ONE OF THE bright stars of Silicon Valley has quit his dream job and will devote his time in bridging the gaps that has divided the country as a result of Donald Trump's campaign and election victory. Like many Californians, Dex Torricke-Barton was surprised by the outcome of Nov. 8. Unlike many people complaining about Trump's election as POTUS, the Burmese/American techie wanted to go beyond the protests that have been held every day since Nov. 8. He wants to do something about it. He quit his job at Elon Musk's SpaceX, to form Onwards, to bridge the "growing gulf... between coastal elites and communities left behind by globalization." "The only reason to leave my dream job was to go and fight a nightmare -- a future where the world is less open, less compassionate, more closed," he said in an interview. "Going to focus on grassroots change is how I feel I can make the biggest difference right now."
Torricke-Barton, whose father is from Burma, said he'll begin his new challenge with a "listening tour" to better understand why communities across America voted for Trump, how new technologies are impacting them and what they think needs to be changed.
He then hopes to pull together what he heard and come up with recommendations "that can be fed into the social movement" that opposes Trump, Torricke-Barton told CNNMoney.
"As an immigrant and the son of a refugee, and as someone dedicated to advancing the interests of humanity, I don’t want to watch while the world slips backwards… From what I see, the world is becoming a less open and less compassionate place," he said.
"There is a need for all leaders across the industry to be more engaged with issues of social concern," said Torricke-Barton. "Staying silent or on the sidelines ... is not responsible."
Burmese emissary Aung San Suu Kyi met with President Obama last week.
NEARLY HALF of all refugees entering the U.S. are Muslim, according to a Pew report.
With most of the media attention and campaign rhetoric focused on the refugees coming from war-torn Syria, the country that actually sending the greatest number of refugees to the United States is going unnoticed.
The Obama administration has informed Congress it wants to increase the number of refugees accepted to the U.S. next year from 85,000 to 110,000.
But it's not Syria, or Iraq or the gang violence-ridden country of Guatemala, that is sending the most refugees here at the moment.
It's Burma.
Burma, also known as Myanmar, sent 18,386 refugees to the U.S. in 2015. Let's hope that Donald Trump doesn't get wind of this news.
In fact, in 2015 that southeast Asian country made up over a quarter of all refugees entering the U.S., almost a 130 percent increase from 2014.
As of mid-August this year, the U.S. has received more than 63,000 refugees, about 22,000 short of the 85,000 ceiling set by the Obama administration at the beginning of fiscal 2016.
According to a Pew study, Burma (Myanmar) still tops the list with 10,464 refugees, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 10,417; Syria, 8,569; and Iraq, 7,479; are the top origin countries of refugees arriving thus far in 2016. Together, refugees from these four nations represent more almost 60 percent of all refugees admitted to the U.S. this fiscal year. Pew notes that the number of refugees admitted to the United States has typically been contingent on the state of conflict around the world. The Balkan wars of the 1990s helped drive the flow of resettlement in that period; it reached a peak of 142,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. in 1993.
The primary reason for the exodus from Burma are long-standing fighting between ethnic groups. Thousands of ethnic Karen and Karenni have fled persecution from the former military regime that ran the country for a half-century. Most of them ended up in refugee camps in Thailand and have been resettled in countries around the world, including the United States.
"They've been there for generations, and for some all they've ever known are the refugee camps," said Derek Mitchell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Burma from 2012 until earlier this year. "This is an ethnic conflict that is going on 70 years and drives this country." The refugee issue was brought up in the talks between President Obama and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Sept. 14 where they also agreed to the lifting of sanctions against the government of Burma. Both leaders stressed that this does not mean letting the Burmese government off the hook for corruption and human rights abuses.
Suu Kyi said that her top priority now is reconciliation between the countries' various ethnic groups. She has been criticized in the past for not being vocal about the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority, which has long been denied citizenship in the Buddhist-majority nation.
The plight of the Rohingyas has been monitored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations,, a U.S.-based human rights advocacy group, which has opposed the lifting of sanctions. “In your meetings with Minister Suu Kyi, CAIR requests that you raise the issue of Rohingya refugees as well as ask her to lift the ban on aid allowing all international relief organizations to freely operate in the Burmese state of Rakhinya," read a CAIR statement issued before Obama's meeting with Suu Kyi.
"We are sincere in trying to bring together the different communities," Suu Kyi told the press, saying that citizenship should be extended to everyone who is entitled to it.
IS MSNBC the latest poster child for #JournalismSoWhite? Rep. Luis Gutierrez thinks so.
In an unusual move, the Chicago representative took to the floor of Congress on March 2 to ask publicly and for the record: what the heck is happening at MSNBC which seems to be trimming the air time of their journalists of color.
What precipitated his question was the resignation of MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry but it also was spurred by the reduction in airtime given to Asian/American journalist Alex Wagner, whose mother is Burmese, and Cuban/American Jose Diaz-Balart.
“Last week, ... MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry was abruptly pulled from the airwaves without even a chance to say goodbye” on her weekend interview program, said Gutierrez. “NBC said they wanted a show that was more about politics.”
The congressman also mentioned Alex Wagner, one of the very few Asian/American journalists who hosts a news program on one of the national networks. She lost her weekday show on MSNBC last summer and subsequently was supposed to be in line to host another show this spring. However, last week MSNBC announced that that proposed programming had been cancelled as it shifts its efforts to covering the political campaigns.
MSNBC had to let go Melinda Harris-Perry
People close to Harris-Perry compiled a list of other minorities who've been dismissed or assigned to lesser roles in the past year. Besides Harris-Perry and Wagner, the list includes program hosts such as Al Sharpton and Joy Reid, and African-American contributors and pundits such as Michael Eric Dyson, Touré, Karen Finney and Goldie Taylor.
Also, veteran Cuban/American newsman Jose Diaz-Balart has seen his daily show frequently bumped in favor of election coverage and is reportedly excluded from the networks coverage of the Florida primary, even though he and his show are based in Florida.
Three other African/Americans who have appeared as panelists and pundits - Janet Mock, Dorian Warren and the Rev. Jacqui Lewis - now mostly appear on Shift by MSNBC, the network's little-viewed digital channel.
Indeed, Washington Post media writer Eric Wemple noted that in 2014, there were five journalists of color hosting weekday programs from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on the "left-leaning" network. Compare that to today, only two minority hosts remain, everybody else are Euro/Americans.
In interviews, MSNBC President Phil Griffin and Yvette Miley, the network's senior vice president of talent and diversity, say they have not stepped back from the network's commitment to presenting different faces and points of view.
"MSNBC has been a leader when it comes to diversity," said Griffin."We're in transition now, but that doesn't mean our commitment has changed. We're rebuilding, but our principles are unwavering."
The cutback of prominent journalists of color at MSNBC comes at a time when the news industry, broadcast and print, is being questioned about their lack of diversity in their newsrooms and studios.
Since the programming shakeups, there have been some minority reporters introduced but they lack the executive influence to drive the programming or determine the guests to interview.
“This is not about quotas, window dressing or checking the diversity file," said Guiterrez. "Journalists of color bring a different texture, a different perspective on what issues matter and what should be discussed and debated on television.”
“The reality is that our nation has become more diverse,” Gutierrez stated, “and our television and our news media and our political institutions -- including the Democratic and Republican parties -- have not kept up.”
