tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23046863857867750572024-03-13T19:20:20.436-01:00The Latino BodyAn Interactive Blog to Accompany the BookUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-35373976597033010702011-06-22T23:32:00.001-01:002012-03-13T02:41:39.287-01:00Pulitzer-prize winning journalist comes out as illegal immigrant<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TJH1IKqF8PA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Pulitzer-prize winning journalist comes out as undocumented immigrant<br />By Liz Goodwin<br /><br />Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas reveals in The New York Times Magazine that he's lived in the United States for nearly 20 years as an illegal immigrant.<br /><br />Vargas writes that his Filipino mother sent him to live with his grandparents--who were legally living in the Bay Area--when he was only 12 years old. He was placed on a plane with a man who he was told was his uncle--in actuality, a "coyote," ie., a person who helps marshal illegal immigrants across the U.S. border--and has never seen his mother since.<br /><br />When he was 16, Vargas writes, he applied for a driver's license and discovered that his green card was fake. He spent the next 15 years hiding his secret from friends, classmates, and employers, hoping that some form of immigration reform would pass in the meantime and allow him to live openly in the country.<br /><br />"This deceit never got easier," he writes. "The more I did it, the more I felt like an impostor, the more guilt I carried — and the more I worried that I would get caught. But I kept doing it. I needed to live and survive on my own, and I decided this was the way."<br /><br />Now, Vargas is starting a campaign called Define American, where he's spotlighting immigrants' stories.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-32522879336421416112011-03-25T15:03:00.000-01:002011-03-25T15:04:21.570-01:00Latinos in the House<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8ls2KS6z4M/TYy8vi1qrJI/AAAAAAAABME/OHgdQg7GAos/s1600/Snapz%2BPro%2BXScreenSnapz006.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 245px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8ls2KS6z4M/TYy8vi1qrJI/AAAAAAAABME/OHgdQg7GAos/s400/Snapz%2BPro%2BXScreenSnapz006.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588048762651716754" /></a>Hispanic population exceeds 50 million, firmly nation's No. 2 group<br /><br />The growing Hispanic population in the United States has reached a new milestone, topping 50 million, or 16.3% of the nation, officially solidifying its position as the country's second-largest group, U.S. Census Bureau officials said Thursday.<br />"Overall, we've learned that our nation's population has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the past 10 years," said Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the bureau's racial statistics branch.<br /><br />Several trends emerged from the 2010 census, according to Robert M. Groves, director of the Census Bureau, and Marc J. Perry, chief of the population distribution branch.<br /><br /><br />South sees largest growth this decade<br /><br />The country is growing at a smaller rate. Growth is concentrated in metropolitan areas and in the American West and South. The fastest-growing communities are suburbs such as Lincoln, California, outside Sacramento. And standard-bearer cities such as Boston, Baltimore and Milwaukee are no longer in the top 20 for population, replaced by upstarts such as El Paso, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, the officials said.<br /><br /><br />The most significant trend, however, appeared to be the nation's new count of 50.5 million Latinos, whose massive expansion accounted for more than half of the nation's overall growth of 27.3 million people, to a new overall U.S. population of 308.7 million, officials said. The Hispanic population grew 43% since 2000, officials said.<br /><br />In stark contrast, all other populations together grew by only about 5%, officials said. The nation as a whole expanded by 9.7%.<br />Bureau officials declined Thursday to say how much illegal immigration has spurred growth among Latinos and other minorities, saying the sources of the growth are still being studied.<br /><br />"Those are actually very excellent questions," said Roberto Ramirez, chief of the bureau's ethnicity and ancestry branch. "We are actually in the middle of the process of investigating that."<br /><br />D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center in Washington, said the birth rate, rather than immigration, is the primary driving factor in the Latino boom. Hispanics now account for nearly one-quarter of children under the age of 18, Cohn said. "Hispanics are a younger population, and there are just more women of a child-bearing age," she said.<br /><br />Although immigration remains a major contributor to Hispanic population growth, the recent recession and high employment rates may have prompted a tapering off in the rate of foreign-born nationals seeking U.S. residence, analysts said. Intensified border patrols may have reduced illegal immigration, but those measures "remain at the margins," said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution. He added that America's overall undocumented immigrant population -- estimated at between 10 million and 11 million people -- may have even declined in recent years, though accurate numbers are difficult to acquire.<br /><br />While Latinos are evidence of a growing voting bloc, they may not necessarily spur immigration reform in Congress, which has been paralyzed politically for years on whether to reform immigration laws or roll out additional crackdowns such as a beefed-up border patrol, said one immigrant rights advocate in Arizona.<br /><br />"We hope these census numbers signal a new era of racial politics in our states, rooted not only in strong economies but also equalities for all people," said Jennifer Allen, executive director of the human rights organization Border Action Network.<br />Home to the busiest border crossing for illegal immigration, Arizona has been the nation's hotbed for several laws targeting illegal immigrants, including the much-publicized Senate Bill 1070 that is now being challenged on constitutional grounds in federal court because one of its controversial provisions allows racial profiling by police, critics charge.<br /><br />Several states have tried to pass measures similar to Arizona's, but not with much success, Allen asserted.<br />The census figures may dampen further immigration crackdowns in Arizona because the new population count "demonstrates the growing importance of Latino voters throughout the state," Allen said.<br /><br />As the census figures are used for congressional redistricting in states, Latino voters should not be "written off and treated as disposable constituents," she added. The census data show that while the white population increased by 2.2 million to 196.8 million, its share of the total population dropped to 64% from 69%, officials said.<br /><br />The Asian population also grew 43%, increasing from 10.2 million in 2000 to 14.7 million in 2010, officials said. Asians now account for about 5% of the nation's population. The African-American population, which grew by about 4.3 million, is now about 40 million, or 12.6% of the population, a slight increase over 12.3% in 2000, officials said.<br /><br />Persons reporting "some other race" grew by 3.7 million, to 19 million, or 5.5% of the nation, figures show.<br />The vast majority of Americans, 97%, reported only one race, with whites as the largest group, accounting for about seven out of 10 Americans. The remaining 3% of the population reported multiple races, and almost all of them listed exactly two races. White and black was the leading biracial combination, figures show.<br /><br />"The face of the country is changing," said Jeffrey Passel, demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.<br />Demographic data had already been released for all states except New York and Maine and for the District of Columbia.<br />In fast-growing states where whites and blacks dominated past growth, Hispanics are now the greatest growth engine, Frey said.<br /><br />The significance of the numbers to the United States is more than just an increase of an ethnicity. Research shows that along with the changing demographics, the country has become more diverse in other ways, Passel said. For instance, there is a substantial mixing of the American population through interracial marriage, he said.<br /><br />Another change is the concentration of the growing populations. Previously, the Hispanic population was concentrated in eight or nine states; it is now spread throughout the country, Passel said.Meanwhile, most of the data released so far show decreases in the population of white children, Frey said.<br /><br />Minorities will have a greater presence among future generations, he said. For example, in Nevada, 61% of children are minorities, compared with 41% of adults. In border states like Texas, demographers say, Hispanic populations are expected to surpass non-Hispanic populations within the next decade.<br /><br />"Without question, we are becoming a Hispanic state," said Texas state demographer Lloyd Potter. "I live in San Antonio, and there you see Spanish advertisements, television shows and newspapers everywhere," he said. In cities and towns across the region, there are Spanish-speaking restaurants, retailers and annual festivals.<br /><br />"It's helpful to be able to speak a little Spanish if you're non-Hispanic," Potter said. "My neighbors don't really speak much English. While my Spanish isn't great, at least we can interact and be neighbors." But while the labor force may absorb Spanish-only employees, an emerging debate among policy makers asks whether their children face additional challenges in English-speaking schools.<br /><br />"Education attainment is the single best determinant for a whole variety of social outcomes," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. Analysts speculate that while population levels swell, comparable growth in education levels may take some time.<br /><br />"In New York City, Italians once had a much higher high school dropout rate," Camarota said, noting an Italian immigration flux in the United States that spanned the years of 1890 to 1920. "It took them 60 to 70 years to lower those levels and close the socioeconomic gap."<br /><br />U.S. Hispanics top 50 million<br />STORY HIGHLIGHTS<br />The Hispanic population is now 50.5 million, or 16% of the country<br />The white population is 197 million, dropping to 64%<br />The black population is 40 million, or nearly 13%<br />The Asian population grew 43% to 14.7 million, or about 5%<br /><br />By Michael Martinez and David Ariosto, CNNUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-2843744883996292032010-12-29T23:54:00.000-01:002010-12-29T23:55:06.782-01:00Sotomayor as Liberal “Enforcer” on Supreme Court?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/TRvYEZiwy5I/AAAAAAAABJg/fPlK2JHadh0/s1600/Snapz%2BPro%2BXScreenSnapz002.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 371px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/TRvYEZiwy5I/AAAAAAAABJg/fPlK2JHadh0/s400/Snapz%2BPro%2BXScreenSnapz002.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556272135379405714" /></a><br /><br />Adam Liptak writes today about the quick evolution of Sonia Sotomayor into the liberal bulwark on the Supreme Court. People forget that there was substantial concern on the left that Sotomayor would wind up more of a moderate; those fears may or may not be more likely ascribed to Elena Kagan. But Sotomayor has become what amounts to a liberal on a conservative Court.<br /><br />Liptak looks in particular at a series of discretionary writings by Sotomayor referring to why the court declined to hear a particular case.<br /><br />Justice Sotomayor wrote three of the opinions, more than any other justice, and all concerned the rights of criminal defendants or prisoners. The most telling one involved a Louisiana prisoner infected with H.I.V. No other justice chose to join it.<br /><br />The prisoner, Anthony C. Pitre, had stopped taking his H.I.V. medicine to protest his transfer from one facility to another. Prison officials responded by forcing him to perform hard labor in 100-degree heat. That punishment twice sent Mr. Pitre to the emergency room.<br /><br />The lower courts had no sympathy for Mr. Pitre’s complaints, saying he had brought his troubles on himself.<br /><br />Justice Sotomayor saw things differently.<br /><br />“Pitre’s decision to refuse medication may have been foolish and likely caused a significant part of his pain,” she wrote. “But that decision does not give prison officials license to exacerbate Pitre’s condition further as a means of punishing or coercing him — just as a prisoner’s disruptive conduct does not permit prison officials to punish the prisoner by handcuffing him to a hitching post.”<br /><br />You’re at least seeing a recognition in her writing of that wrongly-derided concept of empathy; the ability for a judge to understand the circumstances of an individual and apply it to the underlying facts of a case. Liptak posits Sotomayor as the counterpoint to Justice Samuel Alito, with the two almost coming across as “enforcers” for the beliefs of their ideologically aligned colleagues.<br /><br />Strip away the racial or gender politics of the selection. On the merits, the Sotomayor picked has worked out pretty well for the country, and unlike some other decisions this one will definitely outlast Obama’s Presidency by several decades.<br /><br /><br />David DayenUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-6048800209911433332010-11-02T00:29:00.001-01:002010-11-02T00:29:13.667-01:00Obama and Latino Punishment?WASHINGTON – A day before the pivotal midterm elections, President Barack Obama pulled back from remarks he made last month when he called on Latino voters to punish their "enemies" on Election Day. In an interview Monday with radio host Michael Baisden, Obama said he should have used the word "opponents" instead of enemies.<br />Republicans were quick to criticize the president's remarks. House Minority Leader John Boehner was expected to use Obama's words in an election eve speech in Ohio to paint the president as a staunch partisan.<br />"Sadly, we have a president who uses the word 'enemy' for fellow Americans, fellow citizens. He used it for people who disagree with his agenda of bigger government," Boehner said, according to prepared remarks released in advance of his speech.<br />Obama's original comments came during an interview with Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo, a Hispanic radio personality. Piolin questioned how Obama could ask Latinos for their vote when many don't believe he's worked hard to pass comprehensive immigration reform.<br />Obama responded: "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,' if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder."<br />The president said Monday that the message he was trying to send was that voters need to support lawmakers who stand with them on the issue.<br />"Now the Republicans are saying that I'm calling them enemies," Obama said. "What I'm saying is you're an opponent of this particular provision, comprehensive immigration reform, which is something very different."<br />With Republicans poised to score sweeping victories in Tuesday's election, Obama has been imploring the Democratic base to vote in hopes of turning some close races in his party's favor.<br />Though Obama had no publicly announced campaign events on his schedule Monday and Tuesday, the president has been doing radio interviews targeting young people, African-Americans and voters in key states. He was also to hold a conference call Monday night with campaign volunteers in Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico and HawaiiUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-15470252462621317292010-10-07T21:15:00.001-01:002010-10-07T21:16:50.407-01:00Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cp3jg_V3o9I?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cp3jg_V3o9I?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-92231340110175782542010-10-04T06:05:00.000-01:002010-10-04T06:06:27.285-01:00Racial predatory loans fueled U.S. housing crisis: studyPredatory lending aimed at racially segregated minority neighborhoods led to mass foreclosures that fueled the U.S. housing crisis, according to a new study published in the American Sociological Review.<br /><br />Predatory lending typically refers to loans that carry unreasonable fees, interest rates and payment requirements.<br /><br />Poorer minority areas became a focus of these practices in the 1990s with the growth of mortgage-backed securities, which enabled lenders to pool low- and high-risk loans to sell on the secondary market, Professor Douglas Massey of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and PhD candidate Jacob Rugh, said in their study.<br /><br />The financial institutions likely to be found in minority areas tended to be predatory -- pawn shops, payday lenders and check cashing services that "charge high fees and usurious rates of interest," they said in the study.<br /><br />"By definition, segregation creates minority dominant neighborhoods, which, given the legacy of redlining and institutional discrimination, continue to be underserved by mainstream financial institutions," the study says.<br /><br />Redlining is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking and insurance, to residents in specific areas, often based on race.<br /><br />The U.S. economy is still struggling with the effects of its longest recession since the 1930s, which was triggered in large part by the housing crisis, which was in part triggered by the crash of the subprime loan market.<br /><br />Subprime lending refers to loans made to consumers with poor credit and others considered higher risk. They tend to have a higher interest rate than traditional loans.<br /><br />The study, which used data from the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, found that living in a predominantly African-American area, and to a lesser extent Hispanic area, were "powerful predictors of foreclosures" in the nation.<br /><br />Even African-Americans with similar credit profiles and down-payment ratios to white borrowers were more likely to receive subprime loans, according to the study.<br /><br />"As a result, from 1993 to 2000, the share of subprime mortgages going to households in minority neighborhoods rose from 2 to 18 percent," Massey and Rugh said.<br /><br />They said the U.S. Civil Rights Act should be amended to create mechanisms that would uncover discrimination and penalize those who discriminated against minority borrowers.<br /><br />The study is published in the October issue of the journal.<br />(Editing by Paul Simao)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-71984177642858447452010-09-02T23:08:00.002-01:002010-09-02T23:11:38.758-01:00Jan Brewer at Her BestCan we get Mexican immigrants to teach her English? Larry, Barry and Terry, please help!<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xUPKKbmWMZ8?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xUPKKbmWMZ8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-30754266252383179642010-08-27T18:24:00.004-01:002010-08-27T18:30:27.042-01:00Glen Beck and Sara Palin "Reclaiming" Civil Rights Movement in Washington, DC, March?OPEN LETTER TO GLEN BECK AND SARA PALIN<br /><br />You can't have a march to tell the government to leave citizens alone when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's. prerogative was to demand that government live up to its democratic ideals and treat everyone equally. You are having an anti-government march with a bevy of supporters who are sleepwalking through history. Your lack of imagination and historical memory may be masked in ideology but you either fail to remember, can not do so, or find it expedient to lie to yourselves and others for the sake of political gain. And that is the most "un-American" position imaginable.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-67431512832417978522010-08-23T16:25:00.000-01:002010-08-23T16:26:07.667-01:00Candidate for New York State Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda Can't Say if He's for Marriage EqualityCandidate for New York State Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda Can't Say if He's for Marriage equality<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fpw3mFrS2sc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fpw3mFrS2sc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GrnjcZk1jf0?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GrnjcZk1jf0?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-90168214617382922172010-07-26T03:12:00.001-01:002010-07-26T03:12:55.409-01:00Arizona Immigration Law Faces Legal Challenge<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wOvrThmeLOg&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wOvrThmeLOg&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-37537057934815162362010-04-13T02:53:00.000-01:002010-04-13T02:54:01.992-01:00Guilty Plea In Fatal Stabbing of Latino ImmigrantGuilty Plea In Fatal Stabbing Of LI Immigrant<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy5tO9TJXLPKqVFaLYBUsd5iI5A1j0tILnMCOE-zrKguy1VsC5-xcxafWhdo6Iqs5ohuuSMoOs1jiTHLhj4Nw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br />Just moments after a Long Island teenager allegedly plunged a knife into a Hispanic man targeted for violence simply because of his ethnicity, one of his friends urged him to ditch the weapon.<br /><br />"Throw away the knife," Nicholas Hausch says he pleaded with Jeffrey Conroy as they and five others ran away from what would become a murder scene. Conroy insisted he had washed the blood off the weapon in a puddle, Hausch said, but he doubted they could fool authorities so easily -- he had watched too many "Law and Order" episodes to believe that.<br /><br />"I said, 'We're not going to get away with it,"' Hausch told a judge on Thursday as he pleaded guilty to gang assault and hate crime charges in the Nov. 8, 2008, killing of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero.<br /><br />Hausch, 18, is the first of the co-defendants to plead guilty in the case that focused attention on a decade-long animosity between the largely white population that settled on Long Island after World War II and a growing influx of Hispanics, many from Central and South America suspected of illegally entering the United States.<br /><br />He has agreed to testify in upcoming trials against the six others; the district attorney will then make a sentencing recommendation, but Hausch still could face a minimum of five years in prison.<br /><br />The U.S. Justice Department announced in October that it has launched an investigation into hate crimes on eastern Long Island, focused particularly on police response. That followed a September report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that revealed "a pervasive climate of fear in the Latino community" in Suffolk County.<br /><br />Lucero, 37, was walking with a friend near the Patchogue train station at about midnight when they were confronted by the teenagers tooling around town allegedly looking for targets, a somewhat routine avocation for them, according to prosecutors.<br /><br />His friend ran away, but prosecutors say the teens surrounded Lucero, who tried desperately to fight back, smacking one of his assailants with his belt. Conroy, 18, is accused of plunging a knife into Lucero's chest before running away. Prosecutors say the other six were unaware of the stabbing until Conroy told them.<br /><br />Conroy is the only one facing murder charges; his attorney did not immediately return a telephone call for comment on Thursday.<br /><br />"Jeff told us he stabbed the guy," Hausch explained before entering the guilty plea. "No one said, `way to go,' or anything like that. It was more like `you're an idiot."'<br /><br />Although some of the teens discussed splitting up, according to Hausch, they remained together and were arrested a short time later, just blocks from where Lucero died.<br /><br />"Nick has always accepted responsibility. He has enormous remorse," defense attorney Jason Bassett said after Hausch entered the plea before state Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle. "Nick fell in with bigger guys, more popular guys and he wanted to impress them."<br /><br />Besides his role in the Lucero killing, Hausch also pleaded guilty to participating in earlier attacks on Hispanics in the Patchogue-Medford area of eastern Long Island. He admitted that on several occasions, he and a number of other teens had attacked Hispanics merely because of their ethnicity. The assaults included peppering the victim with anti-Hispanic slurs, Hausch said. In one case, Hausch and others shot a BB-gun at an Hispanic man, he said.<br /><br />Joselo and Isabel Lucero, the victim's brother and sister, arrived in the courtroom during Hausch's appearance.<br /><br />"It's really a big surprise right now," Joselo Lucero said afterward. "I think it's a really successful moment."<br /><br />Lucero said he was organizing a candlelight vigil Saturday night in Patchogue to mark the first anniversary of his brother's death. "I'm just trying to have a peaceful event," he said.<br /><br />The Lucero slaying attracted worldwide headlines. A U.S. Justice Department probe of hate crimes on eastern Long Island has focused particularly on police response.<br /><br />The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, sent Spanish speaking researchers to Patchogue to investigate allegations of other bias attacks in the area where Lucero was fatally stabbed. What it found was quote, "frightening."<br /><br />Its report is based on interviews with more than 70 Latino immigrants in recent months. It says that many of them reported being beaten with baseball bats.<br /><br />The report finds the violence is part of a disturbing trend, in which "Latin immigrants in Suffolk County are regularly harassed, taunted and pelted with objects hurled from cars. They are frequently run off the road while riding bicycles, and many report being beaten with baseball bats and other objects."<br /><br />But former Mayor Franklin Whitey Leavandosky says there's no serious problem in Patchogue, only a series of unfortunate isolated incidents.<br /><br />"I think it goes to idle hands, idle minds of teenagers that have no respect for their fellow man," said Leavandosky on Wednesday.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-56394102744259174022010-04-04T16:03:00.001-01:002010-04-04T16:03:54.951-01:00Census Idiocy: Latino Isn't a "Race"<a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/station/as-seen-on/Censored_Census__Hispanic_isn_t_a_race__Los_Angeles.html">Latino Isn't a "Race"</a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/S7jFfAxBdqI/AAAAAAAABHE/88mH8pFz08A/s1600/Snapz+Pro+XScreenSnapz001.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/S7jFfAxBdqI/AAAAAAAABHE/88mH8pFz08A/s400/Snapz+Pro+XScreenSnapz001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456328085131589282" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-3349283961717982192010-02-11T02:17:00.000-01:002010-02-11T02:18:03.081-01:00Daniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airportDaniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airport<br /><br />By Daniel Rubin<br /><br />Inquirer Columnist<br /><br />A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely To Be Recruited By The CIA. He's a physics major at a top college, he minors in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.<br /><br />At Philadelphia International Airport last August, his interest in the world got him handcuffed.<br /><br />The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets.<br /><br />Arabic-language flash cards.<br /><br />George, who was 21 at the time, and about to fly back for his senior year at Pomona College in Claremont, Ca., says he answered every question to the best of his abilities, and figured he'd be quickly sent on his way.<br /><br />But what questions...<br /><br />According to a federal suit filed Wednesday on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, a TSA supervisor asked him, "How do you feel about 9/11?"<br /><br />He said he hemmed and hawed a bit. "It's a complicated question," he told me by phone. "But I ended up saying, 'It was bad. I am against it.' "<br /><br />He was asked if he knew who "did 9/11."<br /><br />He answered, Osama bin Laden.<br /><br />Then he was asked, "Do you know what language he spoke?"<br /><br />George answered, Arabic."<br /><br />The supervisor then held up his flash cards. "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?"<br /><br />To George, they weren't suspicious at all. He was using them to translate Al Jazeera, whose coverage in Arabic he considers critical to understanding America's place in the world. The 200 cards included words for "terrorist" and "explosion," George said. His interest in the Middle East came not from 9/11 but from watching Lawrence of Arabia with his father, Paul George, a Philadelphia attorney and former public defender.<br /><br />Nick George says he started taking classes in Middle Eastern history, politics and languages while at Pomona. He spent a semester in Amman. He has applied for a State Department program that encourages the study of Arabic and he has plans to take the Foreign Service exam after college.<br /><br />He says he did the right thing when questioned.<br /><br />"My mentality was, 'Do what they say, and pretty soon they'll see this is ridiculous and let you go," he said by phone. "That was my mentality until they put the handcuffs on me. Then it was surreal."<br /><br />TSA called the Philadelphia Police, who marched him through the airport to a small office where he sat for more than an hour in cuffs, awaiting FBI agents.<br /><br />In the suit he contends the agents asked him if he was an Islamist or a Communist. He said no. After about 20 minutes they released him. He missed his flight that day.<br /><br />Neither the TSA nor the Philadelphia Police would comment yesterday, given that legal action was pending. But in a September Daily News column, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said behavioral-detection officers had selected the student for screening even before the flash cards were discovered. Those officers are trained to look for "involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered," she said.<br /><br />George says he cannot imagine what they mean - he was calm.<br /><br />A police official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying it was George's ID in Arabic that caught their attention - from his Jordanian studies - and police were suspicious that the student's hair was shorter that day than it was in his Pennsylvania driver's license photo. "That," Lt. Louis Liberati said, is "an indication sometimes that somebody may have gone through a radicalization."<br /><br />Candace Putter, George's mother, thinks that's an amazing statement. She is a longtime advocate for teens in trouble with the law. She said she came of age in the 1960s, when long hair was associated with a different sort of radicalism.<br /><br />"You can't change the world on me that completely," she said, laughing.<br /><br />Putter said said she understands in the post-9/11 world why security officers would pay attention to someone who had been to Muslim countries and was learning Arabic. So can Mary Catherine Roper, George's ACLU attorney. So can I.<br /><br />"Clearly we want them to be paying attention," Cutter said. "But we want them to be paying smart attention."<br /><br />Security technologist Bruce Schneier was less polite.<br /><br />"This is just stupid," he said. "There's no other way to explain it. Someone saw these Arabic language cards and just freaked. It should have taken TSA 15 seconds."<br /><br />The problem, he said, was that there is no cost to the security agent for doing the wrong thing. "If I detain someone and he's not a terrorist, nothing happens to me. I'm probably praised. If I let him go, and he is, my career is over. The TSA incentive is to overreact. Terrorism can't do this to us. I think only we can do this to ourselves."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-60468250103638460232010-01-25T00:45:00.001-01:002010-01-25T00:45:31.523-01:00Latina Magazine on Sonia Sotomayor<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/S1z3OUY3h6I/AAAAAAAABDI/j3LhakLuK48/s1600-h/1111sonia_article.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/S1z3OUY3h6I/AAAAAAAABDI/j3LhakLuK48/s400/1111sonia_article.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430487076065216418" /></a>Her Honor: A Portrait of Justice Sonia Sotomayor<br /><br /><br />America has never before met a wise Latina like Sonia Sotomayor. Latina contributor and former Editor-in-Chief Sandra Guzmán offers the first glimpse of the woman behind the robe in this exclusive profile of the newly minted Supreme Court justice.<br /><br />Here is an excerpt from this fascinating story:<br /><br />I first met Sonia in 1998, after she had been sworn in as a federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. I was the Editor-in-Chief of Latina, and a mutual friend, New York attorney Lee Llambelis, suggested that Sotomayor was someone I should meet since I’d probably want to write an article on her (which appeared in our March 1999 issue). Sotomayor’s life story not only inspired readers, but also captivated me.<br /><br />Since then, we’ve been to each other’s homes for dinner and shared many sweet, honest and confidential conversations. A doting hostess, she puts together cheese platters, makes tasty salads and hooks up a mean churrasco with a tangy lemon marinade. This past spring, she promised to share some of her culinary secrets, so we set a date to fire up the grill in her small yet superb two-bedroom condo in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Sonia thought things would finally slow down for her by the summer—but that’s when things really started heating up.<br /><br />During those grueling confirmation hearings in July, Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl dissected her now-famous “wise Latina” phrase, uttered during an inspirational lecture to Latino law students at the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 2001.<br /><br />The senators aggressively argued that her remarks proved she would bring bias and a liberal agenda to the bench. But Sotomayor repeatedly explained that her comments were part of a regrettable “rhetorical flourish that fell flat.” “I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging,” she said. She added that she was simply trying “to inspire young Hispanics, Latino students and lawyers to believe that their life experiences added value to the process.’’<br /><br />As the new personification of an intellectual rock star, Sotomayor has been inundated with interview requests—from Vogue to Newsweek, El País to Le Monde. But the new justice has yet to agree to a sit-down, aside from one she granted C-Span for a documentary on the Supreme Court. When I asked about a formal interview for this magazine, she told me, “I am not doing interviews and have said no to everyone. I do not want to be seen as having favorites.”<br /><br />She did, however, agree to have her portrait taken for the cover and inside pages. And she went as far as granting me her blessing: “You will have to write based on our history together.”<br /><br />And that’s exactly what I’ve done.<br /><br />Sonia Maria Sotomayor, born in the South Bronx on June 25, 1954, is the oldest child of Celina Baez and Juan Sotomayor, two puertorriqueños who migrated to New York City in the 1940s in search of the American Dream. Reared in the Bronxdale housing projects, she’s a red lipstick–wearing Cancer who loves the Yankees and is credited with saving baseball by putting an end to a 232-day Major League Baseball strike in 1995.<br /><br />After excelling at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, she graduated with the highest academic honors (summa cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society) from Princeton University. She went on to Yale Law School and served as an editor on the prestigious Yale Law Journal. For nearly five years, she worked as a young prosecutor under iconic Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau. She practiced international business law in private practice for another nearly eight years. For the last 17 years, she served on the federal bench, first on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and most recently as a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She represents many legal firsts, such as being the first person appointed to judicial posts by three U.S. presidents from two different parties (presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama)....<br /><br />One evening this past spring, as we prepared dinner for a group of friends, I asked her for some advice. She listened closely as I relayed my marital problems. I still recall her words, which I carry in my heart to this day. She told me that we have been wrongfully taught the Cinderella fairy tale as a paradigm of what happy relationships are supposed to be. And when we fall short of that, we suffer for it. To find happiness in love, she said, we have to make up our own rules. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. The process may involve unlearning what we have been taught and then figuring out what makes us happy. There are all types of relationships and arrangements to choose from. Of course, the trick is finding a companion who shares those values.<br /><br />Love is not the only area where Justice Sotomayor has faced her fears and worked her way through them. Even as recently as April, she had doubts about her potential rise to the Supreme Court. She had been on President Clinton’s Supreme Court short list, but no seats became vacant. When Obama won the White House, the legal world hedged their bets on the brilliant judge with the impeccable résumé. But weeks before Obama made public his pick to replace Souter, Sotomayor called her confidante and good friend Llambelis, telling her that she wanted to pull her name from consideration.<br /><br />“You have to understand that Sonia is a very private person,” Llambelis explains. “She didn’t want to go through another public vetting process and a potential public dressing-down by those on the Republican right who opposed her nomination. Sonia was happy being a Federal Appeals judge, loved her life in New York and felt fulfilled. She worried about having less time to spend with her mother, family and friends, particularly given her mom’s age and potential health complications.” Llambelis recalls listening to her friend, whose “I can” mantra was being drowned out by last-minute uncertainty. She told her to think beyond herself. “At this point, this is not about you,” Llambelis said to her. “It’s about little girls and boys, brown and black, who live in the projects and in poor communities around our nation, who can dream bigger if you are in the Supreme Court. You cannot back down now.” Sotomayor promised to think about it overnight. And in the morning, she woke up with a lighter heart and a bigger purpose.<br /><br />In her short tenure so far on the court, the justice we have witnessed is no shrinking violet. She asks tough questions and is not intimidated by her rookie status. Sotomayor’s charm and confidence surprise very few people who know her, including the man who nominated her. While President Obama’s staff was preparing Sotomayor for the confirmation hearings in a White House office called the War Room, the team covered all the potentially explosive questions and briefed her on every minute detail, including how to dress for the cameras. They even advised her to keep her nails a neutral shade, which she did. But on the day of the White House reception celebrating her appointment, Sotomayor asked the president to look at her freshly manicured nails, holding up her hands to show off her favorite fire engine–red hue. The president chuckled, saying that she had been warned against that color.<br /><br />She sure had, but Sotomayor was not finished. She then pulled her hair back behind her ears, exposing her red and black semi-hoop earrings, a beloved accessory among Latinas across America—from the South Bronx to Houston to East Los Angeles.<br /><br />Obama joked that she had been briefed on the size of the earrings as well. Without skipping a beat, Sotomayor replied: “Mr. President, you have no idea what you’ve unleashed.” He responded, “Justice: I know and remember it’s a lifetime appointment. And I and no one can take it back.” And that, as they say, is the final verdict.<br /><br />To read the rest of this story, pick up the December/January issue of Latina, on newsstands Nov. 17. <br /><br />from Latina by <a href="http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/her-honor-portrait-justice-sonia-sotomayor">Shani Saxon-Parrish</a>, "Her Honor: A Portrait of Justice Sonia Sotomayor"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-78711750535290334252010-01-09T15:30:00.001-01:002010-01-09T15:30:46.566-01:00Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SpvmNp4fzEI/AAAAAAAAA8A/WTaV_sif3LI/s1600-h/secondwave.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 297px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SpvmNp4fzEI/AAAAAAAAA8A/WTaV_sif3LI/s400/secondwave.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376143702452325442" /></a>Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas<br />By David Holthouse<br /> <br /> <br />Camp Vigilance, Calif. — A call to arms from ResistNet blares through this makeshift camp near the small community of Boulevard: "We all know what happens when you back an animal into a corner — it fights back. The way I see it, that's exactly the direction this country is heading. They're backing us into a corner. It's getting to be time to fight back."<br /><br />Located two-and-a-half miles north of Mexico in the high, rugged desert of unincorporated eastern San Diego County, Camp Vigilance, known colloquially as "Camp V," is a sizable Minuteman border vigilante compound situated amidst 170 privately owned acres.<br /><br />Adjacent to active human and narcotics smuggling corridors, Camp V consists of roughly 100 tent camping sites, a half dozen or so full RV docking bays, a bunkhouse, a radio communications center, a mess hall and meeting grounds, all within a gated and well-guarded security perimeter.<br /><br />On this night in late May, a dozen or so Minutemen are checking their weapons, testing batteries in their night-vision goggles and thermal-vision scopes, donning body armor and making other preparations for sundown-to-sunup reconnaissance patrols. A public address system plugged into a massive RV amplifies ResistNet, an Internet radio program broadcast by the Patriot Network, which promotes conspiracy theories and right-wing antigovernment militancy. Since the beginning of this year, ResistNet and other Patriot Network programs have become quite popular at Camp V, as well as other remote Minuteman outposts in southern California and Arizona.<br /><br />The broadcast continues: "I can see the true American patriots are being backed into a corner. They're getting ready to strike back at their captors, the greedy, evil vipers in the high offices of this land."<br /><br />Such exhortations have little to do with border security or undocumented immigration, the issues that launched the original Minuteman Project in 2005 and inspired its many spin-offs, imitators and splinter factions. Instead, the antigovernment screed ringing through Camp V represents a significant, ongoing shift in the nativist vigilante subculture, as major elements of various Minuteman organizations appear to be morphing into a new paramilitary wing of the resurgent antigovernment "Patriot" movement.<br />Waterboarding<br />Waterboarding for the movemement: In a recent exercise, militia members and others trained in resisting interrogation.<br /><br />Increasingly, Minutemen are giving credence to the sort of fringe conspiracy theories that have long typified militia and other so-called Patriot groups. Although the Minuteman movement from its inception has been permeated with the Aztlan or "reconquista" conspiracy theory — which holds that the Mexican government is driving illegal immigration into the U.S. as part of a covert effort to "reconquer" the American Southwest — the conspiracy theories that are now taking root in the movement have little or nothing to do with border security or immigration. They include the belief that a massive cover-up has been conducted regarding Barack Obama's birth certificate, which supposedly shows that he was born in Africa and is therefore ineligible to serve as president of the United States.<br /><br />At several eastern San Diego County vigilante camps in mid-May, there were serious discussions about the global banking system being controlled by an ancient secret society called the Illuminati. Another theory floated involved a cult devoted to the Egyptian god of the afterlife, Osiris, operating within the NASA space agency and perhaps arranging with extraterrestrials for a hostile takeover of Earth.<br /><br />Further indicating the nativist-to-Patriot drift of the Minutemen is the fact that in recent months a number of Minuteman factions have begun promoting the ideology of so-called "sovereign citizens," a bizarre pseudo-legal philosophy whose adherents claim they're not U.S. citizens and are not subject to federal or state laws, only to "common law courts" — a sort of people's tribunal with no judges or lawyers. The most notorious advocates of sovereign citizens ideology include Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and members of the now defunct Montana Freemen, a violent militia outfit. The larger Patriot movement is made up of tax protesters, militia members and sovereign citizens.<br /><br />Accompanying the rise of conspiracy theories and sovereign citizen ideology within the Minuteman movement has been a spike in online and campfire chatter about the potential need for armed insurrection in the near future. This trend toward contemplated violence was most graphically illustrated by the May 30 home invasion murders of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter in Arivaca, Ariz., that were allegedly orchestrated by the leader of Minutemen American Defense to fund her group's vigilante activities.<br /><br />All of these disturbing nativist-to-Patriot trends have taken shape during a period in which, by all indications, the number of Latino immigrants attempting to cross the U.S. border has dropped to record lows, due in large part to the country's faltering economy. According to a June report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions fell to 724,000 last year. That marked the lowest level since 1973 and a decline of more than 50% from 2000, when apprehensions peaked at 1.67 million.<br /><br />Despite this marked drop in undocumented border crossings, however, the number of Minuteman border operations, paramilitary training exercises and rallies continues to increase, and new Minuteman groups continue to form. What's changed is that instead of focusing exclusively on undocumented immigration, growing numbers of Minutemen and their fellow travelers now perceive immigration as merely a glaring symptom of a much broader problem. The larger problem, they believe, involves shadowy conspiracies threatening American sovereignty, unwelcome demographic changes polluting American culture, and a potentially totalitarian government, driven by an illegitimate president, bent on seizing all firearms, trampling the Constitution and imposing a fascist-socialist system on a pathetically docile citizenry.<br /><br />"We're still concerned about the border intruders, but since this all started we've become aware of the fact that border intruders are just pawns in the big game," says "Jawbone," a member of the Campo Minutemen, a particularly hard-core faction based a few miles east of Camp V. "Stopping the border intruders isn't going to keep the shit from hitting the fan. If and when it does, we'll be ready. All this [Minuteman border operations] is just a dress rehearsal for the big dance."<br /><br />One of the leaders of the Campo Minutemen, Britt "Kingfish" Craig, recently appeared on "Patriot's Pipeline Radio Show" along with co-guest Lloyd Marcus, the singer-songwriter responsible for "Tea Party Anthem," a protest ditty written for the "tea party" tax protests that took place across the country April 15.<br /><br />"Tea Party Anthem" has become the Campo Minutemen fight song. Most of its members know at least the first verse by heart: "Mr. President! Your stimulus is sure to bust./It's just a socialist scheme./The only thing it will do/Is kill the American Dream."<br /><br />As part of their campaign to stop President Obama from killing the American Dream, various Minuteman groups, including the Campo Minutemen, are distributing a sovereign citizen "criminal complaint petition" demanding that Obama appear before an "American Grand Jury" to answer charges of treason.<br /><br />Hundreds of Minutemen signed the petition at a large Minuteman "muster," or rally, in Cochise County, Ariz., in late May. More than a dozen Minuteman organizations were represented at the rally, along with members of the Arizona Citizens Militia, a traditional Patriot militia that regularly conducts armed survivalist training exercises in the mountains and woods of northern Arizona. During one recent exercise, members were "waterboarded" by a "professional interrogator."<br /><br />Also present at the Cochise County muster were members of Minuteman American Defense (MAD), the Everett, Wash.-based group led by Shawna Forde, who was arrested less than a month later in the May 30 double murder in Arivaca, Ariz. Also arrested were MAD Operations Director Jason Bush and a third MAD member. According to law enforcement authorities, the three believed the man they killed was a narcotics trafficker who kept large sums of money in his trailer.<br /><br />Forde's half-brother, Merill Metzger, told the Arizona Daily Star that shortly before the murders Forde started talking about forming an "underground militia" that would be funded by robbing drug dealers. "She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.<br /><br />Following her arrest, Forde was denounced by key Minuteman leaders including Jeff Schwilk, head of the San Diego Minutemen, a hard-line group with a well-deserved reputation for confrontational tactics. The fact that a hothead like Schwilk has become a de facto spokesman for the Minuteman movement indicates how radicalized the movement has become since its early days of media-friendly publicity stunts involving retirees sitting in lawn chairs armed only with binoculars.<br /><br />In a mid-April mass E-mail to followers, Schwilk linked his group's resistance to "the invasion from Mexico" with the greater cause of thwarting the "socialist takeover" of America. In the same E-mail, Schwilk announced the formation of the Patriot Coalition, made up of 23 organizations including Minuteman factions, tax-protest groups, pro-gun rights groups and two anti-immigration outfits listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. A subsequent press release described the common cause of the groups under the motto, "Secure Borders, Constitution and Rule of Law." It stated that "Patriotic and Constitutional American grassroots groups" had come together to "fight the growing threats to our region and to the taxpaying American citizens."<br /><br />It used to be that Minutemen declared their vigilance against foreign invaders. Now they're taking a stand against perceived enemies both foreign and domestic. "Revolution is brewing!" Schwilk declared.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-4268527000253226022009-12-22T01:13:00.003-01:002009-12-22T01:15:05.094-01:00México, D.F: First in Latin America to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SzAq3q3oi0I/AAAAAAAABCU/wzhzckHQjB8/s1600-h/r892922740.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 399px; height: 266px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SzAq3q3oi0I/AAAAAAAABCU/wzhzckHQjB8/s400/r892922740.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417877487615511362" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.<br /><br />The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!"<br /><br />Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the Democratic Revolution Party was widely expected to sign the measure into law.<br /><br />Mexico City's left-led assembly has made several decisions unpopular elsewhere in this deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That decision sparked a backlash, with the majority of Mexico's other 32 states enacting legislation declaring life begins at conception.<br /><br />The conservative Nation Action Party of President Felipe Calderon has vowed to challenge the gay marriage law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with gay couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands.<br /><br />The bill calls for changing the definition of marriage in the city's civil code. Marriage is currently defined as the union of a man and a woman. The new definition will be "the free uniting of two people."<br /><br />The change would allow same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, rights they were denied under civil unions allowed in the city.<br /><br />"We are so happy," said Temistocles Villanueva, a 23-year-old film student who celebrated by passionately kissing his boyfriend outside the city's assembly.<br /><br />Only seven countries allow gay marriages: Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. U.S. states that permit same-sex marriage are Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire.<br /><br />Argentina's capital became the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2002 for gay and lesbian couples. Four other Argentine cities later did the same, and as did Mexico City in 2007 and some Mexican and Brazilian states. Uruguay alone has legalized civil unions nationwide.<br /><br />Buenos Aires lawmakers introduced a bill for legalizing gay marriage in the national Congress in October but it has stalled without a vote, and officials in the South American city have blocked same-sex wedding because of conflicting judicial rulings.<br /><br />Many people in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America remain opposed to gay marriage, and the dominant Roman Catholic Church has announced its opposition.<br /><br />"They have given Mexicans the most bitter Christmas," said Armando Martinez, the president of the College of Catholic Attorneys. "They are permitting adoption (by gay couples) and in one stroke of the pen have erased the term 'mother' and 'father.'"<br /><br />City lawmaker Victor Romo, a member of the mayor's leftist party, called it a historic day.<br /><br />"For centuries unjust laws banned marriage between blacks and whites or Indians and Europeans," he said. "Today all barriers have disappeared."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-10223869481784599622009-12-21T15:39:00.000-01:002009-12-21T15:40:08.899-01:00Latino School Dropout Intervention ProgramLatino School Dropout Intervention Program<br /><br />ACHIEVEMENT FOR LATINOS THROUGH ACADEMIC SUCCESS (ALAS)<br />Latino School Dropout Intervention Program<br /><br />from <a href="http://www.ncset.org/publications/essentialtools/dropout/part3.3.01.asp">NCSET</a><br /><br />Background: Achievement for Latinos through Academic Success (ALAS) was one of three projects that received funding in 1990 from the Office of Special Education Programs to address the problem of dropout for students with disabilities. The project focused on preventing dropout in high-risk middle school and junior high Latino students through involvement with students and their families, the school, and the community.<br /><br />Intervention Description: ALAS was developed to prevent high-risk Latino students with and without disabilities from dropping out of school. The model uses a collaborative approach involving the student, family, school, and community. Fundamental aspects of the program in each of four areas are listed below.<br /><br /> * Students receive social problem-solving training, counseling, increased and specific recognition of academic excellence, and enhancement of school affiliation.<br /> * Schools are responsible for providing frequent teacher feedback to students and parents and attendance monitoring. In addition, schools are expected to provide training for students in problem-solving and social skills.<br /> * Parents of program participants receive training in school participation, accessing and using community resources, and how to guide and monitor adolescents.<br /> * Collaboration with the community is encouraged through increased interaction between community agencies and families. Efforts to enhance skills and methods for serving the youth and family are also implemented.<br /><br />Participants & Setting: This program targeted Latino middle or junior high students who were considered to be at high risk of school failure. The program particularly focused on Mexican-American students from high-poverty neighborhoods who had learning and emotional/behavioral disabilities. Students selected for participation were either (a) students with active Individual Education Programs (IEPs) and an identified learning disability or severe emotional/behavioral disability, or (b) students who did not have IEPs, but who exhibited characteristics placing them at-risk for dropping out of school. Students were required to be able to speak English to participate in the program. ALAS has been used in urban and suburban settings.<br /><br />Implementation Considerations: Leaders of training sessions for parents and students are required, as are teachers willing to provide extensive and frequent feedback to families. Community liaisons are also necessary to facilitate communication between school, families, and community resources. A program coordinator is used to oversee all aspects of the program and ensure that everything is running smoothly.<br /><br />Cost: No information was identified in the available material.<br /><br />Evidence of Effectiveness: Three cohorts of students began receiving the ALAS intervention in seventh grade. The first cohort of students received the intervention for three years. Treatment outcomes for students in ninth grade indicated program participants who had IEPs had significantly lower dropout rates compared to the IEP control group. In addition, students who received the intervention and who were in the program longer had lower dropout rates than IEP participants who began in the second year of implementation. When comparing the high-risk, non-IEP program participants to high-risk, non-IEP nonparticipants, the ALAS students had much lower dropout rates (2.2% compared to 16.7%). In general, this study also found that program participants had lower rates of absenteeism, lower percentages of failed classes, and a higher proportion of credits (on track to graduate) when compared to nonparticipants.<br /><br />Follow-up data were also collected for a cohort of students in eleventh grade. Results showed a higher proportion of students were enrolled in school as compared to students who were not in ALAS. In order for optimal results, the authors of the study advocate for sustained intervention over time (perhaps until graduation), especially given the risk characteristics of this population targeted for intervention.<br /><br />Manual or Training Available: A bi-lingual trainer is available who can provide on-site training to school and community personnel. Please contact Magda Neil at (818) 957-2742.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Fashola, O. S., & Slavin, R. E. (1998). Effective dropout prevention and college attendance programs for students placed at risk. Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, 3(2), 159-183.<br /><br />Thornton, H. (Ed.) (1995). Staying in school: A technical report of three dropout prevention projects for middle school students with learning and emotional disabilities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Integration.<br /><br />Thurlow, M. L., Christenson, S. L., Sinclair, M. F., Evelo, D. L., & Thornton, H. (1995). Staying in school: Strategies for middle school students with learning and emotional disabilities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Integration.<br /><br />Contact Information:<br /><br /> Katherine Larson<br /> E-mail: larson@education.ucsb.eduUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-68757424714382676412009-12-15T20:35:00.001-01:002009-12-15T20:36:35.257-01:00Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SygBJeKyo-I/AAAAAAAABCM/zzeKiyT-Mhs/s1600-h/1438-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 254px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SygBJeKyo-I/AAAAAAAABCM/zzeKiyT-Mhs/s400/1438-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415579814141797346" /></a><br /><br />from <a href="http://http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1438/young-latinos-coming-of-age-in-america?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress">Pew Research</a><br /><br /><br />December 11, 2009<br /><br /><br /><br />This is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation<br /><br />Overview<br /><br />Hispanics are the largest and youngest minority group in the United States. One- in-five schoolchildren is Hispanic. One-in-four newborns is Hispanic. Never before in this country's history has a minority ethnic group made up so large a share of the youngest Americans. By force of numbers alone, the kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century.<br /><br />This report takes an in-depth look at Hispanics who are ages 16 to 25, a phase of life when young people make choices that -- for better and worse -- set their path to adulthood. For this particular ethnic group, it is also a time when they navigate the intricate, often porous borders between the two cultures they inhabit -- American and Latin American.<br /><br />The report explores the attitudes, values, social behaviors, family characteristics, economic well-being, educational attainment and labor force outcomes of these young Latinos. It is based on a new Pew Hispanic Center telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,012 Latinos, supplemented by the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of government demographic, economic, education and health data sets.<br /><br />The data paint a mixed picture. Young Latinos are satisfied with their lives, optimistic about their futures and place a high value on education, hard work and career success. Yet they are much more likely than other American youths to drop out of school and to become teenage parents. They are more likely than white and Asian youths to live in poverty. And they have high levels of exposure to gangs.<br /><br />These are attitudes and behaviors that, through history, have often been associated with the immigrant experience. But most Latino youths are not immigrants. Two-thirds were born in the United States, many of them descendants of the big, ongoing wave of Latin American immigrants who began coming to this country around 1965.<br /><br />As might be expected, they do better than their foreign-born counterparts on many key economic, social and acculturation indicators analyzed in this report. They are much more proficient in English and are less likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty or become a teen parent.<br /><br />But on a number of other measures, U.S.-born Latino youths do no better than the foreign born. And on some fronts, they do worse.<br /><br />For example, native-born Latino youths are about twice as likely as the foreign born to have ties to a gang or to have gotten into a fight or carried a weapon in the past year. They are also more likely to be in prison.<br /><br />The picture becomes even more murky when comparisons are made among youths who are first generation (immigrants themselves), second generation (U.S.-born children of immigrants) and third and higher generation (U.S.-born grandchildren or more far-removed descendants of immigrants).1<br /><br />For example, teen parenthood rates and high school drop-out rates are much lower among the second generation than the first, but they appear higher among the third generation than the second. The same is true for poverty rates.<br /><br />Identity and Assimilation<br /><br />Throughout this nation's history, immigrant assimilation has always meant something more than the sum of the sorts of economic and social measures outlined above. It also has a psychological dimension. Over the course of several generations, the immigrant family typically loosens its sense of identity from the old country and binds it to the new.<br /><br />It is too soon to tell if this process will play out for today's Hispanic immigrants and their offspring in the same way it did for the European immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But whatever the ultimate trajectory, it is clear that many of today's Latino youths, be they first or second generation, are straddling two worlds as they adapt to the new homeland.<br /><br />According to the Pew Hispanic Center's National Survey of Latinos, more than half (52%) of Latinos ages 16 to 25 identify themselves first by their family's country of origin, be it Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republican, El Salvador or any of more than a dozen other Spanish-speaking countries. An additional 20% generally use the terms "Hispanic" or "Latino" first when describing themselves. Only about one-in-four (24%) generally use the term "American" first.<br /><br />Among the U.S.-born children of immigrants, "American" is somewhat more commonly used as a primary term of self-identification. Even so, just 33% of these young second generation Latinos use American first, while 21% refer to themselves first by the terms Hispanic or Latino, and the plurality -- 41% -- refer to themselves first by the country their parents left in order to settle and raise their children in this country.<br /><br />Only in the third and higher generations do a majority of Hispanic youths (50%) use "American" as their first term of self-description.<br /><br />Immigration in Historical Perspective<br /><br />Measured in raw numbers, the modern Latin American-dominated immigration wave is by far the largest in U.S. history. Nearly 40 million immigrants have come to the United States since 1965. About half are from Latin America, a quarter from Asia and the remainder from Europe, Canada, the Middle East and Africa. By contrast, about 14 million immigrants came during the big Northern and Western European immigration wave of the 19th century and about 18 million came during the big Southern and Eastern European-dominated immigration wave of the early 20th century.2<br /><br />However, the population of the United States was much smaller during those earlier waves. When measured against the size of the U.S. population during the period when the immigration occurred, the modern wave's average annual rate of 4.6 new immigrants per 1,000 population falls well below the 7.7 annual rate that prevailed in the mid- to late 19th century and the 8.8 rate at the beginning of the 20th century.<br /><br />All immigration waves produce backlashes of one kind or another, and the latest one is no exception. Illegal immigration, in particular, has become a highly-charged political issue in recent times. It is also a relatively new phenomenon; past immigration waves did not generate large numbers of illegal immigrants because the U.S. imposed fewer restrictions on immigration flow in the past than it does now.<br /><br />The current wave may differ from earlier waves in other ways as well. More than a few immigration scholars have voiced skepticism that the children and grandchildren of today's Hispanic immigrants will enjoy the same upward mobility experienced by the offspring of European immigrants in previous centuries.3<br /><br />Their reasons vary, and not all are consistent with one another. Some scholars point to structural changes in modern economies that make it more difficult for unskilled laborers to climb into the middle class. Some say the illegal status of so many of today's immigrants is a major obstacle to their upward mobility. Some say the close proximity of today's sending countries and the relative ease of modern global communication reduce the felt need of immigrants and their families to acculturate to their new country. Some say the fatalism of Latin American cultures is a poor fit in a society built on Anglo-Saxon values. Some say that America's growing tolerance for cultural diversity may encourage modern immigrants and their offspring to retain ethnic identities that were seen by yesterday's immigrants as a handicap. (The melting pot is dead. Long live the salad bowl.) Alternatively, some say that Latinos' brown skin makes assimilation difficult in a country where white remains the racial norm.<br /><br />It will probably take at least another generation's worth of new facts on the ground to know whether these theories have merit. But it is not too soon to take some snapshots and lay down some markers. This report does so by assembling a wide range of empirical evidence (some generated by our own new survey; some by our analysis of government data) and subjecting it to a series of comparisons: between Latinos and non-Latinos; between young Latinos and older Latinos; between foreign-born Latinos and native-born Latinos; and between first, second, and third and higher generations of Latinos.<br /><br />The generational analyses presented here do not compare the outcomes of individual Latino immigrants with those of their own children or grandchildren. Instead, our generational analysis compares today's young Latino immigrants with today's children and grandchildren of yesterday's immigrants. As such, the report can provide some insights into the intergenerational mobility of an immigrant group over time. But it cannot fully disentangle the many factors that may help explain the observed patterns-be they compositional effects (the different skills, education levels and other forms of human capital that different cohorts of immigrants bring) or period effects (the different economic conditions that confront immigrants in different time periods).<br /><br />Readers should be especially careful when interpreting findings about the third and higher generation, for this is a very diverse group. We estimate that about 40% are the grandchildren of Latin American immigrants, while the remainder can trace their roots in this country much farther back in time.<br /><br />For some in this mixed group, endemic poverty and its attendant social ills have been a part of their families, barrios and colonias for generations, even centuries. Meantime, others in the third and higher generation have been upwardly mobile in ways consistent with the generational trajectories of European immigrant groups. Because the data we use in this report do not allow us to separate out the different demographic sub-groups within the third and higher generation, the overall numbers we present are averages that often mask large variances within this generation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-351636204073194592009-12-08T18:31:00.004-01:002009-12-08T18:32:36.720-01:00Studies Show Latinos Climb Socio-Economic Ladder of Success<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sx6o_bAisVI/AAAAAAAABB0/xYzTEyKXy_Y/s1600-h/ladder-2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sx6o_bAisVI/AAAAAAAABB0/xYzTEyKXy_Y/s400/ladder-2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412949609681170770" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />As a front-page story in today’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/06/AR2009120602775.html">Washington Post</a> reminds us: “Not since the last great wave of immigration to the United States around 1900 has the country’s economic future been so closely entwined with the generational progress of an immigrant group.” The story highlights the degree to which the children of immigrants from Latin America have become crucial to sustaining the working-age population and tax base of the nation—particularly as more and more of the 75 million Baby Boomers retire. Moreover, the parents of these children most likely would not have even come to this country if not for the U.S. economy’s past demand for workers to fill less-skilled jobs—demand which was not being adequately met by the rapidly aging and better-educated native-born labor force. The Post story also casts a spotlight on the insecurities and anxieties of commentators who feel that Latino immigrants and their descendants aren’t integrating into U.S. society and moving up the socio-economic ladder “fast enough.” Although these concerns are certainly understandable, they are as unjustified now as they were a century ago when they were directed at immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.<br /><br />By any objective measure, the children of immigrants from Latin America are making significant progress compared with their parents. As demographer Dowell Myers points out in a 2008 report, the experience of Latino immigrants in California reveals not only the vast strides that immigrants themselves make within their lifetimes in terms of English proficiency, homeownership, and declining poverty rates, but also the degree to which the children and grandchildren of immigrants do better than “newcomers.” Similarly, the National Research Council’s Panel on Hispanics in the United States concluded in 2006 that “trends in wages, household income, wealth, and home ownership across time and generations point to the gradual ascension of many U.S.-born Hispanics to the middle class.” And a 2003 study by economist James P. Smith of the RAND Corporation found that successive generations of Latino men experience significant improvements in wages and education relative to native-born non-Latinos. Smith concludes from his analysis that “fears are unwarranted” that Latinos are “not sharing in the successful European experience, perhaps due to a reluctance to assimilate into American culture.”<br /><br />Of course, the socio-economic progress of Latinos over the course of generations is sometimes difficult to see since two-out-of-five Latinos in the United States are foreign-born. But this is a matter of historical perspective, not substance. For instance, in 1891, then-Representative Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) warned that “immigration to this country is increasing and…is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races.” He was speaking principally of the Italians, but also the Russians, Poles, and Hungarians. He observed that these immigrants, “half of whom have no occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor,” are “people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.”<br /><br />Lodge also complained that immigrants such as the Italians:<br /><br /> …come to the United States, reduce the rate of wages by ruinous competition, and then take their savings out of the country, are not desirable. They are mere birds of passage. They form an element in the population which regards home as a foreign country, instead of that in which they live and earn money. They have no interest or stake in the country, and they never become American citizens.<br /><br />The passage of time has since proven Lodge wrong concerning the upward mobility of Italian Americans, just as it will in the case of today’s immigrants from Latin America. This isn’t to say that the undeniable disparities in educational attainment and income between native-born Latinos and native-born non-Latinos in the United States aren’t pressing social concerns. However, to effectively address these problems, they must first be accurately identified. The challenges confronting—and posed by—a poor immigrant from Mexico differ from those of a poor second-generation Latino whose parents are immigrants, which in turn differ from those of a poor third-generation Latino whose parents are native born. Some of these challenges are unique to the immigrant experience, others derive from being part of a “minority” group in U.S. society, and others stem from dynamics of poverty that are not limited to any ethnic group, immigrant or otherwise.<br /><br />For instance, if some third-generation Mexican Americans—like other minority groups in the United States—have encountered a “glass ceiling” in wage growth, this says more about the need for educational investment in poor communities than it does about a culturally specific lack of ambition. To treat Latinos as inherently incapable of upward mobility and as a homogeneous group guided by some innate resistance to “assimilation,” as some immigration restrictionists do, serves only to simplistically misidentify what are in fact a diverse range of issues.<br /><br />Walter EwingUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-59646668719775346262009-12-05T21:43:00.003-01:002009-12-05T21:48:55.867-01:00Three years later, the battle continues over affirmative action<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sxriy9JzbTI/AAAAAAAABBo/Pv4fnDre00E/s1600-h/Snapz+Pro+XScreenSnapz002.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sxriy9JzbTI/AAAAAAAABBo/Pv4fnDre00E/s400/Snapz+Pro+XScreenSnapz002.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411887267276090674" /></a><br /><br />Three years later, the battle continues over affirmative action in Detroit:<br /><br />Arielle Bullard had every belief she could get into the University of Michigan. The senior at Cass Technical High School in Detroit mailed in her application during the 2006-2007 winter semester.<br /><br />The 2.98 GPA student was told in the University of Michigan´s response letter that if she could get a 4.0, her application would be given "serious consideration."<br /><br />Bullard, an African-American student, did just that and then scored a 26 on her ACT.<br /><br />But that semester, Bullard´s school was forced to discontinue its program that gave additional admission points to black and Latino students. Her school ended the program because of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot proposal voters adopted in November 2006. Proposal 2, as it was known, added to the state Constitution an end to all "racial preference" and affirmative action-type programs in taxpayerfunded institutions.<br /><br />Bullard´s application was ultimately rejected. Was it because of Proposal 2? There´s no smoking gun, but the implication is certainly there.<br /><br />"I feel that Proposal 2 will intensify segregation and close doors that have barely been opened to me and other black and Latino students," Bullard said.<br /><br />Bullard and several other black students took action by signing onto a lawsuit against the University of Michigan to get MCRI removed from the state Constitution. It wasn´t the first suit against MCRI.<br /><br />In fact, the long legal road MCRI has traveled began on March 25, 2004.<br /><br />On that date, Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Paula Manderfield ruled that putting the affirmative action-killing initiative on the ballot "flies in the face" of the state Constitution. Michigan´s governing document guarantees "equal protection under the law." It ensures that no person can be "discriminated against" because of race or color. MCRI was a proposal to ban any racial preference program in any state-taxpayer entity — be it a city government´s female recruitment program or the University of Michigan giving extra admission points to an African-American applicant.<br /><br />Manderfield questioned: How can the state ban "preferential treatment" programs and guarantee equality when society´s treatment of minority populations is not equal? Therefore, she concluded, MCRI and the state Constitution are in conflict.<br /><br />The initiative — bankrolled by Ward Connerly, who successfully baked similar language into California law — should not be put before Michigan´s voters, she said.<br /><br />Civil rights groups across the state cheered. MCRI was dead … for a few months any way. Long enough to push MCRI off the 2004 ballot and onto the 2006 ballot. Since then, it´s been very much alive in Michigan.<br /><br />Today, MCRI has been a part of our state´s Constitution for three years. Opponents are still trying to kill it in court, but their options are running out and so are their arguments. It´s been five and a half years since Manderfield´s 19-page decision.<br /><br />Affirmative action defenders in Michigan are still looking for their second judicial victory.<br /><br />Latest stop: U.S. Court of Appeals<br /><br />Civil rights attorney George Washington spent Nov. 17 in Cincinnati in front of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Joined by his legal partner, Shanta Driver, Washington laid out the argument that MCRI violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.<br /><br />Washington argues Proposal 2 has made "second-class citizens" of blacks and Latinos. Michigan State University or Central Michigan University or any other state school of higher education can give special considerations to potential students based on their economic status, their military status or the names of their parents.<br /><br />But not their race. That´s not right, Washington says.<br /><br />"There are large numbers of Latinos and blacks scattered in school districts across this state and they are discriminated against just like the kids from Detroit," Washington said. "We should be honest about this. We have social problems. Our society has inequalities and we´ve had them for years. We need to deal with it."<br /><br />Many legal observers believe Washington is tilting at windmills in Cincinnati. This "political process" argument didn´t work for affirmative action defenders attempting to repeal California´s Prop. 209, an initiative functionally identical to MCRI, or for anyone else.<br /><br />Washington is keeping his head up. He said he believes at least two of the three judges were at least sympathetic to his arguments. It´s possible they agree that a majority of voters cannot take away rights of a minority in the United States, regardless of whether it was 58 percent of the voting population (like it was in Michigan) or not.<br /><br />Look at the facts. Since this "legalized discrimination" was enacted, the University of Michigan has seen a 27 percent drop in undergraduate admissions of blacks and Latinos and nearly a 33 percent drop in law school admissions. Wayne State University has 64 percent fewer blacks and Latinos in its medical school, according to Washington.<br /><br />"It´s like many years ago when James Meredith couldn´t get into the University of Mississippi because of open desegregation," Washington said. "Now it´s a more subtle version. Now, it´s accomplished through test scores, where you went to school, who your parents are. The results are the same. We just need a court order to let these programs resume."<br /><br />But Washington´s legal team has bounced this type of argument off the federal courts before in separate motions and hasn´t been able to get any traction. The courts at all levels have ultimately said (in the simplest form) that MCRI guarantees legal equality regardless of gender and race. So do the state and U.S. Constitution.<br /><br />If there´s a chance for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, which includes By Any Means Necessary, the ACLU and the NAACP, it´s this three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Two of the three judges — Martha Craig Daughtrey and Guy Cole — are two Bill Clinton appointees. The third, Julie Smith Gibbons, was appointed by George W. Bush.<br /><br />Clinton, however, also appointed the federal judge, David Lawson, who sided in favor of MCRI on March 18, 2008. And even if affirmative action supporters are successful, the decision can be reviewed by the full 14-member Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel has an 8-6 Republicanappointed majority.<br /><br />Michael Rosman, the lead attorney for the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public interest law firm in D.C., thinks its chances are "pretty slim."<br /><br />The appellate court will have to rule that the Michigan Constitution and the U.S. Constitution are in conflict, and toss MCRI into the trash. If it were to do that, the court would be taking the opposite road of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld California´s Prop 209.<br /><br />In that scenario, Rosman said it´s highly likely the U.S Supreme Court will want to take a look at this MCRI case, titled Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. The University of Michigan.<br /><br />Washington likes the case´s chances at the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy, universally considered to be the court´s swing vote, does not agree that the U.S. Constitution is color blind.<br /><br />"He recognizes that there are racial disparities in education and that government has a right to take that into account," Washington said.<br /><br />Rosman is not of the same mind. Does he think affirmative action defenders are bringing forth a flimsy case?<br /><br />"Flimsy is a strong word. I just don´t think it´s going to Rosman win," he said.<br /><br />Killing MCRI an ´uphill climb´<br /><br />In a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals, Rosman pointed out that in denying an earlier motion in the case, this same court said affirma- Cox tive action supporters "face an uphill climb" in "contending that the Equal Protection Clause compels what it presumptively prohibits."<br /><br />In other words, the 14th Amendment bans discrimination based on race and gender. MCRI reads that everybody Manderfield regardless of race, sex and ethnicity should be treated the same. Arguing that the two goals are different is difficult.<br /><br />If it can be done, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action would need to argue that MCRI is hurting, not helping, establish equal protections, Washington said Wayne State University Professor Robert Sedler.<br /><br />In the last 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court decisions has twice thrown out state laws singling out minorities as a demographic group under the cover of creating equal situations. This happened, Sedler said, in a 1969 fair housing case in Akron, Ohio, (Hunter v. Erickson) and a 1982 busing case from the state of Washington (Crawford v. Board of Education).<br /><br />Sedler declined to make a prediction on what the Sixth Circuit would do, but said he could see a scenario where MCRI could fall.<br /><br />Rosman disagrees. He said both cases Sedler quotes made it more difficult for minorities to obtain protection from discrimination through a political process of law making. In this case, Proposal 2 of 2006 makes it more difficult for minorities to obtain racial preferences through a political process of law making.<br /><br />To prove his point, Rosman quoted Lawson´s ruling.<br /><br />"Admission at elite universities is a zero-sum enterprise, and programs that prefer some students on the basis of race must do so necessarily at the expense of other applicants not of the preferred race.<br /><br />"The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something when applied to a person of another color," Lawson wrote.<br /><br />Cox leading the charge<br /><br />Technically, the University of Michigan is the defendant in the case, but Attorney General Mike Cox is riding herd for the defense in court. As it turns out, Cox is the only one of the five Republican gubernatorial candidates to have openly supported MCRI when it was put before the voters in 2006.<br /><br />Cox spokesman Nick DeLeeuw said that regardless of where the attorney general came down on Proposal 2 in 2006, there´s no political motivation here.<br /><br />More than 2.1 million Michigan voters legally voted to make MCRI a piece of the state´s Constitution. Cox views it as his role to protect the Constitution.<br /><br />DeLeeuw batted away any insinuation that Cox was riding herd on MCRI to bolster his conservative credentials with the conservative base in the months leading up the Republican gubernatorial primary next August.<br /><br />"It´s his job as the state´s top law enforcement officer," DeLeeuw said. "The people wanted Proposal 2, and when it´s challenged, the attorney general needs to step in and defend it."<br /><br />That may be true, but that doesn´t mean the rest of state government needs to follow. The Department of Civil Rights and the Governor´s Office are two that are not.<br /><br />Much of the court´s focus on MCRI has been over the black or Latino student whose admission into the University of Michigan hinges on whether extra admission points are given based on race, said Dan Levy, law and policy director of the state Civil Rights Department. The focus, he said, needs to shift to making sure entire university classes are adequately represented.<br /><br />Major corporations are hiring from diverse university campuses because they see a benefit from it. Likewise, if a university see a benefit in attracting more minorities into its student body, it shouldn´t be deterred from making its own decision, Levy said.<br /><br />"We believe that when you´re talking about those few students on the cusp, you´re ignoring the students who are choosing a university," he said. "The majority should not be the ones telling the minorities which rights they should have, and we don´t believe ´the majority´ should be making universities´ decisions. The universities should make the determination on its own."<br /><br />The Department of Civil Rights and its governing body, the state Civil Rights Commission, has been involved since California’s Connerly, former state Rep. Leon Drolet and Jennifer Gratz first started talking about bringing MCRI to Michigan in 2004. Gratz, who had been denied admission to the law school at the University of Michigan, was one of the two plaintiffs in Gratz v. Bollinger, the 2003 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that the school’s point system aiding minorities was unconstitutional. The body took a more active approach in late 2005 when Civil Rights commissioners began receiving complaints about how MCRI petition circulators were allegedly misleading folks in Detroit and elsewhere into signing the petition.<br /><br />The commission held several public hearings on the issue in 2006. They concluded Proposal 2 supporters had fraudulently collected signatures by telling registered voters the initiative permitted affirmative action when the opposite was true.<br /><br />As a result, The state Board of Canvassers tried to keep MCRI off the ballot, despite an order from the Michigan Court of Appeals, which then bypassed the board and ordered the secretary of state to put it on the ballot anyway.<br /><br />Likewise, when MCRI succeeded at the ballot box, affirmative action defenders asked the courts to keep the initiative from going into effect until they had exhausted all of their legal remedies. The courts, again, shot them down.<br /><br />But supporters are hoping this time will be different. They feel like this time it has to be different.<br /><br />The courts, once again, will need to come to the aid of the minority populations after being dealt a tough break by the majority. At this point, they have no other choice but to hope they hit a bull´s eye with their last arrow.<br /><br />"I think we´re going to win," Washington said. "I don´t have a crystal ball, but I believe we will prevail. … We can´t have universities that are a majority white. It makes no sense. It´s not fair. It´s not equality."<br /><br />by Kyle Melinn<br />from <a href="http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-3728-three-years-later-the-battle-continues-over-affirmative-action.html">CityPulse</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-1213840180352085212009-11-30T02:33:00.000-01:002009-11-30T02:34:18.356-01:00Octavio Solis, "Lydia"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SxM8yR1vg_I/AAAAAAAABBg/ktvVThvuFAU/s1600/46155245.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 336px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SxM8yR1vg_I/AAAAAAAABBg/ktvVThvuFAU/s400/46155245.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409734411882038258" /></a><br /><br />Fantastic play!<br /><br />"In reality, Octavio Solis mines a new vein"<br /><br />The family drama 'Lydia' is 'the kind of play that I said I would never write.'<br />Octavio Solis<br /><br />Playwright Octavio Solis has become an overnight sensation, and it took only 25 years. Long respected in theater and Latino arts circles, the writer is having breakthrough success with his play "Lydia."<br /><br />Set in El Paso in the 1970s, "Lydia" portrays the saga of the Flores family, whose teenage daughter, Ceci, has been disabled in a horrific accident. Into this household of troubled souls and buried secrets enters an undocumented caretaker who shares a mysterious connection with Ceci.<br /><br />With recent productions at Denver Center Theatre Company, Yale Repertory Theatre and Marin Theatre Company, the drama opens Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Juliette Carrillo. "Lydia" has also been submitted for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize and is a finalist for the 2009 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award.<br /><br />"Lydia" is a breakthrough and a departure for Solis, known for poetic, lyrical language in plays typically not tied to any one setting. The heightened language is still present in "Lydia" but so too is realism.<br /><br />"It's my first real true family play inside a house," the writer says during a recent visit from his Bay Area home. "This is one where everything is happening inside four walls and within a compressed period of time, often real time. I've written the kind of play that I said I would never write.<br /><br />"This is probably my most personal work," adds the soft-spoken playwright. "I felt compelled to write about a family in the realistic language that I grew up with."<br /><br />"Octavio Solis strikes a beautiful balance in writing from his head and his heart," says Bill Rauch, Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director, who has commissioned Solis to write an adaptation of Cervantes' "Don Quixote." "His work is smart and passionate."<br /><br />That combination of the emotional and the intellectual, the intimate and the dramatic, is what some feel gives "Lydia" its power. "It's a domestic drama, but the language and the theatrical idiom are anything but domestic -- the way the combination of Spanish and English in the play is both comforting and jarring; the shifts in tone and mode are exhilarating, and the mysteries of the story stay with you long after you've read or seen it," says James Bundy, dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre. "It's one of the most important plays of this decade."<br /><br />The writing bug<br /><br />Considering the stylistic divide between Solis' earlier works and the giants of American realism, it's easy to understand why the playwright might be puzzled by some of the response to "Lydia." And yet, writing intimately about a family's domestic life as well as the darker side of the American dream, Solis does share a thematic kinship with great U.S. dramatists of generations past.<br /><br />Opining about the play's Colorado premiere, Denver Post theater critic John Moore described "Lydia" as "very much the Latino cousin of 'Death of a Salesman.' " And actor David DeSantos, who has performed in Solis' "La Posada Mágica" at South Coast Repertory, seconds the analogy.<br /><br />"I can only compare Octavio Solis to a modern-day Arthur Miller," says DeSantos, currently acting at OSF. "His unflinching take on the human condition, as Miller embraced, is one of Octavio's strongest assets." In "Lydia," says DeSantos, Solis "found a story so dark and tragic. It is desperate and painful but layered with so much love."<br /><br />From an actor's point of view, another similarity is the psychological richness. "Octavio gives actors a road map to a truth that is terrifying and exhilarating in the same breath," DeSantos says. "In the same way that you open up Odets, Miller or Williams and find a treasure chest of layered honesty, when you open an Octavio Solis play, we actors have a raw, visceral experience."<br /><br />Yet even among those who have worked with Solis for years, there is disagreement over whether "Lydia" is a new type of play for the writer. To Carrillo, who also directed the Denver and Yale outings of the play, "Lydia" is less of a departure than a continuation.<br /><br />"It certainly brings in many of the themes he's been working with -- broken relationships, violence, secrets, passionate love, death," says Carrillo, who first worked with Solis in the late '90s, when she was running SCR's Hispanic Playwrights Project. "But what is profoundly special about this play is how close to the bone he is cutting. It comes from a very deep, personal well."<br /><br />That personal well is, in many respects, where "Lydia" is set; Solis grew up less than a mile from the Rio Grande, near El Paso. "So the border has always been a presence in my life and my psyche," he explains. "It looms large in most of my works that I set in Texas.<br /><br />"There will always be that dichotomy between the first world and the Third World, right there in our backyard. For it to be poignantly expressed as a body of water, a river, where I lived, just makes it more mysterious to me."<br /><br />Solis, 50, was born in El Paso to Mexican-born parents. He attended college in San Antonio and received an MFA in acting at the Dallas Theatre Centre, when Trinity University had its graduate program off site there. Fresh out of school, he was cast in a production of Eric Overmyer's "Native Speech" in Dallas. It proved a turning point. "Instead of thinking I wanted to act in plays like this," Solis says, "I started to think I wanted to write plays like this."<br /><br />Solis produced some experimental writing at a bar where he was then bartending -- when he wasn't teaching high school. That situation lasted until the late 1980s: "My wife made me quit those jobs and said, 'Look, we'll live on my income.' She's an attorney."<br /><br />In 1988-89, Solis was accepted into a workshop with playwright Maria Irene Fornes as well as South Coast Repertory's Hispanic Playwrights Project, then run by playwright Jose Cruz Gonzalez.<br /><br />Solis thus became part of a budding movement that would change American regional theater. The late 1980s saw the blossoming of multiculturalism: a proliferation of culturally and ethnically specific workshops, playwriting labs and other development initiatives, supported by government and private sources.<br /><br />"I'm lucky in the sense that I was a product of that," Solis says. "I think the artistic directors who embraced it all believed in it, and they had tremendous funding for it. But when the money dried up, it became very hard for the theaters to continue."<br /><br />A planned trilogy<br /><br />Sustained by personal and institutional sources, Solis has finally made it to the A-list of regional theater. His current commissions include Denver Center Theatre, SCR, Yale Rep, OSF and California Shakespeare Festival.<br /><br />"Don Quixote" will mark Solis' third play at OSF and the first since Rauch was appointed artistic director in 2006. "As a language-based theater, we embrace writers who use language in extraordinary, fresh and beautiful ways," says Rauch, formerly of L.A.'s Cornerstone Theater.<br /><br />Yale Rep will get the sequel to "Lydia," Part 2 of a projected trilogy, currently titled "Yolanda." The play takes up the story of Alvaro, one of the minor characters in "Lydia," 30 years later. Says Dean Bundy: "He's a good writer for the Rep because he has a distinctive voice and an adventurous aesthetic." And the third play of the trilogy might go to Denver.<br /><br />Yet Solis is not immune to the recession. His "La Posada Mágica," which has been staged as a holiday season event at SCR for the past 15 years, has been canceled for the first time.<br /><br />Still, Solis' star is rising fast. "In these hard times, I have to admit I'm doing well," he says. "I've always had a backup of five commissions. And most theaters have said, 'Write what you want to write,' which gives me the artistic freedom to explore. I have to count my blessings."<br /><br />By Jan BreslauerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-76838396435180863012009-11-25T22:39:00.003-01:002009-11-25T22:41:58.201-01:00Suspect charged with murder in slaying of gay teen in Puerto Rico<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sw3AbIgL5YI/AAAAAAAABBY/8ZUFq0HX4f4/s1600/story.jorge.steven.lopez.mercado.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 169px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Sw3AbIgL5YI/AAAAAAAABBY/8ZUFq0HX4f4/s400/story.jorge.steven.lopez.mercado.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408190299913315714" /></a><br />San Juan, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- The suspect in the brutal slaying of a gay teenager in Puerto Rico was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder and four other counts, the prosecutor in the case told CNN.<br /><br />Juan A. Martínez Matos was arrested late Monday in connection with the slaying of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, whose decapitated, dismembered and partially burned body was found Friday afternoon on a road in central Puerto Rico.<br /><br />In addition to murder, Martínez Matos was charged with three weapons violations and one count of hiding evidence, prosecutor Yaritza Carrasquillo said.<br /><br />Prosecutors are weighing whether to recommend that Martinez Matos be charged under federal hate crimes law, Carrasquillo said. That decision was not expected to come Wednesday.<br /><br />The U.S. gay community is asking authorities to investigate whether the slaying was a hate crime, said Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.<br /><br />"The brutality of the slaying and the fact that he was openly gay leads us to believe it was very possibly a hate crime," Serrano said Tuesday.<br /><br />Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, which means federal agencies have jurisdiction.<br /><br />The U.S. Attorney's Office, in consultation with local officials and other agencies, would determine whether the slaying will be prosecuted as a hate crime.<br /><br />"It's at a very preliminary stage," Lymarie Llovet, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital, said Tuesday. "There's the potential for a federal investigation."<br /><br />Martinez Matos, 26, was arrested late Monday at his home in the Mogote de Cayey neighborhood, said Wilson Porrata Mariani, another spokesman for the Guayama police district.<br /><br />Police impounded two cars and also are investigating a home in another neighborhood, Huertas del Barrio Beatriz de Cidra.<br /><br />Lopez Mercado's body was found on Puerto Rico Road 184 in another part of town, Barrio Guavate de Cayey, police said.<br /><br />Authorities are investigating whether the killing involved sex, Hector Agosto Rodriguez, police commander in the town of Guayama, told CNN affiliate WLII TV.<br /><br />In footage aired on Telemundo-Puerto Rico, Martinez Matos was asked by a reporter if he was gay, to which he replied no, and added, "(Lopez Mercado) tried to kill me."<br /><br />According to Telemundo and other local reports, Martinez Matos confessed to authorities that he picked Lopez Mercado up from the street, thinking that he was a woman.<br /><br />When he realized that Lopez Mercado was a man, Martinez Matos said he regressed to an incident when he was sexually assaulted during a prison term, Telemundo and local reports said.<br /><br />That's when a conflict started between the two, authorities said, leading to the teen's death.<br /><br />The slaying has reverberated through the gay and lesbian community in the United States, where supporters started a Facebook page called "Justice for Jorge Steven Lopez -- End Hate Crimes." The group demands an investigation by Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno and prosecution of the case under the federal hate crime law.<br /><br />The Federal Hate Crimes Law was enacted in 1969 to guard the rights of any U.S. citizen who is targeted because of race, color, religion or national origin, or because of an attempt to engage in one of six protected activities, such as voting, going to school or attending a public venue.<br /><br />President Obama signed into law last month the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which extends federal protection to illegal acts motivated by a person's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.<br /><br />If Martinez Matos is charged under the hate crimes provision, it is believed it would be the first such case under the latest addition to the law.<br /><br />Journalist Nuria Sebazco contributed to this report.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-82578872234129908562009-11-20T15:05:00.003-01:002009-11-20T15:07:22.229-01:00Gay Puerto Rican Teen Decapitated, Dismembered, and Burned<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SwRApClFrXI/AAAAAAAABBA/XhAzO2TBmjo/s1600/6a00d8341c730253ef0120a6a58e68970b-pi.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 321px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SwRApClFrXI/AAAAAAAABBA/XhAzO2TBmjo/s400/6a00d8341c730253ef0120a6a58e68970b-pi.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405516526562684274" /></a><br />From <a href="http://www.towleroad.com/2009/11/gay-puerto-rican-teen-decapitated-dismembered-and-burned.html">Towerload</a><br /><br />Over the weekend the brutalized body of gay teen Jorge Steven López Mercado was found by the side of a road in Puerto Rico. The police investigator suggested that he deserved what he got because of the "type of lifestyle" he was leading.<br /><br />Mercado According to an iReport by Chrisopher Pagan: "On November 14 the body of a gay 19 year old was found a few miles away from the town in which he was residing in called Caguas. He was a very well known person in the gay community of Puerto Rico, and very loved. He was found on the site of an isolated road in the city of Cayey, he was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered, both arms, both legs, and the torso. This has caused a huge reaction from the gay community here, but its a difficult situation. Never in the history of Puerto Rico has a murder been classified as a hate crime. Even though we have to follow federal mandates and laws, many of the laws in which are passed in the USA such as Obama’s new bill, do not always directly get practiced in Puerto Rico. The police agent that is handling this case said on a public televised statement that 'people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen'. As If the boy murdered Jorge Steven López was asking to get killed..."<br /><br />Jorge Here's a report on the murder (in Spanish) from PrimeraHora.com. Said activist Pedro Julio Serrano: "It is inconceivable that the investigating officer suggests that the victim deserved his fate, like a woman deserves rape for wearing a short skirt. We demand condemnation of this investigator and demand that Superintendente Figueroa Sancha replace him with someone capable of investigating this case without prejudice." (my translation, please suggest a better one if you can).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-91899792605897514702009-11-02T00:36:00.001-01:002009-11-02T00:36:43.832-01:00Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Su43QD4abCI/AAAAAAAABAQ/prsuibstTpc/s1600-h/115.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 241px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/Su43QD4abCI/AAAAAAAABAQ/prsuibstTpc/s400/115.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399313752323157026" /></a><br />Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap<br /><br />by Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center<br />Report Materials<br /><br /><br />Nearly nine-in-ten (89%) Latino young adults ages 16 to 25 say that a college education is important for success in life, yet only about half that number-48%-say that they themselves plan to get a college degree, according to a new national survey of 2,012 Latinos ages 16 and older by the Pew Hispanic Center conducted from Aug. 5 to Sept. 16, 2009.<br /><br />The biggest reason for the gap between the high value Latinos place on education and their more modest aspirations to finish college appears to come from financial pressure to support a family, the survey finds.<br /><br />Nearly three-quarters (74%) of all 16- to 25-year-old survey respondents who cut their education short during or right after high school say they did so because they had to support their family. Other reasons include poor English skills (cited by about half of respondents who cut short their education), a dislike of school and a feeling that they don't need more education for the careers they want (each cited by about four-in-ten respondents who cut their education short).<br /><br />Latino schooling in the U.S. has long been characterized by high dropout rates and low college completion rates. Both problems have moderated over time, but a persistent educational attainment gap remains between Hispanics and whites.<br /><br />When asked why Latinos on average do not do as well as other students in school, more respondents in the Pew Hispanic Center survey blame poor parenting and poor English skills than blame poor teachers. The explanation that Latino students don't work as hard as other students is cited by the fewest survey respondents; fewer than four-in-ten (38%) see that as a major reason for the achievement gap.<br /><br />This report was prepared for the Latino Children, Families, and Schooling National Conference sponsored jointly by the Education Writers Association, the Pew Hispanic Center and the National Panel on Latino Children and Schooling. The conference was held on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009 at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304686385786775057.post-71981992171800670682009-10-31T05:17:00.002-01:002009-10-31T05:18:56.912-01:00New Jersey State Police Seem to be Contradicting CNN Host Lou Dobbs' Account of a Gunfire Incident, ¡Qué lástima!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SuvWcP_hzKI/AAAAAAAABAI/nr0QPVVNHPU/s1600-h/loudobbs.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 276px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2wgw2sNW4CI/SuvWcP_hzKI/AAAAAAAABAI/nr0QPVVNHPU/s400/loudobbs.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398644359151340706" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />New Jersey state police seem to be contradicting CNN Host Lou Dobbs' account of a gunfire incident near his Sussex County, New Jersey, house.<br /><br />On Monday on his radio show, Dobbs stated that "my wife has now been and I have been shot at." The alleged incident, which Dobbs had reported to the New Jersey State Police, took place three weeks prior to the October 26 broadcast of the Lou Dobbs Show, and Dobbs told his listeners that it had "followed weeks and weeks of threatening phone calls." Dobbs' discussion of the incident during his radio show also included mention of both longtime critic and FOX host Geraldo Rivera and the immigrant advocacy organizations calling for his removal from CNN including the National Council of La Raza, America's Voice and other "ethnocentric interest groups."<br /><br />Without specifying who he suspects of making the alleged threats, he also said on his radio show that "They've threatened my wife, they've now fired a shot at my house while my wife was standing next to the car." Concluding with a call for "truth, justice and the American way," Dobbs cautioned "if anybody thinks that we're not engaged in the battle for the soul of this country right now, you're sorely mistaken." And during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, Dobbs spoke again about the gunfire incident, linking it to "threatening phone calls tied to the positions I've taken on illegal immigration."<br /><br />Interviews with the New Jersey State Police yielded a rather different assessment of the events described by Dobbs. In a phone interview conducted yesterday, Sgt. Stephen Jones, a NJ State Police spokesperson, chuckled out loud after he heard about Dobbs' account of the gunfire incident. Jones commented that he "wouldn't classify it [the gunfire incident] as very unusual." He also confirmed that there are hunters in the area, and stated that, "at this time of year hunter [shooting] complaints go up."<br /><br />He observed that in the ongoing police investigation sparked by Dobbs' complaint, "nothing has been determined [regarding] what the intended target for this bullet was." Nor did Jones confirm whether the shots near Dobbs' house appeared to be an accident or intentional.<br /><br />Another New Jersey State Police spokesperson, Sgt. Julian Castellanos, noted that "it's a wide open area and there are hunters in the area." Castellanos explained that the bullet had hit the house in vicinity of the attic; it "hit the vinyl siding and fell to the ground" without penetrating the vinyl, he said.<br /><br />While Lou Dobbs' wife, Debi Lee Segura, was standing outside the house at the time of the gunfire, the bullet did not come close to her; it "struck at the apex of the house, near the roof," and thus considerably higher than a standing person, Jones observed.<br /><br />Jones says he had not seen any mention of death threats in the reports about this incident. As Dobbs stated on his October 26 radio show, the CNN host had "decided not to report" "threatening phone calls" he says he has received.<br /><br />The New Jersey police made no mention of the immigration reform groups Dobbs discussed in connection with the incident.<br /><br />When asked to comment for this story, Dobbs disputed the New Jersey State Police's account, saying in an email that "there was no hunting season underway three weeks ago." However, an official at the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife Bureau of Law Enforcement confirmed in a phone interview that state hunting seasons were underway at the time of the gunfire incident three weeks ago.<br /><br />Asked what he thought of Dobbs' version of the gunfire incident, Sgt. Jones stated, "I'm really going to leave Lou Dobbs' assessment to himself."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com