A4 Part 2 What I learned

Blogging is fun and really useful. I was already somewhat familiar with blogging although not on one topic. It had been years since I tried blogging. Blogging is a great way to express yourself in long form. These days everything is on social media and really short. Tweets are a sentence or two and facebook posts can be longer but that tends to get few readers and not be shared. Blogs are an excellent way to tell a story with your audience's undivided attention.

Incorporating video and photos just adds to that. You can inform people about something or teach a lesson. I got familiar again with the blogging format and html. I will definitely be blogging more in the future. I just wish blogging hadn't fallen out of favor.

Bernie won three states yesterday!

Like I said, the calendar looks good for him. Bernie Sanders Seizes 3 States, Sweeping Democratic Contests He didn't just win. He trounced. In Alaska he won with 82% of the vote, Washington state with 73% of the vote and Hawaii with 71% of the vote. These are "YUGE", (as Bernie would say), victories.

My favorite place to get detailed election results is The Guardian. Saturday, March 26th caucus results You get a little cartoon Bernie that rolls around. If Hillary had won any of the districts there would be one of her. They have similar cartoons for the GOP candidates. It is nice to ad some humor into the waiting game for results which can be really stressful.

I should point out yesterday's races were caucuses, not primaries. A primary is when you have an assigned polling location and a set number of hours to vote in. Say between 7am and 7pm. You can go to your poll anytime during those hours, they give you a ballot and you go into the voting booth and vote anonymous. In states like Georgia, with electronic voting, they give you an access card which you take into the voting booth and stick into the machine before casting your vote. No campaigning is allowed in or around the polls.

In a caucus, all the people of that district gather in one spot like the gymnasium of a school. Campaigning is allowed. Traditionally everyone supporting one candidate sits on one side of the room while those supporting another candidate sit on the other side. There is vigorous debate and everyone is counted several times. It is raucous and very public.

Some non-traditional campaigning for Bernie

CNN was not giving Bernie fair coverage so we projected his logo on the side of their building. CNN security was not impressed and threatened to arrest us. I took all of the photos in this post.







The campaign encouraged people to make these light up signs and hold them up in high traffic places


There have also been marches for Bernie in places like Seattle, which drew 400 people, hundreds in Salt Lake City, 1,000 people in Pittsburgh and over 1,000 people in New York City. There have been over 50 marches in support of Bernie Sanders so far and more are planned.

A bird crashed Bernie Sander's speech

on youtube

or embedded, I hope.



The National Audubon Society identified the bird as a female house finch

Deal must veto HB 707, the so called "religious liberty" bill

You can read the bill here. It would allow businesses to deny services to people if they had a religious objection. So they could deny service to gays and lesbians and those whose religions they disagree with.

If this bill sounds familiar it is because they have been trying to pass it for three years. This bill is ridiculous and shameful. Many companies have threatened to leave the state if this bill is signed into law including Salesforce, Disney and Marval and the production of The Walking Dead. A list of tweets is available here.

As a queer woman, this bill makes me sick. No one has the right to discriminate against anyone else. It also scares me. I should have just as much right as anyone else to a product or service. I shouldn't have to worry I won't get a job or will be fired because of my sexual orientation. This bill is legitimized bigotry. I protested this thing last year and the year before. My friend was arrested in Josh McKoon's, (Senate sponsor) office last year.

There will be a Protest on Tuesday, April 5th at the Capitol to encourage Governor Deal to veto this bill. It is bad for the economy and it is just plain wrong.

Pictures from protests past

I was going through some photos and I thought I would share a few from some past protests. I have hundreds of photos from the last 5 years that I will get around to sharing at some point. I took all of these photos myself.

Senator Vincent Fort speaking at a women's health rally








Die In at the Fox Theater

March 15th primaries aka It's not over

Stay calm Bernie supporters. Yes, he didn't win any of the primaries but he still had a good showing.

Bernie Sanders Had a Phenomenal Night — Here’s Why

The calandar looks much beter from here on out. He is projected to win all three caucuses on Saturday.

Something else to keep in mind is the massive voter disenfranchisement in Arizona. Maricopa County had 200 poll locations in 2008. This year they had 60. Hillary Clinton Wins Arizona, Some Bernie Sanders Supporters Claim Potential Voter Suppression

UPDATED: What the Hell Happened in the Arizona Primary Yesterday?

There were alot of stories from people in Arizona of waiting in line for hours to find out they would not be allowed to vote. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Actually, I hate them with passion. However this needs to be thoroughly investigated. The cutting down of available polling places is a blatant attempt at voter suppression.

One possible explanation for why voters had the wrong or no party affiliation. MVD error might have kicked Arizona voters out of parties

A5 Write and Publish a 1-3 minute podcast

It’s Time to Make College Tuition Free and Debt Free

The Pragmatic Case for Bernie Sanders

Hillary Clinton supporters should check out If you like Hillary... then you'll love Bernie!

If you are a Trump supporter then you just make sad. Umm...just try and imagine him negotiating with world leaders. That guy with the nuclear launch codes. That is not a comforting thought.

The Primary is on Tuesday, March 1st. If you haven't already registered, unfortunately you are too late to vote in the primary but you can register to vote in the general election. Check out the Secratary of State's site to register, check your status, find your polling location and view a sample ballot.

I have made a short podcast about the Democratic primary.

A few videos

Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner endorses Bernie and made this video.

Stay tuned for more posts about the election and the intersection of politics and social justice.

A4- Part 1- Blogging - response

Dana Hull’s (2006) article Blogging Between the Lines offers up a snapshot of the early days of blogging. Written almost ten years ago, it comes across as rather dated. Back then blogging was a total new frontier. As Hull points out, traditional news outlets struggled with the amount of control they should exert over bloggers.

Anyone could create a blog and write anything they wanted. There were not any standards unless you actually wrote something libelous. Newspapers who hired bloggers really struggled with when and how to step in. If they edited the content too much then how would it be different from a traditional article just written a bit more informally?

While bloggers do still exist, much of it as evolved into social media. The article references several Myspace “blog” posts which we would now categorize under social media rather than blogs. Now everyone wants information immediately and people are eager to share. Instead of news outlets hiring bloggers, they republish tweets and Facebook posts. Is this better or worse? Most of the time they are not getting permission or compensating the content creator and information is not fact checked like it should be. Traditional news outlets are cutting down on staff as they have trouble competing with the instant world of social media. The days of hiring outside bloggers is long over but is this really better?

Citation: Hull, D. (2006). Blogging between the lines. American Journalism Review, 28(6), 62-67