Posts tagged with 'Public News Service'
Weekly Diaspora: Modified SB 1070 Goes Into Effect; How Federal Law Paved the Way
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by Annie Shields, Media Consortium blogger
Yesterday, 9th Circuit Judge Susan Bolton struck down many of the most controversial provisions in Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, including the section requiring police to ask anyone they suspect of being undocumented for proof of citizenship. It’s a small victory. Today, a modified version of the bill goes into effect.
Although Bolton’s decision weakened the state law, several problematic provisions remain in place, including one that allows Arizona residents to sue local police for not enforcing SB 1070, as well as one that makes it a crime to knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant under any circumstance, even in an emergency. ColorLines has a good breakdown of pending lawsuits against SB 1070. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Evangelicals Unexpected Allies for Immigration Reform
by Annie Shields, Media Consortium blogger
With only a week remaining before Arizona’s contentious Senate Bill 1070 becomes law, Arizona human and immigrant rights groups have found unlikely allies among the religious community.
The American Prospect reports that a growing group of evangelical Christian leaders, like Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, are rejecting the traditional conservative stance on immigration, instead supporting President Barack Obama’s call for comprehensive reform.
Southern Baptist and Catholic leaders are also among those who have come out in favor of a path to citizenship, according to New American Media. Following last week’s blacklist scandal in Utah, the stance on immigration reform in the Mormon Church (Utah’s dominant social institution) is under scrutiny. After the news broke of the blacklist of undocumented immigrants– which contained Social Security numbers, phone numbers, even the due dates of pregnant women– a firestorm of controversy erupted. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Kicking Our Addiction to AC—Why DC Needs to Step Up
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
This summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country’s carbon emissions, America’s share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.
But if it’s hard for individuals to give up air conditioning on some of the hottest days in decades, it’s even harder for the country to give up fossil fuels altogether. Just yesterday, BP finally capped the well that has been spewing oil into the Gulf—it took the company almost three months. Yet even in Louisiana, the state hardest hit by the BP oil spill, workers are supporting the oil industry and pushing back against the Obama administration’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling.
How can the country give up the controlled climate it has become accustomed to? We depend on fossil fuels to keep us cool and to keep our economy pumping. In both cases, the answer is not to go cold turkey, but to come up with an innovative solution. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Supreme Court Decision Protects Immigrants Targeted By Drug War
by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
This week, the United States Supreme Court struck down a 1996 law that made it possible to deport documented immigrants that were convicted of minor drug-possession. Finally, some good news. At RaceWire, Seth Freed Wessler explains that the ruling could drastically change a law which has “helped drive rising deportation numbers.”
The plaintiff was Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo, a legal permanent resident who came to the United States in 1983 when he was five years old. A lower court had ruled that Carachuri-Rosendo “was subject to mandatory deportation under the 1996 law as a result of two minor drug-possession offenses, one for marijuana and the other for a single tablet of Xanax, an anti-anxiety prescription drug often used recreationally.”
Since the 1990s, several laws with increasingly severe penalties for immigrants have passed. Until the most recent Supreme Court decision, all resulted in mandatory deportation. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Why the Senate Climate Bill is Doomed
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), though down one man, finally released their stab at climate legislation this week. One of the most crucial sections in the bill covers off-shore oil drilling, an issue that was supposed to help solve the tricky math of reaching 60 votes. But since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling has become a wedge issue.
Just a few weeks ago, off-shore drilling could have been a point of compromise around which Senators could rally votes to pass the climate bill; now the bill had to strike a new balance to mollify both potential allies who oppose drilling, like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and those who support drilling, like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The draft that Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman released this week allows for expanded drilling but gives states veto power over new projects.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who worked on the bill, said that he had not seen the changes his two colleagues had made since he dropped out of the drafting process—but he looked forward to reviewing their work. Although Sen. Kerry says he thinks the bill can pass, without support from Sen. Graham or another Republican, chances are slim. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Citizens Lead Cochabamba Climate Negotiations
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Environmental advocates from around the world gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this week and resolved that, a year from now, they would hold a world’s people referendum on climate change to marshal support for the rights of the planet.
“Although it is hoped that some states will cooperate, the participation of governments will not be essential to the referendum, as civil society organizations are to plan it according to their own lights and the traditions and customs of each local area,” reports Franz Chavez for Inter Press Service.
The conference’s democratic, citizen-oriented format starkly contrasted with December’s United Nations-led summit in Copenhagen. The conference at Cochabamba emphasized inclusion and a diversity of voices, providing an antidote to processes like the U.N. climate negotiations, where smaller countries were excluded from key discussions. (more…)
Weekly Immigration Wire: These Are American Stories
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
As the immigration debate grows increasingly tense and intertwined with economic worries, cultural anxiety, and deep-seated racism and xenophobia, it is important to be clear about what’s at stake. This debate is about our humanity; about our most fundamental legal precepts concerning a human rights; about refusing to exploit the weak. Put simply: Human beings have rights that cannot be taken away by the stroke of a pen, rap of a gavel, or by angry pundits who demonize the disadvantaged.
RaceWire reports on a new campaign to push back against CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who continually presents immigrants as bearers of disease, inherently criminal, socially corrosive. His hate speech contributes to hate crimes by extension. Pundits like Dobbs have long been able to remain under the radar, but seem to be losing their ability to keep their personal agendas within the bounds of acceptable speech. Presente.org is launching a new campaign that works “with dozens of leading Latino organizations and … allies in cities across the country — from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando.” Presente.org and their allies are banding together to “demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as ‘news.’”
We must not lose our moral bearing during difficult times. Let us be reasonable, as Alvaro Huerta is. Writing for the Progressive, Huerta notes how quickly the media leaped upon Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst, and yet all avoided “The central question: Why shouldn’t undocumented people get health care?” If the undocumented pay taxes; if they have “historically contributed to making this nation the most powerful and affluent country in the world,” then they shouldn’t be denied access to care.
But lest we equate morality with productivity; this conversation is not just about how many assembly lines a person has worked. It is about who we are as a nation. Today’s immigrant stories of exclusion and fierce struggle for rights are quintessentially American stories. They challenge us to respond in alignment with our stated ideals and the spirit of morality that we assume informs the law.
Naima Coster at Wiretap reports on a one group of people who have risen to this challenge. A coalition of immigrant community leaders and clergy came together to get Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials off of Riker’s Island. Every year, approximately “3,000 immigrant New Yorkers face deportation” due to a “collaboration between ICE and the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC).” This partnership was uncovered by a 2008 Freedom of Information request, which revealed a complete lack of policy for regulating the actions of ICE agents, who were “not required to identify themselves, provide interpreter services or inform detainees of their constitutional rights to remain silent and have an attorney present.” The coalition was successful: Former DOC Commissioner Martin Horn has agreed to regulate all ICE operations at Riker’s Island.
As Coster notes, this victory is critical because it “challenges Obama’s plan to expand the Secure Communities program,” an initiative developed under the Bush administration that places federal agents in local jails. Of course nobody wants dangerous people running around; we can all agree on that. But if there is nothing protecting the vulnerable from exploitation, then the law means nothing at all.
Speaking of those needing protection, the trend of sweeping social challenges into prisons continues at an alarming rate, as reported by New America Media. The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, H.R. 7311 may be well-intentioned and is ostensibly “designed to combat labor and sex trafficking,” but will it do more harm than good? Previously, the Border Patrol would reunite a minor with their family within hours upon detaining them. Under H.R. 7311, minors would be placed in detention and could stay there for months. While it is true that the private detention industry might cheer such a move, surely these children and their families will not.
Public News Service reports on immigration reform’s movement in Arizona. While Border Action Network director Jennifer Allen celebrates the suspension of “military-style workplace raids,” she is disappointed that the Obama administration “has put off promised comprehensive immigration reform, while at the same time expanding such harsh measures as having local police enforce federal immigration laws.” Allen points out that policies bringing federal forces into local communities “further marginalize immigrant communities, make public safety activity by local law enforcement more difficult, and in many ways discourage people’s hope that we’re in fact going to see new leadership on immigration reform.”
Finally, on a more positive note, we return to New America Media and hop a border or two with Juanes, a Colombian singer and activist. The second Paz sin Fronteras [Peace Without Borders] concert organized in Cuba was “an important step toward ending the island’s isolation created from both inside and out.” Juanes is scheduled to perform next year on the U.S.-Mexico border. Perhaps the power of music can again, at least momentarily, bridge a divide from which so much pain is born.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration and is free to reprint. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: The Morality of Reform
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
On Tuesday, relations between the U.S. and Cuba thawed a bit more, as AlterNet reports. Discussions for implementing U.S.-Cuba Migration accord resumed after a six year stall. This move is another positive mark for diplomatic progress between the two countries. In April, travel and money transfers to Cuba from U.S. nationals of Cuban descent were authorized.
When it comes to progress on immigration matters, the resumed dialogue between the U.S. and Cuba is a good sign amidst a field of less tangible legislative movement. Aside from the positive messaging sent from the White House after the June 25th meeting with lawmakers, not all is as rosy as it seems.
AlterNet tallies up recent legislative moves in “Backward Steps on Immigration Reform”. As the title suggests, it’s not good news. Advocates publicly praised the White House on their intention to pass reform and their recent decision to repeal the “no-match” rule which checks social security numbers against a database of controversial integrity. Unfortunately, the repeal was overturned one day later and got considerably less attention. We’re left with the impression of progress which is undermined behind the scenes.
Worse than this, the Democratic administration is extending the 287(g) provision, which “deputizes local law enforcement as immigration agents.” AlterNet also points out that “extensive research” has already determined how this “roundup and deportation program has run roughshod over civil and human rights and undermines public safety.” Status Quo, meet Two Steps Backward.
Public News Service’s Ariel Keck reports on how the E-verify system is wreaking havok on the economy. E-verify is a “federal system for determining employment eligibility” of workers. The U.S. Senate will soon consider expanding this heavily flawed program, which means that many employed and productive members of society will lose their income, and many of them citizens. Jennifer Allen of Border Action Network estimates there are “21 million U.S. citizens who don’t possess government photo ID, as required by E-verify.” They too, would be scooped up in this flawed system, should the Employment Verification program continue as proposed.
How would this play out on the ground? In Virginia, workers that harvest “labor-intensive” crops will have their documentation checked against a database of social security numbers. If no match is found, they will lose of their job, and possibly become involved in a legal battle to prove their identity. As noted, the integrity of the process as well as the database is debatable, so many workers will be unjustly unemployed. And all the while, the economy suffers from a loss in production and consumer spending.
It is ironic and cruel that the most vulnerable are scapegoated in these times of hardship. Writing for WireTap, M. Junaid Levesque-Alam points out the hypocrisy of groups who exploit economic downturns to promote anti-immigrant agendas. A recent development includes banning immigrant families from receiving state benefits and public services.
There is a “dishonest disconnect” to these arguments, Levesque-Alam argues:
When Americans loaded up on goods and services on the cheap at the expense of the undocumented during the boom, the hankering to curtail immigrant access to services scarcely rose to the level of a pipsqueak. But now that we’re in a poor economy and the undocumented are forced to avail of public services—precisely because they are denied private options by default—we are witnessing an outpouring of hysterics and moral effluvia about an immigrant “invasion.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who certainly owes some thanks to this country’s generosity toward immigrants, has proposed one of the very initiatives Levesque-Alam writes of. Michelle Chen, writing for RaceWire, describes the new legislation as an attempt to impose “a five-year limit on state welfare support for citizen children of undocumented immigrants.”
“Approximately 100,000 U.S.-born children in about 48,000 California households headed by illegal immigrants, who receive a monthly average of $472” would be affected by this legislation. Even if you view this through a fiscal lens alone, the amount “saved” is questionable, given the state’s massive deficit.
“[Is it] really worth taking away a family’s monthly welfare stipend—money that, in the midst of a recession, barely buffers a household against starvation and homelessness?” Chen asks.
Addressing current immigration policies, and thelack thereof, Sojourners asks Where’s the Love? Reverend Anne Dunlap offers a pointed and simple plea for kindness and fairness, with an eye for hipocracy: For those who are “trying to be faithful to God’s way, God’s vision of communities filled with justice, dignity, and love, the reminder to “love the ‘alien’ as you love yourself” should be the touchstone of our work in solidarity with the immigrant community.”
Affording others the kindness and opportunity we’d want to be given ourselves is an honored tradition among many peoples—those who believe in a God or otherwise. And for good reason, as other options tend to encourage isolation, exploitation and imbalance. We must act to help those in need and suffering because that’s what a healthy, growing world does for itself in order to keep thriving. Ultimately, a less fearful and more humane approach has many positive results for all of us.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Unions and Wage Growth Can Fuel Recovery
by Zach Carter, TMC MediaWire blogger
The U.S. economy is in big trouble right now, and the reform process may be missing a key point. When banks ran into severe trouble late last year, the government responded quickly with a massive bailout, but very little has been done to address a major structural flaw that has left our economy so vulnerable: rampant income inequality. In a system based on consumer spending, we have stretched consumers beyond their limit.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich argues that we are in for a long period of economic woe over at Talking Points Memo. Consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the U.S. economy, so when consumers go broke, everything shuts down. Ordinary Americans’ wages have been declining for decades, and the collapse of the housing bubble wiped out roughly $14 trillion in household wealth. Simply rebooting in the hopes that our simultaneous assault and dependence on consumer pocketbooks will work again will not be effective.
“This economy can’t get back on track because the track we were on for years—featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere—simply cannot be sustained,” Reich writes.
Strengthening our labor unions is probably the biggest single step the U.S. can take toward economic stability. And the best way to do that would be passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much easier for unions to organize by circumventing executive intimidation. Empowered workers can demand fair wages, decent benefits and help build a society that values all labor as an important part of collective existence.
In a profile of AFL-CIO leader David Trumka for The Nation, David Moberg presents a vision of an economy in which policymakers and voters are concerned with how much wealth exists and how that wealth is distributed. Widespread prosperity does not inevitably flow from technological or financial innovation if the resulting gains are diverted to a select few.
“In Trumka’s view, the unionism of the 1930s forged a social compact that made possible the middle class prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s,” Moberg writes. “But since the early 1970s, Wall Street and financial interests have dominated American politics, dismantling the compact and increasing inequality, debt and insecurity as workers struggled to keep up.”
It may be surprising for those of us who don’t work on Wall Street, but there is actually an enormously influential school of thought in Washington, D.C. that believes recessions are actually good for the economy. The reasoning goes something like this: When economies gorge themselves, something has to happen to correct the mistake—to “purge the rottenness from the system,” as Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon once said. The idea has some level of intuitive appeal, but as Christopher Hayes writes for The American Prospect, it’s also a complete distortion of how recessions actually work.
“Economic contraction feels quite different to a bond trader and an unskilled worker,” Hayes writes. “A spike in unemployment hits those on the margins of the labor market the hardest, while contractions also usher in deflation, which has a strong tendency to make the rich richer.”
In reality, the government almost never makes the perpetrators of an economic collapse pay serious consequences. When the economy gets into trouble, the government usually takes emergency measures to avert a crisis, and then refuses to adopt reforms that would protect those dealt the most harm. It’s been this way for decades.
Not only have workers been neglected, but billions of their tax dollars have bailed out banks that ran themselves into the ground via predatory loans. But even that bailout money is not being used to help strengthen the broader economy. Writing for The Washington Independent, Mary Kane highlights a host of reports that indicate banks are booting people out of their homes, and then refusing to care for the houses once they’re vacant. When homes are overgrown and infested with all kinds of critters, the value of nearby properties plummets. Banks are hurting completely innocent homeowners whose tax dollars helped bail them out.
We don’t even know the full extent of the favors the government has performed for financial firms. In a video for the American News Project, Lagan Sebert, Harry Hanbury and Mike Fritz detail some of the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented actions during the financial crisis. The Fed has lent out over $1 trillion to banks over the course of the financial crisis without disclosing who received the loans or what kind of collateral the Fed received in return.
Much of what we do know about the Fed’s rescue plans is disquieting, as William Greider, an economics journalist with The Nation, explains in the ANP video. When Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York negotiated a rescue plan in which JPMorgan would acquire the failed Wall Street icon in exchange for $30 billion in loss protection from the Fed. But JPMorgan would have been one of the hardest hit by a Bear Stearns collapse, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon sits on the board of directors at the New York Fed.
“Tim Geithner, who was then President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and is now Treasury Secretary, was negotiating with his own board member,” Greider says.
Going back to labor: Hourly workers will get some much-needed relief later this month, when the federal minimum wage increases from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour, as Doug Ramsey explains for Public News Service of Arizona. While executives like to argue that raising the minimum wage is a job-killer, the fact is that no serious study has ever linked the two phenomena. Interestingly, the wage increase was not a response to the economic crisis. It was one of the first legislative victories for the Democratic Party when it won back majorities in the House and Senate in 2006.
Anybody who lives on less than $7.00 an hour can attest that the added income is a welcome improvement over the status quo. But $7.25 an hour is just $15,000 a year—not nearly enough to save for the future or pay for a serious medical procedure. Our economy is suffering because many, many ordinary people are living paycheck to paycheck. We have to create an economy where work and workers are given their fair value.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: In Midst of Crisis, Signs of Reform
by Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger
President Obama has often stated that immigration reform cannot be approached in a piecemeal fashion, and that his administration would tackle the issue in 2009. This week, Obama will be meeting with members of Congress to kick off a bi-partisan approach to reform. These meetings don’t guarantee any legislative action will take place this year, but are at least an encouraging sign. In the meantime, the deportation industry shows no sign of slowing, hate crimes are rising and hate groups are being main streamed. As a result, the polarization between reform advocates and foes is getting worse.
New America Media’s Jun Wang writes about the disapointing consensus reached by a panel of immigration activists last Thursday at California State University in Los Angeles. A lack of movement around immigration reform won’t help curb rising rates of hate crimes against Latino/as, and compounds other instances of “othering” and racism. According to one panelist: “Employers in conservative cities” are learning that “they are better off not hiring people who are ‘foreign looking or having foreign sound names.’”
Not content with simply raiding homes, workplaces, or storming the local 7-11, Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE) is escalating its enforcement tactics. Also in New America Media, Hiram Soto reports on the joint operation between the Border Patrol and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in deporting three high-school age girls, one as young as 16, who were stopped by ICE on their way to school. Immigration attorney Lilia Velasquez, who is representing the minors, said she “hasn’t seen anything like this in her 25-year career,” because the children are being let back into the U.S. to fight their deportation.
The plight of these girls is proof that the destructive deportation fetish sweeping the Department of Homeland Security is producing increasingly ridiculous results.
Pundits like Michael Savage are also feeding the violent and anti-immigrant, anti-Latino/a energy in the U.S. Samhita Mukhopadhyay at Feministing writes that these broadcasts are are created “for the purpose of inciting violence against immigrants and to fuel racial tension.” Exposing Savage’s “paranoid” and fearful obfuscation of reality, Mukhopadhyay clears up the anti-immigrant propaganda by pointing out that despite Savage’s tortured logic, the truth is that Immigrants are the “working base” of California, and not the ones creating a drain upon it. California’s immigrants pay roughly $40 billion in taxes every year.
One of the loudest politicians feeding anti-immigrant hostility is Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from Colorado. The Colorado Independent has linked Tancredo to the Minuteman American Defense (MAD) and its former Executive Director Shawna Forde, accused of murdering Raul and Brisenia Flores, via a letter expressing the politician’s solidarity and gratitude to the organization for organizing a rally. It turns out that not only was this beaming “boilerplate rejection letter” (as campaign chair Bay Buchanan hopes to position it) sent to Forde, but a story published by the Everett Herald in 2007 places official Tancredo campaign staff at the event. The connections don’t end there and only grow more unsettling.
Those fighting for justice and on the side of human rights are hardly laying low in this time of legislative uncertainty. In a guest column for RaceWire, undocumented immigrant Sonia Guinansaca writes about how over 500 students from all over the U.S. attended a “Mock Graduation ceremony” on Capitol Hill last Tuesday. The ceremony was intended to both draw attention and show support for the DREAM Act. Guinansaca reminds us of our country’s most inspiring ideals: To be a nation where “nothin’ is impossible.”
RaceWire also brings us more news of youth behind change in Immigrants’ Kids File Lawsuit Against US, and Other News. In this political lull, “the kids of hundreds of deported parents are filing a lawsuit against the government claiming their constitutional right to stay in the U.S. is violated by the deportation of their parents.”
*Editor’s note: The original version of this post implied that all movement towards immigration reform had halted. We’ve updated this blog to reflect recent developments. Stay tuned to next week’s Wire for in-depth analysis of the push for effective immigration reform.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.