The Weekly reFRESH: Radical MLK and $1M for girl coders

January 22, 2016

Edited by Mara Meyers

This week’s reFRESH includes reflections on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a new name for your savings account, and a practical end to Silicon Valley’s well-documented diversity problems.

What we’ve been checking out…

Citing the “white privileged racism” of this all-white Oscars, Mark Ruffalo considered not attending. We think this is awesome and wonder who will be the first white actor to follow through on this lead?

Silicon Valley isn’t looking at historically black colleges for engineers. One professor at Howard is trying to change that.

When it was announced on Tuesday that there would be a push for legislation addressing sexism at universities, students began to reveal stories of sexual harassment.

Instead of saving for a rainy day you should be saving for a fuck off fund.

This study unveils the troubling reality that no one is talking about: only 3% of students in the most competitive U.S. colleges come from the bottom 25% of the socioeconomic quartile.

No more excuses for the tech industry: Kapor Capital made a roadmap for how tech startups can do better when it comes to diversity.

The latest from our speakers…

ICYMI: we announced a new class of eight extraordinary speakers and couldn’t be more excited to collaborate with this new crew.

Bisi Alimi questions our adoration of Martin Luther King Jr. and wonders if our selective memory of historical figures bends towards those considered more “peaceful.”

Jamil Smith reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t as amicable as history would like us to think. In fact, it’s his legacy of radicalism that we should remember.

Bay Area protesters stood in solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. in an epic shutdown of the Bay Bridge. Mia Birdsong explained the meaning behind this action.

Since there are so many self-help books about the process of decluttering our lives, there must be some kernels of wisdom in the practice. Ann Friedman cautions that for women, the act of tidying up may not be therapeutically healing.

It’s been 43 since Roe v. Wade and Julie Zeilinger reveals how far we haven’t come.

When Sesame Street moved from PBS to HBO, people worried that the show wasn’t aimed at everyone anymore. Latoya Peterson questions whether or not the move from public to cable TV has gentrified The Street.

Reshma Saujani and Girls Who Code announced that they would give $1 million to underprivileged girls so that they can attend the Girls Who Code summer program, taking a huge step towards diversifying the tech industry.

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