Elkhart County organizers reviewing ‘flawed process,’ lack of diversity for torch relay

ELKHART — The organizers of a 28-member torch relay team formed as part of Indiana’s bicentennial celebrations are open to adding Latinos and African-Americans to make it more demographically diverse.

Diana Lawson, executive director of the Elkhart County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Monday that she contacted Mark Newman, head of the Indiana Office of Tourism Development, about the make-up of the body after some in Elkhart County questioned the absence of minorities.

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Indiana minorities don’t have proportional representation

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s minorities do not enjoy proportional representation in the Legislature or the state’s congressional delegation, according to data compiled by the Associated Press.

For example, Latinos make up almost 7 percent of the state’s population, but less than 1 percent of the Legislature. The state’s nine-member congressional delegation includes one African-American, but no Latinos.

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Research-based summer camp that helps Latino teens battle depression seeks donations

INDIANAPOLIS — A one-of-a-kind research-based summer camp that helps Marion County Latino youth, who as a group have alarmingly high rates of depression, begins its third year June 20. Camp organizers are seeking donations through the IU Foundation to operate the camp and provide additional services.

The one-week camp is called “Your Life. Your Story.” It was created in 2014 by the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in collaboration with the Latino Health Organization, with support from the Minority Health Coalition.

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Top Indiana Republicans rebuke Trump after criticism over their silence

Gov. Mike Pence and other top Indiana Republicans joined a chorus of national GOP figures Tuesday in condemning Donald Trump’s ethnicity-based attacks on an Indiana-born judge.

The responses came a day after Indiana Democrats criticized the state’s GOP leaders for their silence on the issue, even as other prominent Republicans outside the state slammed Trump for what U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday called “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

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Hispanic Voters Will Decide Bernie Sanders’s Fate in California

California looks a lot like Indiana — another open primary state with few black voters — and it expects Clinton to lose California by 3 or 4 percentage points, similar to her margin of defeat in the Hoosier State.

These differences are even more profound in other states. Depending on which model you use, Clinton is either an underdog in New Mexico, which has few black voters but lots of Hispanics and Native Americans, or a 50-point favorite.

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