Featured: September 2009 Archives

by Henry Cervantes, writing from Chicago's West Side.

Nadashia Thomas, 6, a cousin of Derrion Albert, holds a sign beside a poster of Derrion Albert at Fenger High School in Chicago, Sept. 28, 2009. A vigil for Derrion Albert was planned outside of Fenger High School. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Derrion Albert, just 16 years of age, an Honors Student with a promising future for his community
is but the latest young person claimed by the violence in the streets of Chicago.

The video footage of his violent death, which was captured on a cell phone,
has spread like wildfire over the Internet,
and again has gotten the issue of youth street violence in Chicago on the national scenes of the media.

The violent deaths of young people in the streets of Chicago is nothing new to its residents.
It is but a part of the vivid realities of what the young people of color face here every day.
It is a part of the lessons that Chicago Public Schools students learn daily.

The media and its consumer-driven culture and coverage does never fully speak to the issues at hand.
His death is simply just another story added to the front pages and serves as footage
which fills the screens on our nightly and daily violent news.

I remember vividly a reporter who covered the story on NBC stating that
"this is not the type of public image Chicago wants to project, especially on the verge of its big Olympic bid."
The coverage ends with the reporter stating that "a boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time"
Even though this young person was on his way home from school, and in front of a community center.

But looking at the facts, it seems as if he was on the right path,
which was shattered by the oppression of street violence.
How many more deaths of young people is it gonna take
for the establishment to understand the desperate needs of our community.

I believe these acts of violence are but expressions of something else.
This visible violence only adds to the broader forms of invisible violence.

It criminalizes youth of color who lead lives of survival in our communities.
It leads to further the police state in our public school systems.
It sends young people of color off to the prison blocks
It leaves our communities further marginalized.

And It only leaves questions unanswered.
Whats brings forth these vicious forms of violence?
And who directly benefits from the death of these youth?

Young people are not the problem but the solution to these issues.
Young people know firsthand we're to find meaningful and sustainable solutions
to this violence. An issue that lingers between life and death.

But where are the youth voices on the evening network newsrooms?

— Henry Cervantes serves as Telpochcalli Community Education Project's student leadership coordinator at Farragut Career Academy High School, in Chicago.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.*

The Obama administration enacted the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) back in February, the largest boon to public spending and the safety net since the New Deal, and yet economic conditions are the worst it’s ever been for people of color and single moms. Unemployment is skyrocketing close to double digits, at 9.7% for August 2009. New Census data released recently showed an increase in poverty from 12.5% to 13.2% this past year, meaning an additional 2.6 million persons now live in poverty. Certain groups experience the impact of this poverty increase more than others, according to the Economic Policy Institute:
• Latinos and Asians had marked increases in their poverty rates, by 1.6 and 1.4 points, respectively.
• Over one third of all Black children and almost one third of all Latino children lived in poverty in 2008.
• Nearly a quarter of all families headed by single moms lived in poverty, or 3.6 million families, in 2008.

Tracking funds from the Recovery Act has proven to be difficult because there is no centralized, authoritative source of where the money is going to and what it’s being used for. Currently, information about ARRA funds are dispersed across the federal recovery.gov website, state stimulus czars, and watchdog groups. Recipients of monies are required to report on their activities and how many jobs they’ve created because of it by October 10. But, information will only slowly trickle out to the public. Even then, there is no requirement for recipients to race or gender their data, so we have no way of knowing how much of the recovery benefits those most impacted: people of color and single moms.

We have been following the recovery and its promise to stimulate the economy while protecting the planet and its peoples through the creation of green jobs. Watch this page on October 13 for the release of our Green Equity Toolkit, ideas and resources for community and labor advocates on how to create equity in the emerging green economy. If we are to follow the directive of ARRA and the subsequent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance to help those most impacted by the recession, then we must make race and gender equity key in our planning and practices around green job creation. The toolkit will help us do that.

Last week the Discovery Channel aired "Gang Wars: Oakland", a series that according the network, "opens a window to give a glimpse inside the lives of Oakland's gangs." However, the series played more like a myth dispenser about black and Latino Oakland residents and glorified cops in between.

Aimee Allison host and producer of San Francisco Bay Area KPFA's Morning Show has written a critical review of the Discovery Channel's "Gang Wars: Oakland." In "Discovery Channel's 'Gang Wars: Oakland' Series Spreads All the Wrong Messages About Poverty and Minorities" Allison writes:

Discovery portrays Oakland from the narrow perspective of a gang task force making busts in the city's economically disadvantaged east and west flatlands.

The grainy night shots, closeups of semiautomatic weapons, wailing sirens and shot after shot of black and brown tattooed bravado is horror-flick fun to some -- but this is a harrowing reality for those of us in Oakland grappling with the persistent problem of violence.

Written by Jamilah King, this post originally appeared on WireTap.

Here's another 'why' young people really do care about healthcare reform.

This week, 22-year-old recent Miami University of Ohio grad Kimberly Young died from complications of the H1M1 virus. While a lot of the "swine flu" hysteria has centered on an uncontrollable disease that hits patients before they get a chance to get help, Young knew immediately to go to a hospital. Except she didn't -- because she didn't have health insurance.

Young became sick about two weeks ago. Like many uninsured young folks, she tried to stick it out until this past Tuesday, when friends rushed her to University of Cincinnati hospital in critical condition. She died later that night.

Via Feministing comes the story of Simone Davis, a 17-year-old native Briton described as "an aspiring elementary school teacher and devout Christian." Simone's grandmother Jeannie, her legal guardian and a US citizen, has been trying for the last decade to get Simone US citizenship while the two of them have been living in Florida.

So what's the holdup? Immigration law requires Simone to be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease, with Gardasil, a vaccine that even doctors don't trust. Simone, understandably, sees no need and a lot of risks in Gardasil, and doesn't understand why it's not required of any of her fellow Florida classmates.

Simone and Jeannie sought a religious and moral waiver from all vaccines -- there's no way to seek a waiver from just one vaccine -- and were rejected. Local churches helped raise the more than $1700 to cover the fees for Simone's permanent residency status, and the Davises say they can't afford the $585 to appeal the waiver rejection, much less the prohibitively expensive vaccine.

So what does this mean for Simone?

It means she's facing separation from her family and deportation back to a country that she has no ties to, for the crime of refusing to pay to put her health and her life at risk. Simone and Jeannie are up against an immigration system that employs dangerous, sometimes deadly, double standards. And by fighting it, she's drawn attention to another double standard -- that of the 'good immigrant.'

From ABCNews.com:

When Gardasil was added to the vaccine list last year, it drew anger and protests from immigration advocates, who argued that it placed an unfair financial burden on women. A three-shot series of the vaccine can cost between $300 and $1,400.

Some health care policy experts suggested the requirement was excessive and unnecessary. Of the 14 required vaccines, 13 are designed to combat infectious diseases that are considered highly contagious. But Gardasil targets a virus spread through sexual contact.

Though 18 states are currently debating whether to make the vaccine mandatory [for all residents], none, so far, require it.

"I am most definitely surprised and I would love to know how it ever became policy," said Dr. Jacques Moritz, director of gynecology at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. "I wonder if the drug company could have had any influence."

"It's a voluntary vaccine, and for the U.S. government to make it a mandatory decision to come to this country is crazy," he told ABCNews.com. "It has no public health value that has been shown."

...

"Nothing is more important to [Gardasil manufacturer] Merck than the safety of our medicines and vaccines," she told ABCNews.com. "We are confident in the safety profile of Gardasil."

The company garnered $1.4 billion in sales last year.

Everyone has lost something this year - a job, income, medical coverage, a raise, a house - and by invoking the specter of the Soviet-style socialism every time the Left talks about healthcare, immigration, education, or the environment, the Right raises a primal fear that what little I have left will be taken away from me and given to people who haven't "earned" it.
 
It gets worse.  Because it's not just red-baiting taking place, it's race-baiting as we all know. Every Black and brown face in the United States has been successfully labeled "socialist" and in an underhanded way linked with the worst of the lazy, undeserving, free riding, lawbreaking racial stereotypes.  President Obama is either unable or unwilling to call out these racial attacks for what they are, and in the meantime the rest of the country goes about imagining that they're protecting what little they have left.  ACORN is the latest victim of these attacks - it is no coincidence that one of the largest voter registration and community organizing nonprofits in the country is being razed by dirty tricks and race baiting before the 2010 and certainly the 2012 elections.
 
But the fault lies not only with the Right, but with a complacent and disorganized Left, that I posit has also started to ask, "What's in it for me?" as the Progressive Obama we hoped we elected is replaced with the Democratic Centrist Obama we knew we elected.  We've lived through this before with the Clinton Administration, and we should know better.
 
What happened to the notion that none of us will really win anything if we don't win it together?  The Left fractures easily because too many of us have very little to hold on to - be it housing, immigration status, healthcare, civil rights, or safe and healthy communities.  This has been our perennial weakness when confronted with the kinds of illogical and reductive attacks we all are currently facing.  We're great at defending ourselves with facts and numbers, but we don't have an answer to the question, "What's in it for me?"  This is not a debate on rational terms anymore, and we can't expect the people we most want to reach, including ourselves, to respond rationally.
 
So here's what I propose: we answer the question. And fight fire with fire.

From our friends at Presente.org.

This week, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It's time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join us in demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Dobbs' network, CNN, calls itself "The Most Trusted Name in News." But Dobbs has shown that the only thing he can be trusted to do is to spread dangerous, false myths about immigrants, to give airtime to extremists, and to use dehumanizing and disrespectful language towards our community.

For example, Dobbs has blamed Latino immigrants for an alleged leprosy epidemic that was widely debunked, and has insinuated high crime rates by Latinos falsely claiming "illegal aliens" make up a third of the prison population. Dobbs also regularly hosts extremist guests like FAIR, the Minutemen, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who he called "a model for the whole country."

The Dobbs threat to Latinos is real. Here is how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it to us:

How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill - but that is the effect of what he does.

To fight back against Dobbs, Presente.org is launching a new campaign, working with dozens of leading Latino organizations and our allies in cities across the country -- from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando. We are joining together to demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as "news."

Please join us in saying "¡basta!" and ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Thank you and Adelante!
The Presente.org team

For more on Presente.org's campaign against CNN's continued support of Lou Dobbs, check out Roberto Lovato's article at the Huffington Post.

All right, let's get this over with.

Yes, this is the first Black President of the United States calling a black musician a 'jackass' for his stunt at the VMAs.

No, this will not 'alienate Obama's base,' and yes, this should screw up your favorite talk radio host's 'Black people stick together' narrative.

Yes, there absolutely is a bad track record on addressing mental illness in our Black celebrities, but no, it's not clear that that's what's happening with Kanye.

And yes, we at RaceWire are tired of Kanye always interrupting our blog posts while claiming that he'll let us finish.

Serena Williams has been fined for an outburst during a U.S. Open semi-finals match, but the press is still churning about it, or, more specifically, about whether she's apologized enough. If only she'd yelled at the President, instead of at a line referee -- she could have raised $1.5 million and gotten Max Baucus to add unnecessary and dangerous provisions to his healthcare bill!

From Kate Harding at Salon:

[The L.A. Times' Bill] Dwyre adds, "It was an embarrassment to a sport that has made good strides recently in expanding its niche. The U.S Tennis Assn. loves to talk about its 'grass-roots' programs, geared to getting rackets into young players' hands. Now those young hands have a role model for racket-smashing and bad language." Hmm, do you suppose we'd be talking about the potential effect of this on the grass-roots programs -- aimed at inner-city children from low-income families -- if it had been [opponent Kim] Clijsters, or a white man who went on a brief tirade?

From the never-not-required-reading Shark-Fu, at Feministing:

Just once...just once, damn it...I'd like to be able to read an article about something a black athlete does without being subjected to a deluge of ig'nant as hell racist comments trying to use an individual's behavior as proof that ALL black people are inferior beasts who should be kept locked up.

Just once...I can't even imagine it...I'd like to be able to read an article like other folks got to read articles about Jimmy Connors - the facts, the opinions and the response minus the absolute statements about ALL black people (well, in Connor's case it would have been ALL white people) blowing up unreasonably at a bad call, not being able to properly express their anger and generally being dangerous bad sports who should be banned from the court.

Katy Kelleher at Jezebel breaks down the 'all-American' appeal of the Williams sisters' up-and-coming opponents, quoting commenter 'heykoukla':

What a shame the Williams sisters don't have a rags-to-riches backstory. You know, like growing up in a poor neighbourhood and being coached by a father who had zero experience of their sport, and fighting their way to success against the odds. Yep, that would have made a great story and endeared them to the public, right?

What I really want to know is, who's going to start the I Stand With Serena Facebook fanpage, to counter all these I Stand With Joe Wilson ads I keep seeing? I'd vote for Williams over Wilson in a heartbeat. At least she doesn't falsely claim to have been an immigration lawyer during her apologies.

Moroccan-born waiter Fekkak Mamdouh’s life was thrown into turmoil after September 11th, when Windows on the World, the restaurant he worked at in the World Trade Center, was destroyed. The book about his immigrant experience in the aftermath of September 11th provided the foundation for The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization by Rinku Sen and Fekkak Mamdouh (Berrett-Koehler 2008).

“Since September 11th, immigrants have been wrongly criminalized and scapegoated for allegedly posing a threat to national security and undermining economic opportunities of native-born Americans,” says Rinku Sen, executive director of Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines. “9/11 marked a shift in the politics of race and immigration that has prevented us from adopting a plan for legalization, much less overhauling our very broken system to allow immigration to benefit either the United States or immigrants themselves.”

Looking for a powerful reflection on immigration this September 11th? Check out The Accidental American website and read the discussion guide.

For more on reclaiming the immigration debate, both in language and on policy, see Rinku and Mamdouh's piece today on TheGrio.com, "Post-9/11 immigration debate needs shift in focus":

Immigrants do more than work. They raise families; they organize to improve life for the poor; they learn new skills and build communities. Yet, they are typically treated as expendably "illegal" even if they aren't.

Comprehensive immigration reform would leave the enforcement approach in place, while changing the status of millions of undocumented people. But a little bit of legalization won't cancel out the negative effects of enforcement. Twenty years from now, the undocumented population will grow again, and we will again debate how much legalization to offer.

The traditional pro-immigrant response to restrictionists has been to characterize immigrants as hard workers simply looking for a decent living. Though more benevolent, this narrative suggests that immigrants offer nothing more than a pair of hands available for picking, cleaning and writing computer code.

The economic argument is not the only reason we need an entirely new system. The one we have is terribly broken, especially for the vast majority of poor immigrants and immigrants of color. We need a system that eases people's movement rather than restricts it (thereby equalizing the power of immigrants in relation to their employers), one that isn't fixated on preserving some outdated notion of America as simply a white, Christian country.

Perhaps the most talked-about moment of President Obama's address to Congress last night followed the dismissal of rumors that the new health care plan would cover 'illegal immigrants.' Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) was so outraged that he yelled, from the floor, "You lie!" In an instant, Wilson was willing to breach protocol, embarrass himself, and undermine his party — because he was so infuriated by the idea that Obama's plan might provide care to a certain group of people.

Why is our conversation around immigration so often driven to extremes, both of language and of policy? In this video, Rinku Sen takes the term 'illegal' to task, showing how it's been used to make us comfortable with the suffering and exploitation of millions of undocumented immigrants.

More in the Word! video series:

"Reverse Racism": Word Distracts from the Big WHite Elephant of Systemic Racism
"Colorblind": Word Twists Good Intentions
"Merit": Word Hijacks the Conversation Around Race

Ta-Nehisi Coates has said some stuff I really dug about the fallacy of approaching racism as though it's a solely interpersonal problem that's solvable overnight. That said, I think he's not addressing the whole picture when he says:

I think a lot of us see a racial angle in a white South Carolina congressman yelling at the President and interrupting his speech to the nation. I'm not prepared to go there. Knowing this country, it's history, and some of South Carolina's particular history, I have my suspicions. But I hate these arguments in which we try to go back and forth over a contention, that's basically unprovable.

What would have happened if Obama was white? The truth is, I don't know.

I agree with every bit of that. But, Wilson's unfortunate track record aside, the conversation about racist interpersonal frames is a cheap distraction from the real live racism at play here.

Also noteworthy:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor 'pon de Blackberry;

Kennedy's letter to Obama;

Obama comes out and says 'public option' but leaves wiggle room;

"Those who are here illegally" still a sacrificial lamb;

Jon Cohn at the New Republic talks about what's new in the speech;

and finally, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) cold yellin' stuff during the speech. Good luck playing the 'unstatesmanlike' card after that, guys. (They will anyway.)

Written by Victor Goode

In the last few weeks, some of the right wing criticism of President Obama has reached a virtual crescendo. To be sure, some of his policies raise questions, and reasoned critiques have come from both right and left. But outside of this more sane debate, a new phenomenon has taken shape. It started with the “tea parties,” and then rapidly spread to the town hall meetings on health care. It has received a steady drumbeat of support from right wing talk radio, and has gotten undeserved airtime from many television news programs.

This phenomenon is the slanderous demonization of the man, rather than critique of the message. Obama is (take your pick) a Muslim, not to be trusted; a foreigner, illegally holding the office of President; a stealth leader of world domination by the UN; and simultaneously a Fascist and a Communist. More recently, as this attack shifted from health policy to his speech on education, it seems that the word chosen as the common denominator for all his evil intent, including environmental policy, is “socialist.”

But could it be that lurking slightly beneath these charges by the crazies is the issue of race? While President Clinton was assailed for his proposals on health care, he was declared to simply be wrong. Obama can’t just be wrong; he must also be the embodiment of all that is evil.

Van Jones, special adviser on green jobs to President Obama, has resigned.

The text of his statement follows:

I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.

On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.

I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight."

But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement. I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead.

What do you think about how this went down?

Well, he’s done it now. First, Attorney General Eric Holder told the American public that they need to get real when it comes to race. And now he walks his talk by making the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division actually do its job. What a radical idea.  

And Holder’s new directives? To expand the department’s reach, to hire more attorneys, and, as he told the New York Times, to "get back to what it has traditionally done," like protecting people’s voting rights and access to housing, employment and fair lending practices.

But as Chuck D would say, "Hold it now!" Haven’t we heard this before? 

Ten days after the historic election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, the Applied Research Center released the Compact for Racial Justice. The Compact specifically called on the Obama Administration to focus on the strengthening of the role of the Division of Civil Rights, the use of racial impact statements for major policy initiatives, and placing immigration reform policy squarely on the table.

Chief among the next President’s priorities should be refocusing the Department of Justice (DOJ), which is the federal government’s chief enforcer of laws. In particular, the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, which was established in 1957 during the era of massive civil rights changes, must reprioritize its original mission of fighting racial discrimination. As civil rights laws have expanded over the years, it is both natural and desirable that the DOJ’s mission has expanded to include fighting discrimination on other bases, such as disability. However, in recent years the DOJ’s Civil Rights division has shifted from being at the vanguard of championing the rights of the most vulnerable in our society and taking on those who perpetuate systemic discrimination …The next administration must also ensure that the civil rights enforcement divisions of the other federal agencies refocus on enforcing racial and other related social justice issues.

Karin Wang, Esq. & Vincent Eng,
The Compact for Racial Justice: Re-Envisioning Civil Rights

In observance of the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Bill Quigley at the Center for Constitutional Rights and Davida Finger, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans, have compiled the "Katrina Pain Index – 2009."

Here’s just a sample of their findings:

0 — Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0 — Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems.

2  — Number of Katrina cottages completed in Louisiana as of beginning of 2009 hurricane season under $74 million dollar federal program.

33 — Percent of 134,000 FEMA trailers in which Katrina and Rita storm survivors were housed after the storms, which are estimated by federal government to have had formaldehyde problems.

35 — Percent increase of demand in 2009 at emergency food programs in Orleans and surrounding parishes, “an increase pinned on the swelling ranks of under-employed and rising food, housing, and fuel costs.”