ColorLines Features: August 2009 Archives

As most of the nation talks about the recession, there is one region that is in desperate need of a major stimulus package and has been in need for four years. A new article on ColorLines.com tells the story of several New Orleans residents who are struggling to get basic needs met and to pay for rising rent costs.

Jordan Flaherty writes:

Four years after Katrina, recovery and rebuilding has come slow to this city, and there are many boarded-up homes to choose from. The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center counts 65,888 abandoned residential addresses in New Orleans, and this number doesn’t include any of the many non-residential buildings, like the hospital Palmer stays in.

Overall, about a third of the addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the highest rate in the nation.

Read the rest of Flaherty's investigation on ColorLines.com.

We're in a recession right now (news flash!), and I don't know one person who's not been impacted by the miserable state of the economy--or I'm just not rich enough. Grandmas, new parents, mid-career folks, everyone's got a story. Check out a web preview of Cindy Von Quednow's cover story for the September/October issue of ColorLines to find out what students of color are doing to stay in school during these trying times.

Cindy writes:

[Mondragon's] campus, where 27 percent of the students are Latino, has also endured massive cuts. Currently the campus faces a $42 million cut and decreasing state support from about $6,400 per student to $5,000, according to the university’s president.

“I think it’s ridiculous when we are taught that we should pursue higher education when the state is not making it financially possible,” said Mondragon, who also works with Students for Quality Education.
Early on, Mondragon knew that her family couldn’t help her pay for college. Until recently, she had fared well on her own with a scholarship and financial aid. But last winter, she had to take a third job after her financial aid was cut.

As gay Indians celebrated the high court's decision to decriminalize homosexuality, queer Indians here in the US were protesting their exclusion from Manhattan's annual India Day Parade.

From Minal Hajratwala's article on ColorLines.com:

Lesbian and gay Indo-Americans and their allies marched and demonstrated last Sunday along the route of Manhattan’s annual India Day Parade today, with signs reading “Gay Hind,” “Indian Gay Proud,” and “Shame Shame FIA, Homophobia is so last year.”

The demonstrators were protesting the decision by the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) to bar the South Asian Lesbian Gay Association (SALGA) from one of the largest Indian Independence Day celebrations outside of India. More than 50,000 people attend the annual parade, which stretches from 28th St to 41st St in midtown Manhattan.

Nirav Mehta, executive vice president of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) has since apologized for excluding SALGA saying it was due to a volunteer’s clerical error.

“We apologize,” Mehta said. “There was some confusion and mistakes, and we will be more than happy to welcome them next year. They can be part of our parade, and we will have no problem.”

Although Mehta's testimony of what happened goes against the experience of SALGA, it seems there's nothing more effective to get FIA to own up to their huge "mistake" than a big group of queer Indians.

Read the rest of the ColorLines article here.

Check out the new story about the women of the Puerto Rican activist group, the Young Lords at ColorLines.com. An excerpt:

“We fought against this idea of revolutionary machismo because we said, ‘What is revolutionary racism?’” Morales said.

Connie Cruz had been told what to do all her life-by her parents, then her husband. That changed in December of 1969.

Then, a group of young Puerto Rican activists were appealing to a church in El Barrio (East Harlem) for space to house a breakfast program for the poor. The First Spanish Methodist Church had denied their request. Its minister saw the youths as leftist rabble-rousers.

But the group-the Young Lords Party-remained undeterred.

Read more here.

You ever walked around San Francisco? It's touted as a diverse and welcoming city, but there ain't a lot of Black folks. Take MUNI around town. Plenty of Asians and Latinos, lots of white people. Only a handful of Blacks.

Jamilah King, reporting for ColorLines, shines a little light on the dynamics at play. Turns out, the city knows there's a problem--though they seem more troubled by the damage knowledge of the dwindling Black population might do to the city's reputation, than people's actual welfare.

King writes:

Ironically, since the end of the urban renewal programs in the ’70s, San Francisco city officials have commissioned several studies investigating why Black residents are leaving and how to get them back. Recommendations in the past have included training young Black entrepreneurs and establishing a Black tourist district like Chinatown.

Yet the hemorrhaging has continued.

Since the last report in 1990, San Francisco’s Black population has dropped by 40 percent, faster than any other major city in the country. According to the latest Census data, Black residents make up only 6.9 percent of the city’s current population and are projected to make up as little as 4.6 percent in 2050.

Click here to read the rest of the article, and click after the jump to check out more of Hatty Lee's photographs.

Check out the new stories on arts & culture on ColorLines.com. A book review of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology—Asian American superheroes? A film recommendation of Black Nations/Queer Nations?—a 1995 documentary highlighting the need to bust open static concepts of race, sexuality, and the nation. In theaters and on DVD, Slingshot Hip Hop—a documentary about how young, Palestinian artists have adopted hip-hop as a form of resistance.

Yasmine Farhang, reporting for ColorLines, talks about the ongoing discussion around New York state's GENDA. Advocates are moving swiftly to get it passed, but there are queer groups that oppose the bill:

The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (known as GENDA) would protect people who are routinely kicked out of housing, fired from jobs and harassed in schools and other public institutions because of their gender expression. The bill has passed the state assembly and is up for a vote on the Senate floor. Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia have already enacted similar legislation.

But a group of queer justice organizations is not supporting the bill because it would also add “gender identity and expression” to the list of hate crime offenses and result in longer prison terms. Because the same communities vulnerable to violence face increased policing, it’s a move that would “expose our communities to the inherent racism and classism that is rooted in the criminal justice system,” said Pooja Gehi, staff attorney at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which opposes the hate crime portion of the proposed bill.

Check out more at ColorLines.com