posted Feb 13, 2012 1:34 PM by Andrea Guerrero
The Equality Alliance of San Diego County has endorsed the Millionaires Tax of 2012, a progressive tax measure that we hope to qualify for the November 2012 ballot. It asks the
wealthy, who have benefited so greatly from living in the Golden
State, to pay 3-5% more in taxes to reinvest in our future.
The Millionaires Tax of 2012 represents
the best in our democracy. It's a people-powered initiative that will
create a more equitable tax system. At a time when some of the 1% are
lobbying to pass special tax breaks for themselves and to force the
middle class to keep paying more and more for less and less, this is a chance for the 99% to take back our democracy.
Read more.
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posted Nov 3, 2011 12:44 PM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Jan 10, 2012 10:26 AM
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The Equality Alliance and All Peoples Breakfast Dream Team are thrilled to announce that Jose Antonio Vargas will deliver the keynote speech at the 24th annual event celebrating the living legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. Vargas is an award-winning multimedia journalist and is the founder of Define American, a new campaign that seeks to elevate the conversation around immigration. He's been a journalist for over a decade, writing for some of the most prestigious news organizations in the country. Most recently, he was a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post, where he launched the Technology and College sections. Prior to that, he covered tech and video game culture, HIV/AIDS, and the 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post, and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. His 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. inspired a feature-length documentary -- The Other City -- which he co-produced and wrote. It world premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Showtime. In 2007, the daily journal Politico named him one of the 50 Politicos To Watch. News media's evolution, and the breakdown of barriers between print and broadcast journalism, has guided his reporting career. He's written for daily newspapers (Philadelphia Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle) and national magazines (New Yorker, Rolling Stone) and has appeared on CNN, ABC News and PBS NewsHour. On HuffPost, he created the blog Technology as Anthropology, which focuses on tech's impact on people and how we behave. He taught a class on "Storytelling 2.0" at Georgetown University and served on the advisory board for the Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism, housed at American University. Born in the Philippines, he emigrated to the United States at age 12. Stunning the media and political circles and attracting world-wide coverage, Vargas wrote the groundbreaking essay, "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant," for the New York Times Magazine in the summer of 2011. A very proud alumnus of Mountain View High School and San Francisco State University, he loves jazz, can't get enough of Ben & Jerry's and worships at the altars of Altman, Almodovar, Didion, Baldwin and Orwell. He currently lives in New York City. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets for the All Peoples Breakfast. |
posted Oct 21, 2011 10:07 AM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Oct 21, 2011 10:08 AM
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This week, the Equality Alliance and our education allies celebrated a major victory! Over the last several years, the Equality Alliance has led a coalition effort to get school districts in the county to provide all students with the career and college prep curriculum known as the "A-G" course sequence. The A-G courses are rigorous courses that prepare students to pursue a degree at a community college or a university, which 7 out of 10 jobs now require. Currently, only 4 out 10 high school graduates in the county complete the 15 courses that make up the A-G sequence, and access to the courses varies significantly among high schools. But that is changing.
On Monday, the Sweetwater Union High School District voted 5-0 to align the district's graduation
requirements with the A-G course sequence. We congratulate the school board on its leadership and commitment
to prepare all students for the 21st century! The new requirements will
go into effect beginning with the Class of 2016, this year's 8th
graders. Students who have individual learning plans due to special learning challenges will be exempted on a case by case basis.
Sweetwater is the second school district in the county,
after San Diego Unified, to adopt the A-G course sequence into its
graduation requirements. San Diego Unified did so this past spring. Together these two districts are setting a new
standard for area students and have taken a significant step to close the achievement gap and better meet the workforce needs of the region and state. Read coverage of the Sweetwater vote in the Union Tribune. Learn more about our effort to prepare all students for the 21st century at our website, www.educatesandiego.org.
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posted Oct 21, 2011 9:19 AM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Nov 3, 2011 12:26 PM
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Mark your calendar for the 24th annual All People Breakfast celebrating the living legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This year, the event will be held at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront hotel on Monday, January 16th, beginning at 7:30 a.m., and will feature Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas as the keynote speaker. Click here for more information about the event. Registration is now open. Click here to purchase tickets. Individual tickets are $40. A table of ten tickets is $400. |
posted Oct 21, 2011 9:01 AM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Oct 21, 2011 9:04 AM
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We have just completed our fall Civic Engagement Academy and celebrate our 20 new "civic engagement specialists" who are trained to engage and mobilize community members in the pursuit of social change. Trainees participated in a weekend-long seminar and role-playing academy in which they gained valuable knowledge about the historical impact of community engagement and learned critical communications, leadership, and interpersonal skills. They also learned about best practices for engaging community members and received training on cutting-edge technology used for large-scale engagement. We are grateful to the Guadalupe Charitable Trust for their support of our fall academy! Their support has made it possible to train a new cohort of emerging community leaders. Our diverse and multilingual trainees are already putting their skills to use as part of our fall voter engagement program, a four-week program to talk to voters about their views on possible solutions to the state budget crisis. After that, we anticipate they will continue to look for opportunities to engage community members and improve our communities. Congratulations trainees! |
posted Aug 3, 2011 5:13 PM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Oct 1, 2011 8:25 AM
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THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED
Job Posting: Educational Equity Fellow
The Equality Alliance of San Diego County is seeking a motivated and dynamic organizer for a one-year fellowship to work with parents and community members to improve student readiness for college and career in low-income communities.
The Equality Alliance of San Diego County is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that seeks to share knowledge, build power, and mobilize for change around issues of equality. As one of its goals, the Alliance works to advance educational opportunities for all students.
In the past year, the Alliance celebrated a major policy victory with its coalition partners in getting the San Diego school board to change its graduation policy to require that all students complete the curriculum that prepares them for both college and career (this includes the ‘a-g’ sequence and career-technical education courses). The Alliance seeks an organizer to build on that victory.
The fellow will be supervised by the executive director of the Alliance. Please review the Alliance website [www.equalitysandiego.org] for an understanding of the organization and its educational equity program.
Responsibilities:
- Train parents to (1)
understand what is required of students to be ready for college and career, (2)
evaluate student achievement and school performance, (3) communicate
with teachers and administrators, and (4) advocate for their students.
- Organize parents
within and across schools to articulate and advance shared concerns and
ideas about improving learning conditions for students.
- Facilitate parent involvement in a parent-teacher-administrator dialogue about community school reform efforts at select schools.
- Represent the Alliance at meetings with schools, school districts and before school boards to advance policy reforms.
- Work with other Equality Alliance staff to encourage parents and community members to engage in the electoral and other democratic processes.
Qualification: - Demonstrated ability to work independently.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience.
- Excellent speaking and writing skills.
- Ability to work in a professional environment.
- Strong familiarity with online forms of communication.
- Familiarity with educational equity issues.
- Experience working with diverse communities in the county.
- Experience in organizing and/or community education preferred.
- Spanish language fluency preferred.
- Ability to get to and from schools and community meetings in different parts of the city and county.
- Available to work some evenings and weekends.
Salary & Benefits: Competitive salary (beginning at $30,000) and benefits commensurate with experience.
To Apply: Send a cover letter, resume and a list of at least 3 references to Andrea Guerrero at andrea@equalitysandiego.org. The position will be held until filled. Please do not call.
Equal Opportunity Employer: It is the policy of the Alliance to provide employment opportunities without discrimination based on religion, race, color, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, or any other basis prohibited by law. Everyone is encouraged to apply.
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posted Jun 10, 2011 1:10 PM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated Jun 10, 2011 1:13 PM
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Calling all volunteers to walk targeted neighborhoods and talk to new and infrequent voters and engage them in the democratic process. We will be surveying them on possible systemic solutions to the perennial budget crisis and asking about their views on checkpoints that allow law enforcement officials to stop drivers without suspicion of wrongdoing. We will use the information we gather to express the sentiment of these voters, whose voices are often left out. Why are we talking to voters right now? - First, contact with new and infrequent voters between elections is key to their participation at election time. With your help, we can have the in-person conversations that motivate these voters to get engaged and stay engaged. Expressing your opinion on a survey is practice for voting on issues at election time.
- Second, identifying new and infrequent voters who are willing to engage on a survey now allows us to build a voter database with recorded viewpoints that we can use to target and mobilize voters on ballot measures at election time (we never do candidate work).
- Third, information is power. Over the last 3 weeks, our canvass team has talked to over 7,000 voters on the phone and in person and have recorded their responses. With a few days left in our voter outreach program and with your help this weekend, we aim to reach at least another thousand. At the conclusion of our program, we will share the results to inform current discussions on both budget solutions and checkpoint policies. Policy makers often rely on polls that survey only 600 "likely" voters, ignoring the sentiments of the new and infrequent voters who are concentrated in low-income and immigrant communities. This is an opportunity to share the views of voters who are left out and remind policy makers that these constituents are relevant and should be consulted.
When, where, how do I volunteer? We will be walking in the time slots below. Volunteers will be put in teams of 2 and will be trained to use precinct walk lists and engage voters. We will be focused mostly on the City Heights area, which is a highly diverse community, and we will be walking in neighborhoods that have been welcoming to our outreach efforts before. Can you volunteer for one of these days?
Saturday, June 11th, 9 am - 2 pm Sunday, June 12th, 2:30 pm - 7:30 pm Meet at the Equality Alliance: 3750 30th Street, San Diego, 92104. Please be on time. Thanks! How else can I help? If you're not able to join us this weekend but still want to help, we invite you to make a donation to support this work. You can make a secure online donation today by clicking here. To find out more about the Equality Alliance, click here.
Thanks, The Equality Alliance Team Andrea Guerrero, Chris Wilson, Ricardo Favela, and Daniel Alfaro |
posted May 26, 2011 2:48 PM by Andrea Guerrero
Curious about new civic engagement technology and canvasser practices? Wondering how it's possible to talk to over 1,000 voters a night and identify voters who support social change? Come see it all for yourself at the Equality Alliance open house on Wednesday, June 1st, from 5-7 pm. You will be able to see our canvassers in action on a predictive dialing system and learn more about our large-scale voter engagement program. See details below.
What: Open house to see our canvassing program in action. Where: Equality Alliance, 3750 30th Street, 92104, in North Park (corner of 30th and Gunn). When: Wednesday, June 1st, from 5-7 pm. |
posted May 26, 2011 2:32 PM by Andrea Guerrero
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updated May 26, 2011 3:17 PM
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Please join us on Friday, June 3rd, to celebrate the San Diego school board's adoption of 'A-G' courses as the new standard in district, which will prepare all students for their choice of college or career. To celebrate, the Equality Alliance is hosting an all-ages happy hour and taco bar at their offices in North Park and everyone is invited. We'll recognize the many people--parents, students, educators, community advocates, and school board members--who made this change possible.
What: All-ages happy hour to celebrate 'A-G' victory. Where: Equality Alliance, 3750 30th St, 92104.
When: Friday, June 3rd from 4:30 to 7:30 pm. Toasts will begin around 6 pm. There's more work to be done to successfully implement the new graduation requirement in San Diego Unified, and there is work yet to be done in other districts, but on Friday, June 3rd, we will mark this historic victory. See you there! For more information about the 'A-G' campaign visit our website, www.educatesandiego.org. |
posted May 23, 2011 11:07 PM by Andrea Guerrero
On Tuesday, May 24th, the Equality Alliance Team and hundreds of others will head to Sacramento to urge our lawmakers to support policies that advance immigrant integration and prosperity for all Californians. In San Diego County, where immigrants make up a quarter of the population and a third of the workforce, our lives are inextricably linked. Our futures are tied to together in one San Diego. One California. Follow the San Diego delegation on its visit to Sacramento at http://immigrantsr.us. |
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