Blog
Essays on data, organizing, and the work.
Long-form pieces by Maria del Rosario Palacios. Each one is the companion essay to a DatosLab course. Written in personal capacity, grounded in the work.
Leadership ·
A town hall is not an event. It's a load-bearing piece of civic infrastructure. Most of us treat it like a press conference.
A town hall is not an event. It is load-bearing civic infrastructure. Most of us treat it like a press conference and that is why they fail.
Read essay →
Leadership ·
We keep funding ads. The organizing that actually moves people is base building. Here's how to start.
We keep funding ads. The organizing that actually moves people is base building. Here is how to start when your org has six people and no budget.
Read essay →
Data Analysis ·
57% de las latinas en Georgia votaron en 2024. Aquí está la hoja de cálculo que las trajo a las urnas." / "57% of Latinas in Georgia voted in 2024. Here is the spreadsheet that got them to the polls.
57% de las latinas en Georgia votaron en 2024. Aquí está la hoja de cálculo que las trajo a las urnas.
Read essay →
Data Analysis ·
Construimos un curso de hojas de cálculo en español porque la traducción no es lo mismo que la inclusión" / "We built a spreadsheets course in Spanish because translation is not the same as inclusion
Construimos un curso de hojas de cálculo en español porque la traducción no es lo mismo que la inclusión.
Read essay →
Data Engineering ·
Eight percent. That's the share of computer jobs held by Hispanic workers. We are doing something about it.
Eight percent of computer-and-mathematical-science workers are Hispanic. The pipeline starts with the organizer who cleans voter files on Saturdays.
Read essay →
Data Engineering ·
Your organizing roster is sitting in BigQuery and your team is too scared to open it
Your organizing roster is sitting in BigQuery and your team is too scared to open it. Here is how to start with SELECT.
Read essay →
Data Analysis ·
I have never been in a redistricting fight that was lost because the law was unclear. I have been in plenty that were lost because the data was.
Forty years of redistricting fights and the same story: the law was clear, the data was a mess, and the side with the cleaner files won.
Read essay →
Data Analysis ·
After Callais, the only thing standing between Black voters and a gerrymander is a data analyst
After the Callais decision, the only thing standing between Black voters and a partisan gerrymander is a small group of people who can read a precinct file.
Read essay →
Leadership ·
We don't have a 'difficult employee' problem. We have a management problem.
A pattern across progressive nonprofits in the South: a sharp new hire gets labeled difficult and quits within a year. We don't fix this with a Slack channel.
Read essay →
Leadership ·
The colleague your nonprofit keeps losing is probably autistic
1 in 31 8-year-olds is autistic. A retention problem with a civic engagement cost — and what progressive nonprofits can do about it.
Read essay →