Yesterday, I began my fellowship placement with the Bridges to Health Program of the Greenlining Institute (www.greenlining.org) in Berkeley, CA. Greenlining is "a multi-ethnic advocacy, research, leadership development, and public policy organization whose ultimate goal is to increase the role that low-income and minority Californians play in the civic arena in order to create equitable policies and improve quality of life for all communities." My initial project focuses on telemedicine as it pertains to medically underserved populations. In addition to being part of YP4's Leadership Academy, the people at Greenlining have been generous enough to include me in their own Fellowship Academy.

What
we tend to veer away from is facing that such destructive,
life-distorting policies are deliberate.  That isn't conspiracy
theory.  Basic party theory on the right is to minimize government by
"starving the beast."  You don't need to vote a program away, just
remove the funding and let it dry up and blow away, or savage itself. 
This is the ugly underbelly of Puritanism - if God materially rewards
the good, then the poor are not unfortunate but are the deserving poor
- that is, deserving to be poor.

Hello Fellows! Hello world!

This is a blog entry about your life. Let me explain:

I just started working in the Education and Leadership Department at YP4, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around the potential for connections with the amazing people and programs here. I am hoping to use this space to pass along what I'm learning about how all of the elements at YP4 are interconnected, and can help us in our goal of sustaining and supporting ourselves and one another.

What would the results from the early primaries be if former presidential candidate
John Edwards admitted he had a two-month affair in 2006?

    I have heard this word movement in the last couple of weeks,
when a friend of mine and I were designing our blueprint(shameless plug Power @
the Polls) one of the quotes we were talking about is "Movin the
Movement", so that got me thinking about this movement I am in. Weeks later a friend of mine and co-intern at
the YP4 office held a brownbag lunch about the young progressive movement so
that got me to think even harder about this movement. Are we truly in a
movement? Maybe I'm alone in this and I apologize for this but I believe we are
in a fertile environment for a movement, but I think that there are too many
chefs and not enough cooks.

The student protests and revolutions that swept across the world in 1968 and 1969 still have a powerful effect on the people and institutions we live with and within today. In Cape Town, South Africa, it is no different. From Cape Argus [emphasis mine]:

The University of Cape Town is awash with nostalgia this week as it pays tribute to a student protest that shook the campus exactly 40 years ago, after a black academic was prevented from taking up a post there during apartheid.

This has been a long and on-going process...Who would've thought that we'd have so many amazing local poets in the city of Nashville just dying to perform at a Human Rights event?

Like many Americans, I was both shocked and disappointed to hear about the John Edwards sex scandal. I had just met Edwards in 2005 and admired his efforts to address some of our nation's most urgent concerns, particularly poverty and the broken healthcare system. As I was watching the CNN headlines on Edwards, I experienced a momentary déjà vu, recalling my sentiments a couple years back when Clinton also admitted to having extramarital affairs. I also had and continue to have deep respect for the former president.

While there is certainly no excuse for infidelity, in both the Edwards and Clinton cases, I did have to ask myself, why does this matter to me?

Yep, popcorn can kill. But not all popcorn kills, just the microwave popcorn made in the factories. The working conditions and Chemical additives used to make the flavorings for microwave popcorn can really hurt workers.

 The Economist SArticle. Very Interesting. My fascination with Globalization is crazy!!!

Globalisation and health care

Operating profit

Aug 14th 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition