Among the most important elected positions are for positions on state boards of education. The Texas board of education is a particularly powerful one that is also dominated by right wing extremists who want to ruin public education and want to mix religion with science. That makes this year's Texas Board of Education races among the most important in the country...and yet are largely ignored.

There are two particular races for progressives to focus on. This is adapted from a Daily Kos diary: (with some additions)

VOTE FOR CHANGE IN NOVEMBER - State Board of Education District 10 and District 5

There is a way to change the direction of the Texas State Board of Education - and the states across the nation which are influenced by this board.

The best way to change this direction is to support and elect the Democratic challengers in these races.

District 10 - Dr. Judy Jennings.

The State Board of Education sets policy for Texas public schools. But Republican board member Cynthia Dunbar calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion” and likens sending one's children to public school with "throwing them into the enemy's flames."
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Maegan Ortiz, aka @mamitamala and publisher of Vivir Latino, was here this past Monday and one of the things we were remarking about was the fact we have to write in English on account of our audiences.

I was born in NYC but I was raised in Puerto Rico and lived there until the age of 20. I spent all my formative years in Puerto Rico. In my house we only spoke Spanish. I attended the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras for two years before transferring to New York University to get what I thought would be a better opportunity to continue my studies of Latin American politics, economics and history.

I've written this somewhere in the blog, but let me repeat it here again: Writing, especially in English, didn't click for me until I was well into my 20s. I couldn't write a decent paper during my college and even graduate school years without a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes.

Essays would leave me emotionally exhausted.

Yes: I couldn't write well, neither in English nor in Spanish, until I hit about 25 years of age. And it wasn't really until I started blogging almost 10 years ago that I actually became insanely prolific to many of my readers.
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Sorry to do this, but this bears repeating, even though I posted this a few moments ago at A hungry man is an angry man; a hungry mob is an angry mob | culturekitchen:

we need more black and brown people in medicine, in nursing, in media, in relief and advocacy work. We need more French and Creole and Spanish speaking people in positions of power in the United States. We need to look at how bad immigration laws have cheated this country of the best and brightest of African Diaspora from it's universities, its businesses, it's technology, it's science.

We need to look at the fear-mongering in Haiti coupled with the average demograpics of the relief workers hitting it's ground as a prime example of the systemic racism that is so entrenched and yet so subtle in the United States culture that cannot but help seeing in starving black man or woman with hand out but machete in hand as a big black monster waiting to attack them. We could do better as a country. We could be better as people. We could be building a better multiracial, multiethnic and multilanguage future today if only, if just only, we'd be more weary and aware of the prejudices that holds us back.

Having more blacks and latinos in college cannot just be about upward mobility. Honestly, we have not had upward mobility in years what with wages being stagnant in the US for what some believe has been specific to the last 25 years. We need to see more black and brown faces who are multi-ethnic and polyglot because we need a cultural revolution. Not just in the United States, mind you, but in all of The Americas.

Education doesn't cure people of bigotry but it does minimize it; especially when your teachers, one of the most primary positions of authority in our culture, are black and brown and multilingual. We don't just need them in urban or inner city school, by the way. We need them in suburb and and rural schools. And we most certainly need them in more university departments; especially in more technology and science and research centers.

This doesn't mean though that I propose this as the only answer. Honestly, I believe it is ultimately the wrong one.


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So I received another press release that made me do a double take. MALDEF or the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund is having an OMFGGIVEUSMONEYNOWLOL! awards gala sometime in November and there were two "celebratees" (yes, i know am making that one up) that caught my eye.

First up, Eva Longoria, Desperate Housewives' own Chicana Warrior Princess. She seems to not only plunk a lot of money for a variety of Latino causes, but also does the walk by raising awareness about the plight of immigrant farm workers:
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This comes via Virginia Young Democrats:

Meanwhile, also from the Virginia Young Democrats comes this: McDonnell's Record on Higher Education: Just Say "Nay"