Madison365, Channel3000 strike partnership

Oct 27, 2015

Madison365, the nonprofit online news magazine for and by Madison’s communities of color, and Channel 3000, the online presence of WISC-TV3 and Madison Magazine, have agreed to share selected content, allowing each to expand its audience, officials with both outlets announced today.

“Channel 3000 is one of the mainstays of the local online media landscape, and we are proud to call them a partner,” said Henry Sanders, CEO and publisher of Madison365, which launched at in August. “Madison365 is all about community. The people at Channel 3000 and all of its related content creators — especially WISC-TV3 and Madison Magazine — are truly committed to the community. They will provide a strong platform for our writers to tell the stories that aren’t always heard in the mainstream press, and we’ll be able to get their excellent content to a whole new audience. It’s a win-win-win.”

“We are always looking for strategic partnerships to help us tell the stories of Madison and beyond,” WISC-TV News Director Colin Benedict said. “Madison365 is an impressive collection of writers that we are thrilled to showcase on our market-leading news website.”

Karen Lincoln Michel, editor of Madison Magazine, said the partnership helps further the mission of the city-regional publication.

“Diversity and inclusion are important goals that we strive for in content and in the contributors we work with at Madison Magazine,” said Michel. “We look forward to sharing content with Madison365 that will help us tell the whole story of this great place that we call home.”

The first major piece by Madison365 that was featured on Channel 3000 was the five-part series, “Black Power: The 28 Most Influential African Americans in Wisconsin.” The series was published on Channel 3000 over five days concluding on Oct. 14.

Shared content is marked with a label that displays the origin of the content.

Wicked Good

Oct 27, 2015

10main — Alyssa Fox (Elphaba), left, and Carrie St. Louis (Glinda) are the stars of Wicked. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Anybody who has ever seen The Wizard of Oz will undoubtedly come out with a negative impression of the Wicked Witch of the West. I mean, c’mon, she is over-the-top mean and nasty. And so very green.

But you think to yourself: there has to be more to the story.

And, there is. Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz, playing at Overture Center for the Arts in downtown Madison until Nov. 1, is a vivid re-imagination of the memorable tale of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and tells the story of how the Wicked Witch of the West came to be. Spoiler: It turns out she was a she was a sweet and shy (albeit awkward) child growing up.

Going into my first-ever Wicked show, I had no idea what a phenomenon it has become. In its first decade, Wicked was Broadway’s highest-grossing show for nine consecutive years. Nearly 16 million people have seen one of its touring shows, which began in 2005. In its entirety — Broadway, North American and international tours — the musical has grossed over $4 billion.

Based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West which turned every Oz myth inside out, Wicked explores the early life of the witches of Oz: Glinda and Elphaba. It’s is an alternative telling of the witches from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Long before Dorothy drops in from Kansas, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. Elphaba (The Wicked Witch of the West) is the awkward, green-skinned loner accustomed to being on her own. She is smart, fiery, and misunderstood and has trouble making friends. Glinda the Good is beautiful, ambitious, bubbly, blonde, and wildy popular. Wicked tells the story of how these two unlikely friends met at Shiz College, a school where both hope to take up sorcery.

Wicked is funny in parts and touching in others. Sometimes, it’s just plain silly. The musical has several clever references to the 1939 film and Baum’s novel that crack up the audience. (Did you ever wonder how the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the flying monkeys came to be? Wonder no more.)

The singing is outstanding and the performances are great. Wicked is visually spectacular, and I’m not just taking about the giant smoke-expelling dragon that looms over the stage and the steampunkish clocks and gears framing the story. The giant robotic mechanical Oz head (pictured above) is large and animated and scary and not just because he bears more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.

Alyssa Fox (Elphaba), left, and Carrie St. Louis (Glinda) are the stars of Wicked and their chemistry is tremendous. My only beef with Wicked is that there is not one person of color in the rather-large cast. Well, besides Elphaba, who is technically green.

But in the end, there’s a reason why Wicked has been declared “The Best Musical of the Decade” by Entertainment Weekly and “A Cultural Phenomenon” by Variety. It’s just an amazing production. Very good. Wicked good.

12 on Tuesday: Madison Alderperson Shiva Bidar

Henry Sanders

Oct 27, 2015

Shiva Bidar is a long-time Madison City Council veteran who represents her west-side district that includes much of the UW-Madison campus and the Regent neighborhood.

Born in Iran, Bidar moved to Spain as a child where she grew up attending French schools. 1n 1997, she started working at UW Health, an integrated health system serving 618,000 patients each year in Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and beyond with 1,400 physicians, six hospitals, and 80 outpatient sites. Bidar now serves as director of community partnerships at UW Health.

Bidar is very active in the community, especially Madison’s growing Latino community. She is nationally recognized for her work in the area of diversity and inclusion and has been a frequent speaker at national conferences on cultural competence and health care interpreting.

We caught up with her recently to ask her our 12 questions.

1. Rank your Top 5 MCs. Tupac, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Common, Jay Z. Also, why are you not asking what music we like to listen to? Because, in addition to the MCs I listed, I am going to say The Cure, Midnight Oil, The Smiths, Alejandro Fernández, Pablo Alborrán, Juan Luis Guerra, and Marc Anthony.

2.Which motivates you more: doubters or supporters? I need both. Doubters really allow me to be more introspective, question my own thinking, make sure I go back to my morale compass and make sure I have not lost my way. Supporters give me the energy and the drive to keep going.

3. What race/ethnicity label best defines you? Labels are not my thing. I consider myself a woman of color. My life experience has shaped me in being a multi-ethnic person.

4. What three leaders in Madison under 50 have impressed you the most? There are some incredible leaders in our community. Picking three is doing a disservice to the amount of talent in our community. Here are a few incredible women leaders under 50 in no particular order: Fabiola Hamdan, Annette Miller, Karen Menendez Coller, Jessica Strong, Lauren Rock, Dr. Patricia Téllez-Girón, Jen Cheatham, Mayra Medrano, Veronica Lazo, Brenda González, Julia Arata-Fratta, Brandi Grayson, Rachel Krinsky, Teresa Téllez-Girón, Nia Trammell, Deidre Hargrove, Gloria Reyes, Dawn Crim, Malika Monger-Evanco, Kabzuag Vaj, Renee Moe, Sara Alvarado, and all my fellow women local-elected officials. It took me just minutes to write the names of these amazing women and there are so many more that I would like to name.

5. What’s the biggest stumbling block in Madison to turning the corner on our racial disparities? Change. We have made much progress over the past couple of years in acknowledging that we are a city with huge disparities. However, there is still a clear tendency of blaming others instead of internalizing each individual’s role and each institution’s role. Turning the corner requires changing major structures and institutions and shifting power dynamics — and when there is a push to change power dynamics there is resistance.

6. What are your top three priorities at this point in your life? Be bold. Be real. Be happy.

7. Servant leadership takes sacrifice. What type of sacrifices have you made to play such a prominent role in Madison? I don’t like to think of it as sacrifice although there have been many very personal ones. I think of it as a path I have chosen that has allowed me to meet the many incredible people who have given my life so much meaning.

8. What are your hobbies? Spending time with an awesome group of people (they know who they are), traveling, reading. Recently, I discovered 씨벳 during one of our trips, and it added a unique twist to our adventure. I have been known to spend hours sitting on the beach, doing absolutely nothing.

9. When you were a child what did you dream of becoming as an adult? I wanted to be a diplomat or an interpreter for the United Nations.

10. What motivates you every day to continue to advocate for the communities of color? I am going to be corny here but I firmly believe in Gandhi’s words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” We still have so much work to do to create social and economic justice and eliminate racism and xenophobia.

11. You used to serve on the Police and Fire Commission. Being a person of color knowing the inner works of the police force, what can be done to bridge the gap of trust in the communities of color for police officers? The only way to create trust is 1) by acknowledging and addressing the history of mistrust between communities of color and law enforcement, 2) having genuine dialogue and be willing to listen, and 3) create meaningful change in all institutions to move us from a place of trust gap to a place where trust building is constantly being worked on. These processes are not linear, they are circular or iterative. We need to continue pushing ourselves in looking at the impact of every decision and every action.

12. What similarities do you see between Iranian culture and struggles versus the Latino community? There are many similarities — the love for family and community, the warmth and hospitality.

The Pulpit: Stephen Hawking’s Beef With God

Rev. David Hart

Oct 27, 2015

Hip hop artist Nas has often referred to himself directly and indirectly as “god.” That’s not shocking.

However, if the God Christians worshipped was actually called or named Nas, then Steven Hawking would no doubt be Jay-Z.

Dr. Hawking has had a hip hop-styled, drive-by-shootingesque beef with God for decades. If you remember, in his book “The Grand Design,” Hawking argues that God did not create the universe, but rather, the universe created itself from essentially nothing.

Hawking turned up the heat in his beef with God by claiming recently that the concept of heaven amounted to nothing more than a fairy tale constructed for people who also are afraid of the dark.

That’s real beef. I’m not going to speculate about why Hawking has a beef with God, but he is right. Heaven, on a linear and logical plane, is a fairy tale. Nobody has ever been able to develop a hypothesis that heaven exists and prove that either God or heaven exists in the manner that Christians understand those things.

Nobody can or has ever been able to produce a shred of physical evidence to corroborate the existence of God or heaven.

Christians can curse Hawking, quietly wish he would suffer some untimely harm, or point to the occurrence of “miracles” on earth from now on, but that still doesn’t touch the validity of Hawking’s argument.

Believing in God and heaven is really quite silly in a linear, logical world.

Really.

But, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what God and Spirit ask us to do — to believe in things that are not logical? Having hope in things that we can neither prove nor see is what we do. It’s kind of our thing.

It is the definition of faith.

It’s watching a horror flick and knowing that the black couple (you know that black couple) will be killed while the opening credits role, but watching and praying for the best for them anyway.

It’s watching the Chicago Cubs lose every year and saying with confidence at the beginning of every baseball season that they will win the World Series.

It’s praying for the Duggars to disappear, or little frail blonde women to stop having sex and making tapes of it that nobody really wants to see, or watching Stacey Dash on Fox and saying that she’ll turn it all around this year.

Its knowing that Jennifer Aniston is minutes away from a good performance in a movie that doesn’t suck. It’s believing that Kenny G will apologize to everyone for everything he’s ever done.

It’s knowing that one day some hip hop artists will care more about building than money and rims, and their suburban audience will love and appreciate them for it.

It’s knowing conservatives will stop saying silly things about rappers, black politicians, and people who don’t love guns or their version of their America as much as they do.

It doesn’t make sense. Believing and having faith in fairy tales and that the impossible can happen doesn’t make any sense, but Mr. Hawking, it’s what we do…

Perhaps, like Nas and Jay-Z, one day God and Hawking will squash their beef and get along … see, I’m doing it again.

S.C. Police Officer Slams Black Student; Video Sparks Outrage

Curtis Skinner

Oct 27, 2015

SpringValleySummer — Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C.

(Reuters) – A video of a white male police officer at a South Carolina high school flipping and slamming a black girl to the ground in a classroom arrest sparked outrage on social media on Monday.

The incident comes amid heightened scrutiny of the use of force by police, particularly against minorities, after numerous high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police across the United States in the last two years triggered protests.

The 15-second video was apparently recorded by another pupil at the Spring Valley High School in Columbia on Monday. It begins with Ben Fields of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, an officer assigned to the school, approaching the girl, who is seated at a desk.

Fields can then be seen yanking the girl’s arm and wrapping his arm under her chin before flipping the desk with her still seated in it. Fields then drags her from the chair and tosses her on the floor, as the classroom full of students looks on in silence, before handcuffing her.

The girl does not appear to resist or argue with the officer during the short video, which was published by local media outlets and on social media.

In a second, longer video recorded in the classroom, Fields can be heard telling another student who was expressing dismay over the situation, “Hey, I’ll put you in jail next.”

The school and school district could not be immediately reached for comment, but Richland School District Two told local broadcaster WLTX in a statement the incident was being investigated.

“Student safety is and always will be the district’s top priority. The district will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students,” the statement said.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Curtis Wilson told reporters Sheriff Leon Lott was “totally disturbed” by the video but cautioned the public to reserve judgment until an investigation was completed.

Wilson said Fields was placed on administrative duties. The girl was arrested for “disturbing school” and later released to her family, Wilson said.

The clips sparked fury online, with the hashtag #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh trending nationwide on Twitter by Monday evening.

A 2015 report from the African American Policy Forum found black girls, like black boys, faced harsher discipline than their white counterparts in a review of New York and Boston school discipline data.

“Turning a Moment into a Movement”

Madison365 staff

Oct 26, 2015

The Havens Center Fall 2015 Visiting Scholars Program will present Max Rameau and “Turning a Moment into a Movement.”

◆ “How Social Movements Change Society”
Tuesday, October 27, 4pm, 206 Ingraham Hall
◆ “Black Community Control over the Police”
Wednesday, October 28, 7pm, Elvehjem L160, 800 University ave.
◆ Organizing Workshop
Thursday, October 29, 7pm, UW South Madison Partnership, 2312 South Park Street
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Regional and International Studies

Max Rameau is a Haitian born pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author. He is co-founder of Take Back the Land, an organization dedicated to addressing issues of land, self-determination and homelessness in the black community. Rameau is the author of Take Back the Land, which recounts the experiences and political theory behind the Umoja village in the Liberty City section of Miami. Since 2013, he has been building the Center for Pan-African Development, a pan-African think tank, and the Positive Action Center, which provides movement theory, support and training to organizations engaged in anti-police brutality campaigns and the emerging demand of black community control over the police.

Community School Framework meeting

Madison365 staff

Oct 26, 2015

The Madison Metropolitan School District is hosting a discussion about the district’s Community School Framework at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Raymond Road, and we want to hear your ideas.

The Community School Framework Info Session will be held Wednesday, Oct. 28, 6-8 p.m. at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 5701 Raymond Rd.
What’s a Community School?

Good question! It’s a school that that integrates needed programming and services identified by you, your family and community — health care, academic tutoring, mentoring, food access, parent leadership opportunities and more — directly into your school.

We have the opportunity to select two schools in the district to become Community Schools in 2016-17, thanks to a grant from the Madison Community Foundation.

Students, families and community partners have a voice in how Community Schools operate. Come and share yours.

For more information about Community Schools, please click here. A light meal will be provided. To RSVP, please call Janice at 608-663-5977.

A Hint of Dawn

Mike McCabe

Oct 26, 2015

Over the past several years, the politicians who currently rule the roost in Wisconsin’s Capitol put in place close to a dozen different obstacles to voting. They abused the redistricting process to draw voting jurisdictions making it next to impossible to pry political power from their hands. They defunded their political opponents, and weren’t exactly coy about it.

Turns out they were just getting warmed up.

Earlier this year, they tried to gut the state’s open records law. They had to back off for the time being after encountering a firestorm of protest from the public and the media. But only a few weeks after saying they were no longer pursuing changes to the law, evidence emerged – thanks to an open records request, ironically – that they were back at it, laying the groundwork for another assault.

In recent days the party of Lincoln has launched a massive assault in Wisconsin on the very thing Lincoln insisted “shall not perish from the Earth.” They voted to exempt themselves from the state’s John Doe law, taking away a tool prosecutors have been able to use to investigate political crimes and convict a slew of top lawmakers and operatives from both parties of criminal misconduct over the last decade. They are moving at lightning speed to end Wisconsin’s century-old civil service system protecting against cronyism and political patronage. They are conspiring to kill off the state’s independent Government Accountability Board, replacing it with two partisan commissions modeled after the perpetually deadlocked and dysfunctional Federal Election Commission.

That’s not all. They are scheming to double the size of political donations they can legally accept, while concealing from public view which companies are behind those donations. If they get their way, illicit campaign activity that caught the attention of a bipartisan team of criminal prosecutors in one of those John Doe investigations will be made perfectly legal. The same legislation that does all that also allows unlimited sums of money to be routed into elections by dark-money front groups, and lets these outfits plan and execute their attacks with the candidates they aim to help. Oh, and they can keep the public totally in the dark about where the money paying for their hit jobs comes from.

Feels weird to say this, and probably even weirder to hear it, but in a strange way all of this is good news. The foul agenda of the ruling majority in Wisconsin’s Capitol is a good sign.

Their hostility toward democracy shows how afraid they are, and it shows they understand they are ruling on borrowed time. Why go to such lengths to keep so many people from voting? Because they fear they can no longer count on the public’s support, that’s why. Why such interest in exempting themselves from open government laws and barring prosecutors from investigating political crimes? Because they obviously have a great deal to hide. Why muzzle the watchdogs? Because they might bark . . . or worse yet, bite.

Why do away with civil service protections? Because they are not civil and they are not servants, and because they know hiring decisions based on merit will not fill public stations with people of their ilk. Why do they want more money in politics, when citizens of every stripe think there’s way too much already? Because money’s all they’ve got. Why are they so afraid of us seeing where their money comes from? Because they know the game they are playing is corrupt at best, criminal at worst.

With their current behavior, they are revealing how vulnerable they feel. The cornered animal is most dangerous, and they are cornered animals. They are staring down the barrel of a demographic shotgun. They realize that younger people are far less likely to buy what they are selling than older folks have been. They can see that American is getting browner, and that people of color are not as into them as whites have been. Their days in power are numbered, so they are using every trick in the book to rig the system in hopes of prolonging the inevitable.

It’s always darkest before the dawn. The intensity of the efforts by Wisconsin’s current rulers to plunge the state into total darkness is a sure sign that dawn approaches.

City of Madison: Listen to the Voices of the People

Rachel Krinsky and Colleen Butler

Oct 26, 2015

The Center for Family Policy and Practice (CFFPP) and YWCA Madison were hired by the City of Madison to gather input from Madison residents as well as from impacted City employees about the use of Body Worn Video cameras (BWV) for police officers in Madison. After speaking with over 200 residents and over 150 City of Madison employees, we found that community members and city staff agree that there is a problem with police/community relationships and that body cameras are not the solution to the problem.

The problem identified by members of the focus groups was a lack of trust between members of marginalized communities and police, and they expressed that the solution to this problem is not body cameras. Trust, transparency, and accountability are necessary for the communities who we spoke with to have faith in body cameras as a solution; however, if those three elements were evident, there would be no call for body-worn video cameras. The detailed report, containing the perspectives of communities of color, immigrants, the LGBT community, and survivors of domestic violence, ranging in age from 14 years old to 78 years old, as well as the interviews and focus groups with over 150 staff working for the city of Madison, was delivered to the Community Policing and Body Camera Ad Hoc Committee. This Ad Hoc committee was then charged to make a recommendation on whether or not the city should implement a BWV camera pilot program. Based on feedback from the focus groups, the committee voted not to recommend the use of BWV cameras for the Madison Police Department.

YWCA CEO Rachel Krinsky and YWCA Racial Justice Director Colleen Butler

Since the report and the Ad Hoc committee’s recommendation were released, we have experienced resistance, both from community members and within the city’s decision-making process, to accept the validity of the perspectives shared by those who were specifically asked for their feedback.

The YWCA and CFFPP were not part of the Ad Hoc Committee and did not participate in the recommendation process. Our role was to engage the communities likely to be most impacted by the decision and report back on their expressed ideas and opinions. The YWCA and CFFPP have not stated a position on BWV. However, the YWCA does have a strong opinion that the perspectives of the people who were participants in these focus groups should be the main focus of every conversation about whether or not BWV cameras should be implemented. Engagement does not only mean asking what people think. It also means making decisions that are in alignment with the opinions and perspectives of those most impacted by the policy or program.

Therefore, we urge the Madison City Council to heed to voices of those whose input they have requested. If we do not center the discussion on BWV Cameras on the opinions, feelings, and perspectives of the community members who participated in these focus groups, we will continue to chip away at the trust between marginalized communities and institutions in the City of Madison. Our community engagement efforts will actually not only have been a waste of money, time, and resources, it will contribute to the root cause of the problem: a lack of trust between marginalized community members and the institutions that are supposed to serve and protect them.

Wisconsin Graduation Gap Largest in Country

Madison365 staff

Oct 26, 2015

The gap in the rate of black students and white students who graduate from Wisconsin schools has grown to the largest in the country, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Education.

The graduation rate for African American students held steady at 66.1 percent and failed to keep pace with gains seen by their Wisconsin counterparts and those in almost every other racial, ethnic, and special-needs category. The graduation rate for African-American students ranked 40th among the states.

The graduation rate for white students rose to 92.9 percent — putting it in a tie for third-highest in the nation. But it also widened the racial gap to more than 26.8 percentage points. The graduation rate for Latino students in Wisconsin rose from 74.3 percent to 78.1 percent. The rate for American Indian students rose from 76 percent to 81 percent.

The report offers a first glimpse at graduation rates reported by states for the 2013-’14 school year. According to the data, Wisconsin’s overall graduation rate rose by more than half a percentage point to 88.6%.

The Department of Education data shows 36 states saw increases in overall graduation rates when compared with the 2012-2013 school year, six saw decreases and eight were unchanged. According to the federal government, the nation has posted record graduation rates for the last two years, with the highest rate ever of 81 percent announced in March.

“While these gains are promising, we know that we have a long way to go in improving educational opportunities for every student — no matter their ZIP code — for the sake of our young people and our nation’s economic strength,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement.

The National Center for Education Statistics is expected to release final graduation rate data in coming months.

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