- A campaign to lobby for a non Hispanic Caribbean/West Indian category on the U.S. Census has kicked off officially ahead of the annual West Indian Labor Day carnival, in New York City, home to millions of Caribbean immigrants.
`CaribID2010,` a movement initiated by Hard Beat Communications` Felicia Persaud, is a gigantic effort to get Caribbean nationals from the English, Dutch and French-speaking Caribbean who are a melting pot of ethnic groups and who have no way now of self-identifying themselves on the U.S. Census form, secure a category.
The movement is now lobbying for a bill to be introduced in Congress to push for a single line to be added to the form. Currently, nationals who number millions across the U.S., and are from English, Dutch and French-speaking Caribbean nations, are now forced to choose between checking the box misidentifying themselves as either African American, Asian American or Hispanic or simply `Other.`
CaribID2010 has so far secured the following of a number of Caribbean organizations and media houses in the Caribbean American community, including the Caribbean Immigrant Services, CbeanMedia.tv, the Institute of Caribbean Studies of D.C., the Caribbean Research Center, the Bowling Green Association, the Jamaica Organization of New Jersey, the Guyanese American Workers United, Jamaica Diaspora representative, Marlon Hill and Soca De Vote, the D.C. and Atlanta carnival associations, Curtis Ward Associates LLC and a number of media houses and media practitioners including One Caribbean Radio, South Florida Caribbean, Whatz Up TV, CaribVoice Radio, Jason Walker of WFGG Atlanta, Jamaicans.com, Caribbean Life Style TV, Stan Smith, Ian Edwards, Von Martin and Ron Bobb Semple.
Things nationals can do: sign and fill out the confidential petition form at www.caribid2010.com; send the link urging all of those on your email list to sign up, call your congressperson and urge them to get on board in supporting and pushing a bill for this effort, if you have a media entity, a blog, or a website, post an ad to help spread the word, sing about it, bBlog about it, wave a sign about it at the next party you attend, urge your church and pastor to get on board with the movement, start your own CaribID club.
For more log on to www.caribid2010.com.
