Kudos to the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education & Leadership Institute for seizing on the opportunity to co-sponsor presidential debates with Fox News.
"We were at a rally on Darfur," Clooney said. "People were standing around backstage. All of a sudden, Obama walks out and steps onto the stage. Everyone stopped to hear what he had to say…. I've never been around anyone who can literally take someone's breath away."
Is Mitt Romney not the most transparent politician out there?The way it stands now, we Republicans are on track to get the thumping of a lifetime. We are about to get spanked, and spanked hard.Read why in his WILL 2008 MEAN DOOM FOR REPUBLICANS? (3.28.07).
A mysterious giant hexagon lies above Saturn's north pole, captured by cameras on NASA's Cassini Orbiter.Plaintiffs showed that in the months that followed [the adoption of the anti-immigrant ordinance] and in a national election year, the Defendant Mayor’s media driven campaign stoked panic and fear among the City’s newcomer Latino residents and business owners. Latinos complained about illegal police ID checks of Latino immigrants in the streets, public insults, and, parents fretting over the welfare of their school-age children. These led to Latinos staying at home, the flight of immigrant families, businesses in the City’s Hispanic district losing customers, mounting sales income losses due to a “ghost-town” effect, mortgage defaults arose, Latino businesses closing, and landlords with hardships renting to tenants. The court issuance of the TRO (October 31, 2006) provided a stabilizing effect but the ordinance’s intended impact was palpable. Plaintiffs also showed that the police chief and other officials were not consulted by the Mayor, that no research existed tending to show a crisis of illegal immigrants existed before the bills were proposed, and, that the City’s blame failed to distinguish its Latino residents, whether citizen, immigrant or undocumented, causing community fear and discord.According to Chin, the parties will submit their post-trial briefs due in April 2007. Then, the court will make a decision. It is likely the losing party will take an appeal to the 3rd Circuit.
As soon as I posted U.S. Corporations Lobby Against Puerto Rico Statehood?, I came across Julie Shapiro's Velazquez tries to solve Puerto Rico status limbo (The Villager, 3.14-20.07).Given the clear message in favor of short-term profits over the long-term interests of the Puerto Rican people by U.S. corporations, it seems that Nydia Velazquez may have taken on a bigger challenge than merely winning authorization in the Congress for a PR plebiscite.Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez wants to put decisions about Puerto Rico’s future back in the hands of Puerto Ricans. A commonwealth — neither a state nor an independent country — Puerto Rico is often caught in the middle of a heated debate about its identity.
At the end of last month, Velazquez introduced the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2007. The bill, with 25 co-sponsors, describes a process for Puerto Ricans to decide the status of their home.
“Any proposal regarding the future of Puerto Rico must first come from Puerto Ricans,” said Velazquez, who was born on the island. “Self-determination needs to come from the people of the island — to do otherwise would be tampering with their free will."
More than half of Fortune 100 companies operate there, with billions invested in factories and trained workers. Eli Lilly & Co., Abbott Laboratories and others, including Microsoft Corp. and Coca-Cola Co., don't want to lose Puerto Rico's tax-free commonwealth status, politicians and academics say.Puerto Rico's leading statehood advocate, Senate President Kenneth McClintock, believes that the firms won't leave an educated, loyal and skilled work force.
Ironically, the anti-immigrant/anti-Latinos drum beat of nativists has spurred one of the largest waves of citizenship applications in recent history. And the citizenship wave will ensure that the U.S. gain millions of newly minted U.S. citizens of Latino heritage."The same kind of political abuse that used to go on in Argentina I am now seeing in the US. I'm applying to become a citizen because I want to vote, to make a difference, to have a voice in democracy." Andrea Sbardellati
There's yet more buzz about a possible Michael Bloomberg for president--even though he has said he won't decide until next year.
Saul Arellano's mother, Elvira Arellano, has become a symbol for the resistance against the government's barbaric practice of fracturing immigrant families by forcibly arresting and deporting the "undocumented" mothers of children whom are U.S. citizens. Against American law, the U.S. citizen children of these immigrant mothers are also deported, or--as happened last month in Bedford, MA--the government deports the mothers and leaves the children behind, alone, to fend for themselves.
Last August 2006, Arellano defied an order by ICE to turn herself in for deportation. Instead she sought refuge in Adalberto United Methodist Church where she has lived with her son since under the historic religious practice of Sanctuary.
Click here for a CBS interview with Elvira Arellano recorded last August, 2006, at the Adalberto United Methodist Church last August.
The church sits in the center of Chicago's Humboldt Square, a Puerto Rican community represented by Luis Gutierrez in the U.S. Congress. The Puerto Rican community has rallied to Arellano's cause--and Gutierrez has become a leading champion for immigrant rights and immigration reform.
When government laws and authorities act in inhumane ways, people have historically sought refuge and/or help from religious institutions. There is a long and proud tradition in this country--as well as in others--to defy the immoral and inhumane actions of government from the sanctuary of institutions of faith. Think of the U.S. civil rights movement, the under-ground railroad, the struggle against apartheid, the U.S. sanctuary movement of the 1980s, Poland's Solidarity Movement and Mahatma Gandhi's campaign against British oppression.
What's especially gratifying to see is the leadership role of Chicago's Puerto Rican community. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and could, therefore, simply look the other way--as so many Americans have done. Or they could join in the ugly American tradition of taking free shots at the most recent and beleaguered immigrants. But in Chicago, it's Puerto Ricans--among others--that have formed the human shield necessary against the brutality of the U.S. government.
Visit Puerto Rican Legal and Education Fund's website to learn about how Cesar Perales and his Boricua associates are fighting injustices against immigrants and Latinos.
Photo: AP
"We are U.S. citizens
Source: ColorLines is the leading national, multi-racial magazine devoted to the creativity and complexity of communities of color. Photo: AP
In an effort to gain new listeners, Trenton shock jocks Craig Carton and Ray Rossi of WKXW have added anti-Latino bigotry to their daily adolescent jokes and racist rants.
Many American Indians were forcibly sent away to Indian boarding schools across the country. (Read about one of these schools in The Porto Rican Indians of The Carlisle School.) The idea was to eradicate the native language and culture by crushing of the children's spirits.The K-8 school with 235 students in the Window Rock Unified School District, here on the reservation of the Navajo Nation, draws on both Navajo tradition and modern accountability tools to improve student achievement.Part 2 includes an interview with Laurinda Davis Moore, a Navajo mother who's enrolled her children--Lailauni, Malayne and Latreyal--in the Navajo Language Immersion School. Laurinda mentions that her parents attended an Indian Boarding School where they were punished for speaking Navajo.
A Very Kurdish New Year (by Andrew Lee Butters, TIME, 3.22.07)Understandably, President Bush is angry about the vote and has threatened to veto the measure. But frankly, he has only himself and his administration to blame. While the public went along with the Iraq invasion--even when military leaders and allies cautioned against it--the administration consistently fell short in terms of military intelligence, war strategy and public communications.The 218-212 vote, mostly along party lines, was a hard-fought victory for Democrats...Passage marked [Democrats] most brazen challenge yet to Bush on a war that has killed more than 3,200 troops and lost favor with the American public.
I love Christopher Hitchens' brilliant Letter from Kurdistan: Holiday in Iraq (VanityFair, April 2007) because of what it says about the resilience of the Kurdish people.The Kurds are the largest nationality in the world without a state of their own. The King of Bahrain has, in effect, his own seat at the United Nations, but the 25 million or so Kurds do not. This is partly because they are cursed by geography, with their ancestral lands located at the point where the frontiers of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria converge.Hitchens sees the terrific changes in Kurdish Iraq since George W.H. Bush imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Bush I did so in order to stop Saddam Hussein from continuing his mass murder of the Kurdish people. But Hitchens wonders what might have been had the U.S. honored its commitments to the Kurdish and the Iraqi people.
CHLI and the Girl Scouts Shed Light on the Crisis Facing Young Latinas (HISPANIC PR WIRE, 3.23.07)
At a congressional briefing held today, the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute and the Girl Scouts of USA (GSUSA) shed light to the crisis facing Latina teenagers and discussed ways to work together with other organizations to reach out to Latinas.
Patricia Diaz Dennis, the GSUSA Chairwoman, shared the alarming statistics associated with the significant health and social disparities among Latina teenagers:
17% of Latina adolescents attempt suicide – their rate is more than 150% higher than other girls.
24% of Hispanic teenagers get pregnant, which is the highest pregnancy rate of any of their peers (other statistics show this rate at 51%).
One of every five Latina teenager is obese.
Latinas are at disproportionately high risk for HIV, Chlamydia and Gonorrhea.
One-quarter of all Latina girls drop out of school.
BTW: The Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute is separate from the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, a Democrat party entity engulfed in controversy
Expect social conservatives and leftists to gin up "swift-boat" type attacks on Rudy--his politics and his personal life. (And just today, the NYPost went after Judy Nathan Giuliani ran with a story about her first marriage.)
While one would think that the anti-Rudy campaigns would benefit his likely Democrat opponent, it'll probably be a wash at the end. Why? Because that candidate--whose likely to be Clinton--will undoubtedly face his/her own "swift-boating".
Morning Ireland: Simon Ziviani of the family history websiteancestry.co.uk talks about Barack Obama's hunt for his Irish ancestry.He initially settled in Ohio, got married, had eight children, and later moved to Indiana, right next door to the state Obama currently represents in the US Senate.
María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien, 40, anchor of CNN's American Morning news program, embodies what is right about America: immigration, education, diversity and achievement.
Suffolk lawmakers Tuesday night defeated a controversial anti-loitering bill aimed at immigrant day laborers who congregate along county roads to solicit work from passing motorists.
I like reading Marisa Treviño of Latina Lista, especially her work exposing the lunacy of our immigration policies and enforcement.What was done to those eight federal prosecutors for only doing their jobs was a travesty, ironically, of justice.The real question is not why they were sacked, but why they weren't sacked at the outset?
If Gonzales leaves his post, either by resignation or fired himself, it will be an act of disgrace for him, his family and the Latino community who still measures our progression and success on the backs of those who make it.As in the case with the prosecutors, Attorney General Gonzalez is a political appointee. Part of the deal is that if called upon from above, he is expected to fall on his sword for the good of his patron. His ethnicity has absolutely nothing to do about it. So how would it be a disgrace for his family or the Latino community.
In What We See in Hugo Chávez (NYTimes, 3.17.07), Argentine and writer Luisa Valenzuela offers her perspective on why Latin Americans of all classes are drawn to Hugo Chávez.President Chávez’s weapons of seduction are his superabundance of petrodollars and his obsession with a shared Latin American project. His plan is to realize the dream of Simón Bolívar, the old utopian vision of Latin American integration that today seems more viable than ever before.Of President Bush's contested visit to Latin America last week, Valenzuela sees a fading imperial brawler whose punches have grown soft and short:
President Bush found himself repudiated on one bank of the Plata while President Chávez was getting ovations on the opposite one: each contender in his corner and the moral triumph to the last man left standing, as in a boxing ring.Valenzuela is moved by the "feeling of empowerment that President Chávez instills, and that various South American governments are endorsing." She sees these as "a good engine for further progress — a means of upgrading ourselves from the status of someone’s backyard into that of a truly autonomous region."
In A Search for Self in Obama’s Hawaii Childhood (NYTimes, 3.17.07), Jennifer Steinhauer provides an interesting glimpse of a young Barack Obama through the comments of his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and school pals.There was always a joke between my mom and Barack that he would be the first black president.Isn't this the type of person that America needs today?
He had to pursue those answers actively. People from very far-away places collide here, and cultures collide, and there is a blending and negotiation that is constant.
I think Hawaii gave him a sense that a lot of different voices and textures can sort of live together, however imperfectly, and he would walk in many worlds and feel a level of comfort.
For those unfamiliar with Puerto Rico, the island's South, i.e., it's glorious Caribbean side, is what the locals view as authentic Puerto Rico.The Caribes and Taíno were two tribes from the Caribbean Islands, who made long voyages between the islands in their long canoes. They were skillful navigators, tradesmen and warriors. They were the first of the native peoples met by Columbus in 1492. Some historians believe they settled in South Florida around the Miami River. They traded and raided along the Treasure Coast. In the late 1940s, a Caribe burial of about a dozen individuals was found on Hutchinson Island between Jensen Beach and Fort Pierce.Haines Brown in A brief history of the Timucua Taíno of Northern Florida makes the case for a much more powerful presence of the Taíno in North America.
