The Color of Change: Black Activism On The Internet

Critics of Old Guard Take Black Activism Online

The Color of Change, The Afrospear and black bloggers are highlighted in a Washington Post article written by Darryl Fears, Critics of Old Guard Take Black Activism Online, which highlights how black bloggers are taking on Old Guard like the NAACP. It Highlights one of my favorite activist bloggers, Gina McCauley, at the blog What About Our Daughters and the internet based activist group, The Color of Change. Check out the article HERE

The article highlights how a growing cadre of young black activists are using the Internet in an attempt to reengage and sometimes eclipse traditional civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and hit the refresh button on the civil rights movement.

Big Hat Tip to Mr. Fears who writes, "Bloggers with names such as the Cruel Secretary, and blogs called What About Our Daughters? and the African American Political Pundit, have railed against groups in the "black-o-sphere,"

Note from AAPP: I Think Fears may have meant to say "blogosphere."

saying they do not understand young black Americans, are behind the times and react too slowly to incidents involving the younger generation.

The leaders of the fledgling movement -- Van Jones and James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org -- may not be familiar to many, but their work is. They circulated a letter and a petition last week promising that the Democrats will pay a "political price" if they overturn the will of black and young voters and choose Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y) as the party's nominee over Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

Jones and Rucker were also the first to successfully raise awareness about the cases of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate in Jena, La. The campaign led to one of the largest civil rights marches in the South in recent years.

Blogger Gina McCauley, 32, who is organizing the first conference of nonwhite bloggers this summer in Atlanta, said that what Jones and Rucker have started "can potentially become a new Niagara movement," a reference to the small contingent of black intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who met near Niagara Falls in 1905 to form an organization to oppose segregation. The organization eventually became the NAACP. Check out the full article HERE