This is the 2009 State of Opportunity report. Here you may download the final report, the final report with accompanying charts, a synopsis, and each of the indicators individually.
This memo offers guidance for using the 2009 State of Opportunity in America report, which examines various dimensions of opportunity, including health care, wealth and income, education, and incarceration. While expanding opportunity in America remains a goal of policymakers and advocates alike, this report finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality. Our recommendations to address this reality offer concrete ideas for moving us forward together.
This publication contains a balance of historical context, framing advice, resources, practical tools and strategies for moving toward a new political conversation.
Alan Jenkins, executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, appears on MSNBC to discuss the economy and our new report, The State of Opportunity in America.
If the promise of opportunity is a core national commitment, it is essential to measure our success in fulfilling that commitment. This report assesses the nation’s progress toward protecting and expanding opportunity for all Americans and encourages our policymakers, through bold leadership and innovative policies, to ensure the promise of o
Last week, Hazel Dickens, who dedicated her life to using song to give voice to the voiceless, died at the age of 75. Dickens’ voice was wholly her own, bearing all the traces of her hardscrabble mountain upbringing, and her passing is a great loss to American culture as well as the movement to expand to create full and equal opportunity.
For those of us who can still even stomach it, the first Friday of the month—the usual day for the release of the previous month’s federal Employment Situation Summary, known informally as the jobs report—has become a fairly pathetic ritual, particularly for optimists. We hope for some proof, any proof, that a real recovery is underway. If jobs were shed across the board, but the unemployment rate trended lightly downward, we try to pretend that it wasn’t because still more people have pulled themselves out of the formal count by giving up looking for work entirely. If private sector job growth and public sector job loss cancel each other out, we put on our market fundamentalist wishful thinking caps and talk about how private sector jobs are somehow more sustainable than their public sector equivalents. And when modest job growth does occur, even when it’s below even the basic replacement rate needed to accommodate a growing workforce, well, that’s when we bring out the champagne.
As Americans, we’re a remarkably hopeful people. A belief that, no matter where you start, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work hard, and plant the posts of your picket fence, is fundamental to our identity. But, while we do lack the rigid class constrictions of Western Europe, the truth is that upward economic mobility is fundamentally unattainable for most Americans today. The road to real economic opportunity is a long one, but it starts with a reorganizing of our priorities.
In her blog today, Arianna Huffington asks if CBS’s new reality offering, Undercover Boss, is the most subversive show on television. It’s a provocative question, as most of us would like to think that a reality show existed that could turn the genre on its head.
If you've been following my occasional blogs arguing for a more robust vision for health care reform, often titled "When Insurance Isn't Enough," you know that I start from a values-based framework, the idea that the opportunity to reach our highest attainable standard of health is a right inherent to our dignity as human beings. And then I usually go on to highlight an aspect of health care that isn't getting the sort of coverage or discussion that it should be, given the almost myopic focus on cost-cutting and insurance coverage; in the past, I've highlighted preventative care, healthy infrastructure like walkable communities, care coordination, and enabling services. Today, I'd like to take a step back and think about one of the keystones of the current push for reform: the idea of "universal" health care.
As the country considers how we might reform our health care system, it is important to note that good health requires not just health insurance, but also the flexibility to care for oneself or one's family when sick, and to help prevent the spread of contagious diseases through the workplace. Today, Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill, dubbed the Healthy Families Act, that would guarantee American workers up to 7 paid sick days each year, and allow workers to take these paid sick days to care for ill family members.
Urgency has a strange way of making people more pragmatic. In the context of a crisis, outdated prejudices become stumbling blocks and, consequently, not so deeply held. It’s surprising, then, that it took the Pentagon so long to realize that, at a time when our military is stretched thin in two combat wars, turning applicants away from the armed forces due to immigration status was not a workable solution.
In lieu of the regular Monday Health Blog Round-Up, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on our observation of Labor Day yesterday, and how the history of the holiday reflects upon our current health care crisis.
Labor Day was first conceived of in 1882 by the Central Labor Union of New York City, a coalition of trade unionists who later joined with the American Federation of Labor. But it was not until twelve years later, on June 28, 1894, that Congress made Labor Day a national holiday, eventually adopted by all 50 states. What was the catalyst for the "day off for the working man," and how is all of this related to our current health care crisis? What follows below is a discussion of the key national values mobility, security, opportunity, and how government can (but sometimes fails to) defend the American Dream.
The catalyst, it turns out, may sound somewhat familiar. Irresponsible speculation by banks encouraged over-development by speculators, creating an economic bubble. When the bubble burst, thousands of businesses and hundreds of banks lost everything, resulting in a massive recession where unemployment skyrocketed and many American families wondered about how to make ends meet for the most basic of necessities. After massive protests (some ending violently) subsumed the industrial centers of the Midwest, Congress felt a need to act, and Labor Day, in recognition of the contributions of working families, was what they came up with.
Now, Labor Day is a fine holiday; I enjoyed it myself by making a chuck roast that turned out wonderfully. But the history that bears some worrying parallels to our current economic conditions (a downturn as result of over-speculation by banks and developers, though housing in our case rather than railroads) brings up some questions about how we view labor (with a small "l") in this country. America is based in the core ideal that when folks work hard, not only should they be able to barely make ends meet, they should have the opportunity to advance and fully participate in the social, economic and political. Put another way, this is the promise of Mobility, the element of the American Dream that says not only should we ensure that the lives of the next generation is better than our own, but we must make sure that our institutions allow for all of us in our own lifetimes to pursue a better life for ourselves, our families, and our community. A poor economic environment should not be an excuse for the government to fail to stand up and protect this right; the government has, at its best moments in history, defended the American value of mobility, by creating more jobs, by helping those who have fallen on the hardest times get back on their feet, by helping communities to find new paths in new economies through government-aided infrastructure and supportive programs.
The role of the government is to appease unrest with another national holiday; it is to provide Security. I don't mean security in the sense of having a strong national defense and valuable alliances and partners abroad, though that is important as well; this sense of security is that we, our families, and our communities are entitled, as part of the social contract of the United States, to be secure in our health, our homes, our most basic human needs that afford us our most invaluable human dignity. And here we find the roots of the answer to the second part of my question above, as to how the history of Labor Day relates to health care.
By any measure, Congress's response to the labor protests of May 1894 was inadequate. A holiday didn't change the fundamental inequities of the new economy; it didn't reduce unemployment (the highest estimate being 18.4%), create new jobs, or protect Americans struggling to survive despite working hard to build the new infrastructure of our country. "The Panic of 1893" that had precipitated the events of 1894 had been preceded two decades earlier by "The Panic of 1873," and would be followed by The Great Depression of the 1930s. In these cases, the government had seen the problem before, knew that Americans required their assistance to fulfill the dream of opportunity, security, and mobility, but failed to act. It was only after a government that recognized the American promise to aid our neighbors and to strengthen our national community acted to create jobs and programs to assist those hardest hit to recover that the nation once again began moving in the right direction.
And so, we finally come to health care. There is a crisis in America, only partly due to the recent bursting of the housing and real estate bubble, but a problem that has been underlying for quite some time. Almost 46 million Americans are uninsured, and 25 million Americans are underinsured, meaning that despite having insurance policies, they don't receive the health care that they need when they need it due to insufficient coverage. In a system where health care is tied so closely to employment, the downturn in the economy is foreboding, signaling a possible worsening of this crisis. And yet, in some good news last week, the percentage and number of uninsured actually dropped from 2006 and 2007, from 15.8% to 15.3%, and from 47 million uninsured to 45.7 million. The cause?
A government for the people is one that responds in times of need to protect our core American Values. Now is time for Congress to defend those values not with another holiday, but with real, practical solutions to key issues such as health care. What we need now is something much more than another day of barbecuing.
• An article titled “Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals” appeared in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday. By telling the story of Luis Alberto Jiménez, it documents the disastrous consequences that are the result of inherent failures in the American immigration and health care systems. Below is an excerpt from the article:
Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.
American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.
• Various ICE policies have been scrutinized in a number of news articles this week. A DMI Blog posting discusses the ICE policy of neglecting to inform local police of its decision to conduct a raid in an area. This ICE policy is carried out completely inconsistently – sometimes ICE notifies local law enforcement, sometimes it does not. ICE conducted its recent raid in Sante Fe, New Mexico (where it took 30 undocumented immigrants into custody) without notifying Sante Fe Mayor Cross beforehand. According to the posting, Cross was completely opposed to the raid. He said:
“We know what the right thing to do is. We have political leadership that wants to keep us from doing [the right thing] because the division works for them. But it doesn’t work for us. And most people know that.”
ICE's notification policy is not its only inconsistent policy. According to the Associated Press, ICE's distribution of border patrol agents is a completely political process. The article says that many people have suggested that ICE rewards friendly Congressmen with more border patrol agents in their district:
The 60-mile San Diego sector is at the southern end of a county with roughly 3 million people…
But the sector is already heavily reinforced: Two-thirds of the border is blocked by fences or vehicle barriers. The most populous part of the boundary has nearly 10 miles of double-layer fences with stadium lights…
San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences.
The Huffington Post has also criticized ICE for supporting the discredited Center for Immigration Studies report that says border patrol has been the main reason immigration to the U.S. has fallen. Many researchers have shown that the failing economy is the main reason immigration has been decreasing:
The US needs a practical, fair, and reasonable solution to immigration that includes smart enforcement measures. Political theater and gimmicks won't constrict the supply or demand for immigrant labor.
In addition, The Sanctuary is reporting that the ACLU has obtained a copy of the manual that the government distributes to attorneys who defend those who are arrested in immigration raids:
The manual contains prepackaged scripts for plea and sentencing hearings as well as documents providing for guilty pleas and waivers of rights to be used by both the judges and attorneys in expediting procedures as quickly as possible with little regard for due process.
• Postville update: Standing FIRM has linked to a Chicago Tribune story on the allegations of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors plant. The government has finally begun cracking down on the company for the horrific abuse of its employees:
State officials say the types of child labor violations at the plant included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.
• The National Center for Lesbian Rights has become involved in a case involving a gay HIV-positive Pakistani man who is seeking asylum in the U.S. on the grounds that he will be persecuted if he returns to his country of origin. The Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff to the Board of Immigration Appeals:
Under Pakistani law, being gay is punishable by death and LGBT people are forced to live in secrecy and constant fear of exposure. The Immigration Judge ignored the serious risk of persecution that S.K. faces and denied his application for asylum.
• ABC News has called attention to a recently released report on the human rights abuses that immigrants are subject to at detention centers run by private companies. The report, conducted by the human rights group OneAmerica and the Seattle University School of Law, concludes that people held at these detention facilities, specifically one that GEO Group, Inc. runs, are routinely harassed, verbally and physically abused and subjected to poor to non-existent health care.
This is not the first time GEO has been accused of violating the rights of inmates in its care. In 2000, when the company was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the U.S. Department of Justice sued them over "excessive abuse and neglect" of inmates at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center in Jena, Louisiana.
• On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a ground breaking executive order requiring all city agencies to provide language assistance services for people who speak Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian or French Creole. According to The New York Times, this is the first time that all New York City agencies will be forced to follow the same standard in providing translation and language interpretation services to people who do not speak English:
Immigrant advocates and city officials say it is the most comprehensive order of its kind in the country. The mayor refused to be specific about how much the services will cost, saying only that it was a “relatively small” amount given the size of the city’s budget. He added: “This executive order will make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation.”
The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All details the need for immigrants to have access to language assistance services in order to achieve their full potential. In providing immigrant groups with this access, Mayor Bloomberg has taken the entire city forward and empowered communities throughout New York.
• Politicians have also been busy down in Washington, D.C. working to provide language assistance for immigrant families across the United States. At noon today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman Mike Honda are introducing the “Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act of 2008.” In addition to providing English language literacy and civics education to immigrant families who are in the process of becoming citizens, the bill:
will help immigrant communities become a more integral part of the American fabric and maximize their social and economic contributions.
Legislation like this is crucial to aiding immigrants on their way to becoming U.S. citizens, and is a necessary part of treating immigrants like full and equal members of our community.
• The aftermath of the ICE raids in Postville, Houston, and most recently Rhode Island, is still being felt in communities across America. However, a Washington Post article describes how it is not only workers and their families feeling this strife – now, it is employers as well:
The crackdown's relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.
• A story in the MetroWest Daily News calls attention to a local organization in Massachusetts, the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center, that is defending the rights of immigrant workers in the U.S. Immigrant workers are routinely subject to labor law violations, including the denial of compensation and overtime, as well as unnecessary injuries on job sites. In addition, the article points out that all immigrants, including undocumented ones, have worker rights:
Contrary to what many people think, illegal workers have rights. Although in the country illegally, those who work are entitled to be paid for their labor and overtime. If they are injured on the job, they are eligible for workers' compensation coverage, said [Diego] Low, [director of the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center] who has been advocating for immigrant workers' rights for the last 25 years.
• A DMI Blog posting points to an extremely upsetting Associated Press report of a beating in a Pennsylvania town that left a 25 year old Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez dead.
Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs in factories and farm fields.
The Washington Post reported on the largest raid on illegal workers by the Bush administration to date.
One week ago, helicopters, buses, and vans filled with hundreds of agents surrounded the small town of Postville, Iowa to conduct a raid on an Agriprocessors plant, the largest employer in the northeast of the state.
Postville, whose motto is "Hometown to the World," saw 10 percent of its population incarcerated. Those arrested, totaling 389, were 290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, 4 Ukrainians, and 2 Israelis. The day after, Tuesday, 600 students were absent because their parents were arrested or in hiding.
Local school superintendent, David Strudthoff, described the event as "a natural disaster -- only this one manmade." He went on to complain that employers are not targeted. "They don't put CEOs in jail."
Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley echoed this argument, complaining that the Bush administration was lax in its enforcement efforts against corporations that commit immigration violations. "Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem."
No officials at Agriprocessors have yet been charged.
Louisiana news station WDSU is offering a live video feed from the New Orleans City Council meeting on the impending demolition of public housing. In addition to those speaking at the meeting, hundreds of people are standing outside City Hall in protest of the lack of affordable housing in the region since the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina two years ago. Present-day inequities in New Orleans are often framed with respect to human rights; the demand for affordable housing is just one aspect of ensuring that residents have the social and economic security needed to provide for their families with dignity.
Bloggernista has reported that Congress has lifted a nine-year ban on using public funding to support needle exchange programs in Washington, DC. Despite the fact that syringe exchange programs have proven effective in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, this ban had held firm while the capital city has the developed the highest rate of HIV infection in the nation, a true modern epidemic noted for its immense racial disparities.
The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog reposted an Associated Press article entitled 'State supreme court rules counties are liable for inmates' care,' including conditions that existed prior to imprisonment. It's great to see a court ruling in favor of the responsibility of the community to provide a basis level of health care for those in custody without other options -- this is a good step towards the recognition that all Americans deserve access to health care.
Justices voted 8-0 on Tuesday in favor of HCA Health Services of
Oklahoma, the parent company of OU Medical Center. The hospital sued
Oklahoma County commissioners and Sheriff John Whetsel over $2.2
million in medical payments for treating prisoners in the jail from
February 2003 through September 2006.
The county's argument was that much of the expense was to treat
conditions that predated the prisoners' arrests, Justice Marian Opala
wrote in the court opinion.
The DMI Blog analyzed a recent New York Timeseditorial on Arizona's new law intended to crack down on undocumented immigrants, offering praise for what it refers to as an 'example of smart immigration policy.' Author Suman Raghunathan expounds:
What’s more, Arizona’s law (and believe me, there are many more in
the works across the country) will do nothing to address our nation’s
desperate need for smart and fair policies that welcome immigrant
contributions into our economy. Worse yet, it does nothing to bring
undocumented workers out of the shadows with a legalization program to
level the playing field on wages and labor conditions for all workers –
documented and undocumented, green card holders and US citizens.
Meanwhile, the Presidential election campaigns continue to work themselves into a fevered state, trying to say as little as possible on immigration policy (pick a party, any party) while sounding tough on undocumented immigrants (again, pick a punching bag, any punching bag).
Here’s to hoping those high-falutin’ political operatives take a page from the Times’ editorial board’s playbook when they think about immigration.
Immigration News Daily has posted a couple articles related to
the US as an English-speaking country. In Philadelphia, a well-known
cheese steak restaurant is under review by the city's human rights
commission for a sign that says "This is America - when ordering, please speak English." City officials are alleging that the sign violates the ban on national origin discrimination. On the other end, the blog has reported on an opinion in Newsday which argues that Immigrants would thrive with more English classes.
The piece talks about the shortage of English classes on Long Island
while also explaining how poor language skills have prevented
immigrants from continuing to work in their previous professional
careers:
Plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that these programs work. Two years
ago, for example, a Peruvian-born former computer programmer was stuck
on the assembly line at Love and Quiches Desserts, a Freeport-based
manufacturer. After he completed Freeport Adult Education's ESOL
program, he was promoted to supervisor.
In the Long Beach
school district, several women from Central America who were dentists
in their home countries but worked in dead-end jobs here boosted their
English and found jobs as dental hygienists.
Author Tara Colton makes a case for government investment in the
productivity of immigrants via language classes, noting that this
strategy enjoys bipartisan support:
This is a crucial problem, because the more fluent immigrants are in
English, the more they can contribute positively to society. This is a
point that all sides of the immigration debate agree on. Making this
improvement in the lives of millions of people living and working here
has got to be as vital as deciding whether to punish them for how they
arrived.
For business and government, it's also a matter of economic
development. Boosting workers' English skills improves productivity,
reduces turnover and helps growth.
Immigration Orange posted about the 'widow penalty' which ends the permanent residency process for immigrants whose citizen spouse dies within two years of marriage. The blog recommends contacting your public officials in order to end this "obscure interpretation of the
Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)," examples of which are quoted in the post:
Marlin Coats didn't hesitate to jump in the
water to try to save two drowning teens caught in a riptide at San Francisco Beach Park.
He lost his life that Mother's Day in 2006, but because of his heroism those
two teenagers survived. So why is the U.S. now responding to Coats'
ultimate sacrifice by deporting his wife Jacqueline Coats?
U.S. Army contractor Todd Engstrom of Illinois gave his life for his country when he was killed in Iraq, and now the federal
government is telling his wife Diana she too must go.
And so must Dahianna Heard of Florida,
whose husband Jeffrey Heard was shot in the head by insurgents
in Iraq.
What will happen to their children?
The 'Just News' blog reposted an article from the Omaha World-Herald about a family divided by US immigration policy. Joe Wood of Nebraska had decided it was time to 'do the right thing' and legalize his wife Laura Roldan's immigration status, so he, Roldan and their two daughters traveled to a US Consulate in Mexico to begin the process. However, Roldan has been accused of fraud for giving a false name upon her entry in 2001, and barred from ever returning to the US.
Last up, it has recently come to the ImmigrationProf
blog's attention that all four grandparents of Republican Presidential
Candidate Tom Tancredo were immigrants from Italy. Author KJ links to a
great article in Reason Magazine about the discrimination faced by Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century, along with how, in two generations, the American Dream has brought Tancredo to a place where he has internalized the same distaste for foreigners.
The Sentencing Law and Policy blog has reported that the New Jersey legislature has voted to outlaw the death penalty in the
state. The governor has already indicated his support for the measure, so it will likely be signed into law soon. New Jersey will be the first state in more than 40 years
to abolish capital punishment. While human rights law has called for a ban on the death penalty under certain circumstances (concerning juvenile offenders, for example), the UN has yet to impose a blanket ban. However, the practice is frowned upon internationally -- it is mandated that all nations seeking to join the European Union or the Council of Europe either abolish capital punishment or institute an official moratorium on executions.
RaceWire has provided us with another update on the struggle to preserve affordable housing in New Orleans, quoting an AP article:
Protesters wielding bullhorns and shouting “housing is a human right”
stopped demolition at a massive public housing complex Wednesday in
this hurricane-ravaged city in dire need of homes for the poor.
More than 30 protesters blocked an excavator from entering the
fenced-off area of the B.W. Cooper complex. It was the first of what
likely will be many standoffs between protesters and demolition crews
that are tearing down hundreds of barracks-style buildings so they can
be replaced with mixed-income neighborhoods.
The ImmigrationProf Blog has posted about the recent case of a security officer at a New Mexico high school who has been dismissed for reporting a pregnant 18-year-old student to immigration authorities. The Roswell school district has a policy preventing school officials from concerning themselves with the immigration status of their students. However, officer Charlie Corn decided to take matters into his own hands when he realized that Karina Acosta was unable to produce a driver's license. Acosta has been deported to Mexico in her final year of school, denying her the opportunity to complete her education.
The Latina Lista blog has covered another story about New Mexico, a recent raid of the Proper Foods, Inc tamale plant. This raid was exceptional in some ways:
What's pleasantly surprising is that for the first time that we've
heard, ICE made sure that all the 21 undocumented immigrants
apprehended, as they shuffled out of the kitchens from making the
tamales that will be sold by the dozens for Christmas dinners, received
their full paychecks before being bused off for deportation.
However, the piece goes on to request an end to work-site raids this year, in the spirit of compassion, good will, and community, a set of values that seem closer to our hearts and minds during the winter holidays:
Because it is the Holiday season, the last thing ICE wants to be
caricatured as is the "Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Maybe that explains
the sudden change of heart in advocating for these workers' wages.
Yet, with only 12 days left before Christmas, there is one thing
more that the Department of Homeland Security can do to exemplify that
it is in the "Spirit of the Season" — declare a moratorium on further
raids and deportations for the month of December.
For every adult taken into custody and deported, who knows how many children are left behind?
Critics yell that these parents should take their children with them
but if there is no home to go back to, no relatives who can take you
in, no money to rent someplace, no clothes other than what's on your
back, then what kind of parent would rip their children from the
comforts, no matter how meager, of their lives here to take them where
they literally will have nothing?
To separate parents from their children, especially at
Christmastime, is perhaps more cruel than any kind of trauma, aside
from sexual and physical abuse, afflicted on a child.
We hope Operation Tamale is the last work-site raid for 2007.
The Huffington Post has linked to an article noting that President Bush has used the seventh veto of his administration in order to reject the revised version of a bill seeking to expand health insurance coverage for children.
Meanwhile, the New York state assembly is considering a plan to extend health care to all New Yorkers. The DMI Blog summarizes the proposed legislation:
In New York State, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus
are pretty good programs. They allow participants to choose from a
variety of managed care plans that contract with the state to provide
coverage. Families making up to 150 percent of the poverty line pay no
premiums and there are no deductibles and few co-payments. Despite the
fact that people enrolled in these programs tend to be less healthy
than those enrolled in commercial plans, the premiums the state pays
are much lower and have remained virtually flat even as the cost of
private insurance has skyrocketed.
So why don’t we open these successful state program to every New Yorker, regardless of income?
That simple idea is the basis of New York Health Plus, a new universal health care proposal from Dick Gottfried, Chair of the NYS Assembly Health Committee.
Under Gottfried’s plan, any New Yorker could get free health
coverage from the state, and have their pick of the plans contracting
with the state. Everyone would also be free to opt out and keep paying
for their own private health care coverage. Businesses would no longer
have the burden of employee health care costs. The more than 2 million
uninsured New Yorkers would face no barriers to coverage. Gottfried
also argues that plans under New York Health Plus would have incentives
to offer higher quality care more preventive services, providing a
better choice for New Yorkers who already have insurance too.
The ImmigrationProf Blog has posted a piece entitled 'Another Slavery Report: Yawn?' which begins: "We have reported so much on slavery lately (here and here) that we may have to give up on such reports as newsworthy." However, the Naples Daily News has just reported that a Florida family has been charged with forcibly holding 15 undocumented workers on their property and charging them for basic needs such as food and showers. That these cases are increasingly reported on is further indication of the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Our broken immigration system is fostering abusive work situations that contradict the values of mobility, equality and security for which our nation stands.
The 'Just News' blog has posted another article on the University of Texas Law School Immigration Clinic. Advocates from the clinic have just filed complaints with the Office of Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Texas
Department of Protective Services in the case of an eight-year-old girl held at nearby Hutto detention center who was separated from her pregnant mother for four days. While keeping immigrant children in detention centers is a human rights violation in and of itself, removing the child from her mother went against ICE guildelines, according to the Houston Chronicle:
"ICE officials have previously said detaining families at the facility
is meant to help "children remain with parents, their best caregivers"
while they are processed for deportation. They also told the Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services that parents would be at
the facility with their children and would be responsible for their
care, so state regulation wasn't needed."
The ImmigrationProf Blog has revisited a 2006 essay by George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson about the language we use when discussing immigration. Here's the abstract on the Rockridge Institute's website:
"Framing is at the center of the recent immigration debate. Simply
framing it as about “immigration” has shaped its politics, defining
what count as “problems” and constraining the debate to a narrow set of
issues. The language is telling. The linguistic framing is remarkable:
frames for illegal immigrant, illegal alien, illegals, undocumented
workers, undocumented immigrants, guest workers, temporary workers,
amnesty, and border security. These linguistic expressions are anything
but neutral. Each framing defines the problem in its own way, and hence
constrains the solutions needed to address that problem. The purpose of
this paper is twofold. First, we will analyze the framing used in the
public debate. Second, we suggest some alternative framing to highlight
important concerns left out of the current debate. Our point is to show
that the relevant issues go far beyond what is being discussed, and
that acceptance of the current framing impoverishes the discussion."
In other immigration news, Burger King is under fire for its refusal to join McDonald's and Taco Bell in an agreement to pay historically-underpaid migrant workers in Florida an extra penny per pound of tomatoes picked. Also, a federal court in Canada ruled in favor of a lawsuit challenging the Safe Third Country Agreement, which had designated the US as a
"safe third country" for asylum-seekers, meaning "if they make it to the
U.S. before entering Canada can be returned there." The court found that "the United States fails to comply with Convention on Torture or Article 33
of the Refugee Convention and [therefore] the U.S./Canada safe third country
agreement was flawed as there was no ongoing meaningful review mechanism."
The DMI Blog points to this week's New York Times coverage of the successes of a re-entry program in Brooklyn which offers counseling, drug testing, and work and training programs to former inmates. Re-entry programs not only support the value of redemption, or the right to a second chance, but they are also effective in helping people reintegrate into the community and remain there. According to a recent study of the comAlert program,
"ComAlert graduates are less likely be
re-arrested after leaving prison and much more likely to be employed
than either program dropouts or members of the control group.
Participants who complete the Doe Fund work-training component do even
better. They have an employment rate of about 90 percent, somewhat
higher than the ComAlert graduates generally and several times higher
than the control group."
Finally, Jack and Jill Politics offers further analysis of inequities in Wednesday's CNN/YouTube Republican debate, as compared with its Democratic counterpart:
Of 34 total questions aired, 24 were from white men (including 2 cartoon versions) in the GOP debate.
That's 71%. For the Dem debate, counting was a little more challenging
since one video aired combined video submissions from several people.
Still I'd estimate 22 of 38 questions aired were from white men (I did
not count the snowman as white because snow does not have an ethnicity)
or 58%.
Further, there were 8 questions shown that featured African-Americans during the Democratic debate and a measly 2 in the GOP debate. Hmm.
Also, strikingly -- astonishingly, no questions whatsoever during the GOP debate on:
Healthcare in America Katrina Climate Change or Environment Darfur Iraq Troop Withdrawal Afghanistan and Pakistan -- Resurgence of the Taliban Racial Profiling Voting Machines and Voting Rights The Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden
Following a series of related deaths in North America, Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has advised us that the United Nations has declared tasering to be a form of torture. Portugal has been urged to forgo use of its newly purchased tasers as the intense pain they inflict is in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. We hope that this statement will encourage universal reconsideration of taser usage.
The 'Just News' blog has cited a New York Times article reporting that the Bush administration has elected to revise its controversial 'no-match' policy on verifying the identities of American workers. Given that the new rules were suspended indefinitely by a federal judge in San Francisco, for their potential undue harm to citizens whose records are incorrect in the social security database, Bush and Homeland Security are working to issue new standards that will not provoke legal challenges. In the meantime, Homeland Security has begun training firemen to search for 'hostility to Americans' while fighting housefires.
In criminal justice news, the ACSBlog has posted on a New York Times article on about the challenges faced by those newly-released prisoners who have been exonerated of criminal charges after DNA testing proved their innocence. Inteligenta Indiĝena Indigenismo Novaĵoservo reports that the US leads the world in condemning juveniles to life sentences.
With respect to last week's celebration of Thanksgiving, a number of
blogs questioned the historical construction of the holiday. Latina Lista
notes that the Spanish had a feast with the Timucua Indians in Florida
fifty-six years before the arrival of the Pilgrims. The Native American Netroots blog argues that the holiday has more to do with violence than cooperation. And Rachel's Tavern posted a piece on alternative ways of teaching children about the Thanksgiving story.
Finally, the ImmigrationProf blog tells the story of an undocumented man who came to the aid of a 9-year-old boy who was the lone survivor of a car accident in the Arizona desert on Thanksgiving day. According to a local sheriff:
"He stayed with [the boy], told him that everything was going
to be all right." As temperatures dropped, he gave him a
jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday,
when a group of hunters passed by and called authorities.
After the boy was rescued by local authorities, 26-year-old Jesus Manuel Cordova was taken into custody by the border patrol. In a related article, the same blog notes that Hispanic journalists are urging the media to stop talking about immigration in a way that dehumanizes undocumented immigrants. As Cordova's story shows, undocumented immigrants cannot simply be written off as criminals. Rather, they are also compassionate, generous and helpful people who are willing to make sacrifices in order to protect those in need.
The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog has reposted an interesting New York Times article
on an innovative program providing prenatal care for homeless women in
San Francisco. With nineteen years as a non-profit agency, and a staff
of fifty-three people, half of whom have been homeless in the past, the
program is a model of the core value of redemption, or the idea that we all deserve the support needed for a new start:
"The Homeless Prenatal Program has evolved from its original mission
of helping destitute women give birth to and then keep healthy babies
to become a resource dedicated to stabilizing entire families. It
offers what this particular woman excitedly described here as 'a
plethora of services' for mental health, housing and substance abuse
problems. It combines those with an array of alternative health
approaches not usually available to the poor, like yoga, massage and
chiropractic treatments.
'People call me a reckless optimist, and you have to be to do this
kind of work,' said Martha Ryan, founder and executive director of the
Homeless Prenatal Program. 'But I see enough success. I see people
really able to turn their lives around, and I see their children be
able to move forward and have a different life.'”
Prometheus 6 wrote about yesterday's Washington Post article entitled Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families. A new study by Pew Charitable Trusts has revealed that "nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults," thus confirming the struggle among people of color to maintain the American value of upward mobility.
The Huffington Post has a great piece up by Sally Kohn of the Movement Vision Lab on the writers' strike. Speaking of the absence of the community frame in television or film media, Kohn praises the writers for joining together but contributes a larger cultural analysis of what has shaped our values of individualism:
"If you turn on your TV today or sit for a matinee at your local
cineplex, you'd wonder whether it's an entirely different crop of folks
holding the pens behind the scenes. After all, much of the shows and
movies they write promote extreme greed, competition and the notion
that we have to pull ourselves up from our individual bootstraps ---
NOT that we're all in it together, in solidarity. While most of us in
real life, like the striking writers, have learned that we can't
succeed without the help of others around us, most reality TV shows from American Idol to Survivor tell us that the only way to the top is fierce competition against one another. Meanwhile shows like Desperate Housewives
tell us that selfishness is good and there's no such thing as too much
greed and status --- mind you, the same greed that is keeping the
Hollywood execs from sharing the wealth with writers. And in countless
movies, writers resort to racist and homophobic 'humor' that helps
further divide our country rather than unite us together."
The DMI Blog has written about the Coalition to Raise the Minimum Standards at New York City Jails, a multi-organizational campaign that achieved a number of victories this year as "the Board of Corrections (BOC) proposed a number of changes to the
Minimum Standards for New York City Correctional Facilities" which cover rules and regulations for city jails. Author Ezekiel Edwards reports that while the BOC was not swayed on every issue of importance to prisoners and their families, significant progress was made in preserving and improving conditions of incarceration: "As a result of the Coalition's relentless efforts, the BOC voted
against the 'overcrowding' policy, against putting those in need of
protection in 23-hour solitary confinement, and against reducing
Spanish translation services."
Feministe has a new post entitled 'Housing is a Human Right' which provides information on upcoming protests against the fact that all public housing units in New Orleans are slated for demolition after a recent federal court ruling. The Facing South blog has also posted about the controvery over the formaldehyde-laced trailers provided as temporary housing -- while Gulf Area families have been living in the trailers, FEMA has cautioned its own employees against entering them.
Finally, Latina Lista has reported on a DailyKos post by the author of the Migra Matters blog called 'A progressive plan for immigration reform,' referring to the resource as "the most insightful, certainly most thorough and step-by-step approach into fully understanding the immigration issue." Given his opinion that immigration is the new topic du jour, author Duke1676 prefaces his summary with "I figured it might be a good time post up a diary that sums up
everything I've learned in my past three years here posting on
immigration issues." With some 454 comments by readers, it's worth a read.
In exciting new media news, human rights organization WITNESS has just launched The Hub, a global platform for human rights media and action or "a YouTube for human rights." According to the website:
"The Hub is a grassroots-driven, participatory media website that
enables anyone anywhere in the world with access to the internet to
upload, share, discuss and take action around human rights-related
media and resources. Through the Hub, organizations, networks and
groups around the world are able to bring their human rights stories
and campaigns to global attention.
The Hub has three main areas: See It – where you can view and interact with human rights media uploaded by the Hub community; Share It – where you can create and join groups or discussions that coincide with your interests or expertise; and Take Action – where you can get involved to make a difference, and activate other users around your campaigns and events.
The Hub is a project of WITNESS.
WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the
world to human rights violations. We empower people to transform
personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting
public engagement and policy change."
Another favorite bit of news this week is that the FBI has apparently been tracking sales of Middle Eastern food in San Francisco grocery stores in hopes that it will lead to terrorist communities. So far there have been no reports of falafel consumption leading to arrests.
Immigration News Daily has written about a study just released by the University of Florida which claims that news laws intended to crack down on undocumented immigrants are actually having the opposite effect. Based on interviews with a community of Brazilian immigrants, the report has concluded that "restrictions to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States
are having the perverse effect of encouraging those who are already
here to stay by any means necessary." It is time for the US to abandon these policies of isolation in order to engage in comprehensive immigration reform that will create a fair and just system to provide everyone in America the opportunities needed to achieve their full potential.
The 'Just News' and ImmigrationProf blogs both touched upon a case in Arizona in which an undocumented high school student was found in posession of marijuana, his school called the cops who then called the border patrol, and the student's entire family was deported. After significant protest by fellow students, "the Tucson police has changed its policy: no longer will they call the
Border Patrol to schools or churches, though they will share
information." In addition, immigration law professor Kevin Johnson discusses official agency policies surrounding arrests at school:
"The Border Patrol has a policy saying that Border Patrol agents, who
work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, must have written approval
from a supervisor before conducting any enforcement-related activity at
schools or places of worship. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which falls under a different
branch of the U.S. Homeland Security Department than Border Patrol—has
a policy that 'arresting fugitives at schools, hospitals, or places of
worship is strongly discouraged, unless the alien poses an immediate
threat to national security or the community.'"
It's reassuring that the Tucson community has been able to bring about the procedural changes they felt were necessary to ensure that their schools will be a safe and secure learning environment.
Bloggernista posted about yesterday's vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which passed the House by a vote of 235-184. While this vote is important and historic for its extension of fair workplace practices to lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities, Pam's House Blend guest author Autumn Sandeen has declared that she is "not celebrating" given the bill's failure to include 'real or perceived gender identity' in the list of protected identities.
There has been a lot of discussion on The Huffington Post about the Writers Guild of America strike that started on Monday, as TV networks and screenwriters failed to reach an agreement before the end of their previous contract. Union members are essentially demanding that networks begin to distribute profits from new media airings of their work, but have made little headway in negotiations on the issue. In a move that will endanger the financial security of many Americans, some networks are now threatening large-scale firings of their employees. According to an opinion in the LA Times:
"A day after Hollywood's writers went out on strike, the major studios
are hitting back with plans to suspend scores of long-term deals with
television production companies, jeopardizing the jobs of hundreds of
rank-and-file employees whose names never appear in the credits.
Assistants, development executives and production managers will soon be
out of work, joining their better-paid bosses who opted to sacrifice
paychecks as members of the Writers Guild of America. At some studios,
the first wave of letters are going out today, hitting writer-producers
whose companies don't currently have shows in production."
Migra Matters has done an interesting post on the results of yesterday's election in Virginia, where the Republican party had chosen to make an immigration crackdown its biggest campaign selling point. Curiously, the Democrats appear to have gained control of the state Senate, leading the author to advise us with respect to upcoming national elections: "If the Republicans were looking at immigrant-bashing as a silver bullet
to stem the national tide against them, surely tonight's results in
Virginia will should give them second thoughts."
The House of Representatives has begun debate on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a measure to extend federal workplace protections to those targeted for their sexual orientation. Pam's House Blend discusses the fact that a coalition of civil and gay rights organizations announced their support yesterday for the current version of the bill which does not include the same protections for transgender individuals, thus leaving the LGBT community divided.
The Sentencing Law and Policy blog featured an editorial in today's New York Times about the Second Chance Act, a bill which has had bipartisan support in Congress since 2004 but has yet to move through the legislature. The Times describes the need for the government policies to support redemption, or the idea that we all deserve a second chance:
"If past patterns hold true, more than half of
the 650,000 prisoners released this year will be back behind bars by
2010. With the prison population exploding and the price of
incarceration now topping $60 billion a year, states are rightly
focusing on ways to reduce recidivism. Congress can give these efforts
a boost by passing the Second Chance Act, which would provide crucial
help to people who have paid their debts to society....
The Second Chance Act would add to what the country knows about the
re-entry process by establishing a federal re-entry task force, along
with a national resource center to collect and disseminate information
about proven programs.... The programs necessary to help former
prisoners find a place in society do not exist in most communities.
The Second Chance Act would help to create those programs by providing
money, training, technical assistance — and a Congressional stamp of
approval."
Last up, blogger Sudy is working on a video project to "feature, support, and highlight the work done by feminists of color." She's included a preview of the video on her site which has been cross-posted by Vox et Machina.
The Happening Here blog has a new post up on a newly-announced hospital closure in San Francisco's Mission District. While a hearing will be held next week on the plan to shut down St. Luke's Hospital, author Janinsanfran notes:
"Opponents of the closure quickly discovered unearthed evidence that the impact
of CPMC's plan would be to dump most of their Black, Brown and charity
care patients. CPMC wants to build yet another North of Market Street
hospital on Cathedral Hill, while leaving the South of Market area
entirely to the care of the over-crowded, under-funded county hospital."
Decreasing access to medical care for communities of color and low-income communities is a reality in New York City as well, as illustrated by our google map mash up Health Care That Works. This process continues despite the fact that the majority of New Yorkers agree that health care is a human right.
Feministing has blogged about a recent Kansas City ruling on women's access to contraception, in a lawsuit in which women had alleged discrimination because AT&T refused to provide health insurance coverage for birth control for female employees. The appellate court ruled that "contraception was not 'related to' pregnancy for purposes of the law" and therefore AT&T's actions did not comprise discrimination.
The Facing South blog has posted about the recent introduction of the Gulf Civil Works bill in Congress, legislation aimed at addressing the problem that "there are still about 100,000 fewer jobs in the Gulf than there was pre-Katrina." In the spirit of the New Deal construction works, the program would create these jobs working on much-needed public infrastructure projects. According to Stephen Bradberry,
head state organizer of ACORN Louisiana, the region’s largest
association of low and middle income families,
“Communities across the Gulf Coast suffer from crumbling roads and
water systems, ill constructed flood protection, and closed police
stations, fire house, schools and hospitals...We have an opportunity
to jumpstart the recovery by empowering communities with the resources
they need to lead.”
Finally, Ezra Klein has written an insightful piece on Affluence vs. Security. Discussing whether or not American living standards are getting better or worse, Klein says:
"I haven't quite worked this theory out yet, but my sense is that economic status has been cleaved free of economic security.
So the sort of goods that signal affluence -- iPods and iPhones and
laptop computers and plasma televisions -- are becoming much cheaper,
more broadly accessible, and thus more widely owned. Lots of people,
particularly young people, can thus claim economic status. The
trappings of our wealth are all around us.
Yet economic security is quite a bit further from reach. It's
impossible for me to imagine how I'll ever buy a home. Further
education for me and eventual education for my kids are far beyond what
my salary seems able to bear. And let's not get into health care. Point
being: The affluence I can easily purchase into my 20s seems liable to
crash right into the security I discover is out of reach in my 30s.
Meanwhile, from where I sit, the American Dream is a pretty weak force.
White picket fences aren't the culturally transmitted vision of
prosperity. Electronics are. Awesome stuff
is. We're seeking goods, not security. And we can buy goods. Which
makes us feel prosperous. And if you feel prosperous, if you consider
yourself affluent, you can't merge that self-conception with economic
insecurity, and thus it's hard to consider yourself part of a coalition
in need of economic reform, or more advantageous public policy. By
offering status without security, folks lose the class discontent that
would turn them into a constituency for the security. And so they don't
get it."
Do we agree that true economic security remains elusive for our younger generations? What can we do to bolster the American Dream, to promote policies that will create opportunities and stability for everyone in America?
The ImmigrationProf Blog has written a post featuring the new Guantánamo Testimonials Project,
a project of
the University of California, Davis Center for the Study of Human
Rights in the Americas (CSHRA). The goal of the project is to collect and make available testimonies
of detainees' experiences at Guantánamo and includes statements by "prisoners, FBI Agents, interrogators, prosecution
and defense lawyers, military physicians, a chaplain, a marine, a CIA
asset, and others. "
Yesterday saw an article in The Huffington Post entitled Dangerous Toys are a Human Rights Issue. Author David Nassar discusses the connections between this controversial issue and a lack of protections for workers:
"These dangerous toys aren't putting just our children at risk:
they also endanger the lives of the factory workers who make them.
The
same forces that make manufacturers cut corners on paint and plastic
also make manufacturers cut corners on labor costs. Working long hours
in appalling conditions - often with toxic chemicals and no protection
- laborers in China bear the true cost of America's low price toys.
Stores like Wal-Mart demand bottom dollar costs, but the costs come
back not only to us and our children, but to entire communities
overseas. Today's news stories regarding children making clothing for
the Gap, Inc. in India's factories are another harsh reminder of that
truth.
Last week's Congressional hearing on toy safety and working
conditions in China's factories highlighted the fact that without
ensuring the safety of employees in supplier factories, it is
challenging at best to ensure the safety of the products that come out
of those factories and ultimately the safety of our children."
Regarding education policy, the last few days have seen discussion of high schools functioning as 'dropout factories' (with one in ten American high schools seeing less than 60% of their original class finishing school) and the importance of the federal Head Start preschool program in increasing graduation rates (while also cutting crime rates). Others have discussed new legislation to help control college costs for American youth, while high-achieving immigrants in favor of the DREAM Act have expressed worries such as "I always worried that immigration (officers) would come if I didn't excel." It is important to continue these dialogues concerning the human rights issues of where we as a nation can do better in ensuring that our young people have the opportunities they need to achieve their full potential.
Finally, the DMI Blog has posted on an innovative new media project of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, their just-launched website TheMiddleClass.org.
The website is meant to function as "a dynamic site that will update
throughout the year as members of
Congress vote on legislation of significance to the current and
aspiring middle class." Speaking of its democratizing role of holding politicians accountable to the voice of their constituents by reporting on legislation in an interactive fashion, the site
says:
"For each bill, we begin with a brief description of the legislation,
information about its status in the legislative process, and an
analysis of its impact on the middle class. But themiddleclass.org also
provides more extensive context: you’ll find informative online video
about each piece of legislation, quotations from experts speaking out
on the issue, and hard-hitting numbers from DMI’s Injustice Index. We
look beyond the bill to what more could be done to address the issues
as stake. And we provide links to further resources.
We also provide information on how each member of the U.S. Senate
and House of Representatives voted on the legislation. You can look at
how every member voted on a particular bill, or how your own
representative voted. You can search for legislation by issue area or
keyword and look for legislators by name, state, or entering your zip
code. And you can check out the grades we assign each member of
Congress based on their votes."
In the wake of the California DREAM Act veto, a couple interesting stories have come to light concerning higher education. The first involves a scholarship fund set up by Catalino Tapia, a gardener who settled in Redwood City after immigrating from Mexico. Tapia was so proud to see his son attend law school that he formed a non-profit organization with other gardeners that gave away nine $1500 scholarships last year. Tapia proves he understands the importance of community values: “I believe the education of our young people isn't just the responsibility of their parents, especially in the Latino community where some parents work two or three jobs…It's our obligation as community leaders, because young people sometimes wander without guidance."
Second, a student at Texas A&M University who came to the US on a visa when he was five years old has been ordered to leave the country – but the immigration authorities are going to let him finish his engineering degree in December before deporting him to Guatemala. Having signed a form that made them ineligible for citizenship, the family is all facing deportation – although the mother has also been granted an extension so their one US citizen daughter can finish the school year. While it is upsetting to see a family’s chance at citizenship get hung up on a technicality, it is reassuring to see that ICE is taking their educational status and options into account for the time being.
With respect to the impending construction of a fence along the US-Mexico border, the Pro Inmigrant blog has noted that Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff may decide to use his power to trump a recent federal court ruling halting the building process in Arizona. Latina Lista reports, however, that some communities in Texas may be able to call upon Spanish colonial law to avoid ceding the land demanded by the Homeland Security department. In the town of Granjeno alone, plans dictate that the fence would cut through properties owned by 34 families, demonstrating that the fence would have a negative impact on Americans as well, in addition to its environmental impact and general inability to fix an immigration system already broken and unfair.
In another milestone in the ongoing battle over immigration policy, Migra Matters has featured a recent report by the University or Arizona confirming the economic benefits of all kinds of immigration. The author summarizes the study: “We can now add Arizona to the long list of states in which recent studies prove that the current influx of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, have contributed far more in taxes than they receive in government services.” As a nation, we’ve found much strength not only in the vibrant workforce that immigration has enabled but also in the richness and diversity of our community. Future federal and state policies should reflect our support and gratitude for the benefits that immigration brings us all.
There has been much talk on the recent trial of a nurse and several guards from a Florida boot camp for adolescents who beat a 14-year-old black boy who claimed he was too tired to exercise and then died the following day; their acquittal on murder charges has fed recent discussions on the nature of these youth boot camps where at-risk children are regularly neglected and abused. Forcing troubled youth to undergo starvation can only add to their sense of social abandonment and will not work to increase opportunities available to them to succeed.
The Facing South blog has published commentary on last Friday's New York Times piece on the impact of immigration raids on the Smithfield Foods' North Carolina slaughterhouse. Asking the question "Who Benefits?," author Chris Kromm concludes that businesses suffer from a lack of a stable workforce, and that, "Immigration raids do nothing to improve this situation for workers. In
reality, the costly raids end up separating families and tearing up
communities -- all for a short-term solution to the long-term problem
of immigration reform." Especially because raids are failing to solve our broken immigration system, we need to start approaching the issue of immigration policy reform with consideration for what is best for the community at large.
Ending on a lighter note, the Immigrants in USA blog has posted on a Boston Globe article highlighting various Massachusetts employers that are offering English classes for their workers, catering to a high demand for the service. This is a great example of the way businesses can effectively invest in their workforce and the community as a whole, as increasing communications skills will have ramifications across the board for marginalized populations.
Yesterday's Columbus Day holiday did not go smoothly, as 80 Native American activists were arrested at a sit-in protest of Denver's holiday parade. While claiming "that honoring Columbus in essence celebrates the foundation of genocide, racism, and slavery in the Americas," non-violent protesters were rounded up quite violently by police. The intense controversy over this federal holiday is another flag of just how important is it to frame American history and policy with respect to human rights, or to focus on Bringing Human Rights Home.
"What if America launched a new New Deal and no one noticed? And what
if, instead of lifting the unemployed out of poverty, this
multibillion-dollar project steadily drove poor communities further and
further out of the American mainstream?
That's how America should think about its growing prison system,
some leading social scientists are saying, in research that suggests
prisons have a far deeper impact on the nation than simply punishing
criminals."
These posts are definitely worth a read with attention to the way that our prison system values retribution over redemption, the idea that those who falter in their efforts or break societal rules warrant the chance for reconciliation, rehabilitation, and a new start.
Tennessee Guerilla Women posted a story about 2600 members of the Minnesota National Guard who just returned from 22 months of duty in Iraq to find that they were deployed one day short of the 730 days required to receive the college education benefits outlined in the GI Bill. To knowingly deny veterans the chance to go to college is a disrespectful statement that in spite of government promises and their personal sacrifices, the soldiers must 'go it alone' and support themselves through school. This myth that we should all 'pull ourselves up by the bootstraps' is contrary to our nation's long-held belief that our success as a country depends on the success of all, that we should be striving for the common good. The policies of our government should be based in community values rather than punitive individualism.
An interesting post on the Immigrants in USA Blog discusses the way lack of transportation negatively affects immigrant populations. Based on an article published in Alabama's News Courier about a lecture by sociology professor Stephanie Bohon, the piece discusses how transportation barriers "prevent [immigrants] from learning the language, learning about job or housing opportunities and having access to services." If undocumented individuals are unable to obtain drivers licenses and there is no public transport available in their area, they are left dependent on expensive taxi fares and may choose to forgo outings such as taking their child for necessary vaccinations.
After recent crackdowns on the mobility of immigrant workers, a shortage of farm workers has left farmers threatening to leave fruit and vegetable rotting in their fields. As a result, the Bush administration is quietly working to rewrite federal regulations on foreign labor. This is a perfect example of how reactionary, anti-immigrant policies have not only failed to fix the problem but are making things worse for the American economy. Immigration replenishes our country's workers, communities, and traditions. Immigrants are central to our productivity and success, and help ensure that the US continues to be a land of wealth and opportunity.
Finally, Future Majority alerts us to a new campaign to get young Latinos to vote called Vota Por Tu Futuro (Vote 4 UR Future). A media campaign based on PSAs and in-show
ads, Vote 4 UR Future is a partnership between the youth-focused TV channel Telemundo, mun2 and a coalition of political organizations such as Rock the Vote, the US
Hispanic Leadership Institute, and Democracia USA. Thie campaign is a great step towards ensuring that the growing Latino population has a voice in electing our public officials.
This Friday saw the end of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Conference in New York. The CGI is "a non-partisan catalyst for action bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges," from issues of education and health to global warming. Webcasts of the event have been have been posted on the site, and Blogher has published a number of posts about the meeting, the most recent of which discussed the importance of maternal health and education. Here's a striking example of the discussion from the event:
"Gene Sperling talked about education being the silent crisis because there is no moment when the CNN camera captures a kid dying from lack of education. Every year of education for a mother increases the chance of her child living by 10%. When a woman has five years of education, her children are 50% more likely to see their fifth birthday."
Another exciting new media creation is the interactive web timeline on the America at a Crossroads site. The timeline is related to the PBS series meant to explore "the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world — including the war on terrorism; the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of American troops serving abroad; the struggle for balance within the Muslim world; and global perspectives on America’s role overseas." There are four separate timelines that correspond to a world map and offer pop-ups of information on key historical events. A similar example of the capacity of an interactive timeline is found on the Reclaim Civil Rights website, which even has video embedded in the presentation.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced last week the launch of a new photo-database meant to enhance the E-Verify system for matching names and social security numbers of foreign workers in the US.
Various blogs have commented recently on the new citizenship exam going into effect a year from today. The New York Times published an article discussing changes in the test, which has been criticized as abstract, irrelevant, lacking in any information about Latin Americans, and demanding a level of knowledge of American history and politics well above that of the average citizen. The ImmigrationProf Blog questions how this test relates to the literacy tests for the native-born voting population that were outlawed in the 1960s.
Finally, in other current events, 17-year-old Jena Six member Mychal Bell was released from prison last week on $45,000 bail. In an unexpected display of generosity from the community, bail was posted by Dr. Stephen Ayers of Lake Charles, Louisiana, who offered his support upon hearing about the case because he felt that the District Attorney's treatment of Bell was innapropriately harsh.
First off, a coalition of more than 150 immigrants rights groups are advocating a boycott of Western Union for charging exorbitant fees and using innapropriate exchange rates for its wire transfers abroad. Organizers also assert that the company reinvests very little in the immigrant communities it serves despite profits of over $1 billion per year.
As in the Colbert video below, the Immigrants and Politics Blog has recapped a September 5 New York Times article about farmers relocating their business to Mexico given the difficulties of finding labor within the US. Given recent crackdowns on the mobility and capacity of the migrant workforce, many US companies are struggling to find workers, and farmers often experience labor shortages during harvest time. In response, the profiled farmer has chosen to "southsource" to Mexico. This type of action could very well have long-term negative effects on the American economy.
Another story that was all over the blogosphere yesterday was that of the 20-year-old black woman in West Virginia who was abducted and held hostage while forced to suffer intense physical and sexual abuse. Although her six white captors have been arrested and charged with a total of 108 counts of criminal conduct, federal prosecutors have decided not to consider this a hate crime despite the fact that the six alledgedly referred to the woman as a "nigger." This decision has been quite controversial given the brutality of the incident and the fact that hate crimes laws are in effect to mandate a heavier sentence for acts motivated by exactly this sort of unthinkable discrimination.
Additionally, a study has been released by the Medicare Rights Center which demonstrates that "low-income people enrolled in Medicare private fee-for-service plans pay more for their health care in some counties than people enrolled in the same plans in neighboring, more affluent counties." It hardly seems fair to inflate costs for those who can barely afford to pay for medical services, or smart to force the government to subsidize medical bills at a higher rate. Perhaps the report will force us to rethink that one.
Our friends at Immigration Orange have written a very powerful post featuring the stories of two undocumented Brazilian men who have recently died while in detention. 25-year-old Maxsuel Medeiros died of a heart attack yesterday after being held by Massachusetts Police for a traffic incident. And last month, the following occurred, also in Boston:
"Edmar Araujo, who is epileptic, died from a seizure after he was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Needless to say, psychological or physical stress is what causes a seizure.
Worst of all, his sister claims to have tried to bring his epilepsy
medicine to the local police that picked him up, but that information
was not used to save his life. It's been over a month and we still
don't have answers as to whether or not Araujo's death could have been
prevented, and who is to blame."
That anyone should be living in this kind of extreme fear within the US is just devastating. But to deny medical care to those being held is a tremendous violation of human rights and one which should weigh heavily on our national conscience.
Just News
included a piece about a lawsuit just filed by the United Food and
Commercial Workers International Union that seeks to collect damages as well as to put an end to a series of six
raids of Swift & Co. meatpacking plants by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). The union claims that "agents unlawfully detained
workers and violated their constitutional rights," threatening even US
citizens. This sort of blanket crackdown on American workers can only lead to more violations of our rights.
Firedoglake
has covered the "Hands Across El Rio" protest which lasted for sixteen
days across the Texas border. The protest was organized to show community
opposition to the construction of a wall along the Mexican border, and included
the display of a human chain which stretched the length of the river.
Both Racialicious and Resist Racism have noted the resurgence of noose imagery in the media and in public happenings. Even a recent MSNBC Sports headline implies a lynching. That's not just a bit distasteful, especially given current events.
Just News also mentions a study released in the LA Times which reveals that blacks have "borne the brunt" of Hurricane Katrina, as New Orleans' black population fell 57 percent a year after Hurricane Katrina while the white population only declined 36 percent. There is also a noticeable pattern in where blacks and whites have tended to resettle, with the former choosing to locate themselves in poorer, urban areas.
Finally, Afro-Netizen has posted about new data on racial segregation in nursing homes in the US. Interestingly, facilities in the South have been found to be more integrated than those in the Midwest, but where segregation exists, differences in the quality of care are also evident.
As the immigration debate moves from a Federal to a
states-based forum, different outlets are investigating the impact of various state-level bills. ‘Just News’ blog
reports on the effects of new legislature in Arizona and Georgia. An article from the Arizona Republic
interviews undocumented immigrants after the governor signed a bill recognized
as the “toughest of its kind in the country” which could put companies out of
business for hiring them. Many
immigrants are considering migrating to another state, leaving behind labor
shortages and housing market problems. An article on Governing.com describes the effects of Georgia’s new
immigration law which force state and local government agencies to verify the
legal residency of benefit employees. It’s
too soon to tell what such migration will do to these states enacting harsher
laws. What is clear is that when the Federal government avoids creating a definite nation-wide policy, the differences in states' laws will likely cause many unforeseen problems in the economy.
The Center for Social Inclusion released their monthly “New
Orleans Recovery Report Card” for June (pdf), an advocacy tool for monitoring
rebuilding progress, assigns a grade for the 13 New Orleans planning districts
based on performance in five categories: economy, utilities, health, housing,
and public education. June’s report card continues the trend with not much improvement, especially in the categories of
health and public education, both of which receiving grades of “F” overall.
Other details include:
As of this Report Card, 33% of childcare facilities have reopened in New Orleans, with six new childcare facilities reopening in June. The Lower 9th Ward, Venetian Islands, and New Aurora/English Turn still have no child care.
A report by PolicyLink, a national research and action institute, shows
the Gulf Opportunity Zone Rental Housing Restoration Program, a $2 billion
piece of the failed Road Home Program, will only replace 40% of the 82,000
rental units damaged or destroyed in the 2005 hurricane season.
In a long-awaited flood-risk assessment for New Orleans, the federal government said the
City is better prepared than before Katrina, but would still face severe
flooding in the case of a 100-year storm or a major hurricane. Katrina was a
400-year storm.
Firedoglake blogs about the Employee
Free Choice, a bill which aims to restore workers’ freedom in choosing a union,
especially establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights
when workers seek to form a union. FDL
explains that while 60 million workers say they would join a union if they
could, but many people are intimidated by corporate giants. By stating that this act is a “workplace
rights issue,” a “human rights issue,” and a “civil rights issue,” FDL frames
the issue in universal terms that appeals to the broad advantages for
everyone. The benefits in unionizing
workers appear in many forms. With union
workers receiving an average wage 30% higher than the nonunion worker, creating
greater access to membership will help lessen the growing wage
inequalities. Here's hoping this rights-based frame can help push the issue forward.
Prometheus 6 reports on the alarming disparities in the
racial composition of the 30% of students who fail to graduate high school. In a recent Education Week report, only half of
American Indians and black students graduated, compared with more than
three-quarters of non-Hispanic whites and Asians. The reports uses information from the 2003-04
school year to estimates the number of graduates in 2007. Their analysis shows
that while minority students make up less than half of the total public school
population, they make up more than half of the nongraduates. In addition, Hispanic youth are four times
more likely to drop out than are white youth (pdf), creating an education gap that limits opportunities for young people of color and widens other disparities - in income and health coverage, for example - later in life.
Sentencing Law and Policy reports on a new article from
stateline.org about how increasing prices to maintain the overcrowded prisons
are leading lawmakers to provide different alternatives to prisons. Some of these ideas include an expanded
program to help prevent offenders from being incarcerated again (like diverting funds from prisons to rehabilitation centers), earlier release
dates for low-risk inmates and sentencing revisions. State spending on prisons continues to
increase at an alarming rate to account for the high number of incarcerated
persons. Between 2004 and 2005, not only
did the number of incarcerated persons increase, but so did the rate (491 per
100,000 people in 2005 versus 486 per 100,000 in 2004).
Racialicious reports on a New York Times article explaining
the ways in which New York City's composition of “mom and pop” stores would change drastically under the proposed
immigration bill. Contrary to previous
systems of sponsorship for extended family members, this new bill places a higher value on education and skilled labor via a points system. Many of these small businesses continue to thrive today as a
result of these families ability to bring in new workers. As the study notes, much of the reconstruction of New York City after the bankruptcy and
property losses of the 1970s can be traced to the influx of new immigrants. These immigrants, many who would have been turned away by the provision of the current bill, play a key role in revitalizing American cities like New York.
A recent Free Press study
(pdf) reports on the lack of diversity in radio ownership, attributing the dismal
figures partly to FCC policy and media consolidation. This study is the first
complete assessment and analysis of female and minority ownership of full-power
commercial broadcast stations in the U.S since a ruling from the Third U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in 2004 criticized the lack of diversity on radio, television and
newspapers. Since that ruling, the FCC has done next to nothing to improve minority ownership. Currently, women own just 6 percent of commercial broadcast radio stations, and
racial or ethnic minorities own just 7.7% of them. As a media outlet, dependent on the public airwaves, radio should accurately
represent the composition of the country, and provide all groups an equal voice in our democracy
Feminist blogs reports on an American Journal for Public
Health study which found a correlation between routine, subtle racial
discrimination and development of chronic illness. The study interviewed Asian-Americans across the U. S. about their personal experience with discrimination and their medical histories,
concluding that stress from the former may cause problems ranging from
mental health issues to chronic cardiovascular, respiratory and pain-related health
trouble. Overlooking the negative
effects of subtle institutional racism causes great harm for the groups in
question, and prevents positive solutions through social programs. For example, the recent attempts to allow communities to integrate schools in segregated neighborhoods have not garnered as much support as they should because of people's perceptions about the existence of racism. Without a true understanding of the problems our society still faces, minorities will continue to be disadvantaged.
Bloomberg.com reports on the impact of presidential
candidates’ attitudes on immigration in the upcoming election. With varied reactions from all walks of life,
this bill faces several amendment suggestions to soothe responses. Particularly of concern to immigrant advocacy
groups is the lack of emphasis on family over a point system highlighting education and professional. Deepak Bhargava,
executive director of Center for Community Change, responded that “the
emotional resonance of the family issue is profound. This point system is not just wrong-headed
policy, it is deeply offensive to many people who came to this country as
immigrants.”
In a similar piece, the Gotham Gazette reports on the new
immigration bills and advocacy groups’ reactions. Many groups in New York expressed dismay over the point
system, unhappy about a bill that does not stress family reunification. In response, Chung-Wha Hong, executive
director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said that “the proposed
bargain…undermines our family-based immigration system.”
Next time you head to the movies you must check the powerful and inspiring film, God Grew Tired Of Us. It will be released in NYC and around the country this week. It explores American opportunity through a unique lens, following the lives of Sudanese refugees from the war in Southern Sudan to resettlement in the United States. It highlights how these men try to retain their culture while seizing opportunity in America -- earning a living, going to school, and providing for families back home. It investigates American culture and the American dream, and explores the pros and cons of life in the Unites States.
Here’s a trailer for the movie: and a summary from the website: “Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, GOD GREW TIRED OF US explores the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan who leave their homeland, triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities and move to America, where they build active and fulfilling new lives but remain deeply committed to helping the friends and family they have left behind. Orphaned by a tumultuous civil war and traveling barefoot across the sub-Saharan desert, John Bul Dau, Daniel Abol Pach and Panther Blor were among the 25,000 “Lost Boys” (ages 3 to 13) who fled villages, formed surrogate families and sought refuge from famine, disease, wild animals and attacks from rebel soldiers. Named by a journalist after Peter Pan’s posse of orphans who protected and provided for each other, the “Lost Boys” traveled together for five years and against all odds crossed into the UN’s refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. A journey’s end for some, it was only the beginning for John, Daniel and Panther, who along with 3800 other young survivors, were selected to re-settle in the United States.”
For another interesting take on opportunity (and the barriers to it) in America and the Lost Boys, the book What is the What by David Eggers is a must read. It is based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng, and at 400+ pages, the book provides a nuanced account of the history of the Lost Boys and life after resettlement in America.
Finally, if you’d like to learn more about the conflict in Sudan and join efforts to help out, The International Crisis Group website has a short list of recommendations, including writing to your elected representatives and writing to media urging more coverage of the situation.
Not a lot of time to blog today. I'm giving a guest lecture on blogging at the New School today, and I need to practice my presentation. I promise I'll have a cornucopia of posts tomorrow on all sorts of interesting opportunity issues.
To tide you over, check out Ezra Klein's interesting analysis of the wage gender gap.
In an article with stunningly bad framing, the AP manages to blame poor african americans for getting ripped off by the insurance companies. While the overall framing leaves much to be desired, the article does convey some important information, and a quote by our own Alan Jenkins, buried near the bottom, clearly states what should have been the story's principle message:
Alan Jenkins, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton
administration who lobbies for minority opportunities, said AP's
analysis reinforces a little-discussed reality exposed by Katrina.
"The
promise of opportunity isn't equally available," he said. "Race and
income has made a big difference in people's ability to start over."
Jenkins said state and federal agencies need to adopt different techniques to reach historically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The Republic of T has about 5 great posts up analyzing the New Jersey decision on civil unions/gay marriage. BlackProf has some good stuff on this issue as well.
Finally, the Economic Policy Institute released a paper analyzing minimum wage research and trends. The findings include:
There is a growing view among economists that the
minimum wage offers substantial benefits to low-wage workers without
negative effect. Although there are still dissenters, the best recent
research has shown that the job loss reported in earlier analyses does
not, in fact, occur when the minimum wage is increased. There is little
question that the overall impact of a minimum wage is positive, as the
following facts make clear:
If the minimum wage were increased nationally to $7.25:
14.9 million workers would receive a raise,
80% of those affected are adults age 20 or over, and
7.3 million children would see their parents income rise.
To update our post from yesterday regarding health equity issues in NYC and the state's proposed $1.5 billion bailout, The Albany Times Union does a much better job covering the issues than the New York Times. Following The Times' lead, The APalso drops the ball with this one-sided piece that makes no mention of the true costs of the looming hospital closures to already underseved low-income communities and communities of color. Interesting that local papers seem to be doing such a better job covering this issue . . .
If you missed them yesterday, check out our maps illustrating the disproportionate distribution of health care services that already exist in NYC. These problems are likely to be exacerbated by the state's use of $1.5 billion to "rightsize" New York's health care system.
In a move likely to have negative consequences for the economic security of working Americans, the NLRB is expected to "broaden the definition of "supervisor" under the National Labor
Relations Act in a way that will exclude millions of workers from the
law's protections." EPI has the goods in a state by state analysis.
CAP reports that this move will likely have health consequences as well, as one of the groups most impacted will be the nursing profession. Nurses unions are one of the leading advocates for lower nurse to patient ratios that can improve health care services for all. Sara Solon at DMI Blog has more on the impact this decision will have on the nursing profession.
