Fairfax Dems Mount Massive Latino Outreach

By Todd Thurwachter:

Ahead of the Nov. 6 election, Democrats have made a sustained effort to register and educate Latino voters in Fairfax County – who now constitute 16% of the population, and are heading higher.

The campaign has contacted tens of thousands in Fairfax and neighboring counties, led by the Voter Registration & Education Committee of Fairfax County Democratic Committee (FCDC).

The project began last May with printing and distributing 5,000 voter information cards in Spanish, “Todo Sobre el Voto” (click here to view).

The cards, and other information in Spanish on voting, were also posted on the FCDC website. Also available in Spanish, for the first time, is the free Election Alerts service, which sends emails to subscribers before every election with key information including a sample ballot.

Committee Chair Janice Yohai also created and launched a special Latino outreach pilot program for Back-to-School-Nights in September. The committee targeted 16 Fairfax schools with over 50% Latino populations, mostly elementary schools, and recruited 13 Spanish speaking volunteers, who engaged close to 1,000 Latino parents of schoolchildren.

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GMU students demand end to Koch influence over faculty and curriculum

By Brad Swanson:

George Mason University (GMU) students delivered a 2,000-signature petition to the office of university President Angel Cabrera on Thursday demanding an end to influence by donors such as radical libertarian Charles Koch over academic appointments and course material.

The protest was part of a National Day of Action sponsored by UnKoch My Campus, an organization dedicated to exposing and repealing  “pay to play” gift agreements from Koch and other radical right wing donors that give them power to pick professors and shape the content of their research.

Koch has given GMU an estimated $50 million, and a total of $150 million to universities nationwide. Many of the agreements are secret but some have been revealed to give the donors an unusual amount of discretion. In the case of GMU, Cabrera admitted in April that some GMU donor agreements with the Kochs “fall short of the standards of academic independence”.

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