By Roberto Lovato
This article appeared in the May 26, 2008 edition of The Nation.
May 8, 2008
Justeen Mancha's dream of becoming a psychologist was born of the tropical heat and exploitation that have shaped farmworker life around Reidsville, Georgia, for centuries. The wiry, freckle-faced 17-year-old high school junior has toiled in drought-dry onion fields to help her mother, Maria Christina Martinez. But early one September morning in 2006, Mancha's dream was abruptly deferred.
From the living room of the battered trailer she and her mother call home, Mancha described what happened when she came out of the shower that morning. "My mother went out, and I was alone," she said. "I was getting ready for school, getting dressed, when I heard this noise. I thought it was my mother coming back." She went on in the Tex-Mex Spanish-inflected Georgia accent now heard throughout Dixie: "Some people were slamming car doors outside the trailer. I heard footsteps and then a loud boom and then somebody screaming, asking if we were 'illegals,' 'Mexicans.' These big men were standing in my living room holding guns. One man blocked my doorway. Another guy grabbed a gun on his side. I freaked out. 'Oh, my God!' I yelled."
As more than twenty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded the trailer, said Mancha, agents inside interrogated her. They asked her where her mother was; they wanted to know if her mother was "Mexican" and whether she had "papers" or a green card. They told her they were looking for "illegals."
After about five minutes of interrogation, the agents--who, according to the women's lawyer, Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center, showed no warrants and had neither probable cause nor consent to enter the home--simply left. They left in all likelihood because Mancha and her mother didn't fit the profile of the workers at the nearby Crider poultry plant, who had been targeted by the raid in nearby Stilwell. They were the wrong kind of "Mexicans"; they were US citizens.
Though she had experienced discrimination before the raid--in the fields, in the supermarket and in school--Mancha, who testified before Congress in February, never imagined such an incident would befall her, since she and her mother had migrated from Texas to Reidsville. Best known for harvesting poultry and agricultural products, Reidsville, a farm town about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, is also known for harvesting Klan culture behind the walls of the state's oldest and largest prison. But its most famous former inmate is Jim Crow slayer and dreamer Martin Luther King Jr. His example inspires Mancha's new dream: lawyering "for the poor."
The toll this increasingly oppressive climate has taken on Mancha represents but a small part of its effects on noncitizen immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, and other Latinos. Mancha and the younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white--and black--children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos' subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants. Listening to the effects of Juan Crow on immigrants and citizens like Mancha ("I can't sleep sometimes because of nightmares," she says. "My arms still twitch. I see ICE agents and men in uniform, and it still scares me") reminds me of the trauma I heard among the men, women and children controlled and exploited by state violence in wartime El Salvador. Juan Crow has roots in the US South, but it stirs traumas bred in the hemispheric South.
In fact, the surge in Latino migration (the Southeast is home to the fastest-growing Latino population in the United States) is moving many of the institutions and actors responsible for enforcing Jim Crow to resurrect and reconfigure themselves in line with new demographics. Along with the almost daily arrests, raids and home invasions by federal, state and other authorities, newly resurgent civilian groups like the Ku Klux Klan, in addition to more than 144 new "nativist extremist" groups and 300 anti-immigrant organizations born in the past three years, mostly based in the South, are harassing immigrants as a way to grow their ranks.
Meanwhile, a legal regime of distinctions between the rights of undocumented immigrants and citizens has emerged and is being continually refined and expanded. A 2006 Georgia law denies undocumented immigrants driver's licenses. Federal laws that allowed local and state authorities to pursue blacks under the Fugitive Slave Act appear to be the model for the Bush Administration's Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security (ACCESS) program, which allows states to deputize law enforcement officials to chase, detain, arrest and jail the undocumented. Georgia's lowest-paid workers, the undocumented, now occupy a separate, unequal and clandestine place that has made it increasingly difficult for them to work, rent homes or attend school.
The pre- and post-Reconstruction regional economic system centered on the stately Southern mansions that once graced Atlanta's storied Peachtree Street has given way to a more global finance-driven system centered on the cold, anonymous skyscrapers that loom over Peachtree today. And in a more hopeful sign, some veterans of the civil rights struggle against Jim Crow are joining Latino immigrants in what will likely be one of the major movements of the twenty-first century.
These and other facets of immigrant life in Georgia, the Deep South and the entire country are but a small part of the labyrinthine institutional and cultural arrangements defining the strange career of Juan Crow.
The immigrant condition in Georgia worsened in the wake of the failed immigration reform proposal last year. The national immigration debate had the effect of further legitimizing and emboldening the most extreme elements of the anti-immigrant movement in places like Georgia. Since the advent of what he terms "Georgiafornia," for example, D.A. King, a former marine and contributor to the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE, has leapfrogged into the national limelight to become one of the major advocates for deportation and security-only "immigration reform." Strengthened by the defeat of national reform, King, State Senator Chip Rogers and a growing galaxy of formerly fringe groups succeeded in getting some of the country's most draconian anti-immigrant laws passed. These new racial codes are disguised by the national security-infused bureaucratic language of laws with names like the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (GSICA).
Their efforts were egged on by the Bush Administration's implementation of the ACCESS program last August. ACCESS provided new excuses for state and local officials to pursue the undocumented in states like Georgia. In tandem with the federal government, King and Rogers led the push to pass GSICA, which requires law enforcement officers to investigate the citizenship status of anyone charged with a felony or driving under the influence. GSICA and federal efforts laid the foundation on which the other legal and social structures of Juan Crow grow.
Georgia's estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants must think twice before seeking emergency support at hospitals or clinics because of laws that require them to prove their legal status before receiving many state benefits. "No-match letter" regulations requiring all employers to confirm the Social Security numbers of their employees have been issued by the Social Security Administration and have resulted in firings and growing fear among immigrants. But even without the no-match letters, undocumented immigrants in Georgia have many reasons to fear going to work. If they work at a company with more than 500 employees, for example (and most undocumented immigrants are employed in meatpacking, agricultural, carpet and other industries with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of workers), they must worry about laws that punish employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants and mandate that firms with state contracts check the immigration status of their employees. Similar laws denying or restricting housing, education, transportation and other aspects of immigrant life are also being instituted across Georgia.
For a firsthand look at how the interplay of state and federal policies fuels Juan Crow, one need go no further than the immigrant-heavy area surrounding Buford Highway in DeKalb County, near Atlanta. During the weekend of October 18, 2007, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and other advocacy groups from across the state reported sharp increases in arrests of immigrants in the area. "This weekend alone we received more than 200 phone calls from people telling horrible stories of arrests," said GLAHR executive director Adelina Nicholls of Mexico City. "There are hundreds of Latinos who've been hunted down like animals, taken to jail, and they don't even know why or whether or not they'll be released," said Nicholls more recently.
Nicholls and other advocates are working feverishly in response to the exponential increase in official and extra-official profiling of immigrants. Last year there were forty-four reported armed robberies of DeKalb County-area Latino immigrants in August alone. One especially outrageous incident took place just west of Atlanta, in the rural town of Carrollton, last June. Emelina Ramirez, a Honduran immigrant, called local police to report that her roommates were attacking her, punching and kicking her in the stomach. Ramirez was pregnant. Locals say that when police got to Ramirez's apartment, officers handcuffed her, took her to jail and then ran her fingerprints through a federal database. After discovering that she was undocumented, they contacted federal authorities as stipulated under ACCESS and GSICA. Ramirez was then deported.
Nicholls says she and GLAHR staff exist in a perpetual state of exhaustion after having to expand their DeKalb County work to deal with cases like Ramirez's. Adding to their load is the situation in nearby Cobb County, where the local jail has 500 adults captured on streets, at work and in their homes. All of these people, says Nicholls, are awaiting deportation.
Beneath the growing fear and intensifying racial tensions of Georgia lies the new, more globalized economic system that sustains Juan Crow. At the core of the economy in Dixie are the financial dealings taking place in the shiny towers of Peachtree Street, buildings constructed atop the ashes of plantation houses.
Lining Peachtree today are SunTrust, Bank of America and other titans of global finance with major operations in downtown Atlanta. Along with the financial players of Charlotte, North Carolina, the companies occupying the towers on Peachtree are among the prime movers behind the transformation and restructuring of the Georgia economy--and of its race relations. On Peachtree you can find US banks and financial firms investing in companies doing business in post-NAFTA Latin America, where nonunion labor and miserably low wages drive immigration to Georgia and other states. The investment portfolios of many of these companies have grown fat with high-yield investments in the poultry, meatpacking, rug, tourism and other Georgia industries employing undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. The need to keep down the wages of these undocumented workers is fulfilled with the legal, political and psychological discipline of Juan Crow. Along with the most visible legacy of Jim Crow--Georgia's massive and growing population of black prisoners, housed in Reidsville and other, mostly rural prisons--the Peachtree State's undocumented immigrants find themselves at the bottom of the South's new political and economic order.
By keeping down wages of the undocumented and documented workforce, Juan Crow doesn't just pit undocumented Latino workers against black and white workers. It also makes possible every investor's dream of merging Third World wages with First World amenities. Promotional brochures put out by the state's Department of Economic Development, for example, tout Georgia's "below average" wages and its status as a "right to work" (nonunion) state. Georgia's infrastructure, its proximity to US markets and its incentives--nonunion labor, low wages, government subsidies, cheap land--allow the state to position itself as an attractive investment opportunity for foreign companies. While the fortunes of Ford, GM and other US companies have declined in the South, the fortunes of foreign automakers here are rising. Companies like Korean car manufacturer Kia, which plans to open a $1.2 billion plant by 2009, see in Georgia and other Southern states a new pool of cheap labor. Of the $5.7 billion of total new investment in Georgia in 2006, more than 36 percent was from international companies--companies that were also responsible for nearly half of the 24,660 jobs created by government-supported foreign ventures that year.
Also critical to the economic strategies formulated in the towers on Peachtree Street is another Latin-centered component: free trade with Latin America. "We are the gateway to the Americas," boasted Kenneth Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Stewart was among the more than 1,000 people, including three US Cabinet members and finance ministers, trade representatives, investors, corporate executives and politicians from thirty-three countries in the hemisphere, who attended the sold-out Americas Competitiveness Forum at the Marriott on Peachtree Street last June. As an organizer of the event, the gregarious Stewart, like many of the region's economic leaders, considers hosting the forum a critical part of Atlanta's bid to become the secretariat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas organization. Local elites support building a $10 million, privately financed FTAA headquarters complex, possibly in the area near Peachtree and the Sweet Auburn neighborhood.
Before being rapidly gentrified by the white-collar employees working in the Peachtree towers, Sweet Auburn, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr., was one of the cradles of the African-American freedom struggle. Echoing the connection frequently made here between increased globalization and commerce and improved race relations, Stewart told me that free trade "will benefit citizens of Georgia and the citizens of Mexico and other Latin American countries." But when I asked him about the increased racial tensions, including the murders of some immigrants in Georgia, and about the growing repression of noncitizen Mexican workers, Stewart abruptly ended the interview.
For her part, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin--among the most recent in a long line of African-American Atlanta mayors that includes former Martin Luther King colleague and Wal-Mart consultant Andrew Young (who has an office in a Peachtree high-rise)--also linked local freedom struggles with global free trade. Before the Americas Competitiveness Forum, she and other regional elites distributed splashy brochures promoting the city's FTAA bid. Included in the brochure was a picture of the headstone of King's grave, which bears the inscription Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty I'm Free at last. The brochure promoting "the city too busy to hate" also paints a positive, global Kumbaya picture of the plight of Georgia's migrants: "With its attractive quality of life and rapidly expanding job market, Metro Atlanta draws thousands of newcomers every year and has growing Latin, Asian and African American communities."
"This is the home of Dr. King," said Franklin in her welcome speech at the packed forum. "It is in the spirit of peace, it is in the spirit of collaboration and it is in the spirit of fairness that we attack this issue of [economic] competitiveness," she told her audience in King-like cadences. But had Franklin taken her foreign visitors on the short stroll from their hotel to Sweet Auburn, they would not have found the racial harmony described in the glossy brochures and spirited speeches.
Documented and undocumented Latinos dealing with the economic and political effects of Juan Crow in Georgia (and across the country) find themselves unwitting actors in a centuries-old racial drama, which they must alter if Juan Crow is to be defeated. The major difference today is that Latinos also find themselves having to navigate a racial and political topography that is no longer black and white. Young Latinos, in particular, attend schools that teach them about Jim Crow while giving them a daily dose of Juan Crow.
High school senior Ernesto Chávez (a pseudonym) does not look forward to becoming one of the few undocumented students in Georgia to go to a university like Kennesaw State, which requires them to carry student IDs with special color coding, or to a college that denies them aid and forces them to pay exorbitant, nearly impossible-to-pay out-of-state tuition. He has already learned enough about Jim Crow--and Juan Crow--in high school.
Chávez, who sports a buzz cut and wears baggy clothes, said that when he studied Jim Crow in school, he identified strongly with the heroic generation of African-American youth who rebelled against it. "They couldn't ride in the same trains, they couldn't drink from the same fountains," he said during an interview in a classroom at Miller Grove High School in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia. "I felt mad when I read about that, even though they weren't my people," said the soft-spoken Mexican, who is part of the small but growing minority of Latinos at Miller Grove (African-American students make up about 93 percent of the student body).
Chávez said he came to know the limits of his physical, social and psychic mobility, thanks to the Georgia law that requires people to show proof of citizenship or legal status in order to obtain a driver's license. "It's hard to describe what it feels like to be 'illegal' here in Georgia. It's like you can't move," he said, his voice cracking slightly. "It feels scary because you know that when you go out to a public place, you might never know if you're going to come back. I'm really scared because my mother drives without a license. She's scared too."
Chávez and other Latino students also expressed their shock and dismay at being discriminated against by some of the descendants of those discriminated against by Jim Crow.
"When I first got here, I was confused. I went to a mostly white school in Gwinnett County and started noticing the fifth-grade kids saying things to me, racial stuff, asking me questions like, 'Are you illegal?'" said Chávez as he fidgeted nervously in one of those ubiquitous and visibly uncomfortable school desks. "But when I was in seventh grade, I went to Richards Middle School, where it wasn't the white people saying things, it was black people. They didn't like Mexican kids. They would call us 'Mexican border hoppers,' 'wetbacks' and all these things. Every time they'd see me, they yelled at me, threatened to beat me up after school for no reason at all." Asked how it felt, he said, "It's like, now since they have rights, they can discriminate [against] others."
Chávez's family, along with many immigrant families in Georgia, will be watching closely to see how the state's justice system deals with the still-pending 2005 case of six Mexican farmworkers killed execution-style in their trailers, which were parked near the cotton and peanut farms they toiled on in Tifton. Pretrial motions began last July in the case, in which prosecutors allege that four African-American men bludgeoned five of the immigrants to death with aluminum baseball bats and shot one in the head while robbing them in their trailer home. Though the face of anti-immigrant racism in the Juan Crow South is still overwhelmingly identified as white by the immigrants I interviewed, some immigrants also see a black face on anti-immigrant hate.
Politically, a growing divide has emerged between pro- and anti-immigrant blacks in Georgia. The African-American face of Juan Crow is embodied by State Senator and probable Democratic Atlanta mayoral candidate Kasim Reed (he's also considering a gubernatorial bid). Reed proposed a five-year prison sentence for anyone caught trying to secure employment with a false ID. Local Latino and African-American activists have criticized Reed for what Bruce Dixon of the online Black Agenda Report called his "morally bankrupt attempt to outflank Republicans on the right."
Activists like Janvieve Williams of the US Human Rights Network, based in Atlanta, counter the anti-immigrant tide by elevating the tone of the debate and shifting the terms to human rights. As an Afro-Panamanian immigrant, Williams says she feels discrimination from many whites in Georgia, but she also experiences discrimination from mestizo immigrants. Her perception of anti-immigrant sentiments among African-Americans adds another layer to the complex racial dynamics unleashed by Juan Crow. "I'm caught between African-Americans who don't want to understand immigration and immigrants and Latinos who use words like 'moreno,' 'negritos,' 'los negros' and other terms that are not good," says Williams.
But rather than see her Afro-Latino identity and her Latin American political experience as a barrier between communities, Williams--who co-hosts Radio Diaspora, a weekly Afro-Latino program that helped promote the 50,000-plus immigrants' rights marches in 2006--uses Latin American media and organizing experience to cross linguistic and political borders. "We need to move from civil rights to human rights. We need to start using the language and tools of human rights around the issue of immigration. It's an international issue that needs an international framework," says Williams, whose organization co-sponsored the visit to Atlanta last May by the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. Williams's organization brought together many groups who shared stories of Juan Crow with the special rapporteur, who took his report to the UN General Assembly.
In the same way that the concept of civil rights grew as a response to Jim Crow, the human rights framework advocated by Williams and other immigrants' rights activists in the South and across the country challenges traditional approaches to race and rights. "Some civil rights leaders here don't think human rights affects us in the United States," says Williams. "A lot of the [civil rights] elders of that movement are not linked to the human rights movement, and that also gets in the way of working together."
Not all of Georgia's civil rights elders fit thirtysomething Williams's description. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, the lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., says he did not perceive the threat that some whites and African-American Georgians felt from the massive immigrant marches of 2006; instead he sees in the millions marching in Atlanta and across the country "instruments of God's will to change this country." Reverend Lowery, who now leads the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, has spoken eloquently and vociferously against what he considers "wicked" immigration policies and has attended pro-immigrant rallies. He believes that massive immigration to the United States came about because of the workings within the tall buildings like those in spitting distance of his office in the historic Atlanta Life building on Auburn Avenue. "We've globalized money, we've globalized trade and commerce, but we haven't globalized fairness toward work and labor. The solution to the 'problem' of immigration and other problems is globalization of justice," he said.
Speaking of the relationship between American blacks and Latino immigrants, Lowery said, "There are many differences between our experience and that of immigrant Latinos--but there is a family resemblance between Jim Crow and what is being experienced by immigrants. Both met economic oppression. Both met racial and ethnic hostility.
"But the most important thing to remember," said Lowery, as if casting out the demons of Juan and Jim Crow, "is that, though we may have come over on different ships, we're all in the same damn boat now."
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Educators want TAKS to count progress
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE | Houston Chronicle
May 13, 2008
Texas students should be measured on gains they make throughout the school year, rather than facing punitive measures if they fail to clear the hurdles set by the state's standardized test, educators and community leaders told legislators Monday.
Making progress on the test, they argue, is a more important indicator that students and teachers are trying their hardest. It would also take pressure off students, who can currently be retained or kept from graduating if they don't pass certain parts of the exam, educators told members of the Select Committee on Public School Accountability during a public hearing in Aldine.
About 100 people attended the hearing, one in a series being held by the 15-member panel on how the state's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills testing system should be changed.
"We are mindfully listening and internalizing all the testimony," Brownsville ISD deputy superintendent Beto Gonzales said.
Legislators already opted to replace high school-level TAKS tests with end-of-course exams, a move they hope will provide a more accurate read of what students are learning.
Houston mother Thelma de la Cruz, whose son is a fourth-grader at Harvard Elementary, said TAKS testing has left her family "exhausted, pressured and embattled."
"Students bear the weight of testing on their shoulders all year," said de la Cruz, who said her son is in therapy because of TAKS stress.
Jefferson Davis High School senior Jesus Santoya said state testing puts him in a constant state of worry.
"It is scary to know that if I don't meet some certain standards, it makes me, my teachers, my school and my family look bad," the 18-year-old said.
Aldine Superintendent Wanda Bamberg told the panel that they need to reduce the number of tests given, measure districts against those with similar demographics and better align the state's accountability system with the federal No Child Left Behind law.
She also supports the idea of moving to a statewide "value-added" system — or looking at the growth students make over the school year.
"That's the layer of the onion we need to peel," she said.
May 13, 2008
Texas students should be measured on gains they make throughout the school year, rather than facing punitive measures if they fail to clear the hurdles set by the state's standardized test, educators and community leaders told legislators Monday.
Making progress on the test, they argue, is a more important indicator that students and teachers are trying their hardest. It would also take pressure off students, who can currently be retained or kept from graduating if they don't pass certain parts of the exam, educators told members of the Select Committee on Public School Accountability during a public hearing in Aldine.
About 100 people attended the hearing, one in a series being held by the 15-member panel on how the state's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills testing system should be changed.
"We are mindfully listening and internalizing all the testimony," Brownsville ISD deputy superintendent Beto Gonzales said.
Legislators already opted to replace high school-level TAKS tests with end-of-course exams, a move they hope will provide a more accurate read of what students are learning.
Houston mother Thelma de la Cruz, whose son is a fourth-grader at Harvard Elementary, said TAKS testing has left her family "exhausted, pressured and embattled."
"Students bear the weight of testing on their shoulders all year," said de la Cruz, who said her son is in therapy because of TAKS stress.
Jefferson Davis High School senior Jesus Santoya said state testing puts him in a constant state of worry.
"It is scary to know that if I don't meet some certain standards, it makes me, my teachers, my school and my family look bad," the 18-year-old said.
Aldine Superintendent Wanda Bamberg told the panel that they need to reduce the number of tests given, measure districts against those with similar demographics and better align the state's accountability system with the federal No Child Left Behind law.
She also supports the idea of moving to a statewide "value-added" system — or looking at the growth students make over the school year.
"That's the layer of the onion we need to peel," she said.
Border busts coming and going
A van driver unloads luggage belonging to several passengers being detained by federal agents at the checkpoint just north of the border. The operations occur at random, unannounced times.
At random times in San Diego near the border, vehicles are searched. Most detainees without criminal records or numerous immigration violations are released in a few hours, officials say.
By Richard Marosi, LA Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2008
SAN DIEGO -- U.S. border authorities no longer apprehend illegal immigrants only as they enter the country. Now they're catching them on the way out.
At random times near the Tijuana-San Diego border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up checkpoints, boarding buses destined for Mexico and pulling off people who don't have proper documentation.
The operation appears to be an expansion of a broader federal crackdown targeting illegal immigrants in jails, airports and workplaces across the country.
The checkpoints, which are not announced in advance, are set up on southbound Interstate 5 about 100 yards north of the border. Vehicles in all lanes must stop.
Vincent Bond, an agency spokesman, said departing immigrants are fair targets.
"If our officers come upon people who are here illegally . . . regardless of whether they're leaving the country, we detain them, make a record of the fact they were here illegally and return them to Mexico," Bond said.
Immigrant rights groups and other critics say the crackdown is a sad reflection of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.
"The policies of the Bush administration are designed to make life so difficult for immigrants in the U.S. illegally that they're forced to leave. . . . Now they're arresting people who they are actually driving out of the country. . . . Unbelievable," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based immigration reform group.
But some GOP politicians and anti-illegal immigration organizations praise federal authorities for widening their enforcement efforts. A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) said agents were simply doing their job.
"Whether people are coming or going . . . checkpoints are just another line of defense that targets illegal behavior," Joe Kasper said.
Customs and Border Protection, which typically provides detailed statistics on apprehensions, would not disclose details of the checkpoint operation. Nor would they say how long it has been underway.
The checkpoints have been randomly deployed since the Sept. 11 attacks, with inspectors typically looking for fugitives, stolen vehicles, weapons, drugs and other contraband.
Illegal immigrants became targets for arrest at the checkpoints only a few months ago, according to immigrant rights groups and human rights organizations in Mexico. It is unclear how frequently the checkpoints have been set up.
But Enrique Morones, president of the Border Angels, a San Diego-based group, said he believes that hundreds of immigrants have been arrested since the crackdown began.
Over a half-hour period April 30, agents appeared to be pulling over every bus and van heading for the border. But any vehicle, including cars, that agents deem suspicious may be stopped and searched.
Inspectors detained five young men from one bus traveling from Los Angeles to Puebla, a city southeast of Mexico City. After the inspectors made their apprehensions, only two passengers remained onboard.
"Pobrecitos (poor people)," said Lily Lujan, who watched the immigrants being arrested as she walked to the border crossing. "They were almost home. If they're already leaving the country, what's the problem?"
Federal agents say the checkpoints are a productive way to stop dangerous criminals, drug shipments and money launderers.
The illegal immigrants they apprehend are typically turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol for processing. Unless they have serious criminal records or numerous immigration violations, most are returned to Mexico within a few hours, the agents say.
Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center of Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego, said he was not aware of similar crackdowns in the past. The checkpoints make sense for intercepting contraband, but targeting illegal immigrants voluntarily leaving the country is a "bizarre" way of handling the illegal immigration question, he said.
Other critics call it an enormous waste of resources and say it could be counterproductive and discourage immigrants from going home.
"There are people that want to go back, and even though they haven't done anything wrong, they might be intimidated from leaving," said Morones of the Border Angels. "It makes no sense."
But groups that fight illegal immigration praise federal authorities for showing more willingness to enforce existing immigration laws aggressively. Focusing on the criminality of people entering the country is only part of the job of border agencies, they say.
Rick Oltman, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, said he hoped that the crackdown on departing illegal immigrants would be expanded to other exit points across the country.
He said apprehended immigrants who returned home to Mexico would become "ambassadors of enforcement" and might help deter illegal immigration.
"Each one of these people will then report increased enforcement to family and friends when they do get home, and that will give them second thoughts about sneaking back into the U.S.," he said.
Gov. Barbour signs illegal-worker bill
Immigrants rights advocates cry foul, vow they will continue to fight
Leah Rupp | Clarion Ledger
March 18, 2008
Companies in Mississippi soon will be required to use a federal pilot program called eVerify to determine whether potential workers are legal U.S. residents, under a bill Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law Monday.
But shortly after he signed off on Senate Bill 2988, Barbour cautioned that the language needs some alterations, including adding more avenues for companies to check the residency status of new hires.
Key supporters of the legislation say any changes will have to wait until next year though. Immigrants rights advocates say they'll continue to fight the new law they call a racist attempt to drive Hispanics from the state.
Other critics maintain the bill, along with another one Barbour signed Monday enhancing the penalty for home invasions, could be costly as they will bloat the prisons.
"Any employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien should be held accountable," Barbour said.
But, he continued, "I have serious concerns ... the bill could have unintended negative consequences. I urge the Legislature to make the necessary technical changes to ensure this bill will have the intended effect."
Under the legislation, larger companies would be required to begin using the eVerify system first, with compliance deadlines as early as July.
Penalties for the employer could include the cancellation of state or public contracts.
Companies also could be prohibited from bidding on any such contracts for up to three years.
Those convicted of violating the new law could be sentenced to up to five years in prison or fined up to $10,000. The illegal immigrant also would be deported.
State Sen. Michael Watson, one of the principal authors of the bill, said he doesn't think lawmakers can grant Barbour's wishes for changes in the law this session. "Maybe next year," Watson, R-Pascagoula, said.
Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant - who has made cracking down on illegal immigration one of his key issues - agreed, saying in a statement that he would "work in future sessions to address (Barbour's) recommendations."
Changing the law at this point during the session would require suspending the legislative rules to bring up a new bill - which requires a two-thirds vote - then passing it in both chambers.
Immigrants rights advocates fear that the new law could lead to increased racial profiling and hamper economic development.
"The governor basically whines in the statement about all the problems with the eVerify system," said Bill Chandler, of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. "Just on the face of that, he shouldn't have signed this bill into law. But he is silent on how racist this bill is, criminalizing people who are working."
The Washington-based Pew Research Center estimates there are up to 50,000 undocumented immigrants living in Mississippi. The Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, however, estimates the number to be 200,000. In 1990, Pew estimates there were about 5,000.
Six other immigration-related bills are expected to die in a House committee today.
Another bill signed by Barbour on Monday would increase the penalty from no less than three years in prison to no less than 10 years for breaking into a home where people are present.
Sen. David Blount, primary author of Senate Bill 2622, said the governor's support "sends a strong statement that Mississippians have a right to be safe in their homes."
In 2007, there were 2,563 reported house burglaries in the city, based on Jackson Police Department weekly crime data. In the past, officials at the department have said a "very minute" number of those would be considered home invasions.
In 2006, several home invasions in Jackson made headlines, causing concern among residents in the metro area.
Some worry that bill and others that increase the penalty for crimes, such as the immigration bill, will increase prison populations.
"(The Legislature) sometimes passes these feel-good things without thinking about what it's going to cost," said Ron Welch, a prisoners' rights attorney. "Somebody is going to have to pay - and that'll likely be public services across the board."
Blount said he hoped other bills, such as one that is pending that would grant some nonviolent offenders parole, would cut down on the number of people in prison.
"We need to keep people who are violent and a threat to public safety in prison," Blount, D-Jackson, said.
Going along with that, he said, "we need to give people who are not a threat to the public a chance to straighten out their lives."
Leah Rupp | Clarion Ledger
March 18, 2008
Companies in Mississippi soon will be required to use a federal pilot program called eVerify to determine whether potential workers are legal U.S. residents, under a bill Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law Monday.
But shortly after he signed off on Senate Bill 2988, Barbour cautioned that the language needs some alterations, including adding more avenues for companies to check the residency status of new hires.
Key supporters of the legislation say any changes will have to wait until next year though. Immigrants rights advocates say they'll continue to fight the new law they call a racist attempt to drive Hispanics from the state.
Other critics maintain the bill, along with another one Barbour signed Monday enhancing the penalty for home invasions, could be costly as they will bloat the prisons.
"Any employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien should be held accountable," Barbour said.
But, he continued, "I have serious concerns ... the bill could have unintended negative consequences. I urge the Legislature to make the necessary technical changes to ensure this bill will have the intended effect."
Under the legislation, larger companies would be required to begin using the eVerify system first, with compliance deadlines as early as July.
Penalties for the employer could include the cancellation of state or public contracts.
Companies also could be prohibited from bidding on any such contracts for up to three years.
Those convicted of violating the new law could be sentenced to up to five years in prison or fined up to $10,000. The illegal immigrant also would be deported.
State Sen. Michael Watson, one of the principal authors of the bill, said he doesn't think lawmakers can grant Barbour's wishes for changes in the law this session. "Maybe next year," Watson, R-Pascagoula, said.
Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant - who has made cracking down on illegal immigration one of his key issues - agreed, saying in a statement that he would "work in future sessions to address (Barbour's) recommendations."
Changing the law at this point during the session would require suspending the legislative rules to bring up a new bill - which requires a two-thirds vote - then passing it in both chambers.
Immigrants rights advocates fear that the new law could lead to increased racial profiling and hamper economic development.
"The governor basically whines in the statement about all the problems with the eVerify system," said Bill Chandler, of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. "Just on the face of that, he shouldn't have signed this bill into law. But he is silent on how racist this bill is, criminalizing people who are working."
The Washington-based Pew Research Center estimates there are up to 50,000 undocumented immigrants living in Mississippi. The Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, however, estimates the number to be 200,000. In 1990, Pew estimates there were about 5,000.
Six other immigration-related bills are expected to die in a House committee today.
Another bill signed by Barbour on Monday would increase the penalty from no less than three years in prison to no less than 10 years for breaking into a home where people are present.
Sen. David Blount, primary author of Senate Bill 2622, said the governor's support "sends a strong statement that Mississippians have a right to be safe in their homes."
In 2007, there were 2,563 reported house burglaries in the city, based on Jackson Police Department weekly crime data. In the past, officials at the department have said a "very minute" number of those would be considered home invasions.
In 2006, several home invasions in Jackson made headlines, causing concern among residents in the metro area.
Some worry that bill and others that increase the penalty for crimes, such as the immigration bill, will increase prison populations.
"(The Legislature) sometimes passes these feel-good things without thinking about what it's going to cost," said Ron Welch, a prisoners' rights attorney. "Somebody is going to have to pay - and that'll likely be public services across the board."
Blount said he hoped other bills, such as one that is pending that would grant some nonviolent offenders parole, would cut down on the number of people in prison.
"We need to keep people who are violent and a threat to public safety in prison," Blount, D-Jackson, said.
Going along with that, he said, "we need to give people who are not a threat to the public a chance to straighten out their lives."
> Pew Hispanic Center Releases Statistical Portrait of Hispanic Women in the U.S.
Download the fact sheet from the Pew Hispanic Center's website. -Patricia
Pew Hispanic Center
May 8, 2008
Annual births to Hispanic women in the United States exceeded one million for the first time in 2006, and one-in-four children in the U.S. under the age of five is Hispanic, according to new reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics now make up 15% of the U.S. population, and nearly two-thirds (62%) of their population growth in 2006-2007 came from births rather than immigration -- a reversal of the growth pattern in the 1990s, when immigration was the primary driver of Latino population increases in this country.
In order to illuminate these trends, the Pew Hispanic Center today releases "Hispanic Women in the United States, 2007," a statistical portrait of the demographic, social and economic characteristics of this country's 14.4 million Hispanic women.
Key findings from the report:
* Hispanic women are younger than non-Hispanic women. Their median age is 41, compared with a median age of 47 for non-Hispanic women.
* The fertility rate of Hispanic women is one-third higher than that of non-Hispanic women.
* Just over half (52%) of Hispanic women are immigrants. Their fertility rate is about 30% higher than that of native-born Hispanic women.
* Some 42% of Hispanic women who gave birth in 2005-2006 were unmarried, compared with 34% of non-Hispanic women. The share of out-of-wedlock births to Hispanic women immigrants was 35%; the share for native-born Hispanic women was 50%.
* Hispanic and non-Hispanic women are equally likely (54%) to be married. Hispanic women immigrants (63%) are more likely to be married than native-born Hispanic women (44%)-in part because the latter group is younger.
* Hispanic women are less educated than Non-Hispanic women; 36% have less than a high school education, compared with 10% of non-Hispanic women.
* The labor force participation rate of Hispanic women (59%) is similar to the participation rate for non-Hispanic women (61%). Native-born Hispanic women (64%) have a higher participation rate than Hispanic women immigrants (54%).
* Hispanic women who work full time earn a median weekly salary of $460; the equivalent figure for non-Hispanic women is $615.
* Hispanic women are more likely than non-Hispanic women to work in blue-collar occupations such as building and landscape services, food preparation and services, and manufacturing.
* Some 20% of Hispanic women live in poverty, compared with 11% of non-Hispanic women.
Pew Hispanic Center
May 8, 2008
Annual births to Hispanic women in the United States exceeded one million for the first time in 2006, and one-in-four children in the U.S. under the age of five is Hispanic, according to new reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics now make up 15% of the U.S. population, and nearly two-thirds (62%) of their population growth in 2006-2007 came from births rather than immigration -- a reversal of the growth pattern in the 1990s, when immigration was the primary driver of Latino population increases in this country.
In order to illuminate these trends, the Pew Hispanic Center today releases "Hispanic Women in the United States, 2007," a statistical portrait of the demographic, social and economic characteristics of this country's 14.4 million Hispanic women.
Key findings from the report:
* Hispanic women are younger than non-Hispanic women. Their median age is 41, compared with a median age of 47 for non-Hispanic women.
* The fertility rate of Hispanic women is one-third higher than that of non-Hispanic women.
* Just over half (52%) of Hispanic women are immigrants. Their fertility rate is about 30% higher than that of native-born Hispanic women.
* Some 42% of Hispanic women who gave birth in 2005-2006 were unmarried, compared with 34% of non-Hispanic women. The share of out-of-wedlock births to Hispanic women immigrants was 35%; the share for native-born Hispanic women was 50%.
* Hispanic and non-Hispanic women are equally likely (54%) to be married. Hispanic women immigrants (63%) are more likely to be married than native-born Hispanic women (44%)-in part because the latter group is younger.
* Hispanic women are less educated than Non-Hispanic women; 36% have less than a high school education, compared with 10% of non-Hispanic women.
* The labor force participation rate of Hispanic women (59%) is similar to the participation rate for non-Hispanic women (61%). Native-born Hispanic women (64%) have a higher participation rate than Hispanic women immigrants (54%).
* Hispanic women who work full time earn a median weekly salary of $460; the equivalent figure for non-Hispanic women is $615.
* Hispanic women are more likely than non-Hispanic women to work in blue-collar occupations such as building and landscape services, food preparation and services, and manufacturing.
* Some 20% of Hispanic women live in poverty, compared with 11% of non-Hispanic women.
Are Immigration Authorities Going After School Children Now?
This is terrible. It shows how the hate that fuels ICE has no regard for the laws that protect ALL students enrolled in schools. These actions lead to incarceration-like consequences for families and communities that fear leaving their homes. What a violation of human rights! -Patricia
Editor's Note: Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez.
By Amanda Martinez, New American Media
May 8, 2008
OAKLAND, Calif. - Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.
He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.
Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7: 30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.
Parent liaison Isela Barbosa said she was swamped with phone calls all day. "Parents were so afraid to come to the school, they called family members and neighbors, whoever had papers, to pick up their children."
A community member contacted Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District's public information officer to tell him that a Latino family from South Berkley had been detained at a house near Russell Street, and that neighbors had spotted ICE vehicles near school areas.
By noon, the district had received so many calls from concerned parents that they set up an automated voice message system, assuring parents that that there was no way they would allow ICE officers to pick up students from school campuses. These messages were sent out both in English and in Spanish.
At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school.
OUSD officials said they were hesitant to communicate with parents, so instead sent out e-mails to all school district staff about what was happening and reminding them that the school district's commitment was to educate all students, documented or otherwise. The e-mail also advised staff not to facilitate any immigration enforcement actions.
As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.
Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."
He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said.
"As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect."
Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives.
She confirmed that on the morning of May 6, ICE officers arrested four immigration violators who were from Mexico, and were living at a residence in Berkeley. A fifth person was arrested at a residence in Oakland, she said, noting that all five have been released, pending immigration hearings.
Sara Nuno of the Family and Community Office of the OUSD dismissed ICE's assertion that there was no targeting of any schools. "They are targeting schools and we are watching them do it," she asserted.
Ellen Murry, who had come to the school to pick up her grandnephew, said that she believed these types of government actions hurt all students, not just the undocumented ones. She said that if students stayed away from school out of fear, it could impact the school district's income, the bulk of which comes from student attendance.
Troy Flint, communications officer of OUSD, pointed out that such raids distracted students who were taking the state standardized test. He assured students that the OUSD would do everything it could to allow them to finish taking the tests.
Parents and local groups, including the Alameda Labor Council, sent out more than 900 e-mails letting parents know of what was taking place.
One parent liaison, who helped to make phone calls throughout the day to concerned parents, said he thought the fear of deportation was serious. If parents sought his advice, he said, he would tell them to keep their chidren at home, even though the OUSD has assured them that the students would be protected.
Editor's Note: Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez.
By Amanda Martinez, New American Media
May 8, 2008
OAKLAND, Calif. - Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.
He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.
Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7: 30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.
Parent liaison Isela Barbosa said she was swamped with phone calls all day. "Parents were so afraid to come to the school, they called family members and neighbors, whoever had papers, to pick up their children."
A community member contacted Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District's public information officer to tell him that a Latino family from South Berkley had been detained at a house near Russell Street, and that neighbors had spotted ICE vehicles near school areas.
By noon, the district had received so many calls from concerned parents that they set up an automated voice message system, assuring parents that that there was no way they would allow ICE officers to pick up students from school campuses. These messages were sent out both in English and in Spanish.
At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school.
OUSD officials said they were hesitant to communicate with parents, so instead sent out e-mails to all school district staff about what was happening and reminding them that the school district's commitment was to educate all students, documented or otherwise. The e-mail also advised staff not to facilitate any immigration enforcement actions.
As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.
Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."
He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said.
"As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect."
Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives.
She confirmed that on the morning of May 6, ICE officers arrested four immigration violators who were from Mexico, and were living at a residence in Berkeley. A fifth person was arrested at a residence in Oakland, she said, noting that all five have been released, pending immigration hearings.
Sara Nuno of the Family and Community Office of the OUSD dismissed ICE's assertion that there was no targeting of any schools. "They are targeting schools and we are watching them do it," she asserted.
Ellen Murry, who had come to the school to pick up her grandnephew, said that she believed these types of government actions hurt all students, not just the undocumented ones. She said that if students stayed away from school out of fear, it could impact the school district's income, the bulk of which comes from student attendance.
Troy Flint, communications officer of OUSD, pointed out that such raids distracted students who were taking the state standardized test. He assured students that the OUSD would do everything it could to allow them to finish taking the tests.
Parents and local groups, including the Alameda Labor Council, sent out more than 900 e-mails letting parents know of what was taking place.
One parent liaison, who helped to make phone calls throughout the day to concerned parents, said he thought the fear of deportation was serious. If parents sought his advice, he said, he would tell them to keep their chidren at home, even though the OUSD has assured them that the students would be protected.
ICE raids on homes panic schools, politicians
Jill Tucker,Jaxon Van Derbeken | SF Chronicle
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
(05-06) 19:24 PDT Oakland -- Immigration arrests at homes in Berkeley and
Oakland on Tuesday sent a wave of panic among parents in both cities, as
authorities mistakenly believed immigration agents were raiding schools.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were in both cities Tuesday,
performing routine fugitive operations, spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. Teams
go out virtually every day looking for specific "immigration fugitives," she
said.
Officers arrested four family members at a Berkeley home and a woman at an
Oakland residence. They were not at schools.
Yet, within the next few hours, rumors of raids circulated throughout the
communities.
In Berkeley, school district Superintendent Bill Huyet sent out an automated
phone message to all parents notifying them that a Latino family had been
picked up and assuring them that the district would "not allow any child to be
taken away from the school."
In Oakland, Mayor Ron Dellums and three school board members converged at the
end of the school day on Stonehurst Elementary School along with immigration
rights advocates, saying they believed ICE agents "would return."
"In my view, that is the ugly side of government," Dellums said. "No way
children should ever be treated to that kind of harassment and fear."
He said police officers will be posted at the campus Wednesday to ensure that
federal immigration officials don't come onto school grounds. He added that
federal officials have assured him they will not be at schools.
Initially, Oakland district officials said federal agents were at Stonehurst
and denied entry by school staff. By late afternoon, they rescinded that,
saying that an ICE vehicle was seen nearby. Berkeley officials also said no
agents were at local schools.
Still, state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, got involved.
"There should be an immediate freeze on ICE raids directed at schoolchildren
while legislation aiming to fix immigration is considered," he said in a
statement.
Later, immigration advocates said they believed ICE vans were circling schools
and intimidating the community, noting that ICE officers accompanied a mother
onto an Oakland school campus in December before questioning her in a workplace
investigation.
Kice said Tuesday's rumors took on a life of their own.
In most cases, ICE fugitive operations take place at residences or sometimes at
places of employment, she said. "A school is not a place we would routinely
conduct an enforcement operation for a variety of reasons," Kice said.
The fear across the communities, however, was real.
"People are terrified," said Berkeley Unified spokesman Mark Coplan. "There is
a lot of speculation."
Larry Bensky's fifth-grade daughter came home from Berkeley's LeConte
Elementary School on Tuesday saying she had no homework because it was "ICE
week," which meant "they" were going after the families of the Latino children.
"She doesn't know what ICE is," Bensky said. "She doesn't know what targeted
is. You can imagine it's very disturbing for children that from one day to the
next that a child they sit next to could be kidnapped, arrested and deported."
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
(05-06) 19:24 PDT Oakland -- Immigration arrests at homes in Berkeley and
Oakland on Tuesday sent a wave of panic among parents in both cities, as
authorities mistakenly believed immigration agents were raiding schools.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were in both cities Tuesday,
performing routine fugitive operations, spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. Teams
go out virtually every day looking for specific "immigration fugitives," she
said.
Officers arrested four family members at a Berkeley home and a woman at an
Oakland residence. They were not at schools.
Yet, within the next few hours, rumors of raids circulated throughout the
communities.
In Berkeley, school district Superintendent Bill Huyet sent out an automated
phone message to all parents notifying them that a Latino family had been
picked up and assuring them that the district would "not allow any child to be
taken away from the school."
In Oakland, Mayor Ron Dellums and three school board members converged at the
end of the school day on Stonehurst Elementary School along with immigration
rights advocates, saying they believed ICE agents "would return."
"In my view, that is the ugly side of government," Dellums said. "No way
children should ever be treated to that kind of harassment and fear."
He said police officers will be posted at the campus Wednesday to ensure that
federal immigration officials don't come onto school grounds. He added that
federal officials have assured him they will not be at schools.
Initially, Oakland district officials said federal agents were at Stonehurst
and denied entry by school staff. By late afternoon, they rescinded that,
saying that an ICE vehicle was seen nearby. Berkeley officials also said no
agents were at local schools.
Still, state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, got involved.
"There should be an immediate freeze on ICE raids directed at schoolchildren
while legislation aiming to fix immigration is considered," he said in a
statement.
Later, immigration advocates said they believed ICE vans were circling schools
and intimidating the community, noting that ICE officers accompanied a mother
onto an Oakland school campus in December before questioning her in a workplace
investigation.
Kice said Tuesday's rumors took on a life of their own.
In most cases, ICE fugitive operations take place at residences or sometimes at
places of employment, she said. "A school is not a place we would routinely
conduct an enforcement operation for a variety of reasons," Kice said.
The fear across the communities, however, was real.
"People are terrified," said Berkeley Unified spokesman Mark Coplan. "There is
a lot of speculation."
Larry Bensky's fifth-grade daughter came home from Berkeley's LeConte
Elementary School on Tuesday saying she had no homework because it was "ICE
week," which meant "they" were going after the families of the Latino children.
"She doesn't know what ICE is," Bensky said. "She doesn't know what targeted
is. You can imagine it's very disturbing for children that from one day to the
next that a child they sit next to could be kidnapped, arrested and deported."
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Asian-American Students Struggling Under NCLB, Group Says
Check out the entire study "Left in the Margins" it has some interesting findings. This is something that certain parts of California have dealt with for years, especially non-urban areas where the majority of the diverse Asian populations are refugee immigrants. Far too many Asians suffer from generalizations similar to Mexican/Chicano/Latino students in California. -Patricia
By David J. Hoff | Ed Week
May 8, 2008
Schools are failing to identify struggling Asian-American students under the No Child Left Behind Act and to get them the academic interventions they need, a report says.
“Contrary to stereotypes that cast Asian-Americans as model students of academic achievement, many Asian-American students are struggling, failing, and dropping out of schools that ignore their needs,” says the report, released last week by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Because the 6-year-old federal law fails to adequately track the academic achievement of all Asian ethnic groups, the organization contends, schools don’t need to publish test-score data that would highlight of the struggles of some groups of Asian-American students, particularly those...
Read on
By David J. Hoff | Ed Week
May 8, 2008
Schools are failing to identify struggling Asian-American students under the No Child Left Behind Act and to get them the academic interventions they need, a report says.
“Contrary to stereotypes that cast Asian-Americans as model students of academic achievement, many Asian-American students are struggling, failing, and dropping out of schools that ignore their needs,” says the report, released last week by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Because the 6-year-old federal law fails to adequately track the academic achievement of all Asian ethnic groups, the organization contends, schools don’t need to publish test-score data that would highlight of the struggles of some groups of Asian-American students, particularly those...
Read on
New Study Shows Distinct Ethnic and Political Identity for Mexican Americans
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
May 1, 2008
LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - May 1, 2008) - Mexican Americans identify with their ethnic culture, and ethnic identification remains strong across generations, according to a report released Thursday, May 1, 2008, by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
The report -- based on the study and book titled "Generations of Exclusions: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008) -- concluded that ethnic assimilation among Mexican Americans is slow. The results, which are drawn from a longitudinal and intergenerational research study that updates "The Mexican American People" (1970), measured various markers of assimilation over a nearly 40-year time span.
"These findings support the view that Mexican Americans are part of an ethnic political community with a distinct ethnic and political sensibility," said the study's authors, UCLA sociology professor Edward E. Telles and UCLA associate sociology professor Vilma Ortiz.
For instance, when asked to name their ethnic identity, most respondents replied that they were Mexican or Mexican American. Smaller percentages identified as Chicano, Latino, or Hispanic. About 10 percent did not mention an ethnic group, preferring a term such as "American."
Sociologists also asked respondents about their racial identity and found that 38 percent of the first generation identified as white. White identity was markedly weaker among the children of original respondents and it declined with each successive generation.
The study also measured political party voting shifts among respondents and found that although a substantial majority of respondents did report voting for the Democratic candidate in 1964 and 1996, voting Republican increased in 2000.
By the 1996 presidential election, more original respondents -- 6 percent of the first generation and 17 percent of the third generation -- voted for the Republican candidate.
Although Mexican Americans in the study moved away from their traditional support for the Democratic Party, respondents agreed with Democratic positions on several controversial issues including immigration.
When asked in 2000 whether respondents agreed that Mexicans should be able to immigrate to the United States if they want to, a majority said yes.
Children of original respondents were less supportive than their parents, however, with just over half responding affirmatively. These numbers are, nonetheless, significantly higher than those reported by non-Hispanic whites and blacks.
"This intergenerational study suggests that Mexican American political participation has increased over time, but that a distinct ethnic and political sensibility remains in place," the study's authors noted.
The first study surveyed Mexican Americans living in Los Angeles and San Antonio in 1965 and 1966. From 1998 to 2002, nearly 700 of the original respondents were re-interviewed in addition to approximately 760 of their adult children.
May 1, 2008
LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - May 1, 2008) - Mexican Americans identify with their ethnic culture, and ethnic identification remains strong across generations, according to a report released Thursday, May 1, 2008, by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
The report -- based on the study and book titled "Generations of Exclusions: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008) -- concluded that ethnic assimilation among Mexican Americans is slow. The results, which are drawn from a longitudinal and intergenerational research study that updates "The Mexican American People" (1970), measured various markers of assimilation over a nearly 40-year time span.
"These findings support the view that Mexican Americans are part of an ethnic political community with a distinct ethnic and political sensibility," said the study's authors, UCLA sociology professor Edward E. Telles and UCLA associate sociology professor Vilma Ortiz.
For instance, when asked to name their ethnic identity, most respondents replied that they were Mexican or Mexican American. Smaller percentages identified as Chicano, Latino, or Hispanic. About 10 percent did not mention an ethnic group, preferring a term such as "American."
Sociologists also asked respondents about their racial identity and found that 38 percent of the first generation identified as white. White identity was markedly weaker among the children of original respondents and it declined with each successive generation.
The study also measured political party voting shifts among respondents and found that although a substantial majority of respondents did report voting for the Democratic candidate in 1964 and 1996, voting Republican increased in 2000.
By the 1996 presidential election, more original respondents -- 6 percent of the first generation and 17 percent of the third generation -- voted for the Republican candidate.
Although Mexican Americans in the study moved away from their traditional support for the Democratic Party, respondents agreed with Democratic positions on several controversial issues including immigration.
When asked in 2000 whether respondents agreed that Mexicans should be able to immigrate to the United States if they want to, a majority said yes.
Children of original respondents were less supportive than their parents, however, with just over half responding affirmatively. These numbers are, nonetheless, significantly higher than those reported by non-Hispanic whites and blacks.
"This intergenerational study suggests that Mexican American political participation has increased over time, but that a distinct ethnic and political sensibility remains in place," the study's authors noted.
The first study surveyed Mexican Americans living in Los Angeles and San Antonio in 1965 and 1966. From 1998 to 2002, nearly 700 of the original respondents were re-interviewed in addition to approximately 760 of their adult children.
Influx of Hispanics brings demand for bilingual teachers, health-care workers
S.C. has nation’s largest increase in percentage of Hispanic population
By Anna Simon | Greenville Online
May 1, 2008
South Carolina leads the nation in the percentage increase in the Hispanic population, according to new U.S. Census information for 2007.
The state’s Hispanic population increased 8.7 percent, adding 13,569 residents from 2006.
Hispanics make up 3.83 percent of the state’s population, up from 3.59 percent a year ago and 2.37 percent in 2000.
The increase has led to a demand for new and expanded services ranging from bilingual classroom teachers to emergency room interpreters.
"A bilingual person is golden in any capacity," said Pat Mitchell, executive director of human resources for Greenville County Schools.
The influx in Hispanic students "places that much more demand on the need for teachers qualified to teach these students in a market that’s already tight," Mitchell said.
As a result, the district recruits Spanish teachers from nations including Spain and Costa Rica, Mitchell said.
Under an agreement between the state Department of Education and the Spanish government, 21 teachers from Spain are teaching foreign language courses in 11 South Carolina school districts this year, said Jim Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Education.
Greenville County School’s English for Speakers of Other Languages program also has grown -- tenfold -- from fewer than 500 students 10 years ago to more than 5,000 students today, and is the state’s largest in terms of enrollment, said Eve Diaz, program coordinator. Greenville has the most residents overall among the state’s 46 counties.
In 1998, the school district had fewer than 10 people designated to work only with English language learners. Today there are more than 100 personnel -- teachers and assistants -- who work at least part of a day, and some full time with the program, Diaz said.
The program’s growth is fueled by an expanding international population and also recent federal and state mandates such as No Child Left Behind that broaden the definition of who is served and for how long, Diaz said.
Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center also is actively recruiting bilingual employees.
The hospital is recruiting employees in registration and clinical areas in particular and also is increasing its language services staff to better serve the Upstate’s growing Hispanic communities, said Sandy Dees, a hospital spokeswoman.
"We are reaching out to minority vendors to help expand opportunities to work with GHS, and we are expanding our community outreach programming into the Hispanic community," Dees said. "We are covering a broader range of initiatives to better meet the needs."
While South Carolina has seen the nation’s largest percentage increase in Hispanic residents, the actual number of Hispanic residents -- 168,920 -- is relatively small compared to some other areas, according to the census figures.
The Hispanic populations of California and Texas grew by a larger number of people than South Carolina’s total Hispanic population. California’s Hispanic population grew by 267,779 people in 2007, and the Hispanic population in Texas grew by 307,782.
The increasing Hispanic population impacts personal life as well as professional life for Diaz, who came to Greenville in 1996 from the international climate of Miami, Fla. At that time she could spend an afternoon shopping at Haywood Mall and never hear a word of Spanish -- her own native tongue. Now she can hear Spanish spoken within minutes of entering the mall.
Diaz said Greenville’s growing foreign presence -- Hispanics and also people from other nations employed by companies, such as BMW and Michelin -- adds richness to life for all who live here.
"When we have students who speak another language at home, it can only enrich the overall classroom experience," Diaz said. "The world is shrinking with technology. It is even more important to be exposed to different cultures and people at a younger age. There is going to be a lot more sharing and diversity in the world that they grow up in."
At the same time, she’s aware that not everyone welcomes the growing numbers of Hispanic residents.
"Any time there’s any minority group that is different, there are always going to be incidents, things that occur that are reactionary," Diaz said. "I believe that the presence of foreign international population has helped Greenville and will continue to help Greenville."
By Anna Simon | Greenville Online
May 1, 2008
South Carolina leads the nation in the percentage increase in the Hispanic population, according to new U.S. Census information for 2007.
The state’s Hispanic population increased 8.7 percent, adding 13,569 residents from 2006.
Hispanics make up 3.83 percent of the state’s population, up from 3.59 percent a year ago and 2.37 percent in 2000.
The increase has led to a demand for new and expanded services ranging from bilingual classroom teachers to emergency room interpreters.
"A bilingual person is golden in any capacity," said Pat Mitchell, executive director of human resources for Greenville County Schools.
The influx in Hispanic students "places that much more demand on the need for teachers qualified to teach these students in a market that’s already tight," Mitchell said.
As a result, the district recruits Spanish teachers from nations including Spain and Costa Rica, Mitchell said.
Under an agreement between the state Department of Education and the Spanish government, 21 teachers from Spain are teaching foreign language courses in 11 South Carolina school districts this year, said Jim Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Education.
Greenville County School’s English for Speakers of Other Languages program also has grown -- tenfold -- from fewer than 500 students 10 years ago to more than 5,000 students today, and is the state’s largest in terms of enrollment, said Eve Diaz, program coordinator. Greenville has the most residents overall among the state’s 46 counties.
In 1998, the school district had fewer than 10 people designated to work only with English language learners. Today there are more than 100 personnel -- teachers and assistants -- who work at least part of a day, and some full time with the program, Diaz said.
The program’s growth is fueled by an expanding international population and also recent federal and state mandates such as No Child Left Behind that broaden the definition of who is served and for how long, Diaz said.
Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center also is actively recruiting bilingual employees.
The hospital is recruiting employees in registration and clinical areas in particular and also is increasing its language services staff to better serve the Upstate’s growing Hispanic communities, said Sandy Dees, a hospital spokeswoman.
"We are reaching out to minority vendors to help expand opportunities to work with GHS, and we are expanding our community outreach programming into the Hispanic community," Dees said. "We are covering a broader range of initiatives to better meet the needs."
While South Carolina has seen the nation’s largest percentage increase in Hispanic residents, the actual number of Hispanic residents -- 168,920 -- is relatively small compared to some other areas, according to the census figures.
The Hispanic populations of California and Texas grew by a larger number of people than South Carolina’s total Hispanic population. California’s Hispanic population grew by 267,779 people in 2007, and the Hispanic population in Texas grew by 307,782.
The increasing Hispanic population impacts personal life as well as professional life for Diaz, who came to Greenville in 1996 from the international climate of Miami, Fla. At that time she could spend an afternoon shopping at Haywood Mall and never hear a word of Spanish -- her own native tongue. Now she can hear Spanish spoken within minutes of entering the mall.
Diaz said Greenville’s growing foreign presence -- Hispanics and also people from other nations employed by companies, such as BMW and Michelin -- adds richness to life for all who live here.
"When we have students who speak another language at home, it can only enrich the overall classroom experience," Diaz said. "The world is shrinking with technology. It is even more important to be exposed to different cultures and people at a younger age. There is going to be a lot more sharing and diversity in the world that they grow up in."
At the same time, she’s aware that not everyone welcomes the growing numbers of Hispanic residents.
"Any time there’s any minority group that is different, there are always going to be incidents, things that occur that are reactionary," Diaz said. "I believe that the presence of foreign international population has helped Greenville and will continue to help Greenville."
Californians divided over new taxes for schools, poll finds
Check out the full report Californians and Education". -Patricia
Respondents fault the governor and Legislature for not providing more leadership over education.
Mitchell Landsberg | Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2008
Californians want their public schools protected from state budget cuts and are willing to tax the rich to make that happen. But despite the threat of schools taking a beating in next year's state budget, residents are sharply divided over whether they would support higher taxes for themselves, according to a statewide poll released late Wednesday.
The poll by the Public Policy Institute of California also turned up some interesting divisions among Californians -- by region, by political party, and by race and ethnicity.
Residents of Orange and San Diego counties were the happiest with their public schools, while residents of the San Francisco Bay Area were the grumpiest. Latinos and immigrants were far more likely than others to view public schools as primarily a springboard to college. And, not surprisingly, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to support new taxes to pay for public schools.
The survey also found the public to be generally worried about the state of public schools and deeply dissatisfied with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature for their stewardship.
"I think today's report is very bad news for the governor," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and director of Policy Analysis for California Education. "It's not surprising that Californians would be confused about the tax issue, because this governor is politically weak, and he's weak because he isn't showing bold leadership."
Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, countered that Fuller "would be hard-pressed to find anyone who's showing more leadership on education right now." He said the governor shares voters' concerns about cuts to education, but rejects tax increases to solve the problem.
"And that's why he's talking about budget reform: so we don't put the schools through this roller coaster of inconsistent funding year after year, and we're able to provide some stability," McLear said.
Education ranked as the second most important issue facing the state, well behind the sour economy but slightly ahead of immigration and gasoline prices.
Eighty percent of respondents said the quality of schools was a problem, and just over half said it was a big problem. Nearly 60% said the school system needs major changes.
More than half of those polled said they disapproved of Schwarzenegger's handling of education, and 61% disapproved of the Legislature.
The statewide survey of 2,502 California adults showed that attitudes about education have not changed significantly over the decade that the group has been conducting it.
"If anything, it was the consistency over time that struck me as being significant, especially in this strong economic downturn," said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan think tank.
The poll revealed overwhelming agreement -- by nearly eight in 10 respondents -- that schools in poor neighborhoods have fewer resources than those in wealthier spots. Seven in 10 people said that if more money became available, a larger portion should go to schools in low-income areas. Most people agreed that more money would make schools better, although Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to hold this view. But there was near unanimity that schools could be improved through better use of existing state funds.
The survey revealed some fascinating differences in attitude among the state's ethnic and racial groups.
African Americans expressed the most concern about the quality of education, with 97% saying it was a problem and 72% saying it was a big problem -- far more than any other group. Blacks were the most concerned about the effect of budget cuts, whites the least.
Latinos were the most likely to support higher taxes on themselves to pay for education, whites the least. And when asked the primary goal of public schools, 61% of Latinos said it was to prepare students for college -- nearly triple the percentage of whites and double that of blacks and Asians. Those groups were more likely than Latinos to say the primary goal was to prepare students for the workforce, to teach them "the basics," or "life skills." There was a similar divide between immigrants and people born in the U.S.
"The belief that public education can provide a way to economic and social mobility is very strong among Latinos and immigrants," Baldassare said, "and among the native population and the white population, I think that K-12 schools are seen as providing a variety of different roles for different people."
Fuller said he was concerned that Latinos were less likely to worry about the quality of public schools.
He said he found that "troubling, because we know that on average, Latino students go to the lousiest schools in the state. . . . Latinos either don't understand the mediocre quality of their public schools or they're reticent to criticize public institutions."
The survey was conducted by telephone -- including, for the first time, cellphones -- between April 8 and April 22. For the total sample, the margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Respondents fault the governor and Legislature for not providing more leadership over education.
Mitchell Landsberg | Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2008
Californians want their public schools protected from state budget cuts and are willing to tax the rich to make that happen. But despite the threat of schools taking a beating in next year's state budget, residents are sharply divided over whether they would support higher taxes for themselves, according to a statewide poll released late Wednesday.
The poll by the Public Policy Institute of California also turned up some interesting divisions among Californians -- by region, by political party, and by race and ethnicity.
Residents of Orange and San Diego counties were the happiest with their public schools, while residents of the San Francisco Bay Area were the grumpiest. Latinos and immigrants were far more likely than others to view public schools as primarily a springboard to college. And, not surprisingly, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to support new taxes to pay for public schools.
The survey also found the public to be generally worried about the state of public schools and deeply dissatisfied with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature for their stewardship.
"I think today's report is very bad news for the governor," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and director of Policy Analysis for California Education. "It's not surprising that Californians would be confused about the tax issue, because this governor is politically weak, and he's weak because he isn't showing bold leadership."
Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, countered that Fuller "would be hard-pressed to find anyone who's showing more leadership on education right now." He said the governor shares voters' concerns about cuts to education, but rejects tax increases to solve the problem.
"And that's why he's talking about budget reform: so we don't put the schools through this roller coaster of inconsistent funding year after year, and we're able to provide some stability," McLear said.
Education ranked as the second most important issue facing the state, well behind the sour economy but slightly ahead of immigration and gasoline prices.
Eighty percent of respondents said the quality of schools was a problem, and just over half said it was a big problem. Nearly 60% said the school system needs major changes.
More than half of those polled said they disapproved of Schwarzenegger's handling of education, and 61% disapproved of the Legislature.
The statewide survey of 2,502 California adults showed that attitudes about education have not changed significantly over the decade that the group has been conducting it.
"If anything, it was the consistency over time that struck me as being significant, especially in this strong economic downturn," said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan think tank.
The poll revealed overwhelming agreement -- by nearly eight in 10 respondents -- that schools in poor neighborhoods have fewer resources than those in wealthier spots. Seven in 10 people said that if more money became available, a larger portion should go to schools in low-income areas. Most people agreed that more money would make schools better, although Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to hold this view. But there was near unanimity that schools could be improved through better use of existing state funds.
The survey revealed some fascinating differences in attitude among the state's ethnic and racial groups.
African Americans expressed the most concern about the quality of education, with 97% saying it was a problem and 72% saying it was a big problem -- far more than any other group. Blacks were the most concerned about the effect of budget cuts, whites the least.
Latinos were the most likely to support higher taxes on themselves to pay for education, whites the least. And when asked the primary goal of public schools, 61% of Latinos said it was to prepare students for college -- nearly triple the percentage of whites and double that of blacks and Asians. Those groups were more likely than Latinos to say the primary goal was to prepare students for the workforce, to teach them "the basics," or "life skills." There was a similar divide between immigrants and people born in the U.S.
"The belief that public education can provide a way to economic and social mobility is very strong among Latinos and immigrants," Baldassare said, "and among the native population and the white population, I think that K-12 schools are seen as providing a variety of different roles for different people."
Fuller said he was concerned that Latinos were less likely to worry about the quality of public schools.
He said he found that "troubling, because we know that on average, Latino students go to the lousiest schools in the state. . . . Latinos either don't understand the mediocre quality of their public schools or they're reticent to criticize public institutions."
The survey was conducted by telephone -- including, for the first time, cellphones -- between April 8 and April 22. For the total sample, the margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
JOINT STATEMENT ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF “A NATION AT RISK”
WASHINGTON (April 26, 2008) – As we mark the 25th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” the spotlight is shining everywhere except where it is most needed. We need a clear-eyed accounting of the progress our schools and students have made over the past 25 years, and we need an honest assessment of the unfinished work required to protect the prospects of our young people and our nation into the future.
Instead of purposeful evaluation and planning, one group of commentators is furiously debating whether the Commission got it right when it claimed that the "tide of mediocrity" was getting “higher” back in 1983, as opposed to merely “high.” Meanwhile, another group argues that without fully and finally eliminating all of the outside-of-school challenges in children's lives, better schools won't make much of a difference.
These arguments distract us from attending to what we can and should do right now for our schools and for the students they serve. Yes, too many of our students are growing up under unconscionable conditions. And yes, we must commit ourselves and our nation to ensuring that no American child suffers under the burdens of poverty or racism. But we cannot allow gross inequities outside our schools to excuse gross inequities within our schools because the facts suggest that poor children and children of color can and do learn more when their schools are better.
Our schools now serve children with a more challenging array of needs than ever before. Yet virtually every group of those children—white, black, Latino, Asian, poor, rich—is achieving at higher levels in most subjects at most grade levels today than they were 25 years ago. In some cases, the achievement gaps which have plagued this country throughout our history are beginning to narrow. That’s solid evidence that strong and committed educators, unwilling to buy into the myths about what some kids can’t do, can make big differences for students, even in the face of daunting outside-of-school circumstances.
But while we’re doing better, it’s still not good enough. The rest of the world is outpacing us. Despite our gains, U.S. high school students now rank in the bottom quarter among industrialized nations in mathematics and in the bottom half in science. Our students are fleeing the very disciplines that are the foundation of the knowledge economy.
Even at the college level, where we’ve led the world for so long, our young adults have dropped to ninth place in attainment of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. The gaps in college-going between black and Latino students and their white peers are wider now than they were 30 years ago. And for the first time in our history, American young adults are less likely to earn college degrees than are their parents.
We can’t afford to be distracted by other issues or satisfied with our progress. We can’t afford to do business as usual. We can’t afford to continue to ignore the fact that, in the great majority of cases, our schools continue to stack the deck against the success of low-income and students of color.
As Americans we know that education is the best route out of poverty and the surest weapon against racism. But instead of organizing our schools according to our values and the needs of our society, we undermine our most vulnerable students, giving them less of everything that makes for academic success—strong teachers, challenging courses, up-to-date textbooks, functional science labs and college scholarships.
Yes, our students have to work harder. As parents we need to work harder, too, instilling in our children the importance of persistence and effort. But we must also face the reality that schooling in America is out of sync with our long-held national values as well as with the urgent demands of the 21st century.
We strongly reaffirm the Commission’s original call for higher standards, and the efforts since that time to codify those standards and put them to work in American classrooms.
Those standards, however, must be for all students. As a country, we need all students to achieve at the highest levels. After all, poor and “minority” students together now comprise about half of our young people.
The Commission got it right when it said that “the twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or practice.”
But in 25 years, our country hasn’t gotten this part right. Not even close.
Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights
The Education Trust
League of United Latin American Citizens
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund
National Council of La Raza
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
Instead of purposeful evaluation and planning, one group of commentators is furiously debating whether the Commission got it right when it claimed that the "tide of mediocrity" was getting “higher” back in 1983, as opposed to merely “high.” Meanwhile, another group argues that without fully and finally eliminating all of the outside-of-school challenges in children's lives, better schools won't make much of a difference.
These arguments distract us from attending to what we can and should do right now for our schools and for the students they serve. Yes, too many of our students are growing up under unconscionable conditions. And yes, we must commit ourselves and our nation to ensuring that no American child suffers under the burdens of poverty or racism. But we cannot allow gross inequities outside our schools to excuse gross inequities within our schools because the facts suggest that poor children and children of color can and do learn more when their schools are better.
Our schools now serve children with a more challenging array of needs than ever before. Yet virtually every group of those children—white, black, Latino, Asian, poor, rich—is achieving at higher levels in most subjects at most grade levels today than they were 25 years ago. In some cases, the achievement gaps which have plagued this country throughout our history are beginning to narrow. That’s solid evidence that strong and committed educators, unwilling to buy into the myths about what some kids can’t do, can make big differences for students, even in the face of daunting outside-of-school circumstances.
But while we’re doing better, it’s still not good enough. The rest of the world is outpacing us. Despite our gains, U.S. high school students now rank in the bottom quarter among industrialized nations in mathematics and in the bottom half in science. Our students are fleeing the very disciplines that are the foundation of the knowledge economy.
Even at the college level, where we’ve led the world for so long, our young adults have dropped to ninth place in attainment of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. The gaps in college-going between black and Latino students and their white peers are wider now than they were 30 years ago. And for the first time in our history, American young adults are less likely to earn college degrees than are their parents.
We can’t afford to be distracted by other issues or satisfied with our progress. We can’t afford to do business as usual. We can’t afford to continue to ignore the fact that, in the great majority of cases, our schools continue to stack the deck against the success of low-income and students of color.
As Americans we know that education is the best route out of poverty and the surest weapon against racism. But instead of organizing our schools according to our values and the needs of our society, we undermine our most vulnerable students, giving them less of everything that makes for academic success—strong teachers, challenging courses, up-to-date textbooks, functional science labs and college scholarships.
Yes, our students have to work harder. As parents we need to work harder, too, instilling in our children the importance of persistence and effort. But we must also face the reality that schooling in America is out of sync with our long-held national values as well as with the urgent demands of the 21st century.
We strongly reaffirm the Commission’s original call for higher standards, and the efforts since that time to codify those standards and put them to work in American classrooms.
Those standards, however, must be for all students. As a country, we need all students to achieve at the highest levels. After all, poor and “minority” students together now comprise about half of our young people.
The Commission got it right when it said that “the twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or practice.”
But in 25 years, our country hasn’t gotten this part right. Not even close.
Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights
The Education Trust
League of United Latin American Citizens
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund
National Council of La Raza
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
Craddick: State should have a near $15 billion surplus going into next session
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Craddick: State should have a near $15 billion surplus going into next session
By Steve Taylor
House Speaker Tom Craddick speaks at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Pharr on Wednesday evening. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)
PHARR, May 1 - Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick says the state should have about a $15 billion surplus going into the next legislative session.
“We went from a $10 billion deficit in four and a half years, to a $14.5 billion surplus,” Craddick said, of the period between 2003 and 2007. “We are going to go into session in January next year. We project we are going to have close to a $15 billion surplus.”
Craddick made the forecast during a speech at the Hidalgo County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, held at the Nomad Shrine Club in Pharr. The speech focused on the achievements he believes Republicans have made during the six years they have controlled the House and the major tasks facing lawmakers in 2009. Craddick acknowledged that while rising oil prices have helped build the state's surplus, GOP policies have played a big part too.
“Your taxes have gone down. We’ve got a surplus and it just didn’t happen,” Craddick said. “Now, I didn’t create the price of oil and I know that’s helped a little but let me tell you right now, so did cutting spending, so did consolidating agencies, so did saying the word ‘no.’”
Having a surplus will allow lawmakers to bring more transparency to the budget process, Craddick said. For example, he said, the sales tax raised on sporting goods needs to go where it was intended, which is Texas Parks and Wildlife. An even bigger funding switch should happen with the gas tax, some of which currently pays for the Department of Public Safety, Craddick said.
“In the next session of the legislature, we need to quit funding DPS with highway money. We need to fund highways with highway money. It’s $1.6 billion. We need to move it (DPS) out of the highway fund and fund it in general revenue. We’ve got the money, now’s the time to do it. Let’s spend it on programs like that,” Craddick said.
Craddick said Republicans could be proud of the way they balanced the budget without raising taxes, brought in sweeping tort reform, and pumped more money into public and higher education.
Craddick became speaker in 2003, with the state facing a $10 billion budget deficit. The deficit was eliminated through cutting spending and consolidating agencies, Craddick said, pointing out that 13 health and human service agencies were consolidated into two. “Saved $1.2 billion a year in administration,” he said, of the HHS reforms.
Craddick said the new leadership came in with a different mindset. “We are going to treat this thing like a business, for the first time in years. We did. We ended up with a balanced budget at the end of the session. We funded schools. We didn’t have any new taxes,” he said.
Craddick said just changing the names of some of the state programs helped the state qualify for federal matching grants. In some cases, he said, the state could have been receiving $3 for every $1 it put towards a certain program. “Those federal dollars are dollars you paid into the federal budget. We weren’t getting our federal dollars back. Texas wasn’t participating,” he said.
Craddick said Republicans should also be proud about passing the largest property tax cut, not just in Texas but in the United States, $14.5 million. Property taxes went from $1.50 per $100 valuation to $1 dollar. “Many of you did not see all of that. That’s because your appraisals went up,” Craddick said. “We have got to get control of the appraisals in this state.” The audience clapped enthusiastically. “I know there is a lot of controversy over that but it’s a reality and we’ve got to do it,” Craddick added.
Craddick did not mention the new business margins tax that was brought in to replace funding lost through property tax cuts.
Another significant achievement for Texas, Craddick said, was the way it has led the nation in job creation and business start-ups these past five years. He said 200,000 new jobs were created in Texas last year. “We have created an Enterprise Fund that you all have used in this part of the state to bring in new business,” Craddick said, perhaps not realizing that the Rio Grande Valley has yet to benefit from the fund administered by the Governor's office.
Another huge improvement has been tort reform, Craddick said. He pointed out that in November 2002, just before he was elected speaker, he visited the Rio Grande Valley and learned how bad the situation was for doctors.
“It was interesting to me. Every chamber said, ‘Our major problem is medical malpractice. We have lost 100 doctors in the last 12 months. We can’t get doctors to practice here. They can’t find medical malpractice insurance. We’re Lawsuit Heaven USA, in South Texas,’” Craddick recalled.
“We went in and passed the greatest tort reform legislation that has ever been passed in the United States. You read any article in the country, they talk about Texas first. Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, California, have all sent delegations to our office and said, ‘how did you do it?’”
Craddick said tort reform was passed by legislators meeting for 14 days straight, from 9.30 or 10 a.m. until four or five o’clock the next morning. The leadership fought off 750 amendments to the tort reform bill, he said. “What we did is we settle down and say, these are the things that have got to be done.”
Craddick said he remembers Gov. Rick Perry coming to his office in the early hours of the morning one day during the 2003 session and saying, “you’ve got to give,” on tort reform. Craddick said he handed Perry a note with one word on it. The note said: ‘No.’
“I said, ‘I’m not giving. People might think I’m hard-headed. They’re wrong. I just think we’ve got a task to do, we’re going to do it, and we’re going to stay here,” Craddick said, claiming Perry still carries the note.
Tort reform was achieved because Republicans “joined together in unity to do what was right and needed to be done in this state,” Craddick said. “That’s the reason we passed the budget with no new taxes. We can do it and we have done it in the past.”
As a result of tort reform, Craddick said, frivolous lawsuits have been reduced and 9,000 new doctors have come to Texas. “Look at other states, they are losing medical people. They are losing doctors and we are gaining them. Our hospitals have gone up in accreditation. Our programs have gone up more,” he said.
Craddick pointed to discipline, working long hours, and not reading the newspapers as key factors in the GOP’s legislative success. “None of these things were greeted with a lot of cheers. Change sometimes causes problems and change makes people upset. If you are in power and you lost power and changes are made, it even makes it more so. We did what we thought was right,” he said.
On the subject of public education, Craddick said everybody wanted better schools and more money for those schools. However, few people had any idea how to pay for it.
Craddick said Republicans were willing to put more money into schools and give teachers pay raises because they deserved it. Craddick said they did both, but with that had to come greater accountability.
“We want to know where they (school districts) are spending their dollars and what kind of return we are getting. What are the test scores? Today, I think if you talk to the school districts, they are very happy that came about,” he said.
“It took us a couple of special sessions, but we did that. We are now putting more dollars into teachers’ salaries and where it is needed, in the classroom, and not into administration.”
Craddick placed great emphasis on higher education and workforce training during his speech. He said Republicans had put more money into higher education in the last six years than was done throughout the 1990s. “I really believe, not only K through 12 but higher education, the junior college system and the four-year college system, is the backbone of this economy,” Craddick said.
Craddick said every region of the state wants to attract more businesses but in order to do that the state needs to do a better job of training its workforce. If not, he said, it is “all in vain.”
Craddick said he might not be popular for saying it but he does not subscribe to the view that every student needs to go to college or university. “Have you hired a plumber lately or an electrician lately?” Craddick asked, suggesting that greater emphasis needs to be placed on technical and service sector training.
“These people that get out of high school and then… to have to take millions of dollars that we are paying every year for remedial training to teach to get to a level where they can take a college course, it is ridiculous. We need to get rid of that,” Craddick said.
“There’s another side to that and the technical side and the service sector, we need to focus on these people, rather than have them drop out of school.” The audience applauded.
Reinforcing his belief that higher education and workforce training were key to the state’s future, Craddick told a story from a few years ago about the first time he met Michael Dell, founder of Round Rock-based Dell Computers. Dell explained that he was about to announce a new computer assembly plant and it was going to be in Georgia, rather than Texas.
“Unless you fix higher education and get more graduates and better graduates out of our four-year institutions the next time we add jobs we are moving out of Texas too,” Craddick said Dell told him.
Dell’s remarks said everything one needed to know about Texas’ approach to higher education in the 1990s, Craddick said. “We did not fund higher education. We have funded higher education. We spent $2 billion on tuition revenue bonds to build new facilities, to expand our medical schools, our law schools, our campuses here,” Craddick said.
Craddick concluded by saying that in the last six years the House had focused on education, tax cuts and jobs. “If you focus on those three it works and it has worked,” he said.
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Elizondo sworn in as Hidalgo County Democratic Party chair
Reyes: Witness who claimed terrorists were crossing the Mexican border needs investigating
Escobar: I have not ruled out running again
Gallegos, Dewhurst differ on voter ID
Was Guerrero a victim of Mission Superfund site, ask local residents
Vitiello: Valley will benefit from failure of Arizona's 'virtual fence'
Craddick looking forward to Valley visit
JAG members to attend Elizondo’s swearing-in ceremony this evening
Foster to testify at Monday's border wall hearing in Brownsville
MIT professor to speak at Valley Interfaith’s Economic Conference tomorrow
© Copyright of the Rio Grande Guardian, www.riograndeguardian.com, Melinda Barrera, Publisher. All rights reserved.
© 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Craddick: State should have a near $15 billion surplus going into next session
By Steve Taylor
House Speaker Tom Craddick speaks at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Pharr on Wednesday evening. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)
PHARR, May 1 - Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick says the state should have about a $15 billion surplus going into the next legislative session.
“We went from a $10 billion deficit in four and a half years, to a $14.5 billion surplus,” Craddick said, of the period between 2003 and 2007. “We are going to go into session in January next year. We project we are going to have close to a $15 billion surplus.”
Craddick made the forecast during a speech at the Hidalgo County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, held at the Nomad Shrine Club in Pharr. The speech focused on the achievements he believes Republicans have made during the six years they have controlled the House and the major tasks facing lawmakers in 2009. Craddick acknowledged that while rising oil prices have helped build the state's surplus, GOP policies have played a big part too.
“Your taxes have gone down. We’ve got a surplus and it just didn’t happen,” Craddick said. “Now, I didn’t create the price of oil and I know that’s helped a little but let me tell you right now, so did cutting spending, so did consolidating agencies, so did saying the word ‘no.’”
Having a surplus will allow lawmakers to bring more transparency to the budget process, Craddick said. For example, he said, the sales tax raised on sporting goods needs to go where it was intended, which is Texas Parks and Wildlife. An even bigger funding switch should happen with the gas tax, some of which currently pays for the Department of Public Safety, Craddick said.
“In the next session of the legislature, we need to quit funding DPS with highway money. We need to fund highways with highway money. It’s $1.6 billion. We need to move it (DPS) out of the highway fund and fund it in general revenue. We’ve got the money, now’s the time to do it. Let’s spend it on programs like that,” Craddick said.
Craddick said Republicans could be proud of the way they balanced the budget without raising taxes, brought in sweeping tort reform, and pumped more money into public and higher education.
Craddick became speaker in 2003, with the state facing a $10 billion budget deficit. The deficit was eliminated through cutting spending and consolidating agencies, Craddick said, pointing out that 13 health and human service agencies were consolidated into two. “Saved $1.2 billion a year in administration,” he said, of the HHS reforms.
Craddick said the new leadership came in with a different mindset. “We are going to treat this thing like a business, for the first time in years. We did. We ended up with a balanced budget at the end of the session. We funded schools. We didn’t have any new taxes,” he said.
Craddick said just changing the names of some of the state programs helped the state qualify for federal matching grants. In some cases, he said, the state could have been receiving $3 for every $1 it put towards a certain program. “Those federal dollars are dollars you paid into the federal budget. We weren’t getting our federal dollars back. Texas wasn’t participating,” he said.
Craddick said Republicans should also be proud about passing the largest property tax cut, not just in Texas but in the United States, $14.5 million. Property taxes went from $1.50 per $100 valuation to $1 dollar. “Many of you did not see all of that. That’s because your appraisals went up,” Craddick said. “We have got to get control of the appraisals in this state.” The audience clapped enthusiastically. “I know there is a lot of controversy over that but it’s a reality and we’ve got to do it,” Craddick added.
Craddick did not mention the new business margins tax that was brought in to replace funding lost through property tax cuts.
Another significant achievement for Texas, Craddick said, was the way it has led the nation in job creation and business start-ups these past five years. He said 200,000 new jobs were created in Texas last year. “We have created an Enterprise Fund that you all have used in this part of the state to bring in new business,” Craddick said, perhaps not realizing that the Rio Grande Valley has yet to benefit from the fund administered by the Governor's office.
Another huge improvement has been tort reform, Craddick said. He pointed out that in November 2002, just before he was elected speaker, he visited the Rio Grande Valley and learned how bad the situation was for doctors.
“It was interesting to me. Every chamber said, ‘Our major problem is medical malpractice. We have lost 100 doctors in the last 12 months. We can’t get doctors to practice here. They can’t find medical malpractice insurance. We’re Lawsuit Heaven USA, in South Texas,’” Craddick recalled.
“We went in and passed the greatest tort reform legislation that has ever been passed in the United States. You read any article in the country, they talk about Texas first. Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, California, have all sent delegations to our office and said, ‘how did you do it?’”
Craddick said tort reform was passed by legislators meeting for 14 days straight, from 9.30 or 10 a.m. until four or five o’clock the next morning. The leadership fought off 750 amendments to the tort reform bill, he said. “What we did is we settle down and say, these are the things that have got to be done.”
Craddick said he remembers Gov. Rick Perry coming to his office in the early hours of the morning one day during the 2003 session and saying, “you’ve got to give,” on tort reform. Craddick said he handed Perry a note with one word on it. The note said: ‘No.’
“I said, ‘I’m not giving. People might think I’m hard-headed. They’re wrong. I just think we’ve got a task to do, we’re going to do it, and we’re going to stay here,” Craddick said, claiming Perry still carries the note.
Tort reform was achieved because Republicans “joined together in unity to do what was right and needed to be done in this state,” Craddick said. “That’s the reason we passed the budget with no new taxes. We can do it and we have done it in the past.”
As a result of tort reform, Craddick said, frivolous lawsuits have been reduced and 9,000 new doctors have come to Texas. “Look at other states, they are losing medical people. They are losing doctors and we are gaining them. Our hospitals have gone up in accreditation. Our programs have gone up more,” he said.
Craddick pointed to discipline, working long hours, and not reading the newspapers as key factors in the GOP’s legislative success. “None of these things were greeted with a lot of cheers. Change sometimes causes problems and change makes people upset. If you are in power and you lost power and changes are made, it even makes it more so. We did what we thought was right,” he said.
On the subject of public education, Craddick said everybody wanted better schools and more money for those schools. However, few people had any idea how to pay for it.
Craddick said Republicans were willing to put more money into schools and give teachers pay raises because they deserved it. Craddick said they did both, but with that had to come greater accountability.
“We want to know where they (school districts) are spending their dollars and what kind of return we are getting. What are the test scores? Today, I think if you talk to the school districts, they are very happy that came about,” he said.
“It took us a couple of special sessions, but we did that. We are now putting more dollars into teachers’ salaries and where it is needed, in the classroom, and not into administration.”
Craddick placed great emphasis on higher education and workforce training during his speech. He said Republicans had put more money into higher education in the last six years than was done throughout the 1990s. “I really believe, not only K through 12 but higher education, the junior college system and the four-year college system, is the backbone of this economy,” Craddick said.
Craddick said every region of the state wants to attract more businesses but in order to do that the state needs to do a better job of training its workforce. If not, he said, it is “all in vain.”
Craddick said he might not be popular for saying it but he does not subscribe to the view that every student needs to go to college or university. “Have you hired a plumber lately or an electrician lately?” Craddick asked, suggesting that greater emphasis needs to be placed on technical and service sector training.
“These people that get out of high school and then… to have to take millions of dollars that we are paying every year for remedial training to teach to get to a level where they can take a college course, it is ridiculous. We need to get rid of that,” Craddick said.
“There’s another side to that and the technical side and the service sector, we need to focus on these people, rather than have them drop out of school.” The audience applauded.
Reinforcing his belief that higher education and workforce training were key to the state’s future, Craddick told a story from a few years ago about the first time he met Michael Dell, founder of Round Rock-based Dell Computers. Dell explained that he was about to announce a new computer assembly plant and it was going to be in Georgia, rather than Texas.
“Unless you fix higher education and get more graduates and better graduates out of our four-year institutions the next time we add jobs we are moving out of Texas too,” Craddick said Dell told him.
Dell’s remarks said everything one needed to know about Texas’ approach to higher education in the 1990s, Craddick said. “We did not fund higher education. We have funded higher education. We spent $2 billion on tuition revenue bonds to build new facilities, to expand our medical schools, our law schools, our campuses here,” Craddick said.
Craddick concluded by saying that in the last six years the House had focused on education, tax cuts and jobs. “If you focus on those three it works and it has worked,” he said.
Write Steve Taylor
E-mail this article Printable version
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Obama signs on as co-sponsor of Cornyn's Valley veterans' hospital bill
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CDF-RGV welcomes new campaign to insure every Texas child
Flores: Craddick has been great for the Valley
Elizondo sworn in as Hidalgo County Democratic Party chair
Reyes: Witness who claimed terrorists were crossing the Mexican border needs investigating
Escobar: I have not ruled out running again
Gallegos, Dewhurst differ on voter ID
Was Guerrero a victim of Mission Superfund site, ask local residents
Vitiello: Valley will benefit from failure of Arizona's 'virtual fence'
Craddick looking forward to Valley visit
JAG members to attend Elizondo’s swearing-in ceremony this evening
Foster to testify at Monday's border wall hearing in Brownsville
MIT professor to speak at Valley Interfaith’s Economic Conference tomorrow
© Copyright of the Rio Grande Guardian, www.riograndeguardian.com, Melinda Barrera, Publisher. All rights reserved.
© 2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Principal Sees Injustice, and Picks a Fight With It
Were more principals like this one.... -Dra. Valenzuela
ON EDUCATION
Principal Sees Injustice, and Picks a Fight With It
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: March 12, 2008
PHOENIX — One morning last August, Yvonne Watterson, the principal of GateWay Early College High School here, sat in her office, grimly scrolling through the database of its 240 students.
At the behest of a new state law she detested, she looked for which ones listed a Social Security number and which did not. Without a number, it was virtually certain that a child was in America illegally.
Ms. Watterson wound up with 38 names, many of them of boys and girls she had personally recruited to the school. Under the statute popularly known as Proposition 300, illegal immigrants could not receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in Arizona. Nor could school administrators like Ms. Watterson use state money to pay it.
GateWay’s students, while still in high school, are able to take courses at a community college in the same building, with in-state tuition paid by the high school. Ms. Watterson knew her students could not afford to pay the out-of-state rate, generally $280 a credit. And without the college classes, there would be less reason to stay in school.
So she made the list and sent letters home and began to call in the affected students one by one to tell them that their tuition was no longer subsidized. A girl named Karla crumpled to her knees in the principal’s office, and said, “But I’m a good person.” A few weeks later, Ms. Watterson heard, Karla was riding a bus back to Mexico.
Yvonne Watterson vowed to do something so she would not lose any more of her students. She made the vow because of what happened every July 12 back in Antrim, Northern Ireland, her hometown.
On that night, the local Protestants celebrated their forebears’ victory over a Catholic army three centuries earlier in the Battle of the Boyne. Even in the Arizona desert, Ms. Watterson remembered the sound of Loyalist anthems and the smell of burning tires and the sight of the pope being burned in effigy. Though she was a Protestant, even as a child she had always cringed imagining how July 12 felt to her Roman Catholic playmates up the block.
“I thought, ‘Here we go again, segregating kids, putting kids on a list,’ ” Ms. Watterson, 44, said recently in her office at GateWay. “It’s that hatred. It’s that separation. Not having to look someone in the eye. It’s a horrible, cowardly — I don’t know what to call it. I wouldn’t have believed I was in America.”
In her career as an educator, Ms. Watterson had been nothing if not decisive. When she became principal at GateWay in 2003, she threw out a progressive curriculum and replaced it with a traditional variety. She required all 10 teachers on the staff to reapply for their jobs and hired back just one. After visiting early-college high schools in New York City and Stockton, Calif., and seeing how well they served immigrant teenagers, she brought the model to GateWay.
So she went immediately into advocacy mode, giving an interview to The Arizona Republic, the daily newspaper in Phoenix. In the subsequent article, she was quoted describing the plight of her undocumented students and talking about her own experience as an immigrant after she came to America in the mid-1980s.
She mentioned Jose Razo, heading into his senior year, on track to accumulate more than 50 college credits in courses ranging from macroeconomics to video-game design. At home, he had a cologne box filled with certificates for the honor roll, perfect attendance, good citizenship. But he was not a citizen, and because of Proposition 300, he was already thinking about going to Mexico, a country he had left at age 2.
Ms. Watterson reaped the whirlwind of the blogosphere, as readers responded to The Republic’s article.
From Gilbert19: “These children are dishonest law-breakers; why do we want them going to our schools?”
From gbishop01: “You have totally destroyed your integrity.”
From AWhite: “All I have to say to these criminals is ‘DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT’!!!!!”
The attacks attested to the vox populi. Proposition 300 had been approved with 71 percent of the vote. It won alongside three other ballot measures denying various rights to illegal immigrants and declaring English the official state language.
“In my heart of hearts,” Ms. Watterson said, “I thought, ‘Honestly, people can’t vote for something that would hurt kids who are taking college classes.’ I thought they just didn’t understand. Honest to God, that’s what I thought. But the overwhelming reply was, ‘That’s exactly what we intended.’ ”
Still, the response was not unanimous. A lawyer who doubled as a television host, José A. Cárdenas, called Ms. Watterson and arranged for Jose Razo to appear on his show.
About a week later, GateWay received an anonymous donation of $25,000 to help undocumented students pay their tuition. Mr. Cárdenas recommended that Ms. Watterson approach the Stardust Foundation in suburban Phoenix, and it gave $50,000.
Ultimately, Ms. Watterson received $83,000 from various donors. In January, she was named one of seven winners of a Phoenix-area award in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After having her students write autobiographical thank-you notes to donors, she had the letters collected and published as a bilingual book, “Documented Dreams.”
Still, this ending is not quite happy. The donations came in too late for the affected students to take their college classes in fall 2007.
About $27,000 of it went toward their tuition for the spring semester of 2008, and the rest will cover next fall’s needs. Beyond that, there is only uncertainty.
“I don’t wake up every day to steal purses,” said Noemi Ariza, a 17-year-old student at GateWay. “I wake up to try my hardest to succeed. And for people to despise me, to tell me I have no right to be here, to look at me like a murderer — it’s so dehumanizing. All I’m trying to do is make something of myself.”
Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. His e-mail is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.
ON EDUCATION
Principal Sees Injustice, and Picks a Fight With It
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: March 12, 2008
PHOENIX — One morning last August, Yvonne Watterson, the principal of GateWay Early College High School here, sat in her office, grimly scrolling through the database of its 240 students.
At the behest of a new state law she detested, she looked for which ones listed a Social Security number and which did not. Without a number, it was virtually certain that a child was in America illegally.
Ms. Watterson wound up with 38 names, many of them of boys and girls she had personally recruited to the school. Under the statute popularly known as Proposition 300, illegal immigrants could not receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in Arizona. Nor could school administrators like Ms. Watterson use state money to pay it.
GateWay’s students, while still in high school, are able to take courses at a community college in the same building, with in-state tuition paid by the high school. Ms. Watterson knew her students could not afford to pay the out-of-state rate, generally $280 a credit. And without the college classes, there would be less reason to stay in school.
So she made the list and sent letters home and began to call in the affected students one by one to tell them that their tuition was no longer subsidized. A girl named Karla crumpled to her knees in the principal’s office, and said, “But I’m a good person.” A few weeks later, Ms. Watterson heard, Karla was riding a bus back to Mexico.
Yvonne Watterson vowed to do something so she would not lose any more of her students. She made the vow because of what happened every July 12 back in Antrim, Northern Ireland, her hometown.
On that night, the local Protestants celebrated their forebears’ victory over a Catholic army three centuries earlier in the Battle of the Boyne. Even in the Arizona desert, Ms. Watterson remembered the sound of Loyalist anthems and the smell of burning tires and the sight of the pope being burned in effigy. Though she was a Protestant, even as a child she had always cringed imagining how July 12 felt to her Roman Catholic playmates up the block.
“I thought, ‘Here we go again, segregating kids, putting kids on a list,’ ” Ms. Watterson, 44, said recently in her office at GateWay. “It’s that hatred. It’s that separation. Not having to look someone in the eye. It’s a horrible, cowardly — I don’t know what to call it. I wouldn’t have believed I was in America.”
In her career as an educator, Ms. Watterson had been nothing if not decisive. When she became principal at GateWay in 2003, she threw out a progressive curriculum and replaced it with a traditional variety. She required all 10 teachers on the staff to reapply for their jobs and hired back just one. After visiting early-college high schools in New York City and Stockton, Calif., and seeing how well they served immigrant teenagers, she brought the model to GateWay.
So she went immediately into advocacy mode, giving an interview to The Arizona Republic, the daily newspaper in Phoenix. In the subsequent article, she was quoted describing the plight of her undocumented students and talking about her own experience as an immigrant after she came to America in the mid-1980s.
She mentioned Jose Razo, heading into his senior year, on track to accumulate more than 50 college credits in courses ranging from macroeconomics to video-game design. At home, he had a cologne box filled with certificates for the honor roll, perfect attendance, good citizenship. But he was not a citizen, and because of Proposition 300, he was already thinking about going to Mexico, a country he had left at age 2.
Ms. Watterson reaped the whirlwind of the blogosphere, as readers responded to The Republic’s article.
From Gilbert19: “These children are dishonest law-breakers; why do we want them going to our schools?”
From gbishop01: “You have totally destroyed your integrity.”
From AWhite: “All I have to say to these criminals is ‘DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT’!!!!!”
The attacks attested to the vox populi. Proposition 300 had been approved with 71 percent of the vote. It won alongside three other ballot measures denying various rights to illegal immigrants and declaring English the official state language.
“In my heart of hearts,” Ms. Watterson said, “I thought, ‘Honestly, people can’t vote for something that would hurt kids who are taking college classes.’ I thought they just didn’t understand. Honest to God, that’s what I thought. But the overwhelming reply was, ‘That’s exactly what we intended.’ ”
Still, the response was not unanimous. A lawyer who doubled as a television host, José A. Cárdenas, called Ms. Watterson and arranged for Jose Razo to appear on his show.
About a week later, GateWay received an anonymous donation of $25,000 to help undocumented students pay their tuition. Mr. Cárdenas recommended that Ms. Watterson approach the Stardust Foundation in suburban Phoenix, and it gave $50,000.
Ultimately, Ms. Watterson received $83,000 from various donors. In January, she was named one of seven winners of a Phoenix-area award in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After having her students write autobiographical thank-you notes to donors, she had the letters collected and published as a bilingual book, “Documented Dreams.”
Still, this ending is not quite happy. The donations came in too late for the affected students to take their college classes in fall 2007.
About $27,000 of it went toward their tuition for the spring semester of 2008, and the rest will cover next fall’s needs. Beyond that, there is only uncertainty.
“I don’t wake up every day to steal purses,” said Noemi Ariza, a 17-year-old student at GateWay. “I wake up to try my hardest to succeed. And for people to despise me, to tell me I have no right to be here, to look at me like a murderer — it’s so dehumanizing. All I’m trying to do is make something of myself.”
Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. His e-mail is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.
Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report
Reading First, according to this report, does increase the amount of time spent on reading but does not improve reading comprehension. Click here for full report [pdf].
Prominent Educators Urge Greatly Expanded Federal Role in Improving Schools
To read the press release, go to: http://www.forumforeducation.org/upload_files/files/pressrelease.pdf
.
A recording of the April 23rd press conference at the National Press Club is available here.
Portions of the event are available as video on John Merrow's site.
To read the Foreword, click here.
The full report, Democracy At Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education is available here.
-Angela
April 23, 2008 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Prominent Educators Urge Greatly Expanded Federal Role in Improving Schools
A panel of well-known education experts today called on the federal government to take a much bigger role in overhauling elementary and secondary education, partly by establishing large new training programs for teachers and principals and by pumping much more money into education research.
In a report timed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the issuance of the landmark “A Nation at Risk” study, the panel of educators, who call themselves the Forum for Education and Democracy, argues that the nation’s schools are farther behind now than they were when the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued that widely publicized 1983 document calling for sweeping education reform.
“While other countries have made strategic investments and transformed their schools to produce results, we have demanded results without investing in or transforming schooling,” Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University and co-author of the report, said in a news release.
The report urges the federal government to adopt a sweeping plan for training educators, to include new scholarships for prospective teachers, the establishment of the equivalent of a West Point for principals and other school leaders, and the creation of new professional-development schools that would work with universities to ensure that both prospective and veteran teachers learn new skills.
“For an annual investment of $4-billion, or less than what we are currently spending per week in Iraq, the nation could underwrite the high-quality preparation of 40,000 teachers annually (enough to fill all the vacancies that are filled by unprepared teachers each year), seed 100 top-quality urban teacher-education programs, ensure mentors for every new teacher hired each year, provide incentives to bring expert teachers into high-need schools, and dramatically improve professional-learning opportunities for teachers and principals,” the report says.
The report calls for the share of the federal research budget devoted to education research to rise from 0.2 percent to 1 percent, with much of the additional money to be spent ensuring that educators know of promising new practices.
Among the leading members of the forum are John Goodlad, president of the Institute for Education Inquiry; Sharon Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; Ted Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools; and Angela Valenzuela, the University of Texas at Austin’s associate vice president for university-school partnerships. —Peter Schmidt
Posted on Wednesday April 23, 2008
.
A recording of the April 23rd press conference at the National Press Club is available here.
Portions of the event are available as video on John Merrow's site.
To read the Foreword, click here.
The full report, Democracy At Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education is available here.
-Angela
April 23, 2008 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Prominent Educators Urge Greatly Expanded Federal Role in Improving Schools
A panel of well-known education experts today called on the federal government to take a much bigger role in overhauling elementary and secondary education, partly by establishing large new training programs for teachers and principals and by pumping much more money into education research.
In a report timed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the issuance of the landmark “A Nation at Risk” study, the panel of educators, who call themselves the Forum for Education and Democracy, argues that the nation’s schools are farther behind now than they were when the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued that widely publicized 1983 document calling for sweeping education reform.
“While other countries have made strategic investments and transformed their schools to produce results, we have demanded results without investing in or transforming schooling,” Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University and co-author of the report, said in a news release.
The report urges the federal government to adopt a sweeping plan for training educators, to include new scholarships for prospective teachers, the establishment of the equivalent of a West Point for principals and other school leaders, and the creation of new professional-development schools that would work with universities to ensure that both prospective and veteran teachers learn new skills.
“For an annual investment of $4-billion, or less than what we are currently spending per week in Iraq, the nation could underwrite the high-quality preparation of 40,000 teachers annually (enough to fill all the vacancies that are filled by unprepared teachers each year), seed 100 top-quality urban teacher-education programs, ensure mentors for every new teacher hired each year, provide incentives to bring expert teachers into high-need schools, and dramatically improve professional-learning opportunities for teachers and principals,” the report says.
The report calls for the share of the federal research budget devoted to education research to rise from 0.2 percent to 1 percent, with much of the additional money to be spent ensuring that educators know of promising new practices.
Among the leading members of the forum are John Goodlad, president of the Institute for Education Inquiry; Sharon Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; Ted Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools; and Angela Valenzuela, the University of Texas at Austin’s associate vice president for university-school partnerships. —Peter Schmidt
Posted on Wednesday April 23, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Multiple choices for bypassing TAKS
Some seniors move to exam-free states to graduate
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE | Houston Chronicle
May 3, 2008
Atascocita High School honors student Ashley Coxen wasn't about to let the state's high-stakes exam or severe test anxiety keep her from earning a diploma this June or from cashing in a promised college scholarship.
With her heart set on becoming a crime scene investigator, the 17-year-old figured a way around the science portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which she's narrowly failed several times. A tearful Coxen flew last week to Denver, where she'll live with relatives until she earns her diploma from Colorado, a state that doesn't require students to pass an exit exam.
"I don't think a test should determine whether you graduate or not," Coxen said.
Texas is among about 20 states with high-stakes graduation exams. While researchers focus their efforts on identifying students who drop out because of these exams, no one collects statistics on the hundreds of other students who quietly exit Texas public schools to receive diplomas elsewhere. With just months or weeks left in their senior years, struggling students enroll in private schools or out-of-state campuses to skirt the TAKS. Others seek general equivalency diplomas or opt to be home-schooled down the final stretch.
As of March, 40,500 Texas high school seniors still needed to pass at least one portion of the four-part TAKS. Some of the students may have already dropped out, returned to their home country or moved out of state for issues unrelated to the TAKS, officials said. The majority, however, won't sport caps and gowns in June unless they passed the exam on their fifth attempt last week.
For some of these families, desperation is setting in.
"About mid-May last year, we got probably half a dozen or a dozen phone calls from public school seniors who were not able to graduate," said Tim Lambert, president of the Texas Home School Coalition."But that's not home schooling. You don't go to school, withdraw the last month and get a diploma."
Though the coalition and the state don't condone it, technically speaking, a parent could do just that. But it's up to each college or university to determine whether the home-school-issued diploma is sufficient to maintain any admission or scholarship the student earned while attending public school, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.
Otherwise, the state recognizes parents' rights to choose home schooling, private schools or out-of-state transfers, she said.
For the most part, Trevor Thorn, director of undergraduate admissions at Sam Houston State University, said officials usually don't question students who change schools late in their senior year.
"It may be personal," Thorn said. "It's really none of my business."
A few charter and private school campuses in Houston have earned reputations as diploma mills, he said. Students who transfer to those campuses subject themselves to extra scrutiny, he said, declining to name those schools.
More than 16,800 children left public school to be home-schooled in 2005-06 and 8,400 more left for private school, but the TEA couldn't pinpoint how many were high school seniors at the time, officials said.
Nija Higgins, who founded a private school in Dallas called T. Davis Independent School, saw her enrollment skyrocket last year when she started marketing her campus to high school seniors who were unable to pass the TAKS.
"We opened up Pandora's box," said Higgins, a former public school teacher. Though many private schools require students to enroll for a semester or two before they can earn a diploma, students can graduate from T. Davis in a matter of weeks.
About 100 students enrolled at T. Davis in January — the majority of whom are seniors, Higgins said. They all have to earn their class credits and complete a leadership class before they receive a diploma, Higgins said. Tuition starts at about $680, she said.
"I have a few that enrolled the last six weeks when they got their test scores," she said. "It just brings tears to your eyes when you hear all these parents."
Many are smart teens who will lose college scholarships if they don't graduate. Their parents are panicked, Higgins said.
State policymakers "don't realize that maybe they're just not good test takers. A lot of them just have anxieties," she said.
TEA officials aren't sure whether switching to end-of-course exams, which will be phased in for Texas high schoolers in 2011-12, could mean fewer students will face these types of tough decisions so late in their senior years.
Under that system, students will have to earn a combined score of 70 percent on their freshman, sophomore and junior level in each of the four main content areas. Each end-of-course exam also will count as 15 percent of a student's class grade.
Joan Herman, who directs a testing research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said relying on a single assessment creates unintended consequences.
"That's the nature of blanket policies," Herman said.
If Coxen's parents weren't as aggressive, the teen could have become a dropout statistic, she said.
Coxen transferred from Colorado to Texas late in her sophomore year, which may be part of the reason she was tripped up by Texas' science test. She's also struggled with test anxiety throughout her academic career, said her mother, Shawna Coxen. Despite studying hard and working with a tutor, the teen failed by one question on the April retest.
"She's not a slacker. She didn't blow it off," Shawna Coxen said. "The poor kid's done everything she's supposed to do."
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE | Houston Chronicle
May 3, 2008
Atascocita High School honors student Ashley Coxen wasn't about to let the state's high-stakes exam or severe test anxiety keep her from earning a diploma this June or from cashing in a promised college scholarship.
With her heart set on becoming a crime scene investigator, the 17-year-old figured a way around the science portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which she's narrowly failed several times. A tearful Coxen flew last week to Denver, where she'll live with relatives until she earns her diploma from Colorado, a state that doesn't require students to pass an exit exam.
"I don't think a test should determine whether you graduate or not," Coxen said.
Texas is among about 20 states with high-stakes graduation exams. While researchers focus their efforts on identifying students who drop out because of these exams, no one collects statistics on the hundreds of other students who quietly exit Texas public schools to receive diplomas elsewhere. With just months or weeks left in their senior years, struggling students enroll in private schools or out-of-state campuses to skirt the TAKS. Others seek general equivalency diplomas or opt to be home-schooled down the final stretch.
As of March, 40,500 Texas high school seniors still needed to pass at least one portion of the four-part TAKS. Some of the students may have already dropped out, returned to their home country or moved out of state for issues unrelated to the TAKS, officials said. The majority, however, won't sport caps and gowns in June unless they passed the exam on their fifth attempt last week.
For some of these families, desperation is setting in.
"About mid-May last year, we got probably half a dozen or a dozen phone calls from public school seniors who were not able to graduate," said Tim Lambert, president of the Texas Home School Coalition."But that's not home schooling. You don't go to school, withdraw the last month and get a diploma."
Though the coalition and the state don't condone it, technically speaking, a parent could do just that. But it's up to each college or university to determine whether the home-school-issued diploma is sufficient to maintain any admission or scholarship the student earned while attending public school, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.
Otherwise, the state recognizes parents' rights to choose home schooling, private schools or out-of-state transfers, she said.
For the most part, Trevor Thorn, director of undergraduate admissions at Sam Houston State University, said officials usually don't question students who change schools late in their senior year.
"It may be personal," Thorn said. "It's really none of my business."
A few charter and private school campuses in Houston have earned reputations as diploma mills, he said. Students who transfer to those campuses subject themselves to extra scrutiny, he said, declining to name those schools.
More than 16,800 children left public school to be home-schooled in 2005-06 and 8,400 more left for private school, but the TEA couldn't pinpoint how many were high school seniors at the time, officials said.
Nija Higgins, who founded a private school in Dallas called T. Davis Independent School, saw her enrollment skyrocket last year when she started marketing her campus to high school seniors who were unable to pass the TAKS.
"We opened up Pandora's box," said Higgins, a former public school teacher. Though many private schools require students to enroll for a semester or two before they can earn a diploma, students can graduate from T. Davis in a matter of weeks.
About 100 students enrolled at T. Davis in January — the majority of whom are seniors, Higgins said. They all have to earn their class credits and complete a leadership class before they receive a diploma, Higgins said. Tuition starts at about $680, she said.
"I have a few that enrolled the last six weeks when they got their test scores," she said. "It just brings tears to your eyes when you hear all these parents."
Many are smart teens who will lose college scholarships if they don't graduate. Their parents are panicked, Higgins said.
State policymakers "don't realize that maybe they're just not good test takers. A lot of them just have anxieties," she said.
TEA officials aren't sure whether switching to end-of-course exams, which will be phased in for Texas high schoolers in 2011-12, could mean fewer students will face these types of tough decisions so late in their senior years.
Under that system, students will have to earn a combined score of 70 percent on their freshman, sophomore and junior level in each of the four main content areas. Each end-of-course exam also will count as 15 percent of a student's class grade.
Joan Herman, who directs a testing research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said relying on a single assessment creates unintended consequences.
"That's the nature of blanket policies," Herman said.
If Coxen's parents weren't as aggressive, the teen could have become a dropout statistic, she said.
Coxen transferred from Colorado to Texas late in her sophomore year, which may be part of the reason she was tripped up by Texas' science test. She's also struggled with test anxiety throughout her academic career, said her mother, Shawna Coxen. Despite studying hard and working with a tutor, the teen failed by one question on the April retest.
"She's not a slacker. She didn't blow it off," Shawna Coxen said. "The poor kid's done everything she's supposed to do."
Thursday, May 01, 2008
5 Reasons to Participate in the Immigrant Rights Marches on May 1st
We truly can't afford not to... -Patricia
By Roberto Lovato, Of America | Alternet
May 1, 2008
As the Mayday marches approach, I hear the pattering of well-meaning, but worried hearts. Some have told me that they are worried that Mayday may become low-turnout day. Though normal and to be expected, especially in a climate so toxic with state and corporate media-sponsored hopelessness, such fears need to be recognized and dealt with, for such personal, internal negotiations in times of global crisis are the stuff that the best political dreams are made of.
So, as we ponder whether to move our bodies to march in an age when politics and, especially, "progressive" politics, have given way to the important, but largely disembodied politics of the web, here are a few things to consider:
1. Marching Matters - we might want to remember what ACTUP, Latin American and other activists taught and told us: silence=death. As the Pentagon propaganda scandal makes chillingly clear, the domestic war, the war within the borders is primarily psychological and symbolic. Elites know this and so should we. Add to the equation the physical war targeting migrants and you get a situation that demands that we demonstrate self-respect and courage in the face of such serious repression. Rather than simply absorb the messages of hopelessness and discouragement coming out of our TVs and computer screens (and even from some of our friends and families), let's move our bodies against the state and the elite interests controlling it. One of the best antidotes to the fear and isolation propagated by the media, government and other interests is to march with others. Marching helps us realize that, in a pathologically ill country, migrants and their supporters are, indeed, "aliens"; Marching reminds us that, yes, we are not alone. Regardless of how many of us march, it's critically important that those living in isolation and fear, especially our children and young people, need to see some of us raising our fists and heads before injustice. Next time someone tells you "marching doesn't matter", just ask them what marching might mean to those undocumented parents who've never participated in marches or anything political and who's small children watched them come out of the political closet of undocumented status for the first time in their lives.
2. The Government has Spent Billions to Attack Migrants and Destroy the Immigrant Rights Movement - in case you didn't realize it, in times of war and declining empire, immigrants and those who defend them become enemies of the state, useful enemies that help militarize life within the borders of the "nation". Just look at what happened after 9-11, especially after the marches of 2006: raids and home invasions by the thousands, massive deployments of thousands of heavily-armed ICE agents and national guard troops, billions spent on defensive walls, electronic surveillance and military equipment,..the list goes on and on. The exponential amounts of money, imprisonment rates and the state violence aimed at migrants should make abundantly clear what we're witnessing: a domestic war on immigrants. Local, state and federal governments have spent billions to destroy us, yet still we march.
3. The mainstream media is fatally ignorant of -and antagonistic towards- immigrants and immigration issues - you might remember that this is the same media that repeated mantra-like that the marchas of 2006 "came out of nowhere"; the same media that then proceeded to report on the marches without context, reporting as if Mojadopotli, the God of the Undocumented, magically moved DJ's as he/she rained millions of marchers down on hundreds of U.S. towns and cities. Rather than worry that your local and national media are already reporting on the marches as a failure because "far fewer" people are "expected" to show up, you might stop for a moment to consider that the media is simply doing its political job-and then march anyway. And there are much better, even funner ways to spend your Mayday than taking in gobs and gobs of messages from the most sophisticated and private sector-driven spin and propaganda system ever devised.
4. Movements have their ebbs and flows-and we're ebbing right now - if your political commitment depends on the fix of massive marches for you to feel good or inspired, you might consider checking into a political detox facility immediately. Such conjunctural logic fits perfectly into the "look, their marches have diminished" "reporting" that we even hear from the Spanish language and broken-Spanish-inflected reporting of some Latino surnamed reporters. Not to march means we further enable the diverse and cowardly interests aligned against migrants: Minutemen, the Bush Administration, the media, Democrats and Republicans and others. The moment we forget that the true measure of movements that inspire social and political change is what happens in the heart and mind is the moment we allow the whispers and hollers of our adversaries to crystallize inside of us. This dark, defensive moment will pass only if at least some of us continue to carry the candle of hope.
5. Immigrants Still Lead the Way - more than anything, Mayday should serve to remind us of the power of immigrants to alter history. It's because of immigrant workers that children (at least most working class children) no longer languish in factories; it's because of immigrant workers that there's an 8 hour workday; it's in no small part because of immigrants and other free, partially free and wholly unfree workers that any "freedom" exists in the cold heart of the most powerful and most rapidly declining empire ever.
So, in the face of the unholy alliance of interests aligned against us from above, let us march if only to connect to the tradition of freedom brought from below.
A marchar!
Roberto Lovato, a frequent Nation contributor, is a New York-based writer with New America Media.
By Roberto Lovato, Of America | Alternet
May 1, 2008
As the Mayday marches approach, I hear the pattering of well-meaning, but worried hearts. Some have told me that they are worried that Mayday may become low-turnout day. Though normal and to be expected, especially in a climate so toxic with state and corporate media-sponsored hopelessness, such fears need to be recognized and dealt with, for such personal, internal negotiations in times of global crisis are the stuff that the best political dreams are made of.
So, as we ponder whether to move our bodies to march in an age when politics and, especially, "progressive" politics, have given way to the important, but largely disembodied politics of the web, here are a few things to consider:
1. Marching Matters - we might want to remember what ACTUP, Latin American and other activists taught and told us: silence=death. As the Pentagon propaganda scandal makes chillingly clear, the domestic war, the war within the borders is primarily psychological and symbolic. Elites know this and so should we. Add to the equation the physical war targeting migrants and you get a situation that demands that we demonstrate self-respect and courage in the face of such serious repression. Rather than simply absorb the messages of hopelessness and discouragement coming out of our TVs and computer screens (and even from some of our friends and families), let's move our bodies against the state and the elite interests controlling it. One of the best antidotes to the fear and isolation propagated by the media, government and other interests is to march with others. Marching helps us realize that, in a pathologically ill country, migrants and their supporters are, indeed, "aliens"; Marching reminds us that, yes, we are not alone. Regardless of how many of us march, it's critically important that those living in isolation and fear, especially our children and young people, need to see some of us raising our fists and heads before injustice. Next time someone tells you "marching doesn't matter", just ask them what marching might mean to those undocumented parents who've never participated in marches or anything political and who's small children watched them come out of the political closet of undocumented status for the first time in their lives.
2. The Government has Spent Billions to Attack Migrants and Destroy the Immigrant Rights Movement - in case you didn't realize it, in times of war and declining empire, immigrants and those who defend them become enemies of the state, useful enemies that help militarize life within the borders of the "nation". Just look at what happened after 9-11, especially after the marches of 2006: raids and home invasions by the thousands, massive deployments of thousands of heavily-armed ICE agents and national guard troops, billions spent on defensive walls, electronic surveillance and military equipment,..the list goes on and on. The exponential amounts of money, imprisonment rates and the state violence aimed at migrants should make abundantly clear what we're witnessing: a domestic war on immigrants. Local, state and federal governments have spent billions to destroy us, yet still we march.
3. The mainstream media is fatally ignorant of -and antagonistic towards- immigrants and immigration issues - you might remember that this is the same media that repeated mantra-like that the marchas of 2006 "came out of nowhere"; the same media that then proceeded to report on the marches without context, reporting as if Mojadopotli, the God of the Undocumented, magically moved DJ's as he/she rained millions of marchers down on hundreds of U.S. towns and cities. Rather than worry that your local and national media are already reporting on the marches as a failure because "far fewer" people are "expected" to show up, you might stop for a moment to consider that the media is simply doing its political job-and then march anyway. And there are much better, even funner ways to spend your Mayday than taking in gobs and gobs of messages from the most sophisticated and private sector-driven spin and propaganda system ever devised.
4. Movements have their ebbs and flows-and we're ebbing right now - if your political commitment depends on the fix of massive marches for you to feel good or inspired, you might consider checking into a political detox facility immediately. Such conjunctural logic fits perfectly into the "look, their marches have diminished" "reporting" that we even hear from the Spanish language and broken-Spanish-inflected reporting of some Latino surnamed reporters. Not to march means we further enable the diverse and cowardly interests aligned against migrants: Minutemen, the Bush Administration, the media, Democrats and Republicans and others. The moment we forget that the true measure of movements that inspire social and political change is what happens in the heart and mind is the moment we allow the whispers and hollers of our adversaries to crystallize inside of us. This dark, defensive moment will pass only if at least some of us continue to carry the candle of hope.
5. Immigrants Still Lead the Way - more than anything, Mayday should serve to remind us of the power of immigrants to alter history. It's because of immigrant workers that children (at least most working class children) no longer languish in factories; it's because of immigrant workers that there's an 8 hour workday; it's in no small part because of immigrants and other free, partially free and wholly unfree workers that any "freedom" exists in the cold heart of the most powerful and most rapidly declining empire ever.
So, in the face of the unholy alliance of interests aligned against us from above, let us march if only to connect to the tradition of freedom brought from below.
A marchar!
Roberto Lovato, a frequent Nation contributor, is a New York-based writer with New America Media.
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