Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
It seems that public officials are determined to pull out all stops when it comes to making sure people understand that in about a week, they’re going to be receiving that form in the mail from the U.S. Census Bureau that asks for an accounting of who actually lives at every address in the country. We’re not talking about just the heads of households. Officials want to make sure that children get counted to. IT IS WITH that goal in mind that Census Bureau officials plan to hold an event this week to promote their “Children Count, Too!” campaign that makes sure parents understand that it does no good to just fill out the form for themselves. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
Yesterday was a big day in immigration “reform” news. President Barack Obama and Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) were supposed to meet to show a united front on moving the issue forward. Schumer has been facing pressure to produce something ever since he delayed pushing legislation back in September of last year in search of more supporters. Advocates have been told over that he’s been working on something but details have been hardly forthcoming since the NY Senator said that part of his proposal would include a biometric identity card. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
Yesterday was International Women's Day, a day that celebrates the strides women have made and the hardships they still endure. When we think of those hardships, those of us who are middle-class, college-educated or have good jobs, tend to think of the women in third-world countries or countries where men and women are still considered unequal and where women are still treated as subservient slaves to the men in their families and society, subjected to treatment that most 21st Century women think is obsolete. Yet, we don't have to look across an ocean or a border to see that so-called "obsolete" treatment perpetuated within our own communities. It's happening here in greater numbers to women who are known as undocumented immigrants. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
"Two earthquakes in two months can put the many forms of poverty into perspective," writes Latin American expert Marcela Sanchez. "Five days after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile on February 27, the number of deaths stood at 802. In Haiti, the 7.0-magnitude quake of January 12 killed some 220,000." Sanchez examines the factors that may have made the difference. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
I have known Barack Obama since 1986, when we were both community organizers. I am still organizing on the streets of Chicago, and what I see in the Latino community makes me fear that the president is oblivious to the pain wrought by our broken immigration system. It could have a profound effect on the 2010 and 2012 elections. It didn't have to be this way. For a brief moment last year it appeared that Obama might realign the modern political map, cementing the Latino vote into the Democratic coalition by speaking plainly to the American people on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
A few weeks ago, I blogged about how former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez pulled papers to run for state treasurer in 2014. I speculated that whether we see Fabian Nuñez re-emerge in elected office will depend largely upon what happens with his son’s murder trail, which is scheduled to begin in May. Well, another one of his Esteban Nuñez’s friends has decided to testify against him according to the Los Angeles Weekly. Writer Christine Pelisek has been following this story, and she hit the nail on the head with this: “Here’s why the political elite in California are watching this tragic murder case involving alleged killers who come from private schools and lives of power and privilege. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
The Ozark region of the Midwest and Mexico’s high-end culinary fare: An unlikely pairing, unless you happen to be a connoisseur of the wide-ranging diversity of Mexico’s dishes and knowledgeable about tequila’s emergence as a newly favored spirit for mixologists. Halt any tendency to conjure demeaning “hillbilly” images at mention of the Ozarks. Rather, a more accurate portrait would include lakefront property and a crucial role in some of the world’s most respected wines and spirits. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 09 March 2010
Does Puerto Rico need a civil war? I know this is like asking “Do you need a hole in your head?” But is the United States waiting for one to develop before it realizes the implications of one fateful decision in American foreign policy in 1898? It can be said that Puerto Rico has witnessed a civil war for more than two centuries, if by civil war is meant that Puerto Ricans have avoided coming to actual physical blows with each other over the fate of their country.
In 1898 Spain "ceded" the island of Puerto Rico to the United States as result of the "Spanish American War". Unfortunately, American public attention is never paid to issues regarding foreign affairs until caskets start coming back wrapped in American flags. So it is not surprising that after 100 years most Americans remain ignorant about the colonial situation of Puerto Rico. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 05 March 2010
The window is closing on comprehensive immigration reform. At least that's what the politicians in Washington are saying. They're afraid of more demagoguery. They're afraid of upcoming elections. They're afraid of the politics of fear. But I am more and more troubled by how little they seem concerned about the worsening plight of many of America's most vulnerable families -- about how families are being broken up by the U.S. government, forcibly separating children from their parents. And for the media, immigration reform is just another looming political conflict to report, more of the gamesmanship of Washington to cover. Continue Reading...
Featured article
Posted on 05 March 2010
The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation. Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight. Continue Reading...
John Carlos Frey wants you to be angry about the U.S.-Mexico border. He wants you to feel such a deep sense of moral outrage that you'll get out of your chair and write a letter to your congressman. That's why he invited me to the border town of El Centro, to stand in Imperial County's pauper's cemetery, a dusty field dotted with about 900 concrete markers the size of bread loaves. Each was stamped with numbers or the name "John Doe." Several hundred marked the final resting place of Mexican and other Latin American migrants who've died walking across the desert or drowned trying to cross the nearby All-American Canal. Frey, a 46-year-old filmmaker, blames the U.S. government for their deaths.
[...more]
