Sit Back, Relax and Stand Up For Girls!

By Hollie Harper

Although I was 26 when I first got into stand-up, the idea of making people laugh had been brewing inside of me for as far back as I can remember. Growing up, Joan Rivers was my idol,  and I would watch her performances every chance I got. While my family never fully understood my obsession, they supported me and even bought me one of her tapes for Christmas when I was 15. I wore that tape down and had every word of her monologues and jokes perfectly memorized, many of which still live with me today.

As I grew up, I spent every spare moment writing jokes. While working as a waitress I’d find myself writing jokes between taking orders and delivering food to my customers. Every situation was an opportunity to write something funny. My older sister was finally the one to push me to admit not only was this my passion, but also my future. 

This was scary for so many reasons. While Joan was my idol, she was the exception to the rule, as most comedians were men. Even less was my chance of seeing anyone who looked like me, a woman of color. My choices were to give up before I began or keep fighting and working for my place in the industry that I knew I deserved.

My once in a lifetime chance finally came one night while working as a waitress in a blues bar. The host didn’t show up for the open mic. Knowing this was my ‘do or die’ moment I decided to take my shot and in between taking orders and delivering drinks I manned the stage and this stand-up comedian was born.

Becoming a stand-up is a mixed blessing. I love connecting with the audience and making people laugh. There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as seeing people having a good time because of what you’re doing. What I didn’t love was the feeling that stand-up comedy was a ‘Boys Club’. No matter how hard I worked I felt that I would never be part of that club, and after three years, I transitioned to sketch comedy. I spent the next ten years honing my craft and though I loved sketch comedy, my first true love was still stand-up.

I know they say that ‘lightning doesn’t strike twice’ but for me it actually did. At one of my sketch shows, the comedian was a no show and I once again couldn’t waste the opportunity and opened the show. I continued there for many years but still felt hesitant to call myself a stand-up until just five years ago when I got the courage to try out my jokes at an open mic for an important upcoming show and thought “I can do this!”

Two years ago, while discussing names of comics for a show a friend was shooting, he turned to me and said “What about you?” The faith he had in me was what I needed to go back to the platform I loved so dearly. 

Seeing more women, especially young women of color in stand-up is extremely important. No girl should ever think that there isn’t a place for her because of her gender, nor do I want to hear the phrase ‘women are just as funny as men’ ever again. It’s 2020, we can do whatever we want no matter our gender, race, sexuality or any other type of identifier, as long as we have the passion, talent and desire. However, many girls today are still being told they are not as funny just because they are girls, and unfortunately believe it. 

I found Stand Up! Girls 18 months ago when I was introduced to Bryn Bowen, a board member,  at the Black Women in Comedy Festival. I remember attending my first show and tearing up thinking about how I could have used this in 1985. It was not until I was in my late 20’s that I was able to finally see an all-female stand-up show. 

Stand Up! Girls is a nonprofit organization, founded by Holly Weiss, whose core mission is to educate, inspire and equip girls from underserved communities with the communication skills necessary to succeed in and lead male-dominated workplaces. Through developing and performing stand-up comedy, the girls gain confidence and learn to ‘own the room’. The hope is that by learning these skills at a young age, young girls will feel empowered to seek out positions of leadership in settings like a courtroom, operating room or boardroom.

It was a no brainer to say yes when I was offered the opportunity to become an instructor. It has been an honor to give these girls a chance to find their voice and mentor them as they hone in on their craft in a nurturing and welcoming environment. It has been an absolute pleasure to watch these girls transform into confident young ladies and our future leaders! 

Stand Up! Girls will be hosting a virtual fundraising event on October 29th at 7:30 pm EST. The fundraiser, Sit Back, Relax and Stand Up for Girls, consists of an at-home movie showing of All Joking Aside, followed by a Q&A hosted by award-winning comedian and writer, Judy Gold. 

The Q&A panel will include the film’s lead actress Raylene Harewood and director Shannon Harwood, Stand Up! Girls program participants from Cristo Rey H.S. (Brooklyn), Stuyvesant (Manhattan) and Democracy Prep (Harlem) and a group of female comedians including myself!

Topics to be discussed are female empowerment, gender bias, mentoring, and what we can learn from bombing on stage. 

Founded in 2018 by successful professional women and people of color, Stand Up! Girls has enrolled 30-50 girls a semester across New York City. Each program consists of 8-12 weeks of instruction and culminates in a performance showcase at a comedy club in NYC, and for now, on Zoom. To learn how to get involved, visit http://standupgirlsnyc.org. 

All Joking Aside will be available for rental and sale beginning November 13 on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and other major platforms.

By teaching girls stand-up comedy we teach them to tap into their voice, speak and be HEARD.

Because in the words of Kamala Harris, “Excuse me, I’m still talking.”

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Facebook missteps stoke fears of long political ad blackout online

When Facebook and Google announced plans to ban new political ads around the end of the election, they left one key thing out of the new policies: an end date.

Now, as Facebook’s pre-election blackout on new ads begins and a total post-election freeze on Google and Facebook ads looms, digital strategists in both parties are worried that ads on the biggest digital platforms may never come back — or, at the very least, they’ll be down so long that they paralyze campaigns in major races set to stretch beyond Nov. 3.

Those fears spiked in recent days after Facebook’s blackout started Tuesday with the social media giant taking down ads that groups in both parties said had been pre-approved. A day and a half later, many groups said they are still struggling to resolve these inconsistencies with the companies’ advertising reps.

Democrats, in particular, are concerned that the undefined timeline for restarting online ads could hamper efforts to raise money and voter awareness around potential Senate runoffs in Georgia and Mississippi in January. Others noted that the policies will make it more difficult for campaigns to raise legal funds for recounts.

One Democratic operative affiliated with a Georgia Senate campaign reached out to Google’s representative for advice on budgeting advertising for the expected January runoff in the state, but Google advised that they should “not budget” for that spending at all — setting off “alarm bells” inside the party that the ban may extend well into 2021, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

“They went from implying it would be a week or so, and [now] they’ve stopped implying that and they are using the words like indefinitely,” said Maddie Kriger, director of digital media at Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC that had nearly 600 pre-approved ads taken down by Facebook this week. “It’s super concerning that there [could] be elections happening that we can’t communicate to voters around.”

An official with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also said that the tech giants have been “intentionally vague” about when they would start running new political ads again, after initially giving the committee the impression that the bans would be short-term.

"We’re deeply concerned that at this late date, it’s still unknown when and how political ads will resume,” Scott Fairchild, the DSCC executive director, said in a statement shared with POLITICO. “It is their responsibility to share this information with candidates, campaigns and their users, and we expect immediate answers.”

Representatives of Facebook and Google said that their political ad bans were temporary.

“Our intention is to block political and issue ads only for a short period of time,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “As part of our efforts to protect the integrity of this election, we are temporarily blocking the creation of any new political and issue ads during the final week of the election and all political and issue ads in the election’s immediate aftermath."

In early October, Sarah Schiff, a Facebook product manager, told reporters that after all “social issue, electoral and political ads” are paused after the polls close on Nov. 3, “advertisers can expect this to last for a week, so this is subject to change and we will notify advertisers when this policy is lifted,” noting that they are “temporarily stopping these ads after the election to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse.”

For Google, its “sensitive events” policy — which will begin after polls close on Election Day and prevent advertisers from being able to run ads referencing candidates or the election — was also deployed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, initially blocking Covid-related ads to prevent misinformation and price gouging. Eventually, Google allowed ads around coronavirus to start running.

“Given the likelihood of delayed election results this year, when polls close on November 3, we will pause ads referencing the 2020 election, the candidates, or its outcome,” said Charlotte Smith, a spokeswoman for Google. “This is a temporary measure, and we’ll notify advertisers when this policy is lifted.”

But without a firm end date, some digital consultants are now privately speculating that the tech giants may be looking to get out of the political ad game, as they confront a public relations headache and concerns about online misinformation. A Senate hearing Wednesday illustrated how deep anger with big tech companies runs in both parties, with Sen. Ted Cruz pressing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on whether his platform had the ability to “influence elections.” When Dorsey said no, Cruz shot back: “Why do you block anything?”

A Democratic digital strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there’s an “extreme level of concern that political ads are going to be banned outright.” Another Republican digital consultant said he’s “surprised” they haven’t already banned political ads to “avoid the headache,” but “if they do, Congress will probably be more willing to regulate them.”

“A total ban on political advertising by Facebook and Google would be catastrophic,” said Eric Wilson, a GOP digital consultant who worked on Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Together, they account for the vast majority of online advertising. This would shut off candidates, PACs, and issue advocacy groups from reaching voters.”

But Wilson, echoing others, noted that “just looking at the revenue Facebook has generated from political ads this year, it’d be gross malpractice on behalf of shareholders if they shut that off.”

“Ultimately, I think Facebook likes to make money and there’s lots of money in politics,” said Ryan Alexander, a Democratic digital strategist.

Facebook drew sharp criticism from political groups and operatives this week after initiating its pre-election ad blackout. The process arbitrarily removed pre-approved ads from its platform, cutting off key messaging to voters in the crucial final days before the election.

“We are aware that a subset of ads may show as paused,” read a statement Facebook sent to advertisers on Tuesday, which was shared with POLITICO. “Any ads that met the criteria to run during the final campaign will be eligible to run once we've resolved any data lags. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

But Facebook has not yet given advertisers any clarity about what caused the removals, acknowledging to them that it was a “technical glitch,” consultants said. Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that the platform was “investigating” issues into “ads being paused incorrectly” and that they were “working quickly on these fixes.” But several consultants and groups said they were still facing challenges in returning their ads to the platform well into Wednesday.

Facebook noted, however, that while some ads may have been pulled because of technical issues, still others may have been pulled down because of “user error” and not complying with their policy.

Campaigns and outside groups scrambled to upload ads into Facebook’s system before the ban on new ads began. Some of them tried to anticipate the future so they could run closer to the election, including ads from President Donald Trump about GDP numbers set to be released on Thursday, or ads from groups like the ACLU encouraging voters to stay in line after polls close.

Nevertheless, many of those pre-loaded ads were among those that got removed.

“This is a clusterfuck,” said Annie Levene, a Democratic digital consultant. “We’ve been communicating with a group of the electorate for persuasion or for [get-out-the-vote] for weeks, millions of dollars have been sunk into it, and when those ads disappear, we lose the ability to communicate with those people, and we’re losing precious hours, potentially days.”

A DSCC official said that “just one week out” from Election Day, “the DSCC, along with several of its most competitive campaigns in Montana, North Carolina and Texas were blocked from running ads,” issues that “still hadn’t been resolved as of Wednesday afternoon.” The official also noted that the “poorly defined policy” has “implications for both fundraising and voter outreach after Nov. 3.”

The effects of Facebook’s pre-election policy are running all the way down the ballot, from both presidential campaigns to state legislative races.

“In a state legislative race that only has 30,000 voters in a media market of more than a million, you can micro-target [on Facebook], so to lose that” is “problematic,” said David Tackett, a Republican consultant who works on a slate of state legislative races in Oklahoma and saw some of his pre-approved ads pulled. “And to find out a week before the election that 15 to 20 percent of your budget can’t be spent on what you planned? That’s extremely frustrating.”

This is a “site-wide issue that’s affecting everyone,” said one Republican working with a major outside group. Facebook, meanwhile, is “going dark on people,” the person said.

Both the Biden and the Trump campaigns confirmed that they had pre-approved ads removed during Facebook’s policy implementation. But the Trump campaign also created new ads after the ban was supposed to go into effect on Oct. 27, HuffPost reported.

The campaign was able to create ads saying “Election Day is today,” which cut against Facebook’s recommendations that advertisers only say “‘Vote on November 3’ instead of ‘Vote Today.’” Facebook removed most of the new ads after being contacted by HuffPost, the site reported.

The political digital ad ecosystem has already faced massive upheaval over the last two years. Google limited the targeting options political advertisers have on its platform at the end of 2019. Facebook declined to take the same step earlier this year, but over the summer, Facebook gave individual users the option to opt out of seeing political ads altogether.

Twitter, a smaller player in the digital ad space, outright banned political ads toward the end of 2019, and Adobe followed suit on its ad platform over the summer. At the time, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that he’d also considered banning political ads altogether, but chose not to, noting that his platform would “err on the side of greater expression.”

Digital strategists were united in their calls for more clarity from the tech platforms.

“For the sake of both parties, lay down the ground rules and then keep those in place through the general election,” said Tim Cameron, a GOP consultant who also dealt with several ad disruptions. “You’d think they'd have been able to tell us something in the first quarter of this year about how they’d handle this.”

“They’re trying to address issues from 2016, and it’s 2020,” Cameron said.

Steven Overly contributed reporting.

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5 takeaways from Congress' latest clash with Silicon Valley

Republican senators hammered the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google over allegations of anti-conservative bias at a Wednesday hearing while Democrats demanded the companies to do more to police content and accused GOP leaders of hauling in the tech CEOs in a bid to influence the election.

The session showed the depth of both parties' frustrations with Silicon Valley, but also how hard it may be for Congress to come together in rewriting the laws that give the internet companies such power to moderate user posts as they see fit.

Partisan sparring extended even into debates about whether Senate Commerce Committee should have held a hearing at all just six days out from Election Day. Democrats rebuked what they called a thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate the tech moguls into giving Republicans preferential treatment on social media platforms so essential to messaging around the November election.

Republicans, meanwhile, pummeled Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai over claims they stifle conservative material, particularly calling out actions taken against posts by President Donald Trump.

The session comes as lawmakers across the political spectrum, including Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, ratchet up calls to revamp or revoke entirely a fiercely guarded 1996 law known as Section 230, which immunizes online companies from an array of lawsuits over what user posts they allow, take down or otherwise act on. Few lawmakers, however, dug into the details of legislation, instead focusing on their full range of critiques against the companies.

Here are our top takeaways from the hearing:

GOP lawmakers put on a show bashing tech ahead of the election

Republican lawmakers appeared to relish the opportunity to publicly hammer the CEOs on their policies, which have faced mounting criticism from Trump and his GOP allies as the November elections near. And they seized on Twitter and Facebook's recent decision to limit the circulation of disputed New York Post articles alleging direct ties between Biden and his son's business interest to accuse the companies of partisanship.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), an outspoken tech critic who in recent days has launched a media blitz criticizing tech companies, railed against Dorsey over Twitter's decision to initially block users from linking out to the Post's reporting.

"Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?" Cruz said during one of the hearing's most pointed exchanges.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) suggested tech companies are engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices by purportedly handling right-leaning content differently — a sign that Republicans are prepared to pull from a wide array of legal tactics to challenge the companies.

Another prominent GOP tech critic, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, appeared to seize on the hearing to promote her new book by placing it in view of the camera as she pressed the tech moguls on allegations of bias. Blackburn, a Trump ally on tech policy, grilled the Google's CEO on whether the company still employed a staffer who "had very unkind things to say about me."

The theatrics started long before the session itself. In a rare move, the Senate Commerce Committee issued a video previewing the hearing, featuring instances where Republicans had allegedly been "CENSORED" by the three companies and promising to "hold big tech accountable."

Cruz also telegraphed his plans to lay into the tech chiefs ahead of the hearing, releasing a movie trailer-like video vowing to "get answers" from the "oligarchs" in Silicon Valley who he accused of being "drunk with power." A separate promo released by Cruz's office billed the session as a showdown between Cruz, a "FREE SPEECH CHAMPION," and Dorsey, a "CENSORSHIP CZAR."

Soon after the hearing, Trump's campaign accounts on Twitter began reposting clips of GOP lawmakers grilling the CEOs in a sign of synergy between his election team and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill.

Democrats torched the proceedings, accusing Senate Republicans of weaponizing the hearing

Democratic lawmakers walloped Republican leaders for holding the hearing days out from the election, accusing them of trying to get the companies to back off from enforcing their rules on posts by Trump and his allies during a critical period.

It marked a distinctly contentious hearing for the Senate Commerce Committee, which this Congress has otherwise engaged in bipartisan negotiations on an array of tech policy issues, including on data privacy. But that spirit of collaboration was nowhere to be found on Wednesday.

"This is baloney, folks," said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana as the hearing neared its finish. "Get off the political garbage and let's have the Commerce [Committee] do its job."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, meanwhile, tore into Republicans for politicizing concerns about election security instead of taking up legislation on the issue.

“I want to note first that this hearing comes six days before Election Day and, I believe, we're politicizing and the Republican majority is politicizing what should actually not be a partisan topic,” she said.

Other Democrats opted instead to redirect their questioning toward other issues, such as how Silicon Valley is affecting local news and how the CEOs plan to combat extremist content, offering glimpses of what priorities Democrats might take up on tech if they retake the Senate.

Bipartisan efforts to revamp Section 230 smack into partisan headwinds

There's widespread agreement in Washington that the tech industry's legal protections need to be revisited or pared back — but you might not have been able to tell from Wednesday's hearing.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have introduced and even advanced bipartisan proposals to revamp Section 230 in recent months, but those bills got little-to-no attention at the session Wednesday, which was instead dominated by committee infighting.

And even Democratic proponents of Section 230 reform balked at the Republicans' focus for the hearing.

"I have been an advocate of reform of Section 230 for literally 15 years ... so I really welcome the bipartisan consensus that we're seeing now that there needs to be constructive review," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), co-sponsor of a bipartisan Section 230 aimed at curtailing child abuse online.

"But frankly I am appalled that my Republican colleagues are holding this hearing literally days before an election," Blumenthal said, accusing GOP lawmakers of seeking to "browbeat" the platforms and bend their policies to their liking.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), co-sponsor of a separate bipartisan bill to revamp Section 230, declined to ask the witnesses any questions in protest.

"I have plenty of questions for the witnesses, on Section 230, on antitrust, on privacy, on antisemitism, on their relationship to journalism," he said. "But we have to call this hearing what it is. It’s a sham."

Facebook and Twitter are open to tweaking tech’s liability protections — with some caveats

The tech industry has long resisted changes to Section 230, widely credited with helping to create the modern internet. But while all three of the CEOs testifying Wednesday rejected calls to scrap the legal shield altogether and defended its importance, both Zuckerberg and Dorsey voiced openness to tweaking it.

In a pair of notable endorsements, Zuckerberg urged Congress to "update the law to make sure it’s working as intended." And Dorsey proposed “three solutions” to address concerns raised by lawmakers about how tech companies moderate user content, including possible “expansions to Section 230."

His proposed frameworks included requiring companies to disclose more information about how they make decisions on content, allow users to appeal those rulings and let them select which algorithms dictate what content users view on online platforms.

But neither Dorsey nor Zuckerberg spelled out whether they would support making the protections afforded under Section 230 contingent on those requirements. And they hedged their calls for legislation by warning that any changes to the law could have vast consequences for smaller firms that may not have sufficient resources to comply with new regulations.

Their endorsements are likely to be tested as lawmakers continue to press for more sweeping changes than industry leaders have been willing to embrace to date.

Twitter's CEO was in the hot seat most of all, for once

Zuckerberg has testified on Capitol Hill more than any other prominent Silicon Valley CEO in recent years, and his company has arguably faced the brunt of Washington’s backlash against the tech industry amid scrutiny of its privacy practices, content policies and competitive dominance.

But on Wednesday it was Twitter's Dorsey who appeared to take the most heat, due in large part to the more forceful actions the company took to limit the distribution of the disputed New York Post articles on Joe and Hunter Biden.

Dorsey faced a slew of pointed questions from panel Republicans. Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) pressed the tech mogul on whether the platform holds Trump to a higher standard than other global leaders, such as Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) grilled the CEO on the company’s policies against Holocaust denial material. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) pushed the tech mogul to say whether he had knowledge of whether Russia is behind the materials provided to the New York Post. (No, he does not, said Dorsey.)

But it was Dorsey and Cruz’s back and forth on why the publication continues to be locked out on Twitter that encapsulated how Republicans approached the company at the session. Dorsey said the Post could regain access to its account by deleting its original tweets with links to the report, and that it’d be able to repost them now under a revised policy.

Cruz wasn’t satisfied by response and accused Dorsey of trying to "tell the American people what reporting they can hear.”

Dorsey is poised to face similar heat just weeks from now at a separate Senate Judiciary hearing slated for after the election that is more explicitly focused on allegations of anti-conservative bias.

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