For the last three years, America’s Voice has been sending immigrant rights activists to Netroots Nation as “Immigration-Blogger-Scholars”, and it’s one of the programs we’re most proud of. The conference, which has been billed as the biggest progressive conference of the year, attracts many of today’s most popular writers and top opinion leaders in politics, and we want to make sure our movement is well-represented.
This year, the conference is going to be held in Providence, Rhode Island, from June 7th to 12th. Once again, we’re planning on sending ten activists who are passionate about immigration reform.
Does that sound like you?
We’re teaming up with Democracy for America on a scholarship competition to help us decide who to send to Netroots this year. And the process is simple – all you have to do to enter is to submit a profile. As Democracy for America explains it:
The application is easy — we just want to get to know you and see why you’d like to go to the conference. We give bloggers and other DFA members an opportunity to voice their support for you to win. It’s a people-powered scholarship and the applicants with the most votes are automatically selected.
We’ll also have a panel of judges who look at all the applications and select some of the stand-out applications and stories, and we ensure that multiple perspectives from all over the blogosphere are represented.
One of our scholar alumni, Refugio, had this to say about his experience at the Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota last year:
There are hundreds of activists like me that have not yet made it to the Netroots Nation convention. It is imperative that more people of color participate, and that more people of all walks of life bring their voices and ideas to this massive meeting of progressive minds. I have seen firsthand the powerful effect that it can have on the progressive movement. Thanks to the scholarship I received, I was able to attend and even host a panel on how environmental issues affect Latinos, being that another one of my big passions besides immigration is environmental protection. My panel was titled “Beyond Environmental Justice” and afterwards I had people from big name progressive organizations coming up to me to hear more of what I had to say.
It was an incredible experience that I will never forget. I even got to meet and talk to some of the role models that I have from afar admired for a number of years such as Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Congressman Luis Gutierrez.
America’s Voice is committed to supporting a vibrant and independent pro-migrant blogosphere, and we believe it’s essential for those who write regularly and passionately about immigration reform to have a chance at going.
So if you know of someone who is working at the intersection of new media and immigration, ask them to apply. They could be one of our lucky winners this year.
**Scholarships include costs of flight, registration, and hotel.
