On November 30 2010, Fission Co-Founder Cheryl Contee gave a talk entitled, “Black Power 2.0: Rise of African-American Online Political Influentials," at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.   The talk aired on C-SPAN 1 on Jan 2, 2011. Click here to watch it on C-Span. 

Alex Jones, Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center, introduced Cheryl as an "Unashamed Geek" and noted that her blog, Jack and Jill Politics, made her "one of the significant voices" of the African Middle Class.

Janell Sims, in her great summary of the talk, recounts Cheryl's motivation for founding her political blog:

Contee launched Jack & Jill Politics in 2006 as a response to what she described as the "digital divide" between African Americans and the white audiences that are most often targeted by new media. A new generation comprised of "children of the Civil Rights era coming of age with new confidence," Contee said, have "highly trained professional skills" and are "infused with passion from their parents" for progressive politics. This "new voice online," Contee explained, is made up of a "group of political junkies" that are "cross cultural and collaborative," but who also have a great deal of "irreverence" and speak out against traditional barriers. 

Sims goes on to recount Cheryl's vision for the future:

Looking forward, Contee sees a "Harlem Renaissance 2.0" that, like the historical movement, will "not only change African-American society but change U.S. society for the good." She is encouraged by the "emergence of interesting and progressive African Americans," and "is keen to educate audiences on topics like net neutrality, racial profiling and location-based services." A large percentage of her readership is non-African American, and Contee sees the "rich dynamism" of cross-cultural collaboration. The benefits of new media tools, Contee concluded, is that they "provide social advantages" for African Americans that make up for previous social disadvantages. New media is a "mechanism people are using to leap over barriers that have kept out people in the past," she said.

Cheryl gave her own take in her post on Jack and Jill Politics:

Bottom line, the hip hop generation is re-defining black power and our combined energies amplified and accelerated via social media is creating a seismic change across every facet of American culture in a similar fashion to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s/30s.

Click here to watch the video on C-Span.