En este primer episodio de “La experiencia de Benito Juárez” los coanfitriones Luciano Gonzalez y el Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera hablan de sus metas para esta versión en español de su podcast The Benito Juárez Experience. También hablan sobre los temas discutidos en la versión en inglés del podcast.
News and Updates
What I’m Listening
Busy week, little time to listen podcasts but got a few gems to share.
The Benito Juárez Experience 17 TBJE 2.0 Luciano and I reboot the show after 16 episodes. We discuss what we liked, what we want to change, and the changes that are coming to the show in the near future.
Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast 38 The Russia-Cuba Connection Been reading a lot about several of these topics recently. Good timing, good podcast subject by UNC-Charlotte Prof. Greg Weeks who interview Prof. Mervyn Bain from Univ. of Aberdeen.
La Voz del Centro 754 La toma de Jayuya en la Revolución de 1950 Since nationalism seems to be a trendy subject these days, listen [en español] about the 1950 Nationalist Revolt in Puerto Rico.
The Benito Juarez Experience 17: TBJE 2.0
This week Luciano and I reflect on the first 16 weeks of the show. We discuss our favorite moments and argue about what can be improved. We also announce some changes in format.
What I’m Listening
The Benito Juárez Experience #16 Trinity Lutheran v. Comer Luciano and I talk about the recently decided SCOTUS case with Utica College political science professor Dr. Daniel Tagliarina, an expert on the Supreme Court and an old graduate school pal.
Resist Podcast #20 The Importance of Local Political Involvement and more with Sean Omar Rivera Danielle Muscato continues her interviews from the Secular Student Alliance conference, this time with student leader Sean Omar Rivera about the importance of local political involvement.
Code Switch #71 The U.S. Census and Our Sense of Us Great show about the importance of the U.S. Census. Gene Demby & Shareen Marisol Meraji interview former Census Director John Thompson. Also, Professor Cristina Mora talks about how the term Hispanic became a thing.
No Jargon #93: Melting Pot, Boiling Pot Hazelton, PA enacted Trumpian immigration ordinances before Trumpism was a thing. Avi Green interviews University of Washington professor Dr. René Flores who found that stirring anti-immigrant fears of criminality led to criminality indeed…against immigrants.
Two Appearances in the Secular Nation Podcast
Recently I served as guest and, later, host of Secular Nation, the podcast of the Atheist Alliance of America. In my guest appearance I talk about secularism and politics in the Trump Era with Aron Ra and Justin Scott of Eastern Iowa Atheists. In the show I hosted I interview Dr. Ron Millar, the PAC coordinator for the Freethought Equality Fund, a secular PAC.
For my guest hosting appearance I wanted to focus on the great work the PAC did in 2016, one of the few bright spots our movement had in this past election. You can listen to the show here. Ron discusses the process of finding and endorsing candidates, the importance of having more secular Americans running for office, and other issues. As a backgrounder I want to show some information about the PAC’s work last year.
The Fund endorsed 35 candidates in 17 states. Arizona led the way with 9 candidates, nearly one-quarter of the candidate pool. The states are quite diverse. There are hotbeds of American secularism such as Washington, Oregon and New Hampshire with multiple candidates. But there are also places like Utah, Missouri, and Tennessee.
One aspect we didn’t discuss in the podcast was the variety of offices that the candidates ran for. It wasn’t a matter of local offices. Most ran for state (legislative) offices and the second largest cohort competed for federal (Congress) offices.
Last but not least, the Fund was very successful with its endorsed candidates. The majority won their races. In the podcast Ron goes a little bit into detail into who was more likely to succeed.
I hope you enjoy the shows!
Back to Work…What’s Next?
I started working full-time again this week after 3 months of parental leave as a full-time stay-at-home dad. This means I won’t have time to write between baby naps. My plan is to write small, quick reaction posts with some commentary but to dedicate time to longer, more detailed posts about race and politics in the secular movement. Thank you for reading.
Feature Friday: Welcoming The Orbit
A new atheist blog network with a social justice orientation! From Stephanie Zvan’s intro post in her blog.
The Orbit isn’t Freethought Blogs. We have different missions, even with overlap. We have different operating structures. We have different people. But there’s still going to be a lot of FtB in The Orbit. There has to be. FtB was one of the forces that made many of us who we are.
-Stephanie Zvan, Almost Diamonds, “Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going“
You can also support The Orbit in Kickstarter.
Racial Diversity and the Future of the Secular Movement in Free Inquiry
That’s the title of my new piece in Free Inquiry [subscription requited] as part of a volume dedicated to discussing “How do we Sustain the Growth of Unbelief?”
From the abstract: “Seculars of color are more numerous than ever, but movement groups may need to offer broader programming to attract them.”
My main argument, that on paper secular Americans look like a socially and racially progressive group that seems open to address the concerns of secular Americans of color. But while…
. . . [i]t is possible for the movement to address the needs of the growing secular population of color. The question is whether the movement is willing to make the necessary adjustments to become a major force in American society.
Most days I am positive that we have the ability of organizing a racially inclusive movement. However, it depends on acting on stated thoughts and opinions on matters of racial and social justice in polls and prioritizing these preferences in a way that they reflect not just the opinions of many members of the community at-large, but also as guiding values and principles for the movement.
Other articles were penned by Tom Flynn, Ryan Cragun, Barry Kosmin, Christel J. Manning, Jesse Max Smith, and Phil Zuckerman. That’s pretty good company.
Contribute to First in the Family Humanist Scholarship Fund
In 2013, Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA), a 501c3 organization, spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on providing resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless and LGBTQ youth who will be the first in their families to go to college. Responding directly to the school-to-prison pipeline crisis in communities of color, BSLA is the first atheist organization to specifically address college pipelining for youth of color with an explicitly anti-racist multicultural emphasis.
Weekly Summary
I started the week commenting on the story of Diego Kal-El Martinez, whose post at Medium narrated his journey away from Catholicism to atheism. On Tuesday I tackled secular politics again by comparing two organizational perspectives: the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association. While the AHA is placing some capital in activities aimed at getting the attention of political elites, the FFRF keeps hoping that the secular messiah will show up and finally represent the interests of secular voters.
For Feature Friday, I linked to Justin Scott’s interview in The Humanist Hour. The Staturday number of the week was the percentage of nones who voted for Barack Obama in 2012. Finally, I quote and link to a post by Latino Decisions’s David Damore explaining why Donald Trump did not win the Latino vote in the Nevada caucuses.
The LatiNone 