VIDEO: Make the Road New York

Happy Loving Day!

In our work to reform out-dated immigration laws, it’s important to remember other struggles against unjust and retrograde laws. 

 

Only FORTY-ONE YEARS ago today, the U.S. Supreme court overturned bans on interracial marriage in the case Loving vs. Virginia

 

Check out the Loving Day website for more information on the holiday, resources and real stories from interracial couples around the country. http://www.lovingday.org/

ACTION: AZ Superintendent to Abolish Ethnic Studies Program

Today, I read this article from Latina Lista about Tom Horne, a school superintendent in Tuscon, Arizona who wants to do away with an ethnic studies program at a local High School. The classes he’s looking to eliminate include African American studies, Native American studies, Mexican American/Raza studies and Pan Asian studies.

Horne, who claims to have a long history of “opposing ethnic studies and gender studies” says that the decision is “not based on a question of academics or education, but ‘values.’”

The classes he’s proposing for elimination have been proven to help Latino students at the high school perform at higher levels.

Countless studies of such classes have shown that such programs don’t just enrich the curriculum but broadens the knowledge base of the students and fosters a sense of pride.

On a personal level, I am terrified by this justification. What he is proposing is a return to close-minded isolationist education that limits worldviews and works to keep people in agreement by keeping them in ignorace. Not only am I offended, as a woman, by his proud opposition to “gender studies”, but as a student of ethnic studies myself I am outraged that he is inserting “values” into his argument.

It is tactics like this that are working to re-institutionalize bigotry, mysoginy and racism. By eliminating these types of learning opportunities for young people, Horne is sending a message that Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans and Asian Americans are not are part of our “values”.

Whatever happened to the melting pot? Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What is my country heading towards - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness only if you can prove that your values match ours?

Is anyone else outraged by this?

If so, take ACTION!

Horne will be in Tucson tomorrow in order to talk “about reasons TUSD should abolish its Ethnic Studies department”. Prior to his press conference, however, community members will gather in opposition to this deluded strategy of axing programs that lift up minority students.

Community members representing the four TUSD Ethnic Studies Departments (AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES, NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES, MEXICAN AMERICAN/RAZA STUDIES, and PAN ASIAN STUDIES) will be holding a PRESS CONFERENCE in SUPPORT of ETHNIC STUDIES

Where: TUSD’s GOVERNING BOARD ROOM , 1010 E. 10th Street, Tucson, AZ 85719
Time: 9:30 a.m., Thursday, June 12, 2008

 

VIDEO: This Brave Nation

The new series “This Brave Nation” is reminding us that together, we can achieve change. Each 30-minute episode produced by the project features a one-on-one conversation between progressive icons. Those featured include Tom Hayden, Dolores Huerta, Carl Pope, Bonnie Raitt, and Pete Seeger, and rising stars like Majora Carter, Van Jones, Naomi Klein, Ava Lowery and Anthony Romero.

Each episode brings us a unique conversation about influences, personal choices, activism and the fight for humanity that unites us. At a time when our country feels divided and we are working towards solidarity for a better future, “This Brave Nation” reaffirms the soul of our movement and strengthens our resolve for change.

Below is the trailer for the most recent episode - a conversation between activist musician Bonnie Raitt and veteran organizer Delores Huerta. For the full video, and for the other episodes, click here.

Going toe-to-toe with Lou Dobbs

This week David Sirota, author of the newly released THE UPRISING, debated Lou Dobbs on the anchor’s radio show. Sirota challenges Dobbs on his separation of Fair Trade and the immigration debate here in the United States.

Click here to read Sirota’s comments about the debate on The Huffington Post and listen to the audio of the discussion.

MALDEF Joined United Farm Workers March In Memory of 17-Year-Old Worker

Taken from Immigration Prof Blog:

Last week, MALDEF President and General Counsel John Trasviña joined Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), AFL-CIO, and marched with 500 farm workers to the state capitol in honor of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old pregnant farm worker, who died from heat-related exhaustion. (For our story on this tragedy, click here.).Ms. Jimenez fell unconscious in the field but her contractors refused to take her to a clinic, costing the young woman her life.

Forty years ago, Senator Robert Kennedy brought national attention to the plight of America’s farm workers. MALDEF now marches in that spirit for basic protections for the men and women who are so vital to providing food for America and the world. During the march at Southside Park, Mr. Trasviña addressed the crowd and his prepared remarks were as follows:

Brothers and sisters, my name is John Trasviña and I am the President and General Counsel of MALDEF. Founded 40 years ago, MALDEF, the nation’s leading Latino legal organization, promotes and protects the rights of 50 million Latinos in the United States through litigation, advocacy, community education and scholarships. I am honored to join this pilgrimage with Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers, and all of you here today.

First, my deepest condolences to the family and survivors of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the child she carried.

It is with great sadness that we are gathered here to honor and memorialize the lives of Maria Isabel and her unborn child. But their tragic deaths will not be in vain. Today and every day from this day forward we renew our commitment to bring justice, respect and honor to farm workers in the fields of California and across this nation.

Our anger and tears will become the determination and the fire that burns in our hearts to bring human decency in working conditions to the men, women, including pregnant women, and young people, who labor to provide food for our tables.

All workers deserve decent working conditions. But those who work the hardest should have the greatest protections. Instead we see that those who work the hardest, may have legal protection—but that protection is only good if it is enforced. The protections that could have saved Maria Isabel and her unborn child were not enforced. The governor has said we must make sure this never happens again, but it should not have happened even once. MALDEF vows to do everything possible to protect the rights of farm workers so that Maria Isabel and her unborn child did not die in vain.

SI SE PUEDE!

Thank you.

What part of human don’t you understand?

I have to admit, I am new to the blogosphere. I’ve spent the last month or so religiously reading blogs from both sides of the immigration debate. As well as setting up as many Google alerts as possible, bookmarking informative websites and obsessively checking my Google reader for new posts, just to be sure that I catch any news in the debate as soon as it hits the web.

I have researched the framing of messages, the facts on all sides (there are many more than two), the legal implications involved, the various levels of the debate (federal, state, local), the hot-button topics, the mainstream media’s focus (or lack thereof) and have tried to absorb as much as I can, in order to begin to build my own voice amongst the blog community.

Why am I here? What do I believe? I feel like there are millions of Americans out there who are struggling to find their own voices in the immigration debate. With an issue so complex and varied, with so many different arguments, sides and proposed solutions, it is hard to take a stand and feel fully informed, like you can argue your points with confidence and ease.

Ironically, it is the anti-immigrant message that has inspired me to take my stand and start to create my own voice. In the past month, I have seen more hate, more venom and more blind rage directed at immigrants than I ever thought imaginable. Sure, there are valid arguments on both sides, but what separates the pro-immigrant argument from the noise is the humanity at its core.

I have been shocked at the numb brutality of some of my fellow Americans - even in the face of severe and real human rights violations carried out by our government (presumably under the policy umbrella of counterterrorism).

To your all caps “WHAT PART OF ILLEGAL DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?!”, I counter, what part of human don’t you understand?

In this era of global economies, global networks and an emerging global community, where goods, ideas, capital and commerce flow across borders and cultures freely, how does the crossing of one of those borders automatically render a person less than human. How does it cause them to deserve hate, violence and inadequate access to the fulfillment of basic needs?

We are all humans. We are all trying to make our way, all striving to make things better, for ourselves, for our communities and for the future generations. Do you think that people want to leave their homes, their countries, their families, their customs and their sense of belonging for nothing? There are greater forces at work here - forces that we cannot ignore. Immigration doesn’t happen in a vacuum - we are all interconnected. Illegal is not a noun, it is not an identity and is not a label that should be slapped onto a human being to make them seem less-than-human, so that the scapegoating and the hate speech seem less offensive, somehow less barbaric. We are all humans. Lets act like it.

 

Who is on our bus? and where is this bus going? Progressives see light after 8 years….

 Wanted to share this speech with our community….

Deepak BhargavaRemarks at Closing of Take Back AmericaMarch 19, 2008 

Thank you to the Campaign for America’s Future for its work and for organizing this progressive gathering.  It is a pleasure to be speaking here today with such extraordinary progressive leaders as Anna Burger, Cecile Richards and David Bonior.  

 It seems that the progressive bus is moving down along the highway, and after 8 brutal years, that is worth celebrating. The big questions for progressives today are: “who is on our bus?,” “who is driving the bus,” “where is this bus going” and “who might get run over by the bus along the route”? 

Our history is instructive.  A Republican President, Richard Nixon, gave us affirmative action and proposed a guaranteed annual income for the poor.  Our last Democratic Administration gave us welfare reform, NAFTA, a disastrous crime bill, and punitive immigration reform.  The point is not that elections don’t matter: they matter a great deal.  The point is that the strength of outside movements –and who and what we hold to be at the moral center of our agenda– matters very much to our collective future. 

As happens every even numbered year, there will be massive voter mobilization efforts in low-income communities of color.  The question for all of us is: will those constituencies be central or marginal to the progressive agenda after the election is over? 

This question will play out in ways big and small in 2009.  

Will we put justice for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina at the center of our agenda?  How about reducing or eliminating poverty?  A path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants? Relief for the victims of subprime lending? 

The evidence of the last couple of years is not heartening in this regard.  As we speak, a hardy band of House Democrats are pushing for a bill that would be just as bad as the Tancredo bill that sparked the mass mobilizations in immigrant communities in 2006. Talk about wresting defeat from the jaws of victory. 

Issues that will probably be at the top of a new President’s agenda in 2009 at first glance have little to do with poverty or race on further consideration pose some stark choice for our movement.    

One of the hidden consequences of climate change legislation is that the increase in energy prices would amount to a tax of $1000 on the poorest 20% of Americans –who earn about $13,000 per year.  Will we as progressives hold as a bottom line the notion that we won’t tolerate driving families more deeply into poverty? 

We hope that universal health care legislation will be on the table in 2009.  We know from the SCHIP debate that immigrants will be the leading wedge used by the opposition to derail the legislation.  Will we throw immigrants under the bus as a matter of expediency?  If so, we should probably call the legislation “health care for more of us,” not “health care for all of us.” 

John Powell has made the case for a set of principles for progressives that he calls “targeted universalism.” The idea is that we should fight for broad policies that benefit everyone, but in so doing that we pay special attention to the most vulnerable parts of our coalition –typically in our society, low-income people of color.  This is necessary because without that attention, our history shows that even historic advances of the kind achieved in the New Deal do not end up benefitting everyone, least of all those most in need.  The Federal Housing Administration created redlining, and the Unemployment Insurance and AFDC systems systematically excluded workers of color for decades. 

It would be wrong to think that this is only a moral question of inclusion, though surely it is.  It is also a strategic question: are we capable of showing that electoral outcomes make a difference to the lives of poor people of color, and in so doing replace the vicious cycle of under-participation with a virtuous cycle of increasing participation?  Do we want to build a progressive movement that can win not only today, but in the demographically changing America that is arriving?   

Progressives should embrace three principles going forward: first, the idea of community values –that we are all in it together, that we are striving to build a beloved community.  That means everyone is on the bus, we don’t let anyone get run over, and especially not the most vulnerable.  Second, we have a collective obligation to make sure that the politically most vulnerable have strong, well resourced organizations from the grassroots to think tanks so that they can drive the progressive bus. 

Finally, we must not confuse the electoral road with the progressive bus.  This is a mistake that conservatives have never made.  Electoral politics are means, not ends in themselves.  A progressive victory that does not reduce poverty and racial injustice will be neither progressive nor a victory.  We hold history in our hands, and now is the time to break some of the patterns of exclusion that have held our movement and the country back.  It’s up to all of us to rise to the challenge.  

Live Blogging at Take Back America

hey folks,

We’re at the Take Back America conference- live blogging at the Movement Vision Lab.

What the noose means to immigrants

When they hang one of us, they hang us all.

Lately reports across the country, not just the South, have been pouring out about nooses showing up in locker rooms, on cars, in police stations. Put there in the shadows, in acts of cowardice- to intimidate, to hurt, or simply to mock.

 Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport officials said a worker was fired after a hangman’s noose was found in an area under construction. The firing comes the same day nooses were found at a Home Depot in New Jersey.

And a Home Depot store has become but another site in a string of suspected racial bias incidents across the country involving nooses — sinister symbols of segregation-era lynchings of blacks.

Several nooses have been found on New York’s Long Island.

On Friday, police said that a construction supervisor had found a noose hanging from a door hinge at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream on Thursday — the same day a noose was found on a fence at a public works garage in the Town of Hempstead.

On Wednesday, two nooses were found at another Long Island community’s highway department garage. Late last month, a noose was found at a police department locker room. 

Now I’m all for free speech- but would putting a gun or a knife with some blood on it in someone’s locker be considered couth, funny or appropriate? no.

Nooses are a symbol of death, and murder - very real and still with us today. It is an implement of oppression and aggression. Not just against black people, but against all people that have been marginalized, or have chosen to transgress unjust social norms.  Being noosed after interracial relations is a common theme amongst many of the murders.

As migrants cross borders physically and culturally, as LGBT folks cross heterosexual norms, and as all people of color continue to fight for the justice and respect we are do, the noose is a symbol of oppression and agression against all of our acts for liberty and justice in the US.

To paraphrase: When they came for my neighbor, I was silent. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak.