Participation in The 2008 Democratic National Convention
On May 16, 2008, AfroSpear member Atty. Francis L. Holland broke the story of the Democratic National Convention's (DNC) virtually all-white state blog pool, where some 53 of 55 state blogs chosen to sit among the delegates on the floor of the Democratic National Convention were white, with only two Black or Latino blogs chosen. The DNC state blog corps story was first covered in the mainstream media by reporter Karen Brooks of the Dallas Morning News. Atty. Francis L. Holland and D. Yobachi Boswell, both coordinators of the Afrosphere Action Coalition issued a series of press releases and gave a series of interviews to the mainstream media on the issue, after which the story was covered in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Washington Post, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Politico.
Partly as a result of these actions, as well as a generalized afrosphere campaign of e-mail contact with the DNC and intense media attention, six AfroSpear blogs and an additional three afrosphere blogs that had applied for credentials were allowed to cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention as part of the Convention's "general pool" of blogs, but not as part of the state blog corps, which remains virtually all-white.
AfroSpear blogs admitted to cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention in the general pool were L.N. Rock's "African American Political Pundit"; Pam Spaulding's "PamsHouseBlend"; Shawn Williams' "Dallas South"; Gina McCauley's "What About our Daughters?"; Jill Tubman and Baratunde Thurston's "Jack and Jill Politics". Additional afrosphere blogs selected included "Culture Kitchen" and "Georgia Unfiltered".
In 2012, credentialed bloggers at the Democratic National Convention will include Leon N. Rock of the African American Pundit blog and Adrianne George of the Black Women in Europe blog.
Read more about this topic: Afrosphere
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