Open The Door To Your Census Taker; They Might Be Cute!

I mean, look at this love connection

I like reading the Craigslist Missed Connections (a section where people look for someone they shared a fleeting moment of interest with, but didn’t speak to) in part because it tracks interesting trends in how and where people are meeting (or regretfully not meeting). At the end of the weekend you can tell which big parties and concerts everyone was at (“we danced at Rubulad Friday”) or even what the weather was like (“you shared your umbrella with me on 14th street”).

So, I was amused and pleased to find a Missed Connection trend I can add to LYVEF’s Census Campaign! This young man was quite taken with his Census Taker; maybe you will be too! Open the door and be counted, kids, you never know were you’ll find love.

Posted by:

Rachel Bishop

Jay Electronica, Raekwon, Freeway, Chace Infinite, 9th Wonder and others build on Census 2010

Check out some of our other census videos after the jump.

… Continue Reading

Posted by:

Biko Baker

Note to the Hood: Don’t Count on Prisoners

Prisons in Texas are said to be “big business”.  We have many rural towns that have large prisons that serve as the major economic drivers for the schools, hospitals and jobs in this little know places. But as we engage in our decennial census count we must examine how these prison populations are being counted for the purpose of delivering services to Texas communities.

The Census Bureau requires that individuals are counted at the address where they reside as of April 1^st . The Houston Chronicle reported that Harris, Bexar and three other large urban communities will lose about 67,000 residents to rural Texas because prison inmates are counted where they are in prison.

The problem then becomes that the prisoners who were convicted will not lend needed resources back to their home counties. Thus, urban areas that need more schools, jobs and programs will lose out due to how the count is taken at the national level.

What’s more, rural legislators are open to possibly gain seats that belong to inner city folks during reapportionment – 99 problems and it looks like the hood gets one more…

Posted by:

Christina Sanders

Don’t Be A Hipster Doofus: Fill Out The Census

The neighborhood I live in has a reputation for being the hippest- and also the most apathetic- part of Brooklyn. This dubious honor was confirmed by a recent NPR report documenting that the “hipster enclave of Williamsburg” has the lowest census return rate in all New York City.

The reporter asked a few token hipsters why they didn’t participate. One’s thoroughly academic response was “I guess it’s laziness and like, what’s the point?” Another sunk further into nihilistic futility, saying “maybe some people, they figure what’s the point to be counted if you don’t count for much anyway? If we don’t count, why be counted?”

Come on guys. If you know how to read a billboard (and God knows you’ve read Nietzsche), you should know that filling out the census will bring important resources to your community. This is not a ‘does-one-vote-count’, debatable sort of question. Everyone’s census form makes a difference; the city’s estimating that each form filled out will bring NYC an extra $3000 in federal funding.

Maybe the problem is that young, cool people don’t really feel like they’re part of a community. It’s hard for the values of strong community to be present when the whole neighborhood is young; no kids making it necessary to show up at the school board meeting, no parents saying we have to go to the lame Community Day parade. So we end up seeing ourselves in a void, just us and our friends and nobody much mattering outside that.

But Williamsburg is a community. Hipster kids share many key values; the importance of art, love of music, the need for access to sustainable transportation and healthy ways of living. We congregate in masses for kickball games, free shows, street fairs.  But we get stuck before the realization that the group of all of us together means something real and needs our active involvement to keep it going.

So Williamsburgers, I beg you: Before you throw out the census form, think for a minute about what your values are. Why do you live in Williamsburg? For most of us, it’s not just because it’s “cool”; this is a community that formed because young people with shared values wanted to live together, work together, organize and play together.  This community needs to get its fair share of government resources, so we can have great transportation, schools, parks, education; even funding for the arts! Think about it before you shrug it off. Fill out the form.

Posted by:

Rachel Bishop

Ludacris takes to the street to talk about Census 2010

Ludacris Dallas Census 2010

Ludacris | MySpace Music Videos

Posted by:

The Editor