Wednesday Open Thread | Meet Ben Jealous

Posted on September 5, 2018 by rikyrah

Meet Ben Jealous – the Democratic Nominee for Governor of Maryland.

If you can give, please do. Even if you can’t, pass this info onto others.

Meet Ben.

Ben Jealous is a civil rights leader, community organizer, investor in startups for good, educator, former investigative journalist and a Rhodes Scholar who has spent his life bringing people together to get big things done.

He specializes in building diverse coalitions for change and holding government leaders accountable to the needs of everyday people.

Ben’s Maryland roots go back generations. His grandparents lived in Baltimore, where Ben’s grandfather worked on the B&O Railroad and his grandmother at Planned Parenthood. Ben’s mother grew up in the McCulloh Homes public housing complex in West Baltimore and helped to integrate Western High School in 1954 as a member of the NAACP’s Youth and College Division. Ben’s father was one of a small number of white men jailed during the Congress of Racial Equality’s efforts to desegregate Baltimore’s downtown business district.

Ben grew up spending summers in West Baltimore and has lived in Maryland throughout his career as a civil rights leader and businessman.

Ben has extensive experience as a non-profit executive, serving as the past president of the Rosenberg Foundation, and the founding director of Amnesty International’s U.S. Domestic Human Rights Program.

At age 35, Ben was named the youngest ever National President and CEO of the NAACP. During the depths of a national recession, Ben guided the NAACP through an unprecedented era of growth, nearly doubling the organization’s revenue in just five years. Online activists grew from 175,000 to more than 600,000 while donors increased from 16,000 individuals per year to more than 120,000. The NAACP’s membership increased three years consecutively for the first time in 20 years under Ben’s leadership.

 

Ben used his background as a community organizer and executive to press the NAACP forward in expanding and protecting the civil rights of all Americans. The NAACP opened national programs focused on education, health and environmental justice and worked on issues related to the economy and voting rights.

In 2013, Ben was named Marylander of the Year by the Baltimore Sun because of the role he played in leading the effort to abolish the death penalty, helping assure the effort to pass marriage equality was successful, chairing the effort to pass the DREAM Act, and expand voting rights.

Ben JealousThroughout his NAACP tenure, Ben worked with governors from California to Iowa, developing plans to help end mass incarceration and expand civil rights, and helped to pass numerous landmark pieces of legislation during President Obama’s first term in office.

As a community organizer Ben helped lead successful campaigns to abolish the death penalty for children, stop Mississippi’s governor from turning a public historically black university into a prison, and pass federal legislation against prison rape.

While working as a journalist in Mississippi, Ben’s investigations were credited with helping save the life of a white inmate who was being threatened for helping convict corrupt prison guards, free a black small farmer who was being framed for arson, and spur official investigations into law enforcement corruption.

Ben JealousBen currently works as an investor for Kapor Capital, an investment firm that invests in companies working to create progressive social change. At Kapor, Ben manages the firm’s Baltimore office where he has invested in several Maryland companies working to make our state stronger.

Ben is a graduate of Columbia and Oxford University and comes from a long line of activists. He is also the proud father of two children who attend public schools.

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46 Responses to Wednesday Open Thread | Meet Ben Jealous

  7. eliihass says:
    September 5, 2018 at 7:58 pm

    Creepy, shifty, sinister…

    Also, one of those who effusively talk-up their role as ‘good’ father, while weirdly, seriously downplaying being a ‘good’ husband to their mother.. very telling..

    He spoke more passionately about the alt-right woman who clerked for him, than he spoke about his own wife..

    Had him pegged as a sociopath, with serious arrested development qualities..

    https://twitter.com/FemaleHumanist/status/1037325763668856833?s=20

    https://twitter.com/Mayne1Carrie/status/1037406534408519682?s=20

    Reply
  8. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 7:34 pm
    Reply
  9. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 7:27 pm

    KAVANAUGH’S A SNAKE-

    Wondering about the timing of NYT to publish the op-ed, during hearings.

    Reply
  10. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 7:14 pm

    The anonymous senior Trump official works in economics and is probably Larry Kudlow

    Earlier today, the New York Times published an article by a “Senior Administration Official” in the Trump administration who described themself as ‘part of the resistance’. A lot of speculation has floated as to the identity of the official — I believe it is Larry Kudlow.
    Firstly, the article talks about economics in unusually specific detail. It also *doesn’t* mention immigration which makes the Sessions wing less likely or even *judges* which would probably be the number one thing most establishment Republicans would choose, especially if they were Christians (Kudlow is Jewish and seemingly quite socially liberal).

    https://medium.com/@LePetitAnglais/the-anonymous-senior-trump-official-works-in-economics-and-is-probably-larry-kudlow-37a244bb9892

    Reply
  12. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 6:53 pm

    People are obsessing over this one word in the explosive NYT op-ed written by an anonymous Trump official — and they think it might be a clue about who wrote it

    One word in an anonymous New York Times op-ed written by a senior Trump administration official has captivated people on social media.

    The word is “lodestar.”

    Vice President Mike Pence is known to use the unusual word in speeches, prompting speculation he wrote the op-ed.

    Pence is also widely considered to be one of the most loyal members of the Trump administration.
    The op-ed claims there’s a secret resistance movement against President Donald Trump in the White House.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/lodestar-trump-resistance-op-ed-new-york-times-who-wrote-2018-9?r=UK&IR=T

    Reply
  14. SouthernGirl2 says:
    September 5, 2018 at 4:48 pm

    See, you can’t reason with him. He’s dangerous to the country, got dammit! We saw what he did in Helsinki. He’d rather listen to @FoxNews instead of the country’s best intelligence agencies. Invoke the #25thAmendment
    https://twitter.com/TAPAlerts/status/1037451696035819522

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      September 5, 2018 at 7:38 pm

      meanwhile one of the orange POS’s SCOTUS picks is sitting at his confirmation hearing, obfuscating, dodging, word-salad-ing, lying, ETC. ETC, ETC.

      Another SOULESS creep

      Reply
  18. SouthernGirl2 says:
    September 5, 2018 at 2:32 pm

    We can’t let no lying thieving criminal on the highest court. Hell no!

    https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1037348425417809921

    Reply
  23. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 1:26 pm

    Word of the Day : September 5, 2018

    Banshee: noun BAN-shee

    Definition;
    a female spirit in Gaelic folklore whose appearance or wailing warns a family that one of them will soon die

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/banshee-2018-09-05?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=b&file=banshe02&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wotd&utm_content=pron

    Reply
  25. Ametia says:
    September 5, 2018 at 11:28 am

    Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey testify before Congress

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      September 5, 2018 at 11:33 am

      THIS RIGHT HERE:

      As they testified, though, some of their most public adversaries sat behind them, including conservative media personalities like Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-minded InfoWars. The presence of Jones, who had been banned from both platforms for violating rules against harassment, seemed all the more striking given a Wednesday afternoon hearing in the House, featuring Dorsey, focused on allegations that tech is biased against right-leaning users.

      Reply
  26. rikyrah says:
    September 5, 2018 at 10:35 am

    AUG: @NRA says it’ll spend at least $1 million on TV ads urging the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.

    SEP: Kavanaugh refuses to shake hands or acknowledge @fred_guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime died in Parkland. (photo via @andyharnik) pic.twitter.com/jgo9yhNGxs

    — igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) September 4, 2018

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    September 5, 2018 at 6:34 am

    Just what were Democrats supposed to do?
    Cohen was not a shock for us.

    ,……….

    Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) Tweeted:
    I still can’t get over the fact that 2 weeks ago Trump’s longtime personal lawyer stood up in a federal courtroom and, under oath, said he COMMITTED TWO FELONIES WITH TRUMP and absolutely nothing changed.

    Nothing changed for Republicans or Democrats. It’s like it never happened https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1036707754654806017?s=17

    Reply
  36. rikyrah says:
    September 5, 2018 at 12:41 am

    Good Morning, Everyone 😄😄😄

    Reply

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