New America Media

Hyper Local Ethnic Media Roundtable on H1N1 - San Deigo, CA - Wednesday, Dec. 16

2010-12-14T23:18:46Z

2009 H1N1 INFLUENZA VIRUS -- WHAT'S NEXT?

ARE NEW WAVES COMING AND IF SO, WHEN?

WHAT'S THE VACCINE SUPPLY?

WHAT'S THE HEALTH CARE IMPACT IN OUR COMMUNITIES?

WHY VACCINES ARE THE GIFT OF HEALTH FOR THIS SEASON

A ROUNDTABLE EXCHANGE WITH LOCAL EXPERTS AND FRONT LINE HEALTH PROVIDERS

When: Wednesday, Dec 16, 2009

11:00am – 1:00pm

(Lunch included)

Where: Embassy Suites, Santa Fe Room

601 Pacific Highway

San Diego, CA 92101

RSVP to:

Kay Leventhal: kleventhal@newamericamedia.org, or 415-503-4170

Pacquiao Defeats Clottey in Unanimous Decision

2010-03-14T06:15:00Z

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao
was a master at work Saturday night (Sunday, Manila time), scoring a unanimous victory over Ghanian Joshua Clottey to retain his World Boxing Organization [WBO] Welterweight title before 51,000 fans at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Pound-for-Pound King Pacquiao dominated the 12-round duel with an impressive display that underscored his status as the world's top fighter.

"I controlled the fight after the first round," Pacquiao said in his interview after the fight.

Pacquiao said Clottey was "very strong, very tough and never looked hurt."

On his sought-after bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr., Pacquiao said, "I want that fight because people want that fight."

Clottey said he didn’t feel Pacquiao's power but was bothered by the boxer's hand speed.

Photo credit: www.mannypacquiao.ph

S.F. March Highlights Indian Female Infanticide

2010-03-12T10:00:00Z

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Nearly one hundred people marched from this city’s fabled Golden Gate Park to the Indian Consulate on Mar. 6, ahead of International Women’s Day, to highlight the issue of female infanticide in India.

Similar rallies, titled “The Walk for India’s Missing Girls,” were held in India on the same day in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jamshedpur and Pondi. The walk was also held in Kuwait and Australia.

In related news, the Rajya Sabha in India passed historic legislation reserving one-third of all seats for women in the national parliament (see separate story).

Nyna Pais-Caputi, a San Francisco Bay Area resident who spearheaded the walk in various cities, primarily through online social networking sites, told India-West that throughout the world, 2,500 women marched together on Mar. 6.

“My goal is to eventually have every city in India participate in this walk until India decides to start enforcing its laws,” said Pais-Caputi. “We need to create a global movement to bring the world’s attention to this horrific situation.”

Pais-Caputi and her husband Gino are creating the documentary “Petals in the Dust,” to highlight the plight of girl babies in India. The filmmakers estimate that more than ten million girls in India have been lost to infanticide or killed shortly after their birth.

Although abortion is legal in India, the country outlawed sex-selective abortions in 1994. Clinics across the country, however, still continue to perform such abortions.

In a cover story on “Gendercide” in this week’s issue of the Economist, the news magazine noted a marked rise in the phenomenon since 1949. The states of Punjab and Haryana have the worst male to female ratio, reported the Economist, with 125 boys for every 100 girls.

Daman and Diu, in western India, has the lowest sex ratio, with 591 women for every 1,000 men, said Pais-Caputi.

A 2007 India Today article reported that even prosperous areas of Delhi such as Defence Colony and Haus Khas have low sex ratios, averaging 890 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Ultrasound machines — which can be used to determine the sex of a child — must be registered with the Indian government, but about 10,000 such machines across the country are still used without registration.

Susmita Thomas, the Indian consul general in San Francisco, told India-West after the rally that the Indian government was very aware of the issue, and has taken a number of steps to prevent such activity, including training community health workers to spot clinics that offer sex-selective abortions, and banning the use of ultrasound machines for sex selection.

“The government has been working to bring about a change in cultural and social norms,” said Thomas, adding that the basic issue is economic stability.

“When girls are better educated, families are less likely to see them as a burden,” she said, noting that in states such as Kerala, where education and literacy is high, there are appreciably fewer female deaths.

Speaking at the rally was Angelique Guarneri, 18, from Long Beach, Calif., whose birth mother allegedly wanted to abort her. Guarneri’s mother came to the U.S. from India to have the abortion but was advised against it by a sidewalk counselor in front of a clinic, who eventually found adoptive parents for the newborn. Guarneri’s birth mother already had two daughters, and became widowed shortly after Guarneri’s conception.

“Growing up, I used to wonder who my mom was, and why she wanted to kill me,” Guarneri told India-West, adding however, that she could not fully comprehend her birth mother’s situation until she was much older.

The graduating senior, who hopes to attend Oral Roberts University this fall and study business administration, said she hoped to return to India someday and find her birth mother.

“I have one photo of her. A lot of people say she looks just like me,” said the effusive Guarneri.

Also attending the rally was Roopa Reddy of Pleasanton, Calif., who helms the Providing Possibilities Foundation, which raises funds for Aarti Home in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh. Reddy told India-West her aim was to get more children involved in the issue.

The Aarti Home currently cares for 80 girls who have been abandoned or signed over to its care; it has placed a large cement crib at its gates for parents who want to anonymously leave their children there. BBC producer Ashok Prasad featured the Aarti Home in his 2007 documentary “India’s Missing Girls.”

Maidere Sorhondo, who interned at Aarti Home last summer through Stanford University, told India-West she was most inspired by Jyoti, a little girl who may be seven or eight years old, and came to Aarti Home four years ago, after developing an STD from her father’s repeated sexual abuse.

“She’s just a little kid, and so much has happened to her, but she has such a passion for life and so much love,” said Sorhondo, noting that Jyoti followed her around like a little puppy during her stay at Aarti Home.

It is unclear whether Jyoti will survive, added Sorhondo, noting that the girl suffers from extensive head injuries which will require surgery.

A trailer of Pais-Caputi’s film “Petals in the Dust” will be screened at UC Berkeley April 7, and can also be viewed at www.petalsinthedust.com. The filmmakers are currently seeking funding to finish the documentary.

CA Educators Question National Standards Plan

2010-03-12T10:00:00Z

While health care reform and recession economics have dominated the headlines on domestic policy issues, education finally has come into the spotlight, as the president and state officials have focused on creating a uniform set of education standards that would be applied to public school students throughout the country.

Pres. Barack Obama announced recently his plan to require states to implement new standards in order to be eligible for federal Title 1 funding, which is targeted to schools with poor students. And Wednesday, a commission of educators convened by 48 states released its proposed standards for K-12 students in math and English.

But not everyone agrees that creating a set of national standards in math and English proficiency is the best—or only—way to raise achievement for kindergarteners through 12th graders. After all, the No Child Left Behind Act set achievement levels that many states rebelled against as unfunded mandates and unrealistic goals for many low-achieving students.

Some experts are concerned, too, that the very low-income students who are the intended beneficiaries of such an approach would instead be harmed.

“I think this is a wonderful thing to aspire to for all students, but until we provide the resources to these students, it will continue to punish them,” said Patricia Gandara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. “It’s not an anti-standards thing. But we have to weigh who’s paying the costs when we up the standards and up the requirements and don’t provide the commensurate support and the kids don’t get a diploma. Who pays that cost?”

Many schools depend on Title 1 funds to help their neediest students. This year those funds totaled $14.5 billion. Under Obama’s proposal, states would have to implement so-called college and career ready standards by 2014. States would have the option of developing their own standards.

Tying Title 1 money to educational standards is not a new idea, said Mike Cohen, president of the non-profit education reform group Achieve. Achieve has been involved in developing common educational standards in partnership with the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State Schools Officers.

“Since 1994, the federal government has required states to adopt standards to get Title 1 money,” Cohen said. “What is new is that the standards have to be more rigorous so that students are actually prepared for something after high school.”

Cohen said that the purpose of “college and career ready” standards is to provide academic skills in math and English that students will need in order to get well-paying jobs with advancement potential and that require some advanced training.

“The academic skills necessary to get into those kinds of good jobs, whether they require an apprenticeship, training, or a two-year degree … are the same skills needed to get into college level work,” said Cohen.

Creating higher educational standards for U.S. schools has always been linked to a desire to be more competitive internationally, said Ling Chi Wang, UC Berkeley emeritus professor.

In his State of the Union speech, for example, Obama tied the idea of stronger standards to the need to make American schools competitive with the rest of the world, he said.

“More than half of the math PhDs each year [in the United States] are foreign students,” Wang said. “When you go to these countries and you look at their elementary and high school curriculum, they do their algebra and geometry a lot earlier than we do. We do it in high school; they do it in junior high. Then they take analytical geometry and calculus in high school.”

But the focus on standards misses some basic challenges that schools must address, says Gandara. “We keep fiddling around the edges instead of the central problem: that too many low-income students of color do not have access to what they need. You can raise the standards as much as you want, but if you aren’t providing the resources to kids to meet those standards, it won’t make any difference.”

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, a UC Berkeley professor who researches how culture and race influence African-American student achievement, is similarly wary of a discussion of standards without an accompanying discussion of how to help children meet those standards.

“In general, the push for standards has not worked really well. No Child Left Behind is organized around this idea: that if you put a set of standards in place, that schools will rise to that challenge,” she said. “One of the problematic assumptions here is that schools and teachers know what to do, but the right incentive hasn’t been found.”

Suad Nasir notes that states adjusted their testing standards in order to meet No Child Left Behind achievement levels in large measure because “schools didn’t have the resources to help kids meet those standards.”

Over the next few months, Obama and Congress will be revising No Child Left Behind to reflect new education policies, and Obama’s proposal for college and career standards would be one major part of the new plan.

Gandara and Suad Nasir are hopeful that his plan will include a real discussion about how to ensure that historically marginalized students, including low-income Latino and African-American children, can be given the opportunity to better meet these standards.

“My hope is that you create high standards and then you support people in reaching those standards, which means an influx of resources into those schools, and a recognition that urban schools [with low-income students] are bearing more burden financially,” said Suad Nasir. “They are less well funded, and they have more on their plate to do. There would have to be some recognition of that and some righting of that imbalance.”

Related Articles:

WHO ASKED US?—Young People on Budget Cuts and Their Futures

Californians Demand: 'Educate the State'

Arabs Organize to Get Counted in Census

2010-03-11T08:35:00Z

A custom designed T-Shirt
to support the organizing campaign. SAN FRANCISCO — A coalition of Arab-American cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area have launched a grassroots organizing campaign designed to send a clear message to Washington: that they, along with every other Arab in America, are in fact Arab, and not white.

At issue is the format of the 2010 Census form, which has boxes for more than a dozen different racial categories but no racial or ethnic category for people of Arab descent.

In response, community activists have launched a grassroots canvassing campaign to encourage Arabs living throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to complete the 2010 Census by checking the “other” box in Section 9 and write in “Arab.”

The drive was launched at an organizing meeting last Sunday that brought together representatives and volunteers from local Arab social service and cultural organizations.

Loubna Qutami, a coordinator with the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC), one of the organizations behind the campaign, said for far too long, Arabs have been classified as “other,” “Caucasian,” or “white.”

“We don’t want to be subsumed under the category of white,” Qutami said. Arabs “don’t identify as white, and don’t identify as black either,” she added. “We’re still so misunderstood.”

"There is this idea that Arabs are refugees or new immigrants because we’re invisible," she added. "There’s a distortion in our identity, that we’re camel riders, nomads, when in fact Yemenis were part of the labor movement with Cesar Chavez.”

Qutami said that there is also a “hyper visibility - that we’re terrorists, and that’s when people want to know we’re Arab,” she said. “We need to have a voice.”

She argued that the time is now for Arabs to mobilize as a community, and hopes that these efforts will lead to establishing an “Arab” box to check-off for the 2020 Census.

Undercounting Arabs

According to the 2000 Census, the number of Arabs living in the United States was 1.25 million, a figure that many involved in this initiative believe is inaccurate, since Arabs traditionally have larger families than other ethnic groups in the United States. The Arab American Institute estimates the national population to be more than 3.5 million. Community activists say both numbers are too low.

One reason for the undercount, Qutami said, is that without a box to check Arabs write in a variety of terms - for example, Middle-Eastern, Arab-American or Palestinian -- on the Census questionnaire, and the numbers get stratified.

Another organizer, Lily Haskell, who is of Moroccan descent and is with the Arab Resource and Organizing Committee (AROC), echoed Qutami’s views.

Ramsey El-Qare, campaign volunteer reaching
out to store owner Samaan Azar
and his wife, Ph: Suzanne Manneh She said only by identifying as Arab on the Census will legislators know how many Arabs are actually in their constituency. Also, in certain parts of San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, where new immigrant Arab communities have settled, having such Census data will help ensure that those areas have translators in vital settings like in hospitals to accommodate those in need.

That is exactly why community organizers must canvass neighborhoods on foot to convey this to other Arabs, explained Rama Kased, a coordinator with the Arab Youth Organization (AYO).

Canvassing on Foot

“Canvassing is the oldest way of doing outreach— it was done before Facebook and texting," Kased said, “this is how you can build off of what they are telling you, it’s really personal and the person feels like their voice counts.” That, she added, was how community organizers and volunteers can connect with and empower other Arabs.

Kased also said the canvassers are reassuring everyone by pointing out that, “we’re doing this for our own community, to unify our community; we’re not doing this for the government.”

That same afternoon, 20 volunteers in 7 groups of 2-3 reached out to 60 Arab-owned liquor stores, markets, delis, cafes, and restaurants in various districts of San Francisco.

Organizers say that this is the first of several planned outreach and awareness days, where they plan to cover other parts of the Bay Area with Arab communities, such as the East Bay, Peninsula, and South Bay.

Similar efforts are also underway in Arab communities throughout the United States like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago. Town hall meetings are being organized and Arab newspapers are writing short, "news you can use" articles that explain how to fill out the Census questionnaire.

Canvassers were wearing T-shirts depicting an Arab woman in a kuffiyeh and the U.S. Census form. They brought large posters that student artists designed, which outlined the need to complete the Census and write-in Arab. They hung them in business windows with each owner’s permission. They also supplied each business informational postcards in Arabic and English about how to fill out the Census, to leave on their counters, in addition to pamphlets outlining social and cultural services available to Arabs in the Bay Area.

Unfamiliar with the Census

Several business owners they encountered were unfamiliar with the Census or its importance, and said many Arabs have always felt left out of the process and kept uninformed.

Arabs, like Samaan Azar, a mini-market owner on 16th and Mission, was one of them. When Ramsey El-Qare and Homa Nader - campaign volunteers representing the ACCC - explained the Census to him, Azar was disappointed. Over the years, he said, he has always had to justify his racial and ethnic identity because there was never a place for him. Azar said he was eager to share the information with all of his other Arab friends and family in the United States.

“We need to be recognized for who we are,” he told the group of canvassers before him.

A few blocks south, Maher Assad, another store owner shared Azar’s concerns.

“This is so frustrating, we are never counted in anything,” he said. “But doing this, these are baby steps, it’s a great way to start,” he said.

But the canvassers encountered some business owners who did not welcome their initiative.

Lubna Morrar, a campaign volunteer representing AROC, said that one business owner she spoke to had been living in the United States for twenty years. “He told me that he wasn’t going to fill out the Census, he didn’t care and he didn’t see the relevance,” said Morrar.

But, she added that this canvassing experience helped several other uninformed Arabs realize the importance of filling out the Census and filling in Arab, anyway.

She said that one well-known restaurant owner who had been in the United States for nearly 30 years was not responsive at first. "But then I asked him if he would identify as 'white,' since we’re usually lumped in with 'white,' or 'white-other,'” she said.

“‘No way, I am not white, we are not white, we are not anything except Arab, and if this is what we have to do, then I support it,'" she recounted.

Related Articles:

Stand Up and Get Counted

Counting Migrants on Farms a Challenge to Census

Lorenzo Baca: 'Veteran of Government Oppression' Endorses Census

New Cartel War Erupts

2010-03-07T21:05:00Z

A long-simmering conflict between drug cartels exploded into violence in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas bordering Texas last week. Shoot-outs, explosions, kidnappings and reports of large convoys with armed men freely roaming streets rattled a broad swath of the state, especially in the area stretching from Reynosa south to Matamoros known as the “Little Border.”

By Friday, February 26, more than 16 people were dead and 11 injured, according to Mexican and US officials. However, based on residents’ accounts of scores of victims, it’s likely the official figures are low. Amid an atmosphere of local media blackout, isolation and fear, false stories spread about high officials kidnapped and killed.

On Wednesday, February 24, the US Consulate in Matamoros issued a travel advisory for US citizens in and around Reynosa. Further, the US government announced the temporary closure of the Reynosa Consular Agency until additional notice. To the south, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia cautioned US residents who did not have urgent business about crossing into neighboring Matamoros. “It’s best not to go,” Garcia said.

Last week’s violence hampered commerce, border crossings, school attendance and other routine activities in Reynosa, Valle Hermosa, Miguel Aleman, San Fernando, Matamoros, and other cities. By week’s end, the state education department acknowledged that school attendance had dropped by 60 percent in several cities.

Panic spread to the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, where schools were emptied by worried parents and businesses shuttered by frightened owners fearing armed encounters. Jaime Rodriguez Inurrigarro, Tamaulipas state attorney general, later denied that gun fights had broken out in the capital city.

Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores appealed on the population to ignore Internet-spread rumors he insisted had caused “a lot of damage in Tamaulipas” in recent days.

A primary gubernatorial candidate for the National Action Party, Mexican Senator Jose Julian Sacramento, had a different take on the situation.

“Tamaulipas is at war, and if there is no coordination between state and local governments, then the federal government will have a hard time waging a frontal attack on organized crime,” Sacramento said.

Although clashes were reported between Mexican soldiers and suspected cartel gunmen, a good deal of the violence was linked to a conflict between the long-dominant Gulf Cartel and its former armed wing, Los Zetas.

Similar in some ways to an internal corporate power struggle —in this instance over the control of a vast enterprise known as “The Company”—tensions between the two groups have been escalating for more than one year. Besides illegal drug dealing, human trafficking, product piracy, oil diversions and other lucrative activities are up for grabs.

Currently, US authorities are seeking the arrests and extraditions of individuals associated with the leadership of “The Company.”

In the lead-up to this week’s widespread fighting, preliminary skirmishes in which civilian vehicles were commandeered to use as street barricades, broke out February 8 and 19 in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, respectively.

The violence could mean a new round of bad times for Nuevo Laredo, which has been relatively quiet in the past few years since an underworld pact largely halted a war that earlier devastated the city. In an unusual move, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramon Garza Barrios asked Roman Catholic Bishop Gustavo Rodriguez Vega for assistance in calming the nerves of the local population.

Last week’s violent showdown was practically announced, when the Gulf Cartel, La Familia and other smaller cartels unveiled narco-banners in several Mexican states earlier this month announcing an alliance against Los Zetas. Presumably auth-ored by Los Zetas, narco-banners posted in Tamapaulipas and four other states this week sarcastically challenged the purported alliance.

Other actors may be part of the latest fray, too. In other presumed Zetas’ banners posted in 26 cities across Mexico last February 11, the authors blamed alleged Sinaloa Cartel leader “Chapo” Guzman for recent atrocities in Ciudad Juarez and Torreon. The messages also accused Mexico’s federal government of protecting Guzman.

As last week’s fighting unfolded, reports surfaced that members of Michoacan’s La Familia drug cartel were sent to Tamaulipas to reinforce their allies in the Gulf Cartel.

In Tamaulipas, the consequences of years of press intimidation by organized crime and government officials, the murders of reporters, official inaction in prosecuting attacks against journalists and media self-censorship were evident this week as local residents had little solid information from local news sources about what was happening on the street. Conversely, Mexican national and US border news outlets provided better information about the local situation.

But the big news development came from civil society. For better or worse, Tamaul-ipas residents turned to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. A writer on Twitter complained the circumstances in his hometown were almost like Somalia.

The websites of national media organizations quickly became forums for writers claiming to be from Tama-ulipas. Many messages harshly criticized government officials for downplaying conditions on the ground, and some even provided details of the emerging situation.

Posting on the La Jornada website, Manuel Garcia credited social media for keeping the population of Reynosa informed.

Garcia wrote: “Hasn’t (Reynosa’s mayor) ever seen the vehicles that drive in broad daylight with CDG (Gulf Cartel) or XX initials? The checkpoints that these men install at the entrances and exits to the city? The pickups with armed men, sometimes escorted by the municipal police?”

On El Universal’s site, a woman identifying herself as Martha from Tamaulipas wrote that the shooting had spread to the coastal area of Tampico-Madero.

The latest outbreak of violence coincided with the February 25 sentencing of former Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen on drug trafficking charges in a Texas federal court. Observers were surprised by Cardenas’s 25-year sentence, which was considered relatively light in view of the charges against the defendant. Important Texas media outlets blasted the decision of Judge Hilda Tagle to bar the public from the proceedings and permanently seal the trial records.

Like violence-torn Chihuahua to the north, the narco-war in Tamaulipas occurs in a state election year for governor and other officials. Another important parallel could be drawn between the situation in Tamaulipas and the one in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. In both instances, major incidents of “spill-over” violence have yet to materialize on the US side. Several Texas law enforcement agencies reportedly mobilized their forces this week to monitor any potential threats to US territory.

In response to the Tamaulipas trouble, the Mexican navy dispatched marines to hot spots like Reynosa. As in the states of Guerrero and Morelos far to the south, the marines are increasingly used to carry out tasks formerly the domain of the army.

The growing tend of employing navy personnel as the favored front-line fighters in the drug war was reinforced this week with the appointment of Captain Hector Garcia Aguirre as the new head of the federal attorney general’s office (PGR) in Ciudad Juarez. A lawyer by training and a veteran of previous civilian law enforcement functions, Garcia was sworn in at a February 26 ceremony attended by former senator and current PGR official Francisco Javier Molina Ruiz in Ciudad Juarez.

Coming at a time when the Calderon administration has pledged to invest major resources in restoring order to Ciudad Juarez, the Tamaulipas violence represents a serious challenge to the Mexican state. Indeed, given the potential of the fighting to rapidly expand and engulf other states, the Calderon administration once again faces the prospect of managing simultaneous damage control from a shifting, multi-front war.

Related Articles:

Juarez Citizens Fed Up With Calderon

Victims of Mexico's Drug War Getting Younger

Sinaloa: Living Under the Law of the Narco Lords

War on Drugs or War on Mexicans?

Shock Factors: Youth Reflect on Quakes Near and Far

2010-03-07T21:00:00Z

Editor's Note: After catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Chili in less than two months, Bay Area youth reflect on their preparedness for a natural disaster and how it would affect their families.

We’re Not Prepared

My stepfather works in construction, so I’d like to believe our house wouldn’t collapse if an earthquake strikes the Bay Area. During most of my childhood, my stepfather and mother spent so much money tearing down and rebuilding different sections of our old house. However, whenever a door is slammed by a family member or by the wind, you can almost hear our whole house shake.

A lot of people live in our home because we rent out rooms, so I’m not sure if we’re all prepared for an earthquake. The only preparation we have is the knowledge of where the doors are and the basic idea to take shelter underneath a table. We don’t have a shelter behind or underneath our house. We haven’t stored food for earthquakes; we only buy what we will eat that week when we go to the supermarket.

If our house collapsed, my family and I would be homeless because we don’t have money saved in the bank for emergencies. At least, I don’t know of any such money.

I know that being on the ground is better in the situation of an earthquake because the further up from sea level you are, the more likely you are to be affected by the shake, I think. So I wouldn’t really be afraid unless I lived somewhere like San Francisco or the Oakland Hills.

Still, if an earthquake happened tomorrow, I would be most scared of losing the home my mother worked so hard to obtain. Along with our home are so many childhood memories.

-- Oscar Sevellon, 17

Awake For The Quake

I think that we are overdue to get hit with a big quake, like the one in 1989. It scares me sometimes because I hate unexpected things. With climate change, the earth shifting, and all these natural disasters, I feel the earth is trying to show us that something is wrong.

My family and I are not prepared for the big earthquake because I am pregnant and I don’t want to think about the possibility of anything negative that might happen sometime soon. I don’t want to think about what would happen if an earthquake hit and how it might affect my family.

I’ve been in denial about earthquakes for a long time and I know I need to get ready. The best way to prepare for an earthquake is get together all the thing you might need, like bat tiers, fire, can or dried food, and lots of water. You should have a bag of basic things for each person in your family---things you can’t live without, like medications and water.

I don’t think that my community is ready for an earthquake at all. I think that my community would start looting so people could provide for their family. I don’t think that is a necessarily a bad thing--I would do loot if an earthquake happened and I wasn’t prepared.

If we had a earthquake tomorrow, I would be most afraid of losing my son or getting split up from my man because I know he would hold it down for us---but we would all have to be together.

--Valerie Klinker, 19

Stick to Kool-Aid and Canned Foods

It’s crazy how all these natural disasters are happening back-to-back across the world.

Last year, my sister decided to prepare an emergency duffle bag for everyone in my family. Each bag contains flashlights, lighters, and a first aid kit. To prepare for a potential earthquake, buy canned foods, Kool-Aid, oatmeal—foods that don’t spoil for a long time. I have no idea if my community is prepared for a natural disaster. If an earthquake happened tomorrow, I pray that everyone would be okay. I just had a dream about my sister and me taking a trip to Target to stock up on emergency kit things, so earthquakes have been on my mind.

--Angelica Arreola, 19

Not Prepared? Visit The Dollar Store!

First off, I just want to pay my respects to all the people in Haiti and Chile. I am so sorry for your losses.

In California, an earthquake could occur at any moment. This scares me, but it’s not something I constantly think about. The only time I’ve heard people in my neighborhood prepare for an earthquake is at school. But at school, we were more afraid of a potential bullet rather than a potential natural disaster. We could visualize someone shooting--we’ve seen it before--but it’s hard to imagine sidewalks cracking.

A person can prepare for an earthquake with survival techniques and drills, but when the earthquake actually happens, panic may set in and who knows if you’ll be able to protect yourself in the ways you prepared?

I’m not sure if I’m prepared for an earthquake. I guess it’ll depend on the magnitude of the earthquake. As far as food and water, I’m prepared because my mom has a special storage of supplies like canned food, bottled water, flashlights, blankets, tissues, and a first aid kit.

If you’re on a small budget and don’t think you have enough cash to store up for a natural disaster, buy certain supplies from the 99 cent store. All you need is water, sardines, peanut butter, bread, jelly, and canned peaches. Some baby food taste good, as well.

People are more worried about things that are happening in their lives today rather than what might happen in the future. I’m afraid of what it would be like to be stuck in an earthquake’s aftermath. I can’t imagine being stranded for days, being stuck under debris, calling for help. I never want to feel helpless and hopeless.

-- Sean Shavers, 19

First The Recession, Next An Earthquake?

If an earthquake happens in San Francisco, everything will be all bad. First off, the city doesn’t have any money, so how would we be able to fix all the damage? Plus, think about all the people who would die in a big earthquake.

My family is not prepared for an earthquake, but I will help them get prepared ‘cause it’s very important. We should get food, water and candles. We could lose everything in an earthquake.

It feels like my community is not even trippin’ off a potential earthquake ‘cause I don't see anyone here getting ready for one. I called a few people, and most people I talk to don't even know that an earthquake is supposed to hit us. The last earthquake that hit us was 20 years ago. It was ugly because the Bay Bridge collapsed [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFwJR04qBys]]. I hope the bridge doesn’t break again, but if it does, I don’t want to be on the bridge because I can’t swim.

If an earthquake hits tomorrow, I’ll be most afraid of losing somebody close to me, like my mom, brothers and even my dad. Other than that, I’m not really trippin’ off it.

-- Jaquan Rushin, 20

Apathy Over Earthquake Prep

I’ve heard countless warnings from my friends to check www.72hours.org for tips on how to prepare for the inevitable earthquake. Yet these precautionary warnings have fallen on deaf ears. Even though we live near the epicenter of a potential quake, we’re not really listening to these warnings.

I am less prepared than I should be. I barely have money to enjoy some frivolous and recreational fun yet alone to spend on preparatory emergency measures. Like many other young people scrapped for cash, I’m apathetic towards saving for the future, and I usually spend money for the now.

I know nature will strike at the most inopportune moment. Should disaster strike tomorrow or sometime soon, I won’t be more prepared. Like I said, I’m apathetic about preparing for an earthquake.

-- Walter Lopez, 22

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Former ICE Informant Faces Deportation

2010-03-04T11:11:37Z

NEW YORK— Emilio Maya, an Argentine immigrant and resident of Saugerties, in New York’s Hudson Valley, will have deportation hearings every three months until Feb. 8, 2011, his assigned date to leave the country, reports El Diario La Prensa.

The decision came from a ruling yesterday. Maya along with his sister, Analía Maya, worked as confidential informants for ICE in exchange for obtaining legal documents. But at the hearing, authorities said that Maya’s collaboration with ICE was irrelevant. According to the news report, one official told Maya. “I do not care what you did in the past with ICE, or what they promised you.”

Originally, Maya had to return to Argentina on March 1, but with efforts from Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-NY, he won a one-year extension to his deportation order. Maya’s sister has a scheduled immigration court hearing on Friday, March 5.

2010 Ethnic Elders Newsbeat Fellowship - Fri-Sat Feb. 26-27

2010-03-04T10:53:40Z

New America Media's 2010 Ethnic Elders Newsbeat Fellowship, sponsored by The Atlantic Philanthropies, is supporting ethnic media journalists to research and write a major article or series on various aspects of how today's aging demographics in America are affecting ethnic elders, as well as their families and communities. Each story or series will be published or broadcast in the fellows’ respective ethnic media outlets, and selected stories will be published on NAM’s website.

In addition, NAM Ethnic Elders Fellows will participate in a two-day workshop hosted by the University of California in Washington, D.C., Feb. 26-27, where they will meet leading experts and advocates in aging and veteran reporters on the generations beat.

Jazz Favorites of Paula West

2010-03-03T17:00:00Z

Editor's Note: When it comes to legendary African American entertainers, one thinks of luminaries like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, or Nina Simone. But renowned jazz vocalist Paula West has her own private favorites, some of whom are not household names.

She is appearing at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco now until March 14th.

MP3

Related Links

Paula West Online

The Rrazz Room

Celebrating the Best in Bay Area Jazz

New America Now is now available as a podcast through KALW and National Public Radio, so you can listen to the show on your MP3 player. Click here to subscribe.

41,000 Filipino WWII Vets File for Compensation

2010-03-01T18:17:09Z

Editor's Note: This story, which originally appeared in the Philipine News, was produced as part of NAM's Stimulus Watch coverage and was funded with a grant from the Open Society Institute. It is the first in a two-part series. The second part, on delays in paying the claims, will run tomorrow.

Alberto Bacani, 99, became the first veteran compensated when he
received a $15,000 check from (ret.) Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba.WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It felt like winning the lottery, mused Alberto Bacani, 99. Two months after the economic stimulus package became law in February 2009, he got a check for $15,000, making him the first veteran to be compensated for his service in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.

“It was the day before Bataan Day,” recalled the Japanese POW during World War II.

He got an invitation to attend an April 8, 2009, ceremony commemorating the Bataan Death March of 1942, during which the Japanese Imperial Army beat and tortured thousands of Filipino and American troops who had surrendered after months of fighting in the Bataan peninsula north of Manila. Bacani came to the United States in 1976, working initially as a bookkeeper in a travel agency; prior to retirement, he was a librarian at the Environmental Protection Agency office in Virginia.

“They told me I have been chosen to be given the first check because all my records were complete,” he narrated from a sharp memory that remembered every detail. “I made sure I wore a nice suit.”

Before a small crowd of Philippine embassy officials, community leaders and fellow veterans, he received a check from (ret.) Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, who represented Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. No member of his family could attend the ceremony at the Chancery in Washington: His children were at work and his wife Saturnina was in a hospital.

Fellow veterans Celestino Almeda, 92, and Franco Arcebal, 86, aren’t as lucky as Bacani, a dignified-looking man who is partially deaf but remains cheerful in his advancing age. Like Bacani, they promptly filed their payment claims shortly after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into law on February 13, 2009. Last month, Almeda, who served in the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East from 1941 to 1946, received a denial letter from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“They told me not to contact the VA. That if they need something, they will contact me,” he said quoting from the letter. The VA did contact him a week later to let him know his document is incomplete and that the VA needed Form E23, or a certificate of discharge from the Philippine Army.

“I called my granddaughter in the Philippines to follow up with the Army,” he told this reporter, speaking with a slightly muffled voice. He said he is suffering from pneumonia and walks around with an oxygen tube to help him breathe easier.

How the Filipino veterans’ equity intersected with the biggest bailout package since the Great Depression - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA -- is a story that is as inspiring as it is baffling. Hearing it told by the veterans today makes for invaluable oral history.

The struggle for recognition spans six decades, beginning in the aftermath of World War II. In 1946, President Harry Truman signed the Rescission Act and erased everything that the Filipino veterans hoped to gain for themselves and their families. It eliminated all the benefits the U.S. government had promised the Filipinos who volunteered to fight under the Commonwealth Army of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Filipino recruits - numbering anywhere from 200,000 to 470,000 -- were promised a bundle of incentives, including U.S. citizenship.

The VA has denied 92-year-old Celestino Almeda's claim for
compensation.He is pictured here with House Speaker Nancy PelosiWhat this means, according to Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI)., is that the rescission law “denies Filipino veterans access to health care and pension benefits.” The law (also known as Section 107 Article 38 of the U.S. Code) also limits service-connected disability and death compensation to 50 percent of what is being received by U.S. veterans.

What turned out to be particularly degrading is that the law withheld recognition for the veterans’ combat service. It dismissed their sacrifices, their torture at the hands of the Japanese as if they never happened. Turning them into non-entities deepened the humiliation for the veterans who wanted nothing more than to be treated with respect. The law states that the combat service performed by the Filipinos was “not deemed to have been active military, naval, or air service.” As a result, Filipino soldiers under the Commonwealth forces were not entitled to any “rights, privileges or benefits.”

Truly a “dark chapter in history,” conceded (ret.) Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, chief of the Philippine Embassy’s Office of Veterans Affairs.

Advocates in Training

In the 1980s to 1990s, Filipino-American veterans began to aggressively organize with the support of the community. They marched on Congress, held meetings with lawmakers and spoke up in congressional hearings. Franco Arcebal was briefly jailed in 1997 after he and about 15 others chained themselves to a fence near the White House to call attention to what they felt was the U.S. government’s attitude of imperiousness and indifference. They were hauled to a nearby jail, fingerprinted and later released on a $50 fine for each of them. What they didn’t bargain for but got: maximum TV exposure! Imagine a group of elderly veterans, some in wheelchairs and with canes, being led to a police van in dramatic news footage.

Recalling the incident made Arcebal laugh. The jail time was nothing, he said, compared to his wartime incarceration for being a guerrilla intelligence officer for the Americans. “I was tortured and jailed and sentenced to be beheaded, but I was able to escape,” he said, his voice turning serious. “And now, they don’t want to recognize my service?”

Tucked on page 86 of the 406-page, $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a little-known feature called the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation (FVEC) providing a $198 million equity compensation for 18,000 Filipino veterans.

Arcebal and his fellow veterans celebrated, thinking they would finally receive the benefits they were promised 60 years earlier. But as the next parts of the series will show, the new law did not represent a complete victory, only a passage into the next phase of struggle.

The Battle in Congress

The Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation could have never passed without Inouye.

He is chairman of the powerful appropriations committee and one of the sponsors of the stimulus bill. The 86-year-old senator is also a long-time friend of the Philippines and made frequent visits to the country when Ferdinand Marcos was in power. There is a constituency connection behind this friendship. Hawaii, the state Inouye represents, has many Filipinos of Ilocano roots, meaning they come from the northern part of the Philippines where Marcos hails from.

More than his friendship with the Filipino leader, Inouye is also a World War II veteran. After many Japanese-American families were rounded up and forced into concentration camps during the war, Inouye joined other young Japanese who volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Inouye lost his right arm when his unit fought in Italy. He would give up his dream of becoming a doctor, and studied law instead, eventually pursuing a career in politics.

Because he is essentially one of them, Inouye has taken on the Filipino veterans’ cause in the U.S. Congress almost from the beginning. There have been many lawmakers who championed the veterans’ cause, but always Inouye and his fellow Democratic senator and World War II veteran Daniel Akaka, would be there, according to Eric Lachica, executive director of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans (ACFV), a registered lobby group.

“They fought arm-in-arm with our Filipino veterans,” Lachica said. “They have known the experience of being discriminated, and they wanted us to be treated as full American veterans.” Inouye and Akaka would be joined by other Asian-Pacific Islander legislators, such as Rep. Mike Honda, as well as other prominent lawmakers like Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Bob Filner in sponsoring legislation that would restore the benefits of Filipino veterans.

Over the years, some benefits, including health care and burial, would be partially restored. A 1990 law would later award citizenship to about 26,000 Filipino veterans. But to many veterans, these were not enough. They wanted the U.S. to “do the right thing” and give back the full recognition that was taken away wholesale by the Rescission Act of 1946.

Full Recognition

The campaign to define what “full recognition” entailed became the impetus for the FVEC. For almost six decades the United States and the Philippines would go toe-to-toe trying to craft a law that would restore the respect appropriate for the Filipino veterans and their war-time service. A stream of presidents from both countries, as well as ambassadors, would pledge support, exert their own influence, pull their own behind-the-scene strings, to make full recognition happen, such as when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo hired the Covington & Burling lobby group with marching orders to 1) refurbish the image of the Philippines in wake of the extra-judicial killings of activists and journalists 2) get her an audience with President Barack Obama, and 3) get the veterans pension bill approved in Congress. Many of the bills on Filipino veterans had a short shelf life in Congress because there would always be opposition to cost and budget. But there would always be a core group of lawmakers who believed in the issue, pick it up again, dust it off, and refile it. The cycle went on for decades.

“Even if our issue is a strong issue, if you ask Congress for money, it will take years and years,” said Arcebal. “They know our cause is just, but getting the money is a different issue.”

One of the more promising bills - the Veterans Enhancement Bill 2008 -- was for a monthly pension similar to the one given to American veterans. The proposal called for a monthly pension of $911 for each Filipino veteran in the United States and $300 for those in the Philippines -- legislation that would have cost the United States $40 billion yearly. This, too, did not live long after some sectors - mainly conservatives - made it appear the money to pay Filipino veterans would come from the American veterans’ budget. No such thing was intended, according to the bill’s sponsors.

Ultimately, the sponsors, led by House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Bob Filner, decided a one-time compensation - to be called equity instead of pension - would be an easier hurdle. A bill seeking to provide a lump sum payment of $15,000 for each veteran living in the United States and $9,000 for each veteran in the Philippines passed both the Senate and the House. The number of eligible veterans was pegged at 18,000. The surviving spouse is entitled to the benefit if her husband dies while his claim is pending, but not if she was already widowed before the law was passed. The sum total came out to $198 million.

Retired Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, head of the Philippine Embassy’s Veterans Affairs office, and Veterans Service Officer Percival Abu made a curious observation about the amount of $198 million. When the Rescission Act became law, they said the U.S. government was able to save $3.2 billion by withholding all the benefits promised to the Filipino veterans. But to ensure everything ended amicably, the United States offered a token $200 million to the Philippines in exchange for abandoning all its claims for compensation and benefits due the veterans. The “quit claim” offer was rejected and denounced by the Philippines as “an act of discrimination.”

That not much has changed in the amount over the years was promptly noted by Corpus and Abu.

Even at its reduced price tag, the equity bill continued to languish in Congress, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi getting the heat from some in the FilAm community for not doing enough to shake it loose and get it passed. Came the Obama administration and the federal lifeline known as the economic stimulus bill. This became the vehicle in which the veterans bill got its ride back to congressional attention.

“Senator Inouye said the best way would be to include it in the stimulus bill,” Lachica said. “It was a shortcut situation, the stimulus bill was faced with very little opposition. The timing was fortunate.”

Echoed Abu, “The stimulus bill was the vehicle used [for the veterans bill to get passed]. The money was already appropriated, but it cannot be spent unless there is a vehicle.”

As Inouye commands “great respect” from lawmakers, the FVEC sailed through somewhat smoothly on the floor. Except for one or two questions from the opposition, “there was not much discussion about it,” Abu said.

Official estimates put the number of eligible veterans in the United States and the Philippines at approximately 15,000, down from 18,000 when the bill was being crafted. The fact that veterans die at a rate of three to four a day is a statement used to dramatize the urgency of the compensation reaching them.

As of January 28 (the latest as of press time), the VA has received approximately 41,000 claims, including duplicates - or about 37,000 excluding duplicates. The VA said it has made decisions on approximately 21,000 claims and approved 12,148 of those. Total payouts are approximately $146 million.

Invisible Among the Dispossessed: Internally Displaced Persons

2010-02-18T10:50:00Z

After the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti, the island nation has been more or less adopted by the world community. While the hundreds of thousands who subsist on hand outs and live in tents cannot depend on their own government, they can at least expect the world to continue to provide aid, and Haiti itself is receiving donations and funds from all over the world. Equally important, it has world sympathy and attention.

Usually this is not the case. For among the world’s dispossessed there’s a sub-group of people rarely addressed by the global community, but whose numbers are growing by leaps and bounds: the internally displaced.

No legal definition exists for them. While a refugee who fits the strict definition given by the Geneva Convention is, at least in principle, provided some legal protection, such as the right to food and shelter and the freedom to practice his religion, an internally displaced person is virtually invisible, his story never told, and his rights nonexistent.

A United Nations report “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement” defines internally displaced persons (IDP) as “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.”

It is the "natural or human-made disasters" part of the UN definition – which itself is not legally binding - that makes the number difficult to quantify and monitor. Do the 100 million or so roaming Chinese within the country because of industrial pollution that’s devastated their agricultural land or displacement by a government building project count as refugees? And what do we know about the number of Burmese displaced by Hurricane Nagis?

Internally displaced persons often suffer more than refugees, for along with being forced to flee, they fail to cross an international border and thereby don’t legally qualify as refugees. Instead of receiving international protection and capturing media coverage, many remain invisible and are often subjected to abuse within their own country. When their government is uncaring or fails to protect them, and, as in the case of Myanmar, refuses foreign aid and restricts the international media, very little protection for IDPs can be had.

The internally displaced can be found in more than two dozen countries around the world. There are 2 million of them in Colombia, half a million in the Ivory Coast, more than 3 million in Pakistan, just to name a few countries.

And the numbers add up. According to the UNCHR 2009 annual report there are 42 million uprooted people in the world. The total includes 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million uprooted people within their own countries. But some organizations estimate that the actual number of IDP is easily twice the number of internationally recognized refugees, if not triple that amount. The figure can fluctuate due to, for example, the sudden eruption of civil war or a natural disaster such as an erupting volcano, tsunami or earthquake. 

Distributions of food and medicine vary from place to place, and IDP protection depends on where they find themselves and which country they are in. Haiti is but a quick jump over from the United States. Food and supplies and media coverage came relatively quickly – if chaotically - for earthquake victims. But after five years of civil war in Darfur, hundreds of villages have been destroyed, 400,000 have died, and 2.2 million are displaced and facing starvation and ongoing violence. It's a humanitarian crisis in which the international response is shockingly slow and ineffectual, and world attention is sporadic.

And where’s the limelight for the millions displaced in The Democratic Republic of Congo, where 45,000 people continue to die each month, and nearly 6 million people have died from long drawn out war and famine?

Refugees and IDP are essentially the same. Both groups are coerced or compelled to flee in fear for their lives and security, but those who crossed internationally recognized state borders are entitled to systematic protection and assistance under existing international treaties, while those who don’t are entitled to little and remain cursed with invisibility.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper recently wrote in his blog that he cried in Haiti while reporting on the devastation in Port-au-Prince. Alas, there aren’t enough Anderson Coopers to cry in the places in which the number of the dispossessed keeps growing. They have no protection and little assistance, and they have no celebrity-journalist to cry over their misfortune.

Three decades ago, Pope John Paul II called the plight of refugees "the greatest tragedy of all human tragedies" and "a shameful wound of our time." In the 21st century, that wound has festered and gangrened. How effectively we address it will largely determine the future of our global society. For the plight of all refugees should challenge our conscience, as silence and indifference constitute the sin of omission.

Andrew Lam is editor of New America Media and the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, due out in the fall, is "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres."

Juarez Citizens Fed Up With Calderon

2010-02-17T23:13:25Z

Mexican President Felipe Calderon held one of the most contentious citizens meeting of his administration last week in defense of his strategy against his war on drugs. The results remain to be seen, but most of the people present concluded that his war on drugs has resulted in more of the same; that it is a failure.

Last week, prompted by the recent massacre of 15 young people, Mexican President Felipe Calderon visited one of the most violent cities in the world. After chiding him for arriving an hour late, residents of Ciudad Juarez were quick to remind him that he, in fact, was two years and about 4,500 deaths too late.

As he spoke to a crowd of about 600 in a local convention center, seven of the mothers of the victims stood up and turned their backs to the president. Afterwards, while the Chihuahua’s governor gave his own speech, one woman stood up, walked towards the president’s podium and openly chastised him for incriminating the dead youngsters with the narco-wars. Two of those killed were her sons.

Her name was Luz Maria Davila, a resident of Villas de Salvarcar neighborhood where her sons were murdered. “I want you to apologize for saying that [my kids] were gang members! It’s a lie, one was going to the UACH [Autonomous University of Chihuahua], and the other was going to high school…” Davila said while facing the president, as the astonished members of his security detail scrambled to make the woman return to her seat. News accounts of the encounter revealed that Davila railed against the president for over five minutes in front of the media.

It’s unprecedented in the country’s history for a citizen to address a president in those terms, let alone a Mexican woman. According to media reports, a startled Calderon muffled a weak “of course,’’ in a failed attempt to calm her down. The president’s reaction reignited the woman’s frustration.

“Don’t just respond [of course] to me, do something! If someone had killed your son, you would have looked under the stones for the assassin, but since I don’t have the resources, I cannot look for them,’’ Davila said.

Davila went back to her seat sobbing after telling Calderon that all politicians are alike, “they always promise but never deliver.’’ According to several news accounts, the moment was so tense that even Calderon’s wife, seated at his side, went to the woman’s seat and tried to comfort her.

Speaking to reporters at the event, Hernan Ortiz, the head of Citizens for a Better Administration, called the meeting “chaotic.” “If he [Calderon] couldn’t control this meeting, could you believe he can control the rest?’’ Ortiz added, referring to the war against the narcos.

“It is clear that his strategy is not winning this war. However, he insists on more of the same,’’ said Carlos Gutierrez Casas, a member of the local Human Rights Commission. “People don’t trust him anymore.’’

The economic stagnation brought by the narco-violence, has been exacerbated by the global recession, leaving more than one third of the approximate 1.5 million residents of Ciudad Juarez living well below the official poverty level. Unemployment is rampant with official figures set at record double-digit figures of 15 percent, but many local economists believe it to be almost double that figure. The city, once a mecca of maquila products is dying.

According to figures provided this week by the local merchant’s organization (CANACO), more than 10,600 businesses in the city have closed (about 30 percent), many of them burned down after owners refused to pay extortion money.

Restaurants, bars and nightclubs popular with local clientele and tourists from El Paso have been the hardest hit. As soon as the sun goes down so does the traffic, leaving the police and military convoys roaming empty streets.

Local authorities estimated recently that more than 100,000 families have fled, many of them, like Juarez’s mayor, to neighboring El Paso.

Calderon acknowledged the economic crisis by pumping more state funds to the region.

After meeting with state and local officials at the airport, the president announced $230 million in funds for education, public health, urban development, business assistance, and law enforcement programs. Military presence already in place will remain.

“If anything good came out of this meeting it was the fact that for the first time President Calderon faced the citizens affected by his policies,’’ said State Senator Victor Quintana. “It is clear that no war against the narcos will be won without citizens’ participation, but the citizens will not do so unless their needs are met.”

“He just doesn’t get it,’’ said Cipriana Jurado, a local leader of the Center of Solidarity and Research for Working Women, an NGO that deals with issues affecting the thousands of women who work in the maquila industry. “He insists in fighting the narcos with guns, and ignores the social and economic circumstances that breed this problem.”

Jailed Soldier Rapper Bids for U.S. Trial

2010-02-17T21:20:00Z

Lawyers for a U.S. Army specialist imprisoned after mailing an incendiary rap song to the Pentagon have filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court demanding the soldier’s trial take place in the United States rather in Iraq, as the military desires.

The petition, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, argues that sending Spc. Marc Hall, 27, to Iraq “for his court martial would violate his right to do process of law and will significantly compromise his ability to defend himself.”

At the Pentagon, Lt. Col Eric Bloom said he knew “nothing about the filing,” but said that sending Hall to Iraq for trial does not represent an unusual course of action.

“His unit moved so he has to follow his unit,” Bloom told NAM. “His command is there, and the majority of the witnesses are there.”

Ironically, the charges against Hall relate to his desire to avoid being sent to Iraq – a country where he had already served one 14-month tour.

Hall’s supporters say he was looking forward to being discharged from the military this month. Instead, Hall’s superiors “stop-lossed” him and ordered the specialist redeployed to Iraq for a second tour.

Hall was outraged about the deployment, wrote an angry rap about it, and posted it on his personal Web site. He also mailed copies of it to the Pentagon general delivery.

Marc Hall's Rap.

His command responded by locking him up outside Fort Stewart in Georgia where he’s been held since early December. Hall is charged with distributing “original songs wrongfully threatening acts of violence against members of his unit,” as well as “conduct prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the armed forces,” and threatening to “go on a rampage” against his commanders.

Hall’s attorneys don’t disagree that his rap is provocative. But in court filings Tuesday, his military lawyer Cpt. Anthony Schiavetti wrote his case “involves significant First Amendment issues.”

“Because it arose from a song he recorded when he was off duty and out of uniform, the question of whether anything he said was to be taken seriously or reflected artistic license and the hyperbole often associated with art will be central to this case,” Schiavetti wrote.

Schiavetti argued that such a line of defense would be precluded if the court martial were held in Iraq because “finding experts (on the First Amendment) willing to travel around the world to a war zone would be far more difficult than finding experts to testify at Fort Stewart.”

In a declaration to the court, retired U.S Army colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, who has testified as an expert witness for the defense at the court martials of other soldiers protesting their stop loss, said she would like to also testify for Hall’s defense. If his trial were moved to Iraq, she said, “it would be impossible for me to testify.”

The petition filed in the U.S. District Court also says moving Hall’s court martial to Iraq would violate the defendant’s 6th Amendment right to a public trial as well as the press’ First Amendment right to cover it.

“While it may be technically possible for Hall’s family and friends to attend his trial in Iraq,” Hall’s civilian attorney David Gespass said, “in practical terms neither they – nor the journalists who have been covering his case – will be able to get to Iraq.”

At the Pentagon, Lt Col Bloom scoffed at defense claims.

“Wherever the U.S. military is, we have a justice system that functions,” he said. “Being in any state or country makes no difference with the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

The Army had said it could move Hall to Iraq as early as Tuesday, February 16, but at press time he was still confined in Liberty County Jail outside Fort Stewart.

The case has been assigned to Judge William T. Moore, who was appointed to the bench in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton.

Minn. Stimulus Dollars Bypass Black Businesses

2010-02-17T21:10:00Z

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (AARA) called for $50 billion to build and repair the nation’s roads, bridges, railways and ports “to preserve and create jobs” and “to assist those most impacted by the recession.” It explicitly states that investments should prioritize those hit hardest by the recession — those in distressed communities who have a high percentage of low-income households or high unemployment rates.

According to U.S. Department of Transportation records, nearly 2,000 contractors have been awarded stimulus money for highway and bridge projects. However, the Federal Procurement Data System reports that only one federal transportation contract has gone to a black-owned business (in Nevada).

Minnesota received almost $600 million in AARA transportation funds: $487 million for highway improvement; $94 million for public transportation; and $15 million for bike and pedestrian paths. All total, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has approved 110 transit projects. Nine projects with estimated costs at over $91 million are located in the Twin Cities’ outer suburban ring. These include:

* 42nd Avenue North bridge work: $13.5 million ($10 million in AARA funds)
* Highway 7/Wooddale Avenue interchange: $12.3 million ($3.4 million in AARA funds)
* Interstate 494 lighting replacement: $5.8 million ($5.3 million in AARA funds)
* $1.8 million rebuilding lighting system on I-494 in Edina, Minn. ($1.7 million in AARA funds)
* $1.3 million Winnetka Avenue reconstruction ($834,000 in AARA funds)

No black-owned businesses in Minnesota have received any federal transportation contracts in Minnesota. According to the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), black contractors only obtain 1.1 percent of federal highway contracts each year. Seven contracts, or 0.2 percent, were awarded to black contractors in Minnesota for fiscal year 2008.

“I thought there was a real opportunity for us to make some inroads and to share in an equitable economic upturn that we were going to see in the economy. It didn’t happen,” says Thor Construction Company Chairman Richard Copeland, who added that his firm has not received any MnDOT work or stimulus-funded work this past year. “I don’t know of [any blacks who] got any work from MnDOT.”

Neil Copeland started a small paving business in 2009. “We had a good $100,000 tied up into it,” he recalls. Along with his uncle, “We made the investment because we thought MnDOT would come through with some stimulus [funds].”

He submitted 20 to 30 bids on projects that included “anything from trucking in material, hauling out material, [and] excavation work,” continues Neil Copeland. “Anything we could get our hands on, from small to big — we were prepared to do anything that came our way.”

Neil Copeland says an estimated 50 people could have been hired as a result. “The people I had lined up…these were people coming directly from North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis, guys waiting to work. This would have been a good thing all the way around.”

However, “People at MnDOT aren’t very approachable,” says Neil Copeland, who didn’t win any transit bids and eventually shut down his business in December 2009. He now works for his father, Richard Copeland.

Maple Grove, located west of the Twin Cities, is the Minnesota city where most MnDOT work is performed (over $73 million worth). Meanwhile, the 5th congressional district, with Minnesota’s highest proportion of blacks and other people of color, received the lowest amount of transit work ($3.8 million) among the state’s eight congressional districts.

As a result, community and advocacy groups argue that federal stimulus money — “new money” — has not reached the areas with the highest percentage of blacks and other people of color across the state or within the Twin Cities.

“The way the stimulus money was set up, it was set up to go out fast,” says Rev. Paul Slack of Brooklyn Park, Minn., a leader of the local faith-based social justice organization ISAIAH. “In order for it to go out quickly, it had to go out through the current systems of delivery we have in Minnesota.

“Our systems are not set up to do that in an effective way — in any way, really," says Slack. “Because when you look at the contracting and construction industry, most of the people are not African American, not low-income and not women. I think that’s the biggest reason.”

Kalima Rose, senior director of the Oakland, Calif.-based PolicyLink Center for Infrastructure Equity points out, “At the beginning of the stimulus money, it would probably flow through the usual channels, meaning that communities that have not gotten resources before probably would not get ARRA [dollars].

“I would say that…transportation is one of the most behind entities in terms of targeting inclusion in those programs. State departments of transportation haven’t moved as far as they need to. What you see in Minnesota is typical in lots of states.”

PolicyLink, joined ISAIAH, and Organizing Apprenticeship Project (OAP) a Minneapolis advocacy group in producing a recent analysis of ARRA transportation investments in Minnesota and their impact on low-income communities and communities of color. The study concluded that the highest levels of transit investments are not in areas with the highest poverty or unemployment rates, nor are they in areas with the highest percentage of people of color across the state of Minnesota or within the Twin Cities.

AARA funds only reinforced existing inequities, the study added.

Jermaine Toney, lead policy analyst of the OAP says the stimulus money “is deep, deep public investment dollars, but it was not a shift in the transportation policy itself. The suburbs got more transportation projects up and running, but did it benefit the most disadvantaged: blacks and people of color? No.”

“There is no difference in the outcomes we’ve seen from the stimulus than we would from the normal status quo in the transportation department,” says PolicyLink Senior Policy Analyst Shireen Malekafzali.

The MnDOT defended its record in awarding stimulus contracts. “We were audited by the [federal] government on the AARA projects, and it was deemed that we were in compliance with that law," says Bernie Arseneau, director of the policy division. He says that his department is fully committed to increasing the number of black-, people of color- and women-owned companies getting transit contracts.

First-term Minnesota State Representative Bobby Champion, one of two black state legislators, sits on the House Transportation Oversight Committee. “Based on what I’ve seen,” says Champion, “MnDOT has a lot of work to be done, and they need to do it in real time.” His committee “has held a record number of hearings in order to make sure that reporting [from MnDOT] is coming forward,” he adds.

Some suggest that the Minnesota Legislature should put a hold on any remaining or future stimulus transportation dollars. Lennie Chism, a local black businessman, is circulating a petition formally requesting that the state immediately terminate all federally funded transportation contracts and that the U.S. Department of Transportation open an inquiry into whether MnDOT is doing enough to involve black contractors in transit projects that use federal stimulus dollars.

“Are [MnDOT officials] there for [blacks], or are they there to keep us out of it? Are they for inclusion or exclusion?” asks Chism, whose goal is to gather 1,000 signatures to send to MnDOT Commissioner Thomas Sorel, Minnesota elected officials, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

“I don’t want our attention just to be on the stimulus dollars alone,” notes Champion. “But I think we also need to hold state agencies accountable when it comes to state dollars. We don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there are state-only funded projects [and] city projects that are going on, where people of color and women are not being engaged quite the way they are supposed to be.”

However, since the Minnesota Legislature is currently dealing with a $1.8 billion budget deficit, freezing transit dollars, especially AARA funds, might not be realistic, Toney believes. “It looks like a real good solution, but will it work here?”

“Realistically, I don’t see that happening,” adds Neil Copeland. But if it did, it would get “a few eyes open,” he adds.

Among the MnDOT-approved projects is one to replace the Lowry Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River. Ten million of the $65 million project, which is located in North Minneapolis, is funded by stimulus money. And, state officials say a $1.6 million Highway 610 project is completely funded by AARA.

Both of those projects would benefit the black community, says Slack, whose church is located in Brooklyn Park with a large population of blacks and African immigrants. However, he warns, “It’s not just about where the project is, but whether the companies make the investment [in the community]. We also need to do local hiring [so] the people who live in these communities get these jobs.”

The pastor, who has been involved in transportation equity issues for five years, concludes, “We need communities of color to stand up and demand from their representatives that they actually stand on the side of the people who have been left out and neglected for a long time, and demand that we have some real results.”

Slack wants change “not for one, two, three or four years, but we actually transform our communities. That means we have to pay attention, not just now and not just until we see a good number of African Americans hired in the transportation industry, but that we are there for the long haul.”