Academic Ink

New HBO doc "The Latino List" and exhibit aims for depth

2011-09-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

The new HBO documentary "The Latino List" and related Brooklyn Museum exhibit aims for "depth" as per press releases. But is celebration depth? Is public sphere access merely a function of topicality in our immemorious present? Habeas corpus, bring me the Latino body electric and alive. The Latino body requires a greater accounting.

(Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (American, b. 1952). Eva Longoria, 2011. Pigmented ink-jet print. 58 x 44 in. (147.3 x 111.8 cm) framed. © Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)

from Brooklyn Museum

August 19–December 11, 2011
Great Hall, 1st Floor

This exhibition presents twenty-five large-format color portraits of accomplished and influential Latinos from the worlds of culture, politics, business, and sports taken by the renowned photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. In the manner of The Black List Project, Greenfield-Sanders’s 2008 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, which offered insights on what it means to be African American in contemporary society, The Latino List explores the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century. The portraits, whose subjects include Eva Longoria, America Ferrera, John Leguizamo, Chi Chi Rodríguez, Sonia Sotomayor, Pitbull, and Gloria Estefan, will be accompanied by excerpts from a new documentary film, also called The Latino List, directed by Greenfield-Sanders with interviews conducted by Maria Hinojosa and additional interviews by Sandra Guzman, both Emmy Award–winning journalists. The photographed and filmed subjects will be seen and heard directly sharing their stories and experiences, illuminating the richness and diversity of Latino life in America.

The Latino List film will premiere on HBO on September 29. It will be presented at the Museum in its entirety throughout the run of the exhibition (dates/times to be announced), which coincides with the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 through October 15, 2011.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Latino List is organized by Lisa Small, Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

Blatino Spiderman Backlash

2011-08-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

Backlash To Black-Latino Spiderman Indicates We’re Not A Post-Racial Society

Yesterday, USA Today released a story that Marvel Comics Ultimate Spider-Man would take its web-slinging hero in a new direction. Although, Peter Parker has played the Spider-Man character since its creation decades ago – the revamping of the Marvel comic is to attract a new generation of comic book readers, in response to its static past. So, it wasn’t really that surprising that Marvel decided to kill the character off around two months ago.

Unlike the comics’ overwhelmingly Caucasian days of yore – when it came to passing on the infamous red and blue suit – Marvel decided to push the envelope. Instead of embodying the usual stereotype for superheroes, the decision was made to pass the torch to a half-black, half-Hispanic teenager named Miles Morales.

Brian Michael Bendis, the writer behind Parker’s death and Miles arrival told the newspaper that it was long overdue, even in the more ‘diverse’ Marvel universe.

“Even though there’s some amazing African-American and minority characters bouncing around in all the superhero universes, it’s still crazy lopsided,” Bendis admitted.

However, not everyone agrees with Bendis’ assessment, a quick glance through the comments of the USA Today article reveals that even if Marvel wants to be more contemporary that doesn’t give them the right to rewrite comic book history. Of course, it should be of no surprise that some white comic fans feel that iconic comic characters should be left unchallenged by today’s more political correct society – especially when it comes to a biracial teenager becoming the newest incarnation of one of their most beloved superheroes.

Over on the website Bleeding Cool, they decided to publish some of the more “enlightening” comments from the USA Today story in one of their Tuesday posts. The comments ranged from bashing the need to always be politically correct, to complaints over the comic books direction and the rage over the killing of the white Peter Parker so that Morales could replace him.

With several comic-based movies taking liberty when it comes to the race of their supportive characters (i.e. Nick Fury played by Samuel L. Jackson, Perry White being played by Laurence Fishburne), it is apparent that supporting roles are the only roles not susceptible to such a huge backlash. However, making the “minority” a main character is still seen as unacceptable.

As one commenter responded:

“Peter Parker could not be whiter. A black boy under the mask just don’t look right. This opens up a whole new story line with a whole new set of problems. Who is going to believe a black man in a mask is out for the good of man kind?”
So, a black man in a mask isn’t capable of helping out mankind? In a historical context, it wasn’t the black population using masks to strike fear and terrorize others in American society. How quickly that one caveat is forgotten.

Blatant ignorance aside, it is hard not to be offended by some of the reactions regarding Morales’ ethnicity. With the current demographics of New York being so diverse – it would make sense to have someone akin to Morales. It is about time that minority characters are given more precedence instead of being relinquished to the only role that seems deserving—the sidekick.

AUGUST 03
by Cynthia Wright

Pew report finds net worth of Latino households lower than other ethnic or racial group during the recession.

2011-07-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
Multimedia

The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

The declines have led to the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the bureau has been collecting the data, according to the report.

Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

“It’s a very stark reminder of the high share of minorities who live at the economic margins of this country,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and an author of the report. “These data really show their economic vulnerability.”

Household wealth, also referred to in the report as net worth, is made up of assets, like a house, a car, savings and stocks, minus debts, like mortgages, car loans and credit cards. It is tracked by the Census Bureau in the Survey of Income and Program Participation, a broad sampling of household wealth by race and ethnicity.

Nearly two-thirds of Hispanics’ median net worth in 2005 came from home equity, according to the report, and when the housing market collapsed, so did their wealth. Median home equity for Hispanics fell by 51 percent in the period of the survey. The drop was compounded by the fact that Hispanics tended to live in the places that were hit hardest in the recession, like Florida and California, the report said.

Armando Moya, a Mexican immigrant from Woodbridge, outside Washington, experienced these swings of fortune first-hand. For a few happy years, he believed he had avoided his father’s fate of scraping by. He bought a house with a backyard and opened a taco restaurant with his brothers. His bank account was growing, and he took his family on vacations several times a year.

Mr. Moya lives in Prince William County, where the Hispanic population more than tripled from 2000 to 2010, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with many newcomers working in construction trades that were flourishing in the rapidly growing suburbs of Washington.

To capitalize on the influx, Mr. Moya, who is now 38 and had been working in restaurants since he came to the United States in the early 1990s, decided to start his own, and together with his brother opened Ricos Tacos Moya in 2005.

In the same year, he bought a house valued at $350,000. His monthly payments were more than $2,300, and with hungry workers filling his restaurant, he managed.

But when the collapse of the housing market swept like a wave through this Northern Virginia county, taking his house, and his bank account, and many of his customers along with it, he lost his middle-class lifestyle.

“Everything was going down,” he said.

Now he is back where he started, living with his family in a rented apartment, and working seven days a week in the taco restaurant. His house sold for $135,000 to a couple from Morocco, he said.

“My money changed,” he said. “I lost my house.”

The share of Americans with no wealth at all rose sharply during the recession. A third of Hispanics had zero or negative net worth in 2009, up from 23 percent in 2005. For blacks, the portion rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, and for whites, it rose to 15 percent from 11 percent.

About a quarter of all black and Hispanic households owned nothing but a car in 2009. Just 6 percent of whites and 8 percent of Asians were in that situation.

Whites were less affected by the crisis, largely because their wealth flowed from assets other than housing, like stocks. A third of whites owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005, compared with 8 percent of Hispanics and 9 percent of blacks.

The median value of stocks and mutual funds owned by whites dropped by 9 percent from 2005 to 2009. In comparison, the median value of holdings for those blacks who held stocks dropped by 71 percent, most likely because they had to sell when prices were low, Mr. Taylor said.

The median wealth of Hispanic and black households is at its lowest point since 1984, when the Census Bureau first conducted the study, the report said.

Mr. Moya counts himself lucky to still have his restaurant. He has to work weekends at a nightclub in Washington to keep up with his rent. His life is increasingly resembling his father’s — subsisting, without saving — but he has pinned his hopes for a better life on his sons, and he has discarded the idea of returning to Mexico.

“I want my house back,” he said. “I’m working for my house right now.”

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published in NYTimes July 26, 2011

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist comes out as illegal immigrant

2011-06-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist comes out as illegal immigrant

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.

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.

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.

"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."

Now, Vargas is starting a campaign called Define American, where he's spotlighting immigrants' stories.

By Liz Goodwin

"Hispanics" in Puerto Rico?

2011-06-16T07:29:00.001-07:00

A Demographic Portrait of Hispanics in Puerto Rico
By The Pew Hispanic Center

The 2010 U.S. Census counted 3.7 million Hispanics living in Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States. This was down from 3.8 million in 2000.

READ COMPLETE REPORT HERE

By contrast, in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (D.C.), the population of Puerto Rican-origin Hispanics increased from 3.4 million in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2010, surpassing Puerto Rico’s Hispanic population. Nearly one-third of Puerto Rican-origin Hispanics in the 50 states and D.C. were born in Puerto Rico, according to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations from the 2009 American Community Survey.

Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens by birth. But because Puerto Rico, like Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is not part of the 50 states or D.C., those who reside in Puerto Rico are not allowed to vote for President or to elect a voting member of the U.S. Congress. Those who move from Puerto Rico to live in the 50 states and the District of Columbia can vote in federal elections.

This profile compares the demographic, income, and economic characteristics of Hispanics living in Puerto Rico with the characteristics of Hispanics of Puerto Rican origin living in the 50 states and D.C as well as with all Hispanics living in the 50 states and D.C. These profiles are based on tabulations from the 2009 Puerto Rico Community Survey and the 2009 American Community Survey by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Hispanic population exceeds 50 million

2011-03-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

Hispanic population exceeds 50 million, firmly nation's No. 2 group

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.
"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.

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.

South sees largest growth this decade

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.

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.

In stark contrast, all other populations together grew by only about 5%, officials said. The nation as a whole expanded by 9.7%.
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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

"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.
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.

Several states have tried to pass measures similar to Arizona's, but not with much success, Allen asserted.
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.

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.

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.

Persons reporting "some other race" grew by 3.7 million, to 19 million, or 5.5% of the nation, figures show.
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.

"The face of the country is changing," said Jeffrey Passel, demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.
Demographic data had already been released for all states except New York and Maine and for the District of Columbia.
In fast-growing states where whites and blacks dominated past growth, Hispanics are now the greatest growth engine, Frey said.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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."

U.S. Hispanics top 50 million
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Hispanic population is now 50.5 million, or 16% of the country
The white population is 197 million, dropping to 64%
The black population is 40 million, or nearly 13%
The Asian population grew 43% to 14.7 million, or about 5%

By Michael Martinez and David Ariosto, CNN

Shawna Forde Sentenced to Death for Murder of Daughter and Father

2011-02-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant zealot convicted of killing a 9-year-old girl and her father, was sentenced to death by a Tucson jury today.

Forde, the Minuteman-turned-killer, sat stonily in a Tucson, Arizona, courtroom as her lawyers fought to save her life by portraying her as an impulsive, detached, foolish narcissist who could not overcome her abuse-ridden childhood. They argued that Shawna Forde’s early years had been so traumatic that she should not be put to death for masterminding a 2009 home invasion in which 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul were slaughtered on the Arizona border.

The prosecuting attorney said “hundreds of thousands” of people had bad childhoods, but they don’t turn into killers. This case, she said, was “based on hate.” Many still see her as a martyr for the anti-immigration cause. --from Terry Greene Sterling's coverage

College Repeals Ban on Undocumented Immigrants

2011-02-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

Trustees from the County College of Morris voted to change the school’s admissions policy this week, overturning a provision that had barred undocumented immigrants from taking classes.

The board voted Wednesday to amend the provision, which had been passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A school spokeswoman said applicants who are undocumented immigrants will be allowed to enroll if they can prove they came to United States before age 16, have been living here for at least five years and graduated from an American high school or with an equivalency diploma, among other criteria.

Several of New Jersey’s community colleges allow undocumented immigrants to enroll, or do not ask immigration status on applications.

The presidents of more than half of the state’s 19 community colleges, in consultation with their boards of trustees, signed a letter in December urging New Jersey’s congressional delegation to help pass the DREAM Act. That’s federal legislation that would have allowed immigrants brought to the U.S. before the age of 16 the chance to legalize their status by completing at least two years of college or military service if they satisfied certain criteria.

The bill, which did not pass, would also have granted states the power to decide whether to allow students covered by the DREAM Act to pay in-state tuition rates.

Birther Movement Redux: Obama as Undocumented Worker?

2011-02-18T06:43:00.000-08:00

Procedural Guffaw Allows for Rehearing of Birther Movement Claims

The Supreme Court has confirmed that it has distributed a petition for rehearing in the case brought by attorney John Hemenway on behalf of retired Col. Gregory Hollister who challenged President Obama's eligibility to serve as President. It will be the subject of a chamber conference on March 4.

In January the Supreme Court denied, without comment, a request for a hearing on the arguments. But the attorney at the time had submitted a motion for Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who were appointed by President Obama, to recuse themselves. The Supreme Court acknowledged the "motion for recusal" but it changed it on official docketing pages to a "request." And it reportedly failed to respond to the motion. Hemenway's request for a rehearing noted this alleged "procedural violation" by the Court.

In essence, the claim proposes that the court recognize that President Obama is an "undocumented" worker. The rehearing will likely go nowhere but will continue to fuel the racism that now requires even the President to occupy the space of the abject, the undocumented. Lázaro Lima

Activist Judge Scalia: No Such thing As Gender or Sex Discrimination Protected by 14th Amendment

2011-01-04T14:18:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in a recently published interview that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not prohibit discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer. "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws." (He voiced a similar opinion in a speech in September.)

Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, told the Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel that the comments are shocking. "In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," she said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them."

The equal protection clause states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1971 that the clause protected women from discrimination.

Liz Goodwin

Sotomayor as Liberal “Enforcer” on Supreme Court?

2010-12-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Liptak looks in particular at a series of discretionary writings by Sotomayor referring to why the court declined to hear a particular case.

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.

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.

The lower courts had no sympathy for Mr. Pitre’s complaints, saying he had brought his troubles on himself.

Justice Sotomayor saw things differently.

“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.”

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.

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.

David Dayen

Sotomayor Uses "Undocumented Immigrant" Rather than "Illegal Alien"

2010-12-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

T/H to Josh Blackman:
Curiously Justice Sotomayor, who famously used the term “undocumented immigrant,” rather than illegal alien in Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, used the term “illegal alien” during arguments today, and quickly corrected herself and said “undocumented aliens.”

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: "...— just — just focus the question? Because we keep talking about whether the APA-type definition of licensing is what Congress intended or not, but you don’t disagree that Congress at least intended that if someone violated the Federal law and hired illegal aliens of Hispanic — undocumented aliens and was found to have violated it, that the State can revoke their license, correct, to do business?"

Justice Alito and Scalia used the phrase Illegal Alien which is the term used in the statute.

Obama and Latino Punishment?

2010-11-01T18:27:00.001-07:00

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.
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.
"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.
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.
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."
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.
"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."
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.
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 Hawaii.

Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite

2010-10-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

Racial predatory loans fueled U.S. housing crisis: study

2010-10-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

Predatory 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.

Predatory lending typically refers to loans that carry unreasonable fees, interest rates and payment requirements.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

The study is published in the October issue of the journal.
(Editing by Paul Simao)

Jan Brewer at Her Best

2010-09-02T17:11:00.001-07:00

Can we get Mexican immigrants to teach her English? Larry, Barry and Terry, please help!

Glen Beck and Sara Palin "Reclaiming" Civil Rights Movement in Washington, DC, March

2010-08-27T12:22:00.001-07:00

OPEN LETTER TO GLEN BECK AND SARA PALIN

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.

Candidate for New York State Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda Can't Say if He's for Marriage equality

2010-08-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Candidate for New York State Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda Can't Say if He's for Marriage Equality

Arizona Immigration Law Faces Legal Challenge

2010-07-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

¡Nao Piedras! Nao Rocks!

2010-05-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, Spanglish for "Nao rocks"!

Rand Paul on Rachel Maddow: Private Businesses Can Discriminate on Basis of Race

2010-05-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

On February 1st, 1960, in Greensboro NC, four students from North Carolina A&T sat down at a "whites-only" Woolworth's lunch counter and ask to be served. This action by David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil ignited a wave of student sit-ins and protests that flashed like fire across the South. A fire for justice that no amount of beatings, jails, or firehoses, could extinguish. Until Rand Paul... Rand says, in effect, that the state can't legislate against private businesses that discriminate. Is his wig on too tight?

Maddow: "How about desegregating lunch counters?" [...]

Rand: "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant or does the government own the restaurant?"

The Critic Underwater in Isabel Allende's The Island Under the Sea

2010-05-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

I generally prefer to leave evaluations of literary reviews for analysis in the classroom, in articles, or related venues, but I’m making an exception today. Isabel Allende’s _La Isla bajo el mar_ was a good read and, though I haven’t read the English translation, I was irked by Gaiutra Bahadur’s review in today’s _Times Sunday Book Review_. When the central criticism is “Where is the magical realism?,” you have to wonder about the critic’s knowledge of the tradition Allende is working with and against. In the review, its absence equals an inauthentic foray into a sanctioned formula that can presumably capture a missing “reality,” or worst, regional “truths.” Yikes. It reminded me of Andrei Codrescu’s review, also in the _Times_, of Roberto Fernández’s bilingually exquisite novel _Raining Backwards_ years ago when I was in graduate school. Cordrescu missed Fernández’s parody of the notion of modernist innovation by noting how the novel could have been improved if “the echoes of García Márquez [i.e., “magical realism”] had been made conscious,” as if the novel’s bilingualism weren’t a foil for modernist claims to universalism. What would I tell Bahadur? Simple: I hope your reviewers are more attentive to your work than you’ve been today to Allende in the pages of the _Times_.

See "All Souls Rising," by GAIUTRA BAHADUR in today's Sunday Book Review or on her blog

Guilty Plea In Fatal Stabbing of Latino Immigrant

2010-04-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

Guilty Plea In Fatal Stabbing Of LI Immigrant

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.

"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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Conroy is the only one facing murder charges; his attorney did not immediately return a telephone call for comment on Thursday.

"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."'

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.

"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."

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.

Joselo and Isabel Lucero, the victim's brother and sister, arrived in the courtroom during Hausch's appearance.

"It's really a big surprise right now," Joselo Lucero said afterward. "I think it's a really successful moment."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

But former Mayor Franklin Whitey Leavandosky says there's no serious problem in Patchogue, only a series of unfortunate isolated incidents.

"I think it goes to idle hands, idle minds of teenagers that have no respect for their fellow man," said Leavandosky on Wednesday.

Gay Hate Crime Victim to Get Deported

2010-04-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Mother seeks justice for Brooklyn 'hate crime' victim who may face deportation

The mother of a Brooklyn man who faces deportation after being arrested when he told cops he was the victim of an anti-gay hate crime wants justice.

"It hurts me so much," said his mom, Jorgelina Aguirre. "He's there in jail unjustly."

Aguirre, supported by the nonprofit group Make the Road New York, will hold a news conference Wednesday to call for the Brooklyn district attorney to drop charges against her son.

Ricardo Muñiz, 23, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, told police he was dancing with another gay friend at a Flatbush bar in July when an older man started making anti-gay slurs.

According to Muñiz, two men, including the one who had insulted him, followed him and his two friends when they left the bar after it closed at 4:30 a.m. They were walking along Caton Ave. toward Ocean Ave., he said, when the taunts began again.

Muñiz told his mother that one of the men yelled, "You're going to die, f----t."

Muñiz said he tried to calm the situation when his friends began to fight with the two men. "I intervened, telling the younger man to calm down. That's when he took off his belt, wrapped it around his hand and attacked me with the buckle," he told police, later saying that the older man took a bat from his car and hit him with it.

But the investigating officer at the 70th Precinct stationhouse soon became skeptical about Muñiz's account, police sources aid.

At the scene, cops found Jose Cruz, the older man, badly injured. Cruz had to be placed in a medically induced coma and spent several weeks in Kings County Hospital, police said.

Muñiz said Cruz hurt himself when he fell during the struggle.

Police also said Muñiz listed an incorrect phone number on the report and was difficult to reach.

Two weeks later, Muñiz, who was working as a busboy, was arrested at the Bushwick home he shared with his mom. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree assault, and he has been held without bail at Rikers Island since.

"It seems to be ridiculous," said his lawyer Deron Castro. "He was the victim of a hate crime. He was the one who was being attacked. He should never have been arrested in this case."

Aguirre said she's astounded that such an injustice could happen in America.

"He suffered discrimination in Mexico, and we wanted to come to the U.S. so he could live confidently and be open with his sexuality," said Aguirre, 45, who works as a seamstress. "I thought that this was a fair country, but it isn't."

Make the Road New York staffers said if the incident had been prosecuted as a hate crime, Muñiz would have qualified for a U-visa, which gives temporary legal status to victims.

BY Erica Pearson
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Census Idiocy: Latino Isn't a "Race"

2010-04-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Latino Isn't a "Race"

"Homosexuals" responsible for Srebrenica Massacre According to Commander John Sheehan

2010-03-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende attacked on Friday claims by a retired U.S. general that Dutch forces were overrun in Srebrenica in 1995 because of the presence of gay soldiers.

At a U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday on allowing gay soldiers to serve openly in the military, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan said there was a causal link between having homosexuals in the Dutch forces and the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war.

"The remarks were outrageous, wrong and beneath contempt," Balkenende told a news conference.

Bosnian Serb forces overran lightly-armed Dutch soldiers in the United Nations-designated enclave in July 1995 and subsequently massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War Two.

In his remarks which also provoked angry reactions from unions and gay military groups, Sheehan blamed a post-Cold War effort by European nations to "socialize" their armed forces by, among other things, allowing openly gay soldiers to serve.

DUTCH ILL-EQUIPPED FOR WAR

"That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war. The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs," Sheehan said.

"The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them."

Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, asked: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?"

"Yes, they did. They included that as part of the problem," Sheehan said, according to a webcast on the website of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"That there were gay soldiers?" Levin then asked.

"That the combination was the liberalization of the military, a net effect was basically social engineering."

The Dutch Defense Ministry called Sheehan's claims "absolute nonsense" and added that gay Dutch soldiers routinely cooperate with the U.S. military in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen called the claim "the bizarre private opinion of someone without an official function".

Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States, said in a statement, "I couldn't disagree more" with Sheehan, adding there was no evidence of his claims in the extensive record of research on Srebrenica.

Military unions were equally angry. Dutch news agency ANP quoted the head of the military union AFMP as saying Sheehan's comments were "out of the realm of fiction", while the head of the gay soldiers' group SHK called his comments "the ridiculous convulsion of a loner".

The events in Srebrenica remain a sensitive subject in the Netherlands, where a six-year investigation into the massacre led to the government's fall in 2002.

-Ben Berkowitz

Latinos anxious over end of school liaisons in Pr. George's

2010-03-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

As word spreads of the recent decision by the Prince George's Board of Education to eliminate 120 full-time parent liaisons next year to save money, parents and staff at schools with large Latino populations are increasingly worried about how they will cope.

In her eight years at Hyattsville Middle School, liaison Rosa Lorenzo, 48, has often been the only person able to interpret for the roughly one-third of parents who speak only Spanish.

When a learning disability was diagnosed in eighth-grader Fernando Ocono in November, his mother said, it was Lorenzo who kept her involved in the school's response plan by explaining the procedures and regularly updating her on the boy's progress.

When a teacher noticed that seventh-grader Christian Gonzalez had grown distracted and depressed in October, Lorenzo not only found out the source of the boy's anguish -- his father was going blind from untreated diabetes -- but also searched for clinics that could provide low-cost treatment without health insurance. Today the father is on the mend, and Christian recently made the honor roll.

"It will harm me so much not to have her," Christian's mother, Laura Castro, 36, said in Spanish.

"I consult her on everything -- how to understand Christian's report card, what after-school programs he should sign up for . . .," said Castro, who makes a living collecting scrap metal. "Who will I talk to when she's gone? I will feel powerless."

The Latino community's growing anxiety over the board's decision highlights Prince George's uneasy transition from a majority-black county that has been a magnet for affluent African Americans to a county increasingly characterized by low-income Latino immigrant enclaves.
Changing demographics

African Americans have been losing ground in the school system since 2003, when their numbers peaked at 78 percent of the student population. By contrast, the Hispanic student population is growing rapidly, doubling between 2002 and 2009. Nearly one in five Prince George's public school students are Hispanic; some schools have concentrations as high as 98 percent.

Tension over how schools should serve newcomers without neglecting the needs of established groups, such as the county's substantial number of low-income African Americans, surfaced at the meeting last week during which board members -- none of whom are Latino -- overwhelmingly voted down a proposal to preserve 40 out of 120 liaisons who are bilingual.

"To pick and choose a group" of liaisons to keep, said board member Pat Fletcher (District 3), "is even more devastating than letting them all go," calling it "ironic" that only "Hispanic positions" would be saved.

She explained in an interview several days later that she was a strong supporter of the liaison program as a whole. But she said that she saw many English-speaking parents having trouble navigating the school system, too.

"It's the same issue. In terms of [an American] mother who had bad experiences in school, dropped out and just had no clue in terms of the school system, it's the same," she said.

But board member Heather Iliff (District 2), who was the lone vote in favor of saving the bilingual liaisons, disagreed. "I think the need is more acute for people who don't speak the language," she said.

Administrators at several schools with bilingual liaisons echoed that view. Counselors or other staff might be able to make up for Lorenzo's absence by forming close bonds with parents who speak English, noted Gail Golden, principal of Hyattsville Middle School. "But I don't have any counselors who are bilingual, I'm not bilingual, and none of my assistant principals are bilingual," she said, so Lorenzo is "pivotal."
Woman of many roles

To watch Lorenzo in action on a recent morning was to get a glimpse of what Golden meant. A petite woman with a hearty laugh who worked as manager of a jewelry store before deciding to find a job where she could serve the community, Lorenzo strides through the halls in a blur, gripping a walkie-talkie that constantly bleeps with requests.

"Miss Lorenzo: Are you there?" crackled the voice of one the assistant principals. "I need you to make some calls." Of the 10 eighth-graders with unexplained absences that day, five had parents who speak only Spanish.

"Sure, I'll be there in a sec," said Lorenzo, stopping to offer a friendly smile to a tense-looking Honduran woman waiting in the main office.

"Hi. You're here to pick up your daughter for a doctor's appointment?" asked the Dominican-born Lorenzo in Spanish. The woman's face relaxed at the sound of her own language. "Ok," continued Lorenzo. "If you can, ask the doctor for a note. That way your daughter will be excused for missing class."

Then it was off to help the director of the English for Speakers of Other Languages program write a comment form for parents. "I really want them to tell me what further information they'd find useful," said the teacher.

"Okay," said Lorenzo, taking out her pen. "Here's how you say this."

Lorenzo also often serves as an indispensable cultural ambassador, Golden said, for instance helping immigrant parents recognize the value of enrolling children in free after-school tutoring.

Simply sending a note home in Spanish notifying parents of the opportunity is not enough, explained Lorenzo, who draws on her own experience coming to the United States at 17 and raising six children in county schools.

"When they say no, it's because they don't trust that their children are going to go. They think it's an excuse to party or something," Lorenzo said.

"I have a lot of parents who can't even read the permission slip in Spanish. So I have to call them and tell them, 'This is what this is for, and it's okay to sign, and if you want to come and observe, you can.' Once I say all that, they feel relieved and say yes."

Indeed, the ability of bilingual liaisons to bridge cultural differences along with linguistic ones is the reason several principals said they've decided to use federal Title I funding for high-poverty schools to keep their parent liaisons on board.

"We'll have to make adjustments in other areas," said Carol Cantu, principal of Riverdale Elementary School, "But it's not going to hurt us as much as losing [the liaison] would."

Only about half of the schools with parent liaisons have access to Title I funding. Hyattsville Middle School is among 29 that do not.

Golden said she would bring in volunteers and bilingual staff from elsewhere in the school system to interpret at as many meetings and events as possible. At best, she said, it would a stop-gap solution. Lorenzo's absences "will significantly impact our ability to properly serve our Latino population," Golden said. "Am I concerned? Very."

By N.C. Aizenman and Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 7, 2010; C04

Minority Report

2010-02-22T12:59:00.001-08:00

American universities are accepting more minorities than ever. Graduating them is another matter.

By Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert | NEWSWEEK

Published Feb 19, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010

Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, was justifiably proud of Bowdoin's efforts to recruit minority students. Since 2003 the small, elite liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called underrepresented minority students (blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, about 30 percent of the U.S. population) in entering freshman classes from 8 percent to 13 percent. "It is our responsibility, given our place in the world, to reach out and attract students to come to our kinds of places," he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. But Bowdoin has not done quite as well when it comes to actually graduating minorities. While nine out of 10 white students routinely get their diplomas within six years, only seven out of 10 black students made it to graduation day in several recent classes.

The picture of diversity—black, white, and brown students cavorting or studying together out on the quad—is a stock shot in college catalogs. The picture on graduation day is a good deal more monochromatic. "If you look at who enters college, it now looks like America," says Hilary Pennington, director of postsecondary programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has closely studied enrollment patterns in higher education. "But if you look at who walks across the stage for a diploma, it's still largely the white, upper-income population."

The United States once had the highest graduation rate of any nation. Now it stands 10th. For the first time in American history, there is the risk that the rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one. The graduation rate among 25- to 34-year-olds is no better than the rate for the 55- to 64-year-olds who were going to college more than 30 years ago. Studies show that more and more poor and nonwhite students aspire to graduate from -college—but their graduation rates fall far short of their dreams. The graduation rates for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans lag far be-hind the graduation rates for whites and Asians. As the minority population grows in the United States, low college--graduation rates become a threat to national -prosperity.

The problem is pronounced at public universities. In 2007 (the last year for which Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, has comparative statistics) the University of Wisconsin–-Madison—one of the top five or so "public Ivies"—graduated 81 percent of its white students within six years, but only 56 percent of its blacks. At less-selective state schools, the numbers get worse. During the same time frame, the University of Northern Iowa graduated 67 percent of its white students, but only 39 percent of its blacks. Community colleges have low graduation rates generally—but rock-bottom rates for minorities. A recent review of California community colleges found that while a third of the Asian students picked up their degrees, only 15 percent of African-Americans did so as well.

Private colleges and universities generally do better, partly because they offer smaller classes and more personal attention. But when it comes to a significant graduation gap, Bowdoin has company. Nearby Colby College logged an 18-point difference between white and black graduates in 2007 and 25 points in 2006. Middlebury College in Vermont, another topnotch school, had a 19-point gap in 2007 and a 22-point gap in 2006. The most selective private schools—-Harvard, Yale, and -Princeton—show almost no gap between black and white graduation rates. But that may have more to do with their ability to cherry-pick the best students. According to data gathered by Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier, the most selective schools are more likely to choose blacks who have at least one immigrant parent from Africa or the Caribbean than black students who are descendants of American slaves. According to Guinier's data, the latter perform less well academically.

"Higher education has been able to duck this issue for years, particularly the more selective schools, by saying the onus is on the individual student," says Pennington of the Gates Foundation. "If they fail, it's their fault." Some critics blame affirmative action—students admitted with lower test scores and grades from shaky high schools often struggle at elite schools. But a bigger problem may be that poor high schools often send their students to colleges for which they are, in educators' jargon, "undermatched": they could get into more elite, richer schools, but instead go to community colleges and low-rated state schools that lack the resources to help them. Some schools out for profit cynically jack up tuitions and count on student loans and federal aid to foot the bill—knowing full well that the students won't make it. "Colleges know that a lot of kids they take will end up in remedial classes, for which they'll get no college credit and then they'll flunk out," says Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust. "The school gets to keep the money, but the kid leaves with loads of debt and no degree and no ability to get a better job. Colleges are not holding up their end."

A college education is getting ever more expensive. Since 1982 tuitions have been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation. University administrators insist that most of those hikes are matched by increased scholarship grants or loans, but the recession has slashed private endowments and cut into state spending on high-er education. In 2008 the net cost of attending a four-year public -university—after financial aid—equaled 28 percent of median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of median family income. More and more scholarships are based on merit, not need. Poorer students are not always the best-informed consumers. Often they wind up deeply in debt or simply unable to pay after a year or two and must drop out.

There once was a time when universities took a perverse pride in their attrition rates. Professors would begin the year by saying, "Look to the right and look to the left. One of you is not going to be here by the end of the year." But such a Darwinian spirit is beginning to give way as at least a few colleges face up to the graduation gap. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the gap has been roughly halved over the last three years. The university has poured resources into peer counseling to help students from inner-city schools adjust to the rigor and faster pace of a university classroom—and also to help minority students overcome the stereotype that they are less qualified. Wisconsin has a "laserlike focus" on building up student skills in the first three months, according to vice provost Damon Williams.

State and federal governments could sharpen that focus everywhere by broadly publishing minority graduation rates. (For now students and counselors must find their way to the Web site of the Educational Trust, which compares data obtained from schools by the federal government.) For years private colleges such as Princeton and MIT have had success bringing minorities onto campus in the summer before freshman year to give them a head start on college-level courses. The newer trend is to start recruiting poor and nonwhite students as early as the seventh grade, using innovative tools like hip-hop competitions to identify kids with sophisticated verbal finesse. Such programs can be expensive, of course, but cheap compared with the millions already invested in scholarships and grants for kids who have little chance to graduate without special support.

With effort and money, the graduation gap can be closed. Washington and Lee is a small, selective school with a preppy feel in Lexington, Va. Its student body is less than 5 percent black and less than 2 percent Latino. While the school usually graduated about 90 percent of its whites, the graduation rate of its blacks and Latinos had dipped to 63 percent by 2007. "We went through a dramatic shift," says Dawn Watkins, the vice president for student affairs. The school aggressively pushed mentoring of minorities by other students and "partnering" with parents at a special pre-enrollment session. The school had its first-ever black homecoming. Last spring the school graduated the same proportion of minorities as it did whites. If the United States wants to keep up in the global economic race, it will have to pay systematic attention to graduating minorities, not just enrolling them.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/233843

Shaved Pug Anna Wintour Wins 134th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

2010-02-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

Shaved Pug Wins 134th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York! Oh, wait, wrong newsflash, it's Anna Wintour. Sorry...

Daniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airport

2010-02-10T19:16:00.000-08:00

Daniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airport

By Daniel Rubin

Inquirer Columnist

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.

At Philadelphia International Airport last August, his interest in the world got him handcuffed.

The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets.

Arabic-language flash cards.

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.

But what questions...

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?"

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.' "

He was asked if he knew who "did 9/11."

He answered, Osama bin Laden.

Then he was asked, "Do you know what language he spoke?"

George answered, Arabic."

The supervisor then held up his flash cards. "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?"

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.

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.

He says he did the right thing when questioned.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

George says he cannot imagine what they mean - he was calm.

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."

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.

"You can't change the world on me that completely," she said, laughing.

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.

"Clearly we want them to be paying attention," Cutter said. "But we want them to be paying smart attention."

Security technologist Bruce Schneier was less polite.

"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."

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."

U.S. Pentagon Cyberwar Strategy: Secret Cyberweapons

2010-02-03T10:35:00.000-08:00

By MARK THOMPSON

The China-U.S. diplomatic spat over cyberattacks on Google has highlighted the growing significance of the Internet as a theater of combat. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn recently warned of its appeal to foes who are unable to match the U.S.'s conventional military might. An enemy country could deploy hackers to take down U.S. financial systems, communications and infrastructure, he suggested, at a cost far below that of building a trillion-dollar fleet of fifth-generation jet fighters. "Knowing this, many militaries are developing offensive cyber capabilities," Lynn said. "Some governments already have the capacity to disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure." (On Tuesday, the nation's top intelligence official warned that cyber-enemies have "severely threatened" U.S. computer systems. "Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication," Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee.) (Comment on this story)

What U.S. officials don't like to acknowledge is that the Pentagon is hard at work developing an offensive cyber capability of its own. In fact, it has even begun using that capability to wage war. Beyond merely shutting down enemy systems, the U.S. military is crafting a witch's brew of stealth, manipulation and falsehoods designed to lure the enemy into believing he is in charge of his forces when in fact they have been secretly enlisted as allies of the U.S. military. And some in Washington fear that there hasn't been sufficient debate over the proper role of U.S. cyberweapons that are now being secretly developed. (See the Top 10 Most Expensive Military Planes.)

Pentagon officials acknowledge privately that such work is under way, though nearly all of it is classified. The recent creation of U.S. Cyber Command shows that the U.S. military is taking this mission seriously. "You have to be very careful about what you say in this area," says a top cyberwarrior of the Pentagon. "But you can tell there's something going on because the services are putting their money there and contractors are going after it in a big way."

The Joint Chiefs of Staff want the ability to destroy an enemy's computer network "so badly that it cannot perform any function," according to the handbook on what the Pentagon calls "Information Operations." The U.S. military wants to keep foes "from accessing and using critical information, systems and services" and to spoof adversaries "by manipulating their perception of reality." Just how such wizardry is to be accomplished is contained in a classified supplement. But hints can be gleaned in a trickle of contracts and budget documents, larded with geek-speak, that have begun seeping onto the public record. (See pictures of technological advances in the military.)

The Air Force wants the ability to burrow into any computer system anywhere in the world "completely undetected." It wants to slip computer code into a potential foe's computer and let it sit there for years, "maintaining a 'low and slow' gathering paradigm" to thwart detection. Clandestinely exploring such networks, the Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement program's goal is to "stealthily exfiltrate information" in hopes it might "discover information with previously unknown existence." The U.S. cyberwarriors' goal: "complete functional capabilities" of an enemy's computer network - from U.S. military keyboards. The Army is developing "techniques that capture and identify data traversing enemy networks for the purpose of Information Operations or otherwise countering adversary communications." And the Navy is developing "a non-lethal, non-attributable system designed to offer non-kinetic offensive information operation solutions," according to Pentagon budget documents. (See how cyberwar was envisioned in 1995.)

Yet concepts that have regulated war forever, such as deterrence and attribution, are slippery or missing in cyberspace. National boundaries don't exist, making moot the question of sovereignty. Asymmetries abound: defenders must defend everything, all the time, while an attacker can prevail by exploiting a single vulnerability. Tracking down the source of cybersabotage, routed like a skipping stone through a series of innocent servers, can be all but impossible. Are the attackers curious teenagers, criminal gangs, a foreign power - or, more likely, a criminal gang sponsored by a foreign power? Deterrence becomes meaningless when the identity of an attacker is unknown. (See an invasion of Chinese cyberspies.)

"We're in the stage before warfare," cyberwarfare expert James Lewis told a Washington audience on Jan. 27. "We're in the stages of people poking around." Lewis, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said cyberdefenses are inadequate. "Unless we find a way to use offensive capabilities as part of a deterrence or strategic defense," he said, "we will be unable to defeat these opponents." CSIS also released last week a survey of cybersecurity experts from around the world who "rank the U.S. as the country 'of greatest concern' in the context of foreign cyberattacks, just ahead of China."

It's the instantaneous nature of cyberattacks that has rendered defenses against them obsolete. Once an enemy finds a chink in U.S. cyberarmor and opts to exploit it, it will be too late for the U.S. to play defense (it takes 300 milliseconds for a keystroke to travel halfway around the world). Far better to be on the prowl for cybertrouble and - with a few keystrokes or by activating secret codes long ago secreted in a prospective foe's computer system - thwart any attack. Cyberdefense "never works" by itself, says the senior Pentagon officer. "There has to be an element of offense to have a credible defense."

Such cyberbattles are already happening in miniature. In Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. cyberwarriors are hard at work denying enemy commanders the ability to direct their forces, the senior Pentagon officer says. "I shut it down, take away your electricity, take away the radio, infect your phone," he explains. "Now you don't know where I'm coming from, or if you do, you can't tell the rest of your force what's going on." More insidiously, the U.S. can doctor the information the foe gets. "I can alter the messages coming across," he says.

But there is mounting concern that U.S. offensive capability in cyberspace is growing too fast and too secretly. "I have no doubt we're doing some very profoundly sophisticated things on the attack side," says William Owens, a retired Navy admiral and cyberwar expert who led a federal study on U.S. offensive cyberwarfare last year. "But that is little realized by many people in Congress or the Administration." That study, by the National Research Council, concluded that "the U.S. armed forces are actively preparing to engage in cyberattacks, and may have done so in the past." But it added that a lack of public debate has led to "ill-formed, undeveloped and highly uncertain" policies regarding its use, which could lead the U.S. to stumble inadvertently into a cyberwar.

Latina Magazine on Sonia Sotomayor

2010-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

Her Honor: A Portrait of Justice Sonia Sotomayor

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.

Here is an excerpt from this fascinating story:

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.

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.

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.

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.’’

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.”

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.”

And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

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.

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)....

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

To read the rest of this story, pick up the December/January issue of Latina, on newsstands Nov. 17.

from Latina by Shani Saxon-Parrish, "Her Honor: A Portrait of Justice Sonia Sotomayor"

Having Just Finished Writing an Overdue Essay...

2010-01-17T21:21:00.000-08:00

In the middle of "Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend" I'm reminded of la Judy's mindbug that has kept me chuckling and ill at ease with all the leather around me this weekend in D.C. in the throes of the Haitian disaster: "It's not just the norm of heterosexuality that is tenuous. It's all sexual norms. I think that every sexual position is fundamentally comic. If you say 'I can only desire X,' what you've immediately done, in rendering desire exclusively, is created a whole set of positions which are unthinkable from the standpoint of ...your identity. Now, I take it that one of the essential aspects of comedy emerges when you end up actually occupying a position that you have just announced to be unthinkable. That is funny." --Fun from "la Judy" (i.e., la camarera, not the the Garland).

Haitian Embassy Drive Now!

2010-01-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

L'union fait la force! It's been a long day: 01/17/10 Survival Kit Drive at Embassy of Haiti in D.C. and itemization drive at 10:30 a.m. on 01/18/10. Volunteers still needed, meet me at 2311 Massachusetts. Ave., N.W.Washington, DC 20008. Coffee and good will await:

From the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH) ***SURVIVAL KIT DRIVE*** NOAH will be conducting a Survival Kit Drive THIS Sunday, January 17, 2010 from 11am - 4pm at the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti in Washington D.C. located at 2311 Massachusetts Avenue NW. In appreciation of your assistance light refreshments will be available. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact (718.755.0119) or (202.904.9070). Below are a list of items needed immediately. Many can be found at your local dollar store or even the One Spot in your local Target. Please spread the word to all because a MAJOR group effort is needed to get Haiti through this. I appreciate and thank your help and support. ITEMS BEING COLLECTED:
Baby formula (dry/powder)
Baby wipes Baby bottles
Diapers Baby clothes
Toiletries (shampoo, soap, toothpaste)
Hand sanitizer
Vitamins
First aid kits
Over the counter medicines
Socks
Blankets
Mosquito repellent
Flashlights Batteries
Candles Flip flops
T-shirts Pants
Lightweight jackets
Non perishable food that’s not in cans (seal-paks of tuna or sardines, for example)
Think flat, lightweight, easily packable. Remember, L'union fait la force! ***PLEASE FORWARD!!!***

Texas Board of Ed. Attempting to Erase Cesar Chavez from Textbooks

2010-01-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

César Chávez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993)

From Mariela Rosario

Gail Lowe, a staunch Republican and right-wing ideologue, hired a panel of "experts" to review the curriculum after being appointed last summer by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the Texas State Board of Education. One of them suggested removing Cesar Chavez, arguably the most important Latino civil rights leader of the 20th century, from the social studies books, stating that Chavez, “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others" and that he should not be "held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

Lowe's review was sparked by complaints by Board members and their appointees about an "over representation of minorities" in the current social studies curriculum. The whole situation is hysterically ironic given the fact that the majority of children in the public school system in the state of Texas are Latino. But apparently, for the Texas school board, Chavez and the one other Latina currently mentioned—Irma Rangel, the first Hispanic woman elected to the state Legislature—are just too much.

Dos Patrias, Cuba, y la noche/Two Homelands, Cuba, and the night

2010-01-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

A Film by Christian Liffers in association with Saetre Film

Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas

2010-01-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas
By David Holthouse

Repost

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.
Waterboarding
Waterboarding for the movemement: In a recent exercise, militia members and others trained in resisting interrogation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Group Admits To Scamming U.S. Visa System

2009-12-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

Group Admits To Scamming Visa System
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ―

Four employees at a Pennsylvania staffing company have admitted they scammed the visa system to bring hundreds of seasonal workers into the U.S. for clients.

International Personnel Resources applied for temporary work visas under phony names culled from a Mexican phonebook, and its employees used the stockpiled documents to place workers from Mexico and Central America in landscaping and other jobs, authorities said.

At times, the company sent undocumented workers home, supplied them with visas and coached them to tell immigration officials they had never been in the country illegally, prosecutors said.

Former office manager Emily V. Ford, 29, of West Chester, pleaded guilty Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Brenner said.

Company owner and President Michael T. Glah, 48, and his wife, Vice President Theresa M. Klish, 50, both of West Chester, and office manager Mary H. Gillin, 60, of Downingtown, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Philadelphia federal court to charges in the 11-count information.

All four are set for sentencing on March 29. Glah faces a mandatory five-year prison term. The others face prison terms under federal guidelines, Brenner said.

Glah's lawyer, Robert J. Donatoni, called his client remorseful.

"There will come a time when they will articulate why this happened," Donatoni said. "Obviously, there will be no justification for it."

The other defense lawyers did not immediately return messages left by The Associated Press.

H-2B visas are designed for companies that cannot find Americans willing to fill their jobs.

The West Chester-based company accumulated hundreds of H-2B visas for arriving workers from 2003 to 2008.

The defendants took advantage of a provision in the law that lets employers substitute new names if the original applicant becomes unavailable. Given the cap of 66,000 visas annually for such workers, their scheme left fewer available for companies trying to use the system lawfully, prosecutors said.

How Young Latinos Come of Age

2009-12-28T09:14:00.001-08:00

from Pew Research

December 11, 2009

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

Overview

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Identity and Assimilation

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.

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.

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.

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.

Only in the third and higher generations do a majority of Hispanic youths (50%) use "American" as their first term of self-description.

Immigration in Historical Perspective

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

México, D.F: First in Latin America to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage

2009-12-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

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.

The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!"

Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the Democratic Revolution Party was widely expected to sign the measure into law.

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.

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.

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."

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Many people in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America remain opposed to gay marriage, and the dominant Roman Catholic Church has announced its opposition.

"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.'"

City lawmaker Victor Romo, a member of the mayor's leftist party, called it a historic day.

"For centuries unjust laws banned marriage between blacks and whites or Indians and Europeans," he said. "Today all barriers have disappeared."

Latino School Dropout Intervention Program

2009-12-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

Sample Dropout Intervention Program

ACHIEVEMENT FOR LATINOS THROUGH ACADEMIC SUCCESS (ALAS)
Latino School Dropout Intervention Program

from NCSET

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.

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.

* Students receive social problem-solving training, counseling, increased and specific recognition of academic excellence, and enhancement of school affiliation.
* 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.
* Parents of program participants receive training in school participation, accessing and using community resources, and how to guide and monitor adolescents.
* 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.

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.

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.

Cost: No information was identified in the available material.

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.

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.

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.

References:

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.

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.

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.

Contact Information:

Katherine Larson
E-mail: larson@education.ucsb.edu

Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America

2009-12-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Northern Virginia Community College Shooting: Student, 20, Opens Fire in Class

2009-12-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

(In this booking photo to the left provided by the Prince William County Police Department, Jason Michael Hamilton, 20, of Manassas, is shown. Hamilton was arrested soon after shots were fired in a classroom at Woodbridge, Va. campus of Northern Virginia Community College and charged with attempted murder and discharging a firearm in a school zone. He was being held without bond.)

Student, 20, opens fire in Va. class

By NAFEESA SYEED

An upset student was arrested Tuesday after pointing a high-powered rifle at a teacher and firing two shots in a classroom at a Virginia community college, police said. No injuries were reported.

"The teacher hit the floor when she saw a gun come up," said Sgt. Kim Chinn, spokeswoman for Prince William County Police.

The suspected gunman, Jason Michael Hamilton, 20, of Manassas, was arrested soon after the shots were fired and charged with attempted murder and discharging a firearm in a school zone. He was being held without bond. It wasn't immediately known if he had an attorney.

Police haven't yet discussed a motive, but they said Hamilton fired the two shots, then stopped without explanation and left the classroom.

"I assume he's upset," Chinn said. "He walked into a classroom and shot at a teacher."

Hamilton cooperated with officers when they found him in the hallway, Chinn said. He didn't have the rifle with him but told police where it was. Chinn said Hamilton owned the rifle.

The report of an "active shooting" on the campus came in at 2:40 p.m. It quickly prompted fears of another mass shooting like the massacre at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people in 2007.

School officials locked down the campus and SWAT units swept the buildings room by room before letting people leave.

"We heard a loud noise, it sounded like a desk fell over and we heard another loud pop, we knew it was a gunshot," said Miriam St. Clair, a 58-year-old biology professor from McLean.

St. Clair said she looked out the window and saw students running outside. The professor then told her students to get inside the classroom and they closed the door, which did not have a lock. They barricaded themselves inside by piling 20 desks against the door, crouching behind other desks when they were done.

One of the students called 911 and the operator told them there had been an incident and to stay where they were. About 2 1/2 hours later, a SWAT team came in and told them it was safe.

"We were very frightened," she said.

More than two hours after the shooting, student Christian Dorn told WRC-TV by telephone that she was still barricaded inside a classroom. She recalled hearing two loud shots in the building and screams to call 911.

"I just thought about Virginia Tech and Columbine and just was praying this was not another one of those situations," she told the television station. "We're just confused right now. We're ready to leave."

By Tuesday night, several police cars and officers were still standing at the entrance to the college, which is in a suburban area across the street from a high school.

The Woodbridge campus is one of six in the Northern Virginia Community College system, which is the largest educational institution in the state. The system enrolls more than 60,000 students, according to its Web site.

Associated Press Writers Brett Zongker in Washington and Alex Dominguez in Baltimore contributed to this report.

***

Shooting Incident at Woodbridge Campus - Woodbridge Campus Closed for Evening

December 8, 2009
Update: 6:30 p.m.

Woodbridge, VA (December 8, 2009) At approximately 2:40 p.m. on December 8, 2009, the College was notified of a shooting incident that occurred at the Woodbridge Campus. As soon as the incident was reported, the College implemented its emergency procedures, including immediate notification of students, faculty and staff through multimedia devices that included computer pop-up alerts, classroom phone calls, text messaging, campus display screens, website notification and social media.

There were no injuries reported from the incident. The incident is still under investigation and more information may be forthcoming. The suspect was apprehended by Prince William County Police and NOVA Campus police and remains in custody.

The Woodbridge Campus will be closed until noon on Wednesday. Once the campus opens, we will be offering counseling services. Please check our Web site for additional information and updates as they become available.

Studies Show Latinos Climb Socio-Economic Ladder of Success

2009-12-08T11:28:00.001-08:00

As a front-page story in today’s Washington Post 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.

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.”

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.”

Lodge also complained that immigrants such as the Italians:

…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.

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.

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.

Walter Ewing

Detroit's Proposal 2

2009-12-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

Three years later, the battle continues over affirmative action in Detroit.

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.

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."

Bullard, an African-American student, did just that and then scored a 26 on her ACT.

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.

Bullard´s application was ultimately rejected. Was it because of Proposal 2? There´s no smoking gun, but the implication is certainly there.

"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.

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.

In fact, the long legal road MCRI has traveled began on March 25, 2004.

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.

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.

The initiative — bankrolled by Ward Connerly, who successfully baked similar language into California law — should not be put before Michigan´s voters, she said.

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.

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.

Affirmative action defenders in Michigan are still looking for their second judicial victory.

Latest stop: U.S. Court of Appeals

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.

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.

But not their race. That´s not right, Washington says.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

"He recognizes that there are racial disparities in education and that government has a right to take that into account," Washington said.

Rosman is not of the same mind. Does he think affirmative action defenders are bringing forth a flimsy case?

"Flimsy is a strong word. I just don´t think it´s going to Rosman win," he said.

Killing MCRI an ´uphill climb´

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."

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.

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.

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).

Sedler declined to make a prediction on what the Sixth Circuit would do, but said he could see a scenario where MCRI could fall.

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.

To prove his point, Rosman quoted Lawson´s ruling.

"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.

"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.

Cox leading the charge

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

But supporters are hoping this time will be different. They feel like this time it has to be different.

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.

"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."

by Kyle Melinn
from CityPulse

Myriam Mercado, Mother of Jorge Steven López Mercado, Thanks Supporters

2009-11-25T15:42:00.000-08:00

"El amor vence el odio"

Gay Puerto Rican Teen Decapitated, Dismembered, and Burned

2009-11-18T10:43:00.000-08:00

From Towerload
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.

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..."

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).

Fort Hood: How many white male Christians from the midwest felt the need to "mea culpa" after Timothy McVeigh?

2009-11-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

How many white male Christians from the midwest felt the need to "mea culpa" after Timothy McVeigh?

***

The tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, shouldn’t have a political dimension to it. Yet within hours it was being portrayed that way.

From one side, the alleged shooter — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist — is a victim of “Pre-traumatic Stress Disorder” who flipped out because as a doctor treating combat veterans he had to deal with the horrors of an unjust war. From the other side, he’s a Muslim terrorist, an Arab (though born in the United States) plotting and carrying out his own murderous jihad.

In his radio address Saturday, President Obama urged Americans to see beyond the ethnicity of the alleged attacker. Speaking of those serving in the US military, he said:

“They are descendants of immigrants, and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to country that has been tested and proved worthy. What they share is the same unflinching courage, unblinking compassion and uncommon camaraderie that the soldiers and civilians of Fort Hood showed America and showed the world.”

But WorldNetDaily was quick to trumpet a radical Islamic organization in England hailing Maj. Hasan as “an officer and a gentleman.”

And the conservative Web site even charged that Hasan had played an “advisory role in President Barack Obama’s transition into the White House” thinly based on Hasan’s having attended an event at George Washington University at which corporate executives, academic researchers, and officials from previous administrations discussed homeland security.

Others on the right have suggested that Muslim US military officers might need “special debriefings” or “special screenings.”

In a piece headlined “The massacre at Fort Hood and Muslim soldiers with attitude,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin writes: “I’ve said it many times over the years and it bears repeating again as cable TV talking heads ask in bewilderment how all the red flags Hasan raised could have been ignored: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.”

Meanwhile, the debate rages over whether Hasan — aside from his religion, ethnicity, and what he’s reported to have said about two US wars in Muslim countries — himself was a victim of combat-related stress. Even though he’d never been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan himself, presumably as an Army psychiatrist he would have treated and counseled many combat veterans physically broken and mentally battered by war.

“Imagine every day trying to help young men and women somehow put their lives back together despite their night terrors, flashbacks, and chronic sleeplessness,” writes psychologist and full-time therapist Todd Essig. “While you reach out to help, they mistrust your every move and respond with hair-trigger tempers, not to mention all the physical symptoms, alienation, and hopelessness. Surrounded by thoughts of suicide — and homicide — you try and keep faith with the honor and challenge of providing care.”

On a New York Times blog site for war veterans, Vietnam vet and former Marine Joseph A. Kinney writes:

“Could it be that the psychiatrist we want to hate saw the unbearable suffering of warriors he was tasked to treat? Could it be that he identified with the suffering of those he treated at Walter Reed Army Hospital? Did he become one of us, another soul tortured by war’s anguish? I cannot forgive this man who betrayed us but I must try and understand him nonetheless.”

Many of the online comments to Mr. Kinney’s blog post expressed outrage that Hasan’s alleged attack should be seen this way. One person wrote: “You want to understand him? Here’s the explanation: at some point, he became a radical Muslim terrorist. Period. Whether that was brought on by PTSD is irrelevant….”

On Huffington Post, Kamran Pasha describes his conversation with another Muslim soldier at Fort Hood, a 22-year Army man and Iraq combat veteran who recently converted to Islam. This soldier (referred to only as “Richard”) knew Hasan. He told Mr. Pasha (a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of “Mother of the Believers,” a novel on the birth of Islam) that he now believes Hasan’s alleged murderous act was motivated both by religious radicalism as well as having worked in a situation where combat stress was always present.

As more becomes known about what happened at Fort Hood — and, most importantly, why — many Americans may be less likely to see the tragedy in the context of their own opinions about the war and those of all backgrounds called to fight it.

By Brad Knickerbocker

Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap

2009-11-01T17:34:00.001-08:00

Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap

by Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center
Report Materials

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

New Jersey State Police Seem to be Contradicting CNN Host Lou Dobbs' Account of a Gunfire Incident, ¡Qué lástima!

2009-10-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

New Jersey state police seem to be contradicting CNN Host Lou Dobbs' account of a gunfire incident near his Sussex County, New Jersey, house.

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."

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."

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

The New Jersey police made no mention of the immigration reform groups Dobbs discussed in connection with the incident.

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.

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."

Bullet hits Lou Dobbs' NJ Home with Wife Nearby

2009-10-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Police in New Jersey are trying to determine who fired a bullet that struck CNN commentator Lou Dobbs' home as his wife stood nearby. State police Sgt. Stephen Jones says Dobbs' wife and driver were outside the home Oct. 5 when they heard the gunshot. Jones says the bullet didn't penetrate the siding and fell to the ground outside.

Dobbs mentioned the bullet earlier this week on CNN and his radio show.

Dobbs says he had been receiving threatening phone calls for weeks. On his radio show, he connected the gunshot to his advocacy for a crackdown on illegal immigration and to his opponents' rhetoric.

The home is on a farm in Wantage, about 50 miles northwest of New York City.

It is small-game hunting season, but no hunters were seen in the area.

Time For Cobb County To Walk Away From 287(g)

2009-10-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Cobb County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to accept Sheriff Neil Warren’s recommendation on the re-signing of the 287(g) Agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They should reconsider this decision.

The 287(g) program delegates immigration enforcement authority to specific local police agencies. The Cobb Sheriff’s Office is one of the five agencies in Georgia that has entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to participate in enforcement of federal civil immigration laws.

Though initially intended as a measure to combat violent crime and other felonies such as gang activity and drug trafficking, 287(g) programs have in fact undermined public safety, as immigrant communities, fearful of being deported, hesitate to report crime. The Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Police Foundation have both found that participating in 287(g) programs has harmed community policing efforts.

This trend is documented by the ACLU of Georgia report released Monday titled: “Terror and Isolation in Cobb: How Unchecked Police Power under 287(g) had Torn Families Apart and Threatened Public Safety.” The report is based on interviews with 10 community members affected by the program as well as five community advocates and attorneys based in Cobb.

As the report documents, in Cobb specifically, there has been a widespread increase in fear to report crime and mistrust in law enforcement as a result of 287(g). Immigrants feel afraid to seek assistance from law enforcement, even when they are the victims of crimes themselves. This factor poses a public safety threat to all county residents. One community member named Joanna mentioned to us that she once even put out the fire in her kitchen herself, because she was afraid to call 911.

In addition, law enforcement agencies that reallocate limited resources towards cracking down on violations such as driving without a license or lack of insurance may have scarce means left with which to combat crimes of violence and other felonies. In Cobb, immigrants disappear into detention for violations such as having a broken tail light or tinted windows on their car. In 2008, Cobb County turned over 3,180 detainees to ICE for deportation. Of those, 2,180, about 69 percent, were arrested for traffic violations.

In addition, the program has encouraged and served as a justification for racial profiling and human rights violations by some police acting as immigration agents. As the ACLU of Georgia report shows, Cobb officers have misused the power granted to them under the agreement by engaging in racial profiling of Latino communities and detaining individuals in the Cobb jail for unconstitutionally prolonged time periods. A telling example is the case of Jonathan, a Latino man who was shopping for jewelry for his girlfriend at Macy’s when he was followed by a security guard who then called the Cobb Police. Jonathan was detained by the officer without being informed about the reason. He was subsequently charged with loitering and deported. The loitering charge was later dismissed by the district attorney without a hearing. His family now lives in constant fear of the “seemingly unlimited power of the police to arrest a Latino person for any or no reason at all.”

There is currently no meaningful check in place to ensure that local law enforcement do not abuse the program by intimidating and racially profiling immigrant communities in Cobb. A Government Accountability Office investigation earlier this year found ICE was not exercising proper oversight over local or state agencies. This problem is compounded in Georgia, as there is no state legislation banning racial profiling and mandating accountability and transparency for law enforcement.

The minor changes in the program recently announced by the Department of Homeland Security make no serious attempt at discouraging profiling or reducing its negative impact on public safety. In addition, the new MOA actually takes a step backwards in the area of transparency, as it attempts to further shield 287(g) from public scrutiny by declaring that documents related to 287(g) are no longer public records.

In late August, more than 521 organizations across the country, many of which in Georgia, called on the Obama Administration to end 287(g), citing the serious problems associated with the program, including racial profiling. The groups were recently joined in this demand by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In addition, in a recent letter to the Obama administration, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the administration and Congress to do more to end racial profiling by reconsidering the 287(g) program.

The ACLU of Georgia was joined Monday by faith and community leaders from Cobb and around the state in reiterating this demand. 287(g) programs waste local resources and hinder local police ability to effectively protect public safety in Cobb and other communities around the State. It is time for Cobb to walk away from 287(g).

(Originally posted on The Marietta Daily Journal Online)

Judging Judge Keith Bardwell

2009-10-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

The face of Justice?

“I’m not a racist….They come to my house….they use my bathroom…”

By AFRO Staff

(October 18, 2009) - A Louisiana couple is outraged at a local official’s decision to deny them a marriage license because their relationship is interracial.

Hammond, La. residents Beth Humphrey, a White woman, and her fiancé Terence McKay, a Black man, were denied a marriage license by local justice of the peace Keith Bardwell in early October. Bardwell said his decision was based on concern for the welfare of children the couple may have.

After learning of Bardwell’s decision, Humphrey contacted local and national media.

“We are used to the closet racism, but we're not going to tolerate that overt racism from an elected official,” she told CNN.

Bardwell is a justice of peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward and has served in the position for 34 years. His is scheduled to hold the office until 2014.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer, and I won’t help put them through it.”

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told AP. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said Bardwell’s practices and comments were deeply disturbing.

“Not only does his decision directly contradict Supreme Court rulings, it is an example of the ugly bigotry that divided our country for too long,” Landrieu said.

According to The New York Times, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has joined civil rights groups and others in calling for Bardwell’s resignation.

Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess said in a statement that Bardwell’s views were not consistent with his or those of the local government. But as an elected official, Bardwell was not under the supervision of the parish government, The Associated Press reported.

“However, I am certainly very disappointed that anyone representing the people of Tangipahoa Parish, particularly an elected official, would take such a divisive stand,” Burgess said in an e-mail. “I would hope that Mr. Bardwell would consider offering his resignation if he is unable to serve all of the people of his district and our parish.”

Although the couple is distraught by Bardwell’s decision, they said they realize that his views are not shared by most of the community.

“He’s not representing all the people that he is supposed to be representing,” Humphrey told CNN. “He’s only representing the people with his same opinions.”

Humphrey and McKay were later married by another justice of the peace in the same parish. Humphrey said she believes the incident occurred for a reason.

“I just think that God puts you in the right positions at the right time in order to stand up to people who choose to live their lives with hate,” she said.

According to CNN, Bardwell told a local Louisiana newspaper that in his experience, most interracial marriages don’t last. He said he always asks if a couple is interracial and, if they are, refers them to another justice of the peace. Bardwell said no one had complained in the past.

The number of interracial marriages has skyrocketed nationwide, nearly quadrupling between 1970 and 2005, the most recent year for which there is U.S. Census data. As of 2005, nearly 8.5 million Americans are living in “mixed marriages,” according to CNN.

According to the AP, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Judiciary Commission said investigations of the incident are confidential for now. However, if the commission recommends action to the Louisiana Supreme Court, that information would become public.

CNN: Lou Dobbs or Latinos in America?

2009-10-13T15:08:00.001-07:00

Latino Demographics

2009-10-08T18:28:00.001-07:00

Pew Reports
Latinos Account for Half of U.S. Population Growth Since 2000

Since 2000 Hispanics have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States -- a significant new demographic milestone for the nation's largest minority group. During the 1990s, the Hispanic population also expanded rapidly, but in that decade its growth accounted for less than 40% of the nation's total population increase. In a reversal of past trends, Latino population growth in the new century has been more a product of the natural increase (births minus deaths) of the existing population than it has been of new international migration. As of mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15.1% of the total U.S. population.

Since 2000 many Latinos have settled in counties that once had few Latinos, continuing a pattern that began in the previous decade. But there are subtle differences in Hispanic settlement patterns in the current decade compared with those of the 1990s. The dispersion of Latinos in the new century has tilted more to counties in the West and the Northeast. Despite the new tilt, however, the South accounted for a greater share of overall Latino population growth than any other region in the new century. There is also an ever-growing concentration of Hispanic population growth in metropolitan areas. These findings emerge from the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of the Census Bureau's 2007 county population estimates, supplemented by 1990 and 2000 county population counts from the Decennial Censuses.

Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas

2009-08-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Nativist Vigilantes Adopt 'Patriot' Movement Ideas
By David Holthouse

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.
Waterboarding
Waterboarding for the movemement: In a recent exercise, militia members and others trained in resisting interrogation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Rich Benjamin Rocks

2009-08-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

"America" as Dystopia

Microsoft Apologizes for Changing Black Man's Race in Photo

2009-08-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.

A photo on the Seattle-based company's U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

The photo editing sparked criticism online. Some bloggers said Poland's ethnic homogeneity may have played a role in changing the photo.

"We are looking into the details of this situation," Microsoft spokesperson Lou Gellos said in a statement Tuesday. "We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image."

Were they concentrating on producing a better product, perhaps the creative classes wouldn't be running to Apple.

Boston Officer Calls Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey"

2009-07-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

Boston cop suspended after racist e-mail diatribe

BOSTON (AFP) – Boston police said they had suspended an officer for a racist email likely to renew tensions over the recent arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

"Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis placed Officer Justin Barrett, 36, on administrative leave pending the outcome of a termination hearing," a spokesman for the force told AFP in a statement.

"Commissioner Davis was made aware of a correspondence with racist remarks and yesterday removed the officer of his gun and badge."

The email describes Gates, who was arrested and briefly detained earlier this month at Harvard, near Boston, as a "banana-eating jungle monkey," according to a copy published by news site MyFoxBoston.com.

The city's mayor, Tom Menino, was quoted referring to Barrett as a "cancer in the department" and calling on him to be fired.

Gates became the center of a national debate on racism when he was charged with disorderly conduct after arguing with police sent to investigate a suspected burglary at his home near Harvard University.

President Barack Obama became embroiled in the uproar when he said police acted "stupidly." On Thursday, Obama is due to host both Gates and the arresting officer at the White House for what officials say will be a friendly beer.

But the email has reignited the controversy and dealt Boston's police a severe image blow just when they and the White House were hoping to calm tensions.

The email allegedly written by Barrett lambasts Gates for getting into an altercation with police.

"I am not a racist, but I am prejudice towards people who are stupid," reads the alleged diatribe -- containing frequent grammatical and spelling errors -- against Gates and local newspaper the Boston Globe.

"He has indeed transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey."

Politico: President Obama Walks Back Police Criticism

2009-07-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

From ALEXANDER BURNS & CAROL E. LEE |

In an attempt to tamp down the escalating controversy over his comments on the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department, President Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room and placed calls to both Gates and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley, who arrested the Harvard professor.

Taking the briefing-room podium just hours after Cambridge police union officials called on Obama to apologize for saying the officers involved in the incident with Gates behaved "stupidly," Obama conceded that he erred in his "choice of words."

Obama said he spoke to James Crowley, the sergeant who arrested Gates, "and I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of him is that he was an outstanding police officer...and that was confirmed in the phone conversation."

"In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically," Obama said, walking back his sharpest criticism.

But, the president said: "I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Prof. Gates out of his home and to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Prof. Gates probably overreacted as well."

At 3:15 p.m., shortly after phoning Crowley and speaking to the press, Obama also placed a call to Gates and had a "positive discussion," according to the White House.

In a release, the White House said Obama extended an invitation to Gates to appear at the White House with Crowley "in the near future."

Obama's conciliatory moves marked an abrupt shift from Friday morning, when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed a suggestion that the backlash from police groups could be distressing to the White House, given that Obama has enjoyed a positive relationship with the law enforcement community.

"I think the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed McCain," Gibbs fired back at reporters, referring to Obama's Republican opponent in the 2008 election. "If I'm not mistaken."

At a Cambridge press conference Friday morning featuring Crowley, union leaders said Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick had both gone after Cambridge officers' performance without having full information about the incident involving Gates.

Steve Killian, the president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association took exception to the president's charge that Cambridge police handled the incident "stupidly."

"Cambridge police are not stupid. I am proud to represent the officers of the Cambridge Police Department," Killian said. "I think the president should make an apology to all law enforcement personnel throughout the entire country."

And Alan J. McDonald, an attorney for the police unions, stopped short of calling for an apology, but said he was hopeful both the president and Patrick would issue one.

"We're not demanding an apology from anyone…hopeful that upon reflection, they will realize that their statements were misguided and will take the appropriate action in the form of an apology," McDonald said.

While Obama backtracked on the most controversial part of his remarks on Gates's arrest, he stopped short of a direct apology. And the president said he did not regret having commented in the first place.

Noting that some critics suggested it was inappropriate for the president to comment on a local law enforcement matter, Obama told reporters: "I have to tell you, that part of it I disagree with. Race is still a troubling aspect of our society."

"Because of our history," Obama explained, "African Americans are sensitive to these issues."

Obama's appearance in the briefing room signaled a quick reversal in the White House's communications strategy and seemed to reflect a recognition that the growing dispute over Gates's arrest required a more direct response from the administration.

Just a few hours before Obama took the briefing-room podium, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama had already "said what he's going to say on this."

After Obama left the briefing room Friday afternoon, Gibbs took a different line from the podium, telling the press that the president's remarks reflected an ongoing "conversation" about race.

"These are important issues that play out in our daily lives," he said.

***

On a related topic, much of the question in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. case revolves around alleged police animus toward people of color. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"Phila. Blocks City Computer Access to Domelights.com"

By Troy Graham, Staff Writer

Philadelphia Inquirer

Access to the controversial Web site Domelights.com has been blocked from all Philadelphia city computers, following a similar move last week by the Police Department.

The site, which faces a lawsuit from a black police officers organization that alleges it is a forum for racist material, also has restricted access to registered users. Domelights - until this week a publicly available site - is not accepting new members.

Brian Mildenberg, attorney for the black officers group, the Guardian Civic League, said last night that out-of-court negotiations would be held with the city in an attempt to address the concerns of black officers who have long reviled the site as creating a hostile work environment.

Guardian League president Rochelle Bilal said last night that her members' goal was to shut down the site, which is operated by an active-duty police sergeant who uses the screen name McQ.

Because of threats posted on Domelights, Bilal has a detail of uniformed officers guarding her.

McQ posted a message last week saying he merely provides a forum for discussion and disavowing any racist or sexist material on the site, which he founded in 2000.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Arrested

2009-07-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

"It's no disgrace to be coloured. But it is awfully inconvenient."
---Bert Williams

"Driving while Black"? Yes, we've heard of it and, regrettably, many of us have witnessed it while others have even experienced it first hand. But, "Being home while Black"? African American Studies scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home after a neighbor saw "two suspicious Black men" enter a house. It just so happened that it was Gates' house. Gates' driver was helping the scholar with his luggage after a trip to China. When the police arrived Gates was inside his house and was subsequently arrested for, well, resisting arrest for being in his house.

Is Sonia Sotomayor Lucy and Sen. Coborn Ricky Ricardo?

2009-07-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

In a hypothetical conversation about gun-control, Tom Coburn (R-Okla) said to Sonia Sotomayor, "You'll have a lot of 'splainin' to do," in an imitation Cuban accented quip à la Ricky Ricardo about a hypothetical scenario where Sotomayor might attack him. Huh? Can anyone imagine a Senator using, say, a black vernacular accent in any public context much less in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing? His tin ear speaks volumes about unexamined ignorance surrounding Latinos writ large, and the profound ignorance and conflation relating to various forms of U.S. Latinidades. Tom Coburn represents part of the dying ancien regime that will be caught with their proverbial pants down -- several GOP old boys have already been literally caught with their trousers on the floor -- as the face of the "largest minority population" of the U.S. retorts with a forceful, "We don't. But you do."

Sonia Sotomayor, Roe v. Wade Redux, and Political Theater

2009-07-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

Political theater, black minstrelsy, and vitriol converged on Washington, D.C. yesterday as Norma McCorvey ("Jane Roe") joined forces with anti-abortion activist Randall Terry to oppose Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the supreme court on the grounds that she is but a pawn, they contend, in Obama's campaign against unborn children. In yet another collapse of Latino ethnic symbology (remember the piñata incident?), the Virgin of Guadalupe also made an appearance to remind baffled onlookers that Obama "didn't claw his way to the top" to appoint someone who would side with the unborn.

Over on the FOX Network, Jeff Sessions (R-AL) added is own brand of theater to the circus by calling Sonia Sotomayor's past legal decisions as "flabbergasting." All of this has been groundwork for today's confirmation hearings where less than 20 minutes into the conversation "wise Latina" entered the conversation. Not surprisingly, Sessions warned of a "brave new world" of jurisprudence in which judges vote with their biases. He talked of a justice system "further corrupted" by Obama's view that empathy is a quality prized on the bench. Theater indeed.

The Education of Sonia Sotomayor

2009-07-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

Peter Winn writes about Sonia Sotomayor while she was a student at Princeton in today's Washington Post.

Jeff Sessions Attacks Sonia Sotomayor

2009-07-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

Alabama senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has a long history of racist rants, and "hate speech." So much so that his nomination to the federal bench was rejected by the Senate in 1986 because of his record of outright bigotry that included: bringing racially-motivated prosecutions, belittling African-American attorneys, and describing the NAACP as an “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organization that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” Sessions hasn’t changed one bit. More recently, he has begun attacking Sonia Sotomayor by discrediting her work with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (now, Latino Justice PRLDEF) and referring to the organization in terms previously reserved for the NAACP. So much for the GOP's scramble to win thew Latino vote in 2010 and 2012.

The Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) responded to Session's attack this week with an attack of their own. HNBA wrote, "Attacks on Latino advocacy and civil rights organizations are not new – we have seen figures in the media mischaracterize and slander our good works, using provocative terms that fan the flames of ethnic animosity. We expect and are entitled to better from a sitting member of the United States Senate."

Study Finds that Latinos Thrive if They Embrace Their Cultural Heritage

2009-07-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

A new study by Paul Smokowski and others has shown that Latino adolescents who embrace their native culture and have parents involved in U.S. culture have a greater chance of staying happy and healthy. Previous research has shown Latino youths face considerable risk factors when integrated into U.S. society. These include substance abuse and high rates of school dropouts:

“We found teens who maintain strong ties to their Latino cultures perform better academically and adjust more easily socially,” Smokowski said. “When we repeated the survey a year later, for every 1-point increase in involvement in their Latino cultures, we saw a 13 percent rise in self-esteem and a 12 to 13 percent decrease in hopelessness, social problems and aggressive behavior.

“Also, the study showed parents who develop a strong bicultural perspective have teen children who are less likely to feel anxiety and face fewer social problems,” he said. “For every increase in a parent’s involvement in United States culture, we saw a 15 to 18 percent decrease in adolescent social problems, aggression and anxiety one year later. Parents who were more involved in U.S. culture were in a better position to proactively help their adolescents with peer relations, forming friendships and staying engaged in school. This decreases the chances of social problems arising.”

“Such results suggest that Latino youth and their parents benefit from biculturalism."

The Buenos Aires Affair: Who Is María Belén Chapur?

2009-06-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

The rest of the world is about to kick this country right where it counts when it decides to go off the dollar as the reserve currency, and S.C. politicians want to spend five minutes over the fact that Sanford was cheating on his wife? John Stewart said it best, Sanford is "just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis." Still, why did he need to go AWOL about it? Maybe, it's that he could find no gentle exit from the "conservative family values" trap that he found himself in and opted instead for one of the two self-destruct buttons of the self-righteous: their heart or their conscience. Given his record as governor he clearly has no conscience and the heart, we know, is a lonely hunter without one.

Live from New York

(Photo-still of Chuapur)

María Belén Chapur majored in international relations according to Argentina's El Clarín.

Waiting for Chapur (Chapur's building in the Palermo neighboorhood of Buenos Aires)

From Huffington Post

María Belén Chapur has been identified as Mark Sanford's alleged mistress. Politico links to an Argentinian outlet that identifies the mother-of-two.

The media has been camped out by her apartment building near the Buenos Aires zoo. Maria Belen Chapur is 43 and has the two sons from a previous marriage.

Maria is described by a neighbor as a beautiful brunette who plays tennis, goes jogging, and has large eyes.

TMZ talked to a bar owner, who says he watched Sanford and Chapur kiss and cuddle over the weekend, and said Maria has green eyes, dirty blonde hair a "banging body."

A neighbor also described Sanford arriving at Chapur's apartment building late last week with a small sports bag.

Emails published in The State also are addressed to a woman named Maria.

***

In the e-mail, dated July 10, 2008, at 12:24 a.m., he wrote: "You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ..."

LASA Action Alert

2009-06-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

ACTION ALERT: Please forward Aldo Lauria Santiago's email that he recently sent to the Latino Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) far and wide. Without consulting the section's leadership or membership, LASA has eliminated our section.

It is profoundly disappointing that the section leadership was not consulted. As Aldo notes below, to collapse "Latinos" under the rubric of "migrations" and/or "diasporas" evacuates the very history that Latino studies in the U.S has so struggled to instantiate as a field and as a practice of democratic enfranchisement.

Please contact LASA and let them know how you feel about their regrettable decision (emails will have the most immediate impact):

Latin American Studies Association
416 Bellefield Hall
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: 412-648-7929
Fax: 412-624-7145
E-mail: lasa@pitt.edu

FROM ALDO LAURIA SANTIAGO:

Colegas,

I’m writing from Rio. Yesterday the new Call for Papers for LASA 2011 was distributed and it excludes the Latino Studies track. We have learned that it was a decision made by the new incoming Program Chair as part of some process of revision and consolidation of tracks. We have since discussed the issue with incoming Executive Director Milagros Pereyra who explained the origin of the decision and suggested we work within the new track designations (Transnationalism & Globalization; Migration and Latin American Diasporas; Migration and Borders). We also talked with LASA president John Coatsworth who promised to look into the question. We are looking to have a meeting with the new program chair and other LASA officers while still here to express our strong disagreement with the elimination of the track that is so closely linked to our section’s work and that we believe has a significant coherence and justification (fought over in the past in order to get into LASA) and that resembles the sort of intellectual dismissal that so often recurs within the US academy with Latino Studies content, program and departments. The current and past co-chairs of the section and others who signed on at last night’s reception are sending a formal note to LASA administrators requesting the re-inclusion of the track. We will post the note to this list as soon as it is completed.

Whatever the origin of the decision, we consider it a highly troubling step, especially considering the lack of consultation with members and Section leaders.

This is not the first time this question is posed by LASA leaders. Last year I was contacted by Evelyne Huber, Program Chair for LASA 2009, about reorganizing the track into “Latin American Diasporas or Migration.” I successfully convinced her that it was not appropriate to collapse the study of Latinos in the US into this sort of supposedly encompassing umbrella. As a result, this year we had a Latinos in North America designation and a Latin American Diasporas theme. I’ll post the memo I wrote to her later.

In the meantime you might want to write to the LASA leadership questioning this decision, although I suspect the matter will require a more concerted effort on behalf and with the participation of you, the nearly 300 members of this Section.

Saludos,

Aldo Lauria Santiago

Rutgers University

Losing Sonia Sotomayor

2009-06-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

Writing in the New York Times Frank Rich observed not too long that “Gay people… aren't the surefire scapegoats they once were. Hence the rise of a jucier target: Hispanics. They are the new gays, the foremost political piñata.” Rich’s observation took on literalist meaning this week when Creators Syndicate's Chip Bok depicted Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor hanging from a rope and strung up like a piñata along with a Mariachi sombrero-wearing President Obama handing out bats to Republican Congressmen.

Recall, for example, how the “lynching” that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he indignantly “suffered” when Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings years ago drew ire for obvious though ironic reasons. After all, the conservative Thomas, who wouldn’t have been able to marry his Anglo American wife in the state of Virginia, where he lived, until Loving vs. Virginia (1968) made it legal for Blacks to marry whites, used the proverbial race card when all through his career he had eschewed the “racisim” inherent to affirmative action policies that, for him, discriminated against whites. So suddenly, from his race-free worldview, he was being lynched by, not inconsequentially, a black woman.

Fast-forward to our present and now Sotomayor, of Puerto Rican descent, and hanging, ahem, presumably from a tree, is a stand-in for all Latinos in the U.S. as a recent cover of Time Magazine suggested. Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens by birth, are somehow like Mariachi sombrero-wearing and presumably piñata loving Mexicans in the public imagination though the they are routinely discriminated against with a fervor and hate that makes politicians spend billions on paper-walls to keep “them” out though they’ve been “in” the U.S. for longer than current political and historical memory can account for. Political piñatas indeed. And thus the problem with representative personhood for "Latinos" as it is understood in the public imagination.

Political enfranchisement through appeals to pan-Latinidad leaves an empty space where our old political selves use to be. And, what’s more, it leaves too many Latino stripes missing in action. Central Americans, Brazilians, all sorts of homies form the Global South in the U.S. run the risk of being read the same way in the public sphere; not to mention the history that is evacuated every time "Latinos" are seen merely as a recent intrusion onto the national fold. “See,” the media implores, "if she can do it, so can you.” A reverse salvo of the “¡Sí se puede!” that so many of us have been fighting for so long runs the risk of leaving us unable to make clear why an appeal for political enfranchisement under the rubric of a collective identity (“Latinos” writ large) binds us to a history of representative personhood incapable of addressing how our differences, and contributions, need to be made intelligible in the public sphere. The prospect of having to do so on the horizon might require our losing Sonia Sotomayor. Not the person, of course, or the judiciary record she brings that must be as scrutinized as that of any other nominee (especially as it relates to abortion freedoms for all women), but the belief in the benevolence of the state to embrace us as the "Latinos" the state thinks we are.

Refusing such a gesture, the belief that we’re in an inclusive U.S., on a level playing field and alike in some fundamental way—like the belief in benevolence of the state—allows us to awaken from the elusive embrace of a national fantasy incapable of reciprocating our possibilities for self-making and the deep historical accounting required in order to make it so. Such are the limits and responsibilities of becoming political subjects, forsaking representative personhood, in order to awaken from the elusive, albeit seductive, dream of inclusion.

Sleep Dealer and the Promise of Latino Futurity

2009-06-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Lázaro Lima

Sleep Dealer is set on the U.S.-Mexico border where high-tech factories allow the protagonist, Memo, and other migrant workers, to plug their bodies into a network to provide virtual labor for the North. Sleep Dealer constitutes one of the first instances of “Latino Sci-Fi” film and genre making and this is significant. Why? Because there is no tradition of science fiction writing to speak of in Latino literary and cultural studies. There are no Octavia Butlers or Samuel Delanys, as in the African American tradition, no Laurence Yeps or S. P. Somtows, as in the Asian American tradition, to engage in a sustained critique of the ideology of genre as it pertains to a future subject position yet to be imagined; an ideation of Latino futurity that has not yet achieved an ideology of form in the present. What are we to discern from the absence of science fiction writing in Latino literary and cultural studies? What are we to make of this and how should we read this absence?

As I’ve noted in The Latino Body and elsewhere, from “the American 1848” to the present, Latino literary and cultural interventions have been surprisingly consistent in making their relationship to the state historical. From one the earliest “Mexican American” novelist like Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton writing in the XIX century to the extreme contemporary of Latino memoir, literary production has sought to create a logic of presence in the past, anticipating one of the fundamental conundrums raised by Fred Jameson’s recent work; namely, how to own the "inevitable failures" of the past without making defeatism the foregone conclusion of their inheritance. Understood from the confines of a "Latinocentric" perspective, Jameson’s observation might be rendered in the form of a question: By haunting the cultural sphere of the past, do we depoliticize the possibility for a viable Latino future? Or, even better, Why have we allowed the very futures of Latinidad to be colonized through an insistence on the narrative renderings of our stories, our lives, our Latinidades, in the preterite and imperfect tense of the historical imagination? Exile, diaspora, loss, memory, trauma, history, U.S. military campaigns in our countries, language barriers and borders, all emblematic of the Latino experience in the U.S. and carved into niche marketing strategies for publishers, only tell, retell, and package part of historical desire. What those stories can’t imagine is the possibility of making our relationship to the state anything other than historical. In the process, I believe we run the risk as cultural agents in the academy of allowing majortitarian political actors to colonize the very futures of Latinidad.

One of the fundamental questions of Latino studies, then, should be: How do we decolonize the future? If following Jameson, “History is what hurts,” then how might, say, Latinos in space redress that hurt by imbricating our “ethno-racial” particularisms in a future imagined from our present as owners of that future before it is wrested from us like our seemingly unwritten past? I believe that such a decolonizing move, both in the theoretical gesture of investigating why this is so as well as the creation of futurity projects, might have us instantiate the emancipatory potential of a Latino studies project for our moment. A paradigm shift within our inherited race and ethnic studies models would require a recognition that what is at stake is not the location of the known but, rather, how the location of the knower dictates what counts as a legitimate object of study. Ethnic studies, after all, exists because other disciplinary formations aren’t doing their job. Yet the move requires that our students learn to ask more than how they can identify as social and political beings in a racist culture, but how the unequal distribution of social and material resources is in part managed through understanding the ethnic subject as a fractured subject who must answer the inevitable “Who am I?” before being allowed — if at all — to state the declarative “I will be.” And we, all of us in the academy, are imbricated in this impasse. Being able to move away from just such navel gazing makes it more difficult to substitute culture for the state, thereby preventing us from confusing culture with the politics of the state. As when Memo's father in the movie asks, "Is our future a thing of the past?," Sleep Dealer, along with the histories it haunts, admonishes us not to sleepwalk through history lest we be tempted to dream somebody else's dream.

Latinos and the 2010 Census

2009-05-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Demographies of Latinidad

"Latinos" by Presidency:

Andrew Jackson, 1 million

John F. Kennedy, 5 million

Richard Nixon, 10 million

Ronld Reagan, 20 million

Bill Clinton, 30 million

George W. Bush, 40 million

Barack Obama, nearly 50 million

(Total U.S. Population, 304,059,724)

Swine Flu, Mexico and Nomenclature

2009-04-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

Swine Flu sans "the Mexican": Linguistic Transmutations of the H1N1 Virus

The perpetually challenged Paris Hilton was asked today if she was worried that the swine flu was killing so many people in Mexico. Her reply was, “No. I don’t eat that.” Unremarkable in every sense of the word. But then the Israeli deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman today insisted, "The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed 'Mexican' influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork...". Remarkable, in every sense.

A Family Divided by 2 Words, Legal and Illegal

2009-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

(Ángel Franco/The New York Times)
A Family Divided
By DAVID GONZALEZ

"For the father, the choice was obvious: An engineer with several jobs yet little money, he saw no future for his daughter and son in their struggling country, Ecuador. Eight years ago, he paid coyotes to smuggle him into Texas, then headed to New York, where his wife and children flew in as tourists, and stayed."

The Rapid Growth and Changing Complexion of Suburban Public Schools

2009-03-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

From Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center
March 31, 2009
"The student population of America's suburban public schools has shot up by 3.4 million in the past decade and a half, and virtually all of this increase (99%) has been due to the enrollment of new Latino, black and Asian students, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of public school data. Once a largely white enclave, suburban school districts in 2006-07 educated a student population that was 41.4% non-white, up from 28% in 1993-94 and not much different from the 43.7% non-white share of the nation's overall public school student population. At the same time, suburban school districts have been gaining "market share"; they educated 38% of the nation's public school students in 2006-07, up from 35% in 1993-94."

Public Rage

2009-03-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

See Glenn Greenwald's Salon piece, "The virtues of public anger and the need for more"
"The financial crisis has merely unmasked the corruption and rot in our establishment institutions that are staggering in magnitude and reach. Just as the Iraq War was not the by-product of wrongdoing by a few stray bad political and media actors but instead was reflective of our broken institutions generally, the financial crisis is a fundamental indictment on the way the country functions and of its ruling class. What would be unhealthy is if there weren't substantial amounts of public rage in the face of these revelations."

The Fallacies of Representative Personhood

2009-02-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

A conversation with a colleague this week reminded me about the fallacies of Representative Personhood that inhere to ways of being in the academy that evacuate political agency for proletarian producers of knowledge. Oso Raro's piece from Inside Higher Ed speaks to this vis-à-vis the traditional "self-assesment" narrative.
Self-Assessment: Academe and Me

Undocumented at Georgetown

2009-02-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

The Outsider

Though he's lived in this country since he was 2, Juan Gomez has no permanent legal right to stay in the United States, let alone a guarantee of a chance to graduate from Georgetown University

By Phuong Ly
Washington Post Magazine, Sunday, February 22, 2009; W10

As the car pulled within sight of the stone Gothic spires, Juan Gomez sat up straighter. Everything at Georgetown University seems made to reach higher -- the turreted buildings that hark to another era, the thick oaks shading the quad, and the students who walk with confidence and purpose.

For several minutes, Juan, who'd only seen photographs of the campus before, simply stared. A friend's mother who accompanied him on that late-August day last summer recalls that the brown-haired 19-year-old looked just like any other student in his jeans and polo shirt. But Juan felt as if he had landed in another universe -- a place light years away from the deportation letters, detention center jumpsuits and painful goodbyes of the previous year.

"Wow," he told his friend's mother, bounding up the steps to his new dorm. "This is so beautiful."

Juan was still beaming as he examined the sterile, white-walled space in Copley Hall that he would share with another student. "This room," he said, gazing at the two twin beds, two wooden desks and two dressers squeezed together, "is just great." He meant it. Juan felt lucky to be at Georgetown, even though, in terms of academic accomplishment, he clearly belonged there.

His record is a litany of overachievement: a 1410 out of 1600 on the SAT; high scores on 13 Advanced Placement exams, which earned him close to two years of college credit; and a top-20 class rank at a competitive Miami high school. But Juan doesn't have a clear right to be in the United States, much less at Georgetown. In 1990, when he was 2 years old, his family came to this country from Colombia on a tourist visa and never left. Once they were here, they applied for political asylum and spent almost 17 years building a modest life before their legal status finally caught up with them. In October 2007, after they were repeatedly denied political asylum, Juan's parents and grandmother were deported to Colombia, a country that Juan can't even remember.

Juan and his brother, Alex, have been spared, though it's not clear for how long. Thanks to Juan's academic achievements and intense lobbying by friends and supporters, lawmakers temporarily halted his deportation, a rare privilege. Juan applied to Georgetown as an international student and won a scholarship that covers most of his tuition and expenses. But unless Congress or the Obama administration grants him some sort of extension or waiver, Juan could be deported before he's able to graduate, according to his lawyers. He might not be allowed to return for at least 10 years, if ever.

As he settles into Georgetown, Juan says he can't afford to dwell on his precarious status. "I've been given this opportunity, and if I don't take full advantage of it," he says, "I'll never forgive myself for it."

Juan speaks in a serious, even tone. The trim beard that he began growing after his family was deported makes him seem even older. But his demeanor masks a mischievous streak, of which his friends are frequently the target.

After arriving in Washington, Juan quickly made use of a new cellphone number with a 202 area code. He called his friend Scott Elfenbein, who had spearheaded the campaign to prevent his deportation. Pretending to be a think tank director, Juan offered Scott an internship because of "what you've done for immigrants."

"I totally fell for it," Scott says. "We're so used to him making jokes like that, but I still fell for it."

Besides his close friendships and sense of humor, Juan's other refuge is schoolwork. He usually waves off offers from friends to get together at the library. Instead, he holes up in his dorm room, sitting at his desk until the early morning hours. Among the messy stacks of paper and books, he becomes absorbed in work for his business classes: How can information systems be used for strategic purposes? Does this company have a financially sound balance sheet? What are the strengths of Wal-Mart versus Target? When he studies, everything but the work itself fades away.

"I focus on my academics," he says." I focus on what I can control."

***

An estimated 65,000 young people in the United States graduate from high school each year in circumstances similar to Juan's, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. These are teenagers who have been in the country at least five years, say researchers who prepared the 2003 study by analyzing population surveys and census data. When they finish high school, they watch their friends go off to college or work, and discover that it is impossible for them to do the same.

In 2007, the Senate considered and rejected the Dream Act, which would have given these young people a chance to become legal permanent residents. Critics of the bill warn that such exceptions would encourage people to come here illegally, particularly if they had young children in tow.

"Any time you give an amnesty for people who have broken the law, that gives an incentive for more people to break the law," says Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, an Arlington group that lobbies to reduce immigration. Yet Beck acknowledges that he feels torn about Juan, who arrived at such a young age, saying that "on an individual basis, this sounds like the kind of person who you want to have some sort of leeway for." Where, then, does Juan belong?

A couple of months into the fall semester, Juan walks along Georgetown's brick paths, nodding occasionally at familiar faces. He has just completed his midterm exams and feels good about his classes. In the afternoon, he plans to play football with a group of friends. College life has become as comfortable as the gray, hooded Georgetown sweat shirt he often wears.

Juan is majoring in finance, and he's full of ideas about what he could do with his degree. He could start his own company, work for an investment firm or go to law school. With credits already earned from high school and a Florida community college, he could graduate as early as May 2010.

Juan checks the stock market daily and finds its gyrations fascinating. The weekly meetings of the student investment club, whose members compete in an online investment game, rank among Juan's favorite activities. Even losing $100,000 of pretend money and finishing next to last in his group hasn't dampened Juan's enthusiasm. He describes the ailing stock market with an optimism shaped by his youth and own experience: "You have to be confident in the systems that are there. Eventually, it will go back to being a boom."

Here, as at all colleges, life often revolves around the future. Students have just finished unpacking, but they're already being asked to sign up for housing for next year. During an orientation for transfer students, Juan made several friends who want to live together next year. They've decided to apply for a university apartment with three bedrooms. Juan is excited: The apartments are newer and nicer than the dorms. The friends could have their own living room and kitchen -- no more sharing with an entire hall. Imagine the parties.

Juan pauses, remembering a detail. "If it all works out," he says quietly, "if we're all still here."

***

Juan and his family came to the United States as vacationers in August 1990. Toting six suitcases of clothes and tourist visas, they flew into John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. But when the visas expired after six months, they stayed and eventually moved to Florida, where they filed an application for political asylum. The family of four -- father Julio, mother Liliana, Juan and his older brother, Alejandro, or Alex -- had lived a middle-class life in Colombia. Julio oversaw finances for a company that managed pensions for the government and other businesses. But, suddenly, he quit his job.

"My sons don't know much about it, and I don't want to go too deeply into it," says Julio, 54, speaking in Spanish from Pereira, a mountain city in western Colombia. In the petition for asylum, the family says that one of Julio's brothers, a niece and a nephew were murdered for political reasons. Fernando Rojas, the last lawyer who worked on the family's case in Miami, says that Julio received threats from a guerrilla group because of his job. Rojas declined to give further details, saying that he still fears for Julio's safety in Colombia.

During the 1980s and 1990s, civil war ravaged Colombia. Guerrillas and paramilitary forces fought for political power and control of the drug trade, and civilians sometimes were forced to take sides. Kidnappings, torture and killings were common. Two of Julio's brothers had left during the 1980s and settled in Los Angeles and Miami. According to Juan, one uncle was granted political asylum; the other became a legal resident as a result of a 1986 amnesty bill signed by President Ronald Reagan.

Every year after the Gomezes' arrival, they filed for and received work permits, which they were eligible for while the government considered whether to grant the family political asylum. Julio became a security guard. Liliana cleaned rooms at a Holiday Inn and later managed a restaurant kitchen. Julio's mother, who arrived in 1991 and was added to their petition, also worked; she sold flowers as a street vendor. After a few years, Julio and Liliana started their own business renting chairs, tables and other equipment for parties.

Their asylum case should have been heard within months, but during the early 1990s, a long backlog stalled decisions. Years passed, and the Gomezes say they did not receive a court notice. They wondered about the delay but said they trusted the system.

Meanwhile, Juan and his brother became Americans in spirit, if not on paper. At age 3, Juan learned his colors in English first, not Spanish. One of his earliest memories is trick-or-treating on Halloween, dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. He and Alex, who is just 14 months older and more like a twin than an older brother, played basketball and baseball in leagues at local parks. Alex became a star in football, not futbol.

As children, the brothers knew their parents often filed paperwork with lawyers, but they didn't think much about their immigration status. Colombia was primarily a place in their parents' memories, not their own. Liliana cooked lasagna and burgers as well as arepa bread and empanadas. They gathered to watch World Cup soccer with other Colombian families, but a more regular staple of entertainment was renting American movies, especially action flicks. His parents don't speak English very well, but "explosions are understood in any language," Juan says.

Even though Julio and Liliana could spare little time from their jobs, "we were very close," says Alex, now 21. "Our parents always took care of us . . . My mother would work the night shift, but there would always be food on the plates, ready for us. "

In 1999, when Juan was in fourth grade, the family was summoned to a hearing at an immigration court in Miami. Julio and Liliana testified briefly, and the decision came just as quickly -- the judge denied their application. On the quiet drive home, Juan remembers feeling sick and lying down in the car. His father reassured the family: They would try again.

To win political asylum, applicants need to prove that they have a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a family or other social group. Georgetown law professor Philip Schrag, who co-authored a 2007 study on asylum cases, says that the system suffers from inconsistency. There's no checklist for what constitutes persecution, and unlike in criminal cases, there's little forensic evidence. Most applicants aren't able to call in possible witnesses, who live overseas. And the immigration courts are closed to the public, with records sealed.

"The judges have a great deal of discretion," Schrag says. "There are surely some cases in which a person telling the truth wins asylum and others in which they don't."

Schrag's study, published in the Stanford Law Review, analyzed 140,000 decisions in the nation's busiest immigration courts from 2000 to 2004. It found wide disparities even among judges in the same court. For example, among Miami's 22 judges, approval rates involving applicants from Colombia ranged from 5 percent to 88 percent. The Department of Justice, which oversees the courts, has criticized the study, saying that cases can't be compared because each one is unique.

In 2000, the Gomez family's appeal was rejected. Two years later, the next level of judges issued a denial on a second appeal. Still, the family didn't give up. Julio and Liliana spent about $10,000 paying for lawyers.

***

On Nov. 25, 2003, the government made its final decision and sent a letter to the Gomezes. The family had 30 days to voluntarily leave the country.

The family considered going to Canada, but Julio and Liliana feared starting all over again in a place where they knew no one. Besides, what were the chances they would become legal there? They decided to stay in Miami. Maybe the government would forget about them, just as it had allowed their asylum application to languish for years.

The hope that they'd be forgotten wasn't completely unfounded. One estimate from the Urban Institute puts the number of illegal immigrants here at 9.3 million. Faced with such a vast number, government officials have often said that criminals are the first priority for deportation. New responsibilities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also have stretched the immigration agency's limited resources. None of the Gomezes had a criminal record, though Juan recalls his father fretting that it would be hard to renew his driver's license without a legal work permit.

"Forgive me," Liliana Gomez, 52, says now. But anyone in her situation, she believes, would have stayed despite the deportation order. Speaking in Spanish, she says that the family's case for asylum was strong and believes their first lawyer mishandled it. Everything, she maintains, was done for their sons' future: "I can't imagine my sons in Colombia. They think like Americans, and it wouldn't be fair to them, with their desire for educations."

Juan, though, says he begged his parents to leave for Canada. At one point, he even told his classmates that he was leaving the country and collected addresses so he could send letters later. Friends laughed it off as another one of Juan's practical jokes.

By law, public schools accept children without questioning their immigration status, so no one outside his family knew that Juan was now in the country illegally. After a few months, the threat of deportation became like a half-remembered item in the back of a closet. "I honestly didn't think they would come," Alex says. "I didn't think they would get to it."

Juan became comfortable enough to make fun of their situation. Once day, he came into Alex's room and announced, "Immigration's here." Alex recalls panicking, but just for a minute. Juan couldn't keep his face from breaking into laughter.

Soon, Juan became immersed in life at Miami Killian Senior High School. He was taking the most advanced classes and spent hours in his room studying. Classmates often asked him for help because he had a reputation for being patient and unpatronizing.

Juan, however, didn't like asking for help himself. His family couldn't afford a computer, but he didn't want to borrow from friends. Instead, he would spend hours at the library, waiting for a free machine so he could type up his papers. His father, who had to drive him there, would sit patiently until he finished.

Juan aced every class except world history, where he earned a B. Friends and teachers figured he would end up as a CEO of a major company or -- unaware that he hadn't been born in the United States -- maybe even the leader of the free world. Eric Krause, an economics teacher, nicknamed him "President Gomez." Krause says that Juan is one of the best students ever to graduate from Killian.

But at the beginning of his senior year in 2006, Juan could no longer avoid the consequences of his immigration status. Nearly all colleges were closed to him. Most asked about an applicant's residency situation. The biggest exceptions are community colleges, which usually have open enrollment policies. Undocumented teens often attend by paying the higher nonresident tuition. Alex, who had graduated from Killian the previous year, was studying at Miami Dade College and hoped to become a firefighter. The community college was a step down for a student of Juan's caliber, but even if he could be accepted somewhere else, he couldn't afford to go. On financial aid applications, one of the first questions was about citizenship.

At Killian, applying to colleges dominated the talk among seniors. His friend Scott couldn't understand why Juan wasn't applying to any of the top schools. Juan had always been the low-key, no-stress one in their group of high-achieving friends, but his nonchalant attitude about colleges was really grating on Scott. By the end of October, Scott, the super-organized student body president, had already completed his applications to Harvard, Duke and Washington University in St. Louis. Now he began to set deadlines for his friend.

Juan was ashamed to tell Scott the truth. So he filled out a few applications, to Duke, the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University. Scott began researching scholarships for him, which embarrassed Juan even more. He felt guilty for wasting his friend's time.

Finally, during winter vacation, on a car ride home after playing video games, Juan leveled with Scott. He said he was here illegally. His family had exhausted their options in court, and they could be deported at any time.

Scott was in shock. He recalls that he drove his car over to the side of the road, parked and called to tell his girlfriend that he couldn't hang out later that night. He started crying.

Scott says he didn't know much about immigration politics, but he knew how he felt about Juan. "There's no way my country should screw over other people like that," Scott says. "I realized, here's this kid who I've sweated with and worked next to all through high school, and he can't go to college. His opportunities were severely limited just because of what his parents did. It really blew me away."

As their senior year continued, Juan's friends landed spots at top schools. Scott got into Harvard, his first choice. Two friends planned to attend Vanderbilt University and room together, and others were headed to Columbia University and the University of Virginia. Juan always congratulated his friends as soon as he found out about their acceptances. "He was surprisingly happy for everyone," recalls Scott, now a sophomore at Harvard. "He wasn't pessimistic about his own future."

Juan was accepted into the honors program at Miami Dade College and told friends that he would make the most of it. There was nothing else he could do.

***

Shaking Juan awake, his father simply said, "Immigration's here." Car headlights shone through the windows. It was around 6 a.m. on July 25, 2007, nearly four years after the family had been ordered to leave.

Four men in dark uniforms and bulletproof vests gathered the family in the living room. The agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement allowed Juan's grandmother to remain behind for the time being because of her age. As they handcuffed Julio and his sons, Liliana sobbed and screamed that they weren't criminals. The boys were silent, stunned. Alex and his father were ordered into one car; Juan and his mother in the other. Liliana told Juan that he had his T-shirt on backward, but he shrugged. What did it matter now?

Juan had been allowed to keep his cellphone. Despite the handcuffs, he started dialing. He called Scott and told him the news. Scott hung up on him and tried to go back to sleep. He was supposed to pick up Juan later that morning to go to their jobs in a restaurant kitchen. He recalls being annoyed that Juan would pull a trick to get out of work.

A few minutes later, Juan called again, and Scott hung up again. After the next call, Scott realized his friend wasn't kidding. He didn't know what to do, but he started calling other friends.

Once the family arrived at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, they caught a break. Authorities told the Gomezes that they couldn't be flown to Colombia immediately. The office had misplaced the family's passports, which had been sent in years earlier for their case files. After a daylong wait, Julio was sent to a Miami immigration facility. Liliana stayed with her sons but was then separated into a women's area. Juan and Alex were issued orange jumpsuits and led to a room with four other men.

The brothers were scared, not knowing what to expect. Alex remembers his mind flashing to TV cop shows that he'd seen, and he prepared to protect his brother. The other guys, though, just had questions and painful stories they wanted to share. They said they missed their families terribly; they asked about Juan and Alex. Did they have wives or kids?

Juan felt relieved. These guys were like them, just much older. "Nobody there was a criminal," Juan says. "There was no fear in there; there was only sadness."

Meanwhile, Scott was gathering friends at his home. They called lawyer after lawyer, all of whom advised them to say their goodbyes to Juan. Legally, Juan's options were just about zero. Scott refused to give up. "I didn't have anything to lose," he says. "Juan was my friend -- why would we not try? We might as well at least say that we gave it our best shot."

Through the social networking site Facebook, Scott spread the word about Juan, emphasizing his academic record. Parents and teachers lent their support, giving names of anyone they knew with influence: lawyers, business leaders, news reporters.

A day after the Gomezes arrived at the detention center, lawyer Kelleen Corrigan was there to talk to a group of detained women about their rights during court proceedings. When she finished, one of the women shyly approached. It was Liliana. In tears, she told Corrigan about her sons, their school awards and hopes for higher education. Corrigan, who worked for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, was intrigued, but she didn't make any promises.

When Corrigan got back to her office, the center's executive director, Cheryl Little, mentioned that a local business leader had asked her to look into the case of a family with an honors student. Later that day, Corrigan and Little heard a report on the news: A group of Killian high school students were trying to free their friend, Juan Gomez, from the Broward detention center.

***

Lawmakers get calls about cases like Juan's family all the time. Most don't make it past the receptionist.

In the eyes of the court, the Gomezes' case was clear-cut. The family had knowingly violated a deportation order. The only way to stop deportation at this point is for a member of Congress to file a private bill on behalf of the individuals. The requests usually only delay deportation; the bills often never make it out of House and Senate subcommittees. Most legislators don't like to deal with such bills. How can they explain the fairness of sponsoring one person, when hundreds, if not thousands, of other people are in the same situation?

Since 1996, Congress has approved only 36 private bills on immigration, according to the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. One of the successful cases was of a Louisiana couple who adopted a 16-year-old Sri Lankan girl, only to find out that federal law prohibits the immigration of kids adopted after their 16th birthday. Another involved an elderly Chinese woman whose daughter, a U.S. citizen, died of an illness 11 days before immigration officials were scheduled to grant the mother legal residency.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that favors stricter immigration controls, says lawmakers should focus on a full-scale overhaul of immigration law, rather than dealing with problems on a case-by-case basis. Krikorian says he's sympathetic to Juan.

"Children often suffer from the consequences of their parents' mistakes," he says. Still, "you don't get a pass from a violation of the law because it's bad for your kid."

A generation of undocumented children is coming of age, and lawmakers haven't figured out how the offspring should be treated. Some states have considered whether to extend in-state college tuition benefits to illegal students; such proposals haven't gotten very far in Maryland or Virginia. On the federal level, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives sponsored the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or Dream, Act. (The act was originally introduced in the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in 2003.) If it had passed, the law would have allowed undocumented teens who grew up in this country to stay during and after earning a college degree or serving in the military.

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) heard about the Gomez family from media reports. He had never before sponsored a private bill on behalf of an immigrant, but he believed that the Gomez case personified the need for the Dream Act.

"These brothers are just exceptional kids," the congressman says. "It was an awesome sight to see all those friends and neighbors here and lobbying with intensity, concern and love."

Juan's friends, too, realized that the Dream Act could be his ticket out of the detention center. They blitzed the e-mails and voice mails of senators and representatives from Florida. Scott created a lobbying group on Facebook, which grew to more than 2,642 members, many of whom had never met Juan.

But although the friends had managed to make Juan the talk of Miami, they knew the real answer lay in Washington. Facebook messages went out, asking friends of friends for places to crash in the District. Five days after Juan was arrested, Scott, nine classmates and Krause, the economics teacher, flew to Washington and started knocking on doors on Capitol Hill.

On the morning of Aug. 1, 2007, Juan, Alex and their father were summoned to a small, book-lined room in the detention center and asked to wait. Liliana soon joined them. None of the guards would tell them what was happening.

Juan says he was resigned to getting deported. The last seven days had exhausted him. Broward Transitional Center had minimum security, and the detainees were free to move around during the day, to play pool, work out and watch TV. But those niceties meant little to Juan. Until his father was transferred back to Broward, Juan had worried about him. He also missed his mother. Juan knew that Scott was leading an effort to get him out, but he wasn't sure of its chances. Some at the center had languished in detention for months, even a couple of years. "I didn't want to be like them," Juan says. "I was like, just get me out of here. I didn't care if I was in Colombia. I just wanted to be out."

After an hour or so of waiting, the attorney his mother had met appeared. Corrigan was grinning.

Diaz-Balart had proposed a private bill in Congress that would grant permanent residency for Juan and Alex. That action bought the entire family a temporary reprieve. So now, the Gomezes were free to go home.

Julio and Liliana screamed and jumped up to embrace Corrigan. "Angel, you're my angel," Liliana told her.

When the Gomezes emerged from the detention facility in the late afternoon, the glare from the television cameras nearly blinded them. Friends, most of them in tears, ran toward the family. Scott wasn't there; he was still in Washington. From the parking lot, Juan called him and engaged in a bit of trademark needling.

"What took you so long?" Juan demanded. Scott laughed; he was glad the stay in the detention center hadn't changed Juan too much.

That night, the family ate a chicken dinner at a friend's house, surrounded by dozens of well-wishers. The friend offered to let them stay in his spacious home for the night, knowing that reporters and gawkers might be outside the Gomez house. The Gomezes declined; they wanted to sleep in their own beds. They didn't know how much longer they could do that.

***

"Hello, my love." Liliana, speaking in Spanish, is calling out to Juan from his laptop. It is an October weekend, and Juan is sitting at his desk, on an online phone call with his parents. He has just celebrated his 20th birthday.

"We miss you, son. It's hard to be here, especially on your birthday," says his mother, who remembers that Juan was born so fair-skinned and fat that one nurse called him an American baby. Liliana, who now lives in her childhood home with Julio and eight other relatives, had never been separated from her son for more than a night before the detention center.

Juan tries to lighten the mood. He tells his parents that for his birthday dinner, he ate out with friends at a restaurant; he had a great burger. Later tonight, he's going to a meeting of the student investment club. "So, Mom, what did you do this weekend?"

She doesn't answer right away; the line crackles with static as Julio's voice emerges from the speakers. "We really miss you," he says.

"I know, Dad," Juan assures him.

"We endure it, knowing you two are doing well there," Julio says. "That gives us faith."

His mother jumps in: "We're very proud of you and Alex. You two are a great example, son. It's hard to be without you."

"I know, Mom," Juan says. He doesn't know how else to respond. Juan calls his parents every few days, and they occasionally send each other e-cards and photos. He still considers himself strongly connected to his parents. Yet often, there's not that much to talk about: "They really have no concept of what American college life is like."

After the Gomezes left the immigration detention center, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), a co-sponsor of the failed Dream Act, also filed a private bill on behalf of Juan and Alex for the Senate to consider. Dodd's bill gave the brothers a much longer reprieve from deportation, allowing them to stay in the United States until this year. Nothing, however, could be done for Juan's parents and grandmother. They sold household goods and most of the party rental equipment from their business to raise money for their new life in Colombia and the boys' life on their own. During his parents' frantic last week in Miami, Juan learned how to drive and took over their bank accounts. There was so much to do, they never sat down for a long farewell conversation.

On the morning of Oct. 30, 2007, the Gomezes arrived at Miami International Airport, where a mob of reporters greeted them. Grandmother Carmen, frail at 84, used a wheelchair. Juan's face was stoic, and he said little. After the security checkpoint, the family requested that the media leave. They wanted to wait the final hour alone, without even their lawyers.

At the boarding gate, the five of them huddled in a circle, hugging each other, recalls Alex. Liliana could barely speak because of her tears. They were so engrossed in their moment together that they didn't see the man with the television camera until he appeared next to them. Alex says he had never seen his brother so angry. Juan yelled at the man, "Can't you have some respect?"

Precious moments were wasted; the call for boarding soon began. Even now, Juan says he cannot discuss that day: "I'm not emotionally ready."

Shortly after their parents were deported, Juan and Alex moved to another rental house. Juan enrolled in Miami Dade College, devoting himself to studying and going to the gym. Once baby-faced and husky, he lost 30 pounds.

When he and Alex received their work permits, they got jobs busing tables at separate restaurants. Money was a constant worry; both had to pay nonresident tuition and cover the bills.

Nearly all of his high school friends had left for college, and Juan yearned to join them. Without telling his friends, parents or lawyers, Juan applied to Georgetown, just to see if he could get in. He knew he couldn't afford to go, and colleges don't grant much aid to international students, which is the category under which he would have to apply. Tuition, room and board at Georgetown runs close to $50,000 a year.

In his personal essay, Juan wrote about his detention, figuring that Georgetown would find out one way or another. He attached copies of his work permit and temporary stay documents. He doesn't have a copy of the essay, but he says he described "a point in my life where I had lost everything" and how much stronger he'd become as a result.

Juan not only got into Georgetown; he won a scholarship. He remembers rereading the e-mail acceptance several times, certain that there was a mistake. He was ecstatic, but hesitant. The only close family member he had left in the country was Alex, and he worried about leaving his brother. The longest the brothers had ever been separated was a few days, when Alex went to Disney World with high school classmates. Alex would have to work harder to carry the $400 monthly rent and take just one class a semester. But Alex, like their parents, was immensely proud of Juan and urged him to go.

"I felt rejuvenated," Juan says. "I had finally got into a school. Even if the financial aid hadn't come through, I felt this showed I deserved to be there, at least." Georgetown officials declined to comment for this story, even to talk about general immigration issues. A spokesman said that the school does not like to publicly discuss individual students.

Bette Quiat, Scott's mother, took Juan to Georgetown and helped him settle in. As the two toured the campus and picked out bedding at Target, she remembers, the feeling was bittersweet. "I was sad that his mom and dad could not be there to share this pride and overwhelming sense of how great their son had done to get to this place," Quiat says. "His determination to make it is so great."

Juan's room is Spartan: no TV, no posters, not even pictures of his family. He says he only wanted to bring what he needed, and, besides, he doesn't have much. In one corner, gloves and pullovers spill out from a box. Parents of a friend sent them, worried that Juan didn't have the proper clothes for his first winter outside of Miami. He's been grateful for the help, but he feels guilty. Before Quiat paid the bill at Target, he wanted to replace some items with cheaper things.

In Colombia, Liliana laments that she cannot help her son. She couldn't even afford to send him a birthday present. "Imagine how that feels for a mother," she says.

The return to the country where she grew up has been shocking. She and Julio, "fat" in America, have dropped at least one clothing size. Almost all their friends from the old days are gone, either to another country or dead.

The political situation in Colombia has stabilized, but the economy is struggling. Unemployment rose to nearly 11 percent at the end of last year. Liliana and Julio have tried to restart their event and catering business but have been hired for only a few small gigs here and there. Even simple jobs have been elusive, Liliana says. An ice cream shop owner told her that she was looking for an employee, and she immediately volunteered herself. But the business owner wanted a teenage worker. "No one would believe the jobs I've been doing," Liliana says. "I haven't told my sons how things are here because I don't want them to worry ... It's embarrassing."

The family's future is painful to contemplate. If Juan sees his parents again soon, it will be because he was deported. But winning U.S. residency could mean living apart for years. It's a stark choice, but there's no question for Juan and his parents about what he should do.

"I'm not going to give up and go back to Colombia after all they sacrificed for me," Juan says. "I sort of see myself as completing the American dream that my parents weren't able to."

***

At Georgetown, it's not hard to tell that Juan is a little different from other students. Unsolicited, he points to buildings on campus with all the enthusiasm of a tour guide. He even takes a visitor to his dorm's kitchen and lounge, noting that the resident assistant, "a really nice guy," bought pots and pans to share with everyone. In the dining hall, he says he can't get enough of the great food, even the meatloaf that others avoid. In a neighborhood filled with high-priced boutiques, Juan notices that the Subway restaurant on campus doesn't offer the $5 foot-long sandwich special.

Juan's friends at Georgetown say he's made them appreciate all the advantages they normally take for granted: their affluence, their parents, their citizenship. They learned he might be deported about a month into the semester. Juan says he told them he might not be around to share the university apartment they were applying for.

One friend, Mike Hayes, was incredulous. To him, Juan just didn't seem like an illegal immigrant. "I've come across 25-year-old illegal aliens who come here to get a job and get some money and go home," says Mike, a 19-year-old from suburban Philadelphia. "When I heard Juan's story, it was so radically different from them. He wasn't over here to make a buck. This was his home."

John Mazzara, a 20-year-old from Connecticut, says that the news did not change their relationship. If anything, it made him prouder that Juan counted him as a friend. "Juan is more American than I am," John says. In fact, he might be too American. When John needed help with his Spanish homework, Juan didn't know all the answers.

Juan has become a tutor for another subject, too. Through friends of friends, undocumented students e-mail him, wanting to know how to apply to schools or find a lawyer. In the middle of finals week in December, another Georgetown student called Juan: His parents had been picked up by immigration agents. Juan spent a few hours in the student's dorm room, trying to calm him down and answering his questions about what happens at a detention center. There's not much that they can do for each other, but there's the comfort of a common bond.

"I'm not alone in this," says Juan, who finished his first semester with near-perfect grades, four A's and one B-plus. Around the same time, Congress adjourned -- without a Senate subcommittee taking action on the private bill that Dodd introduced on behalf of Juan and his brother. The bill on the House side also died in committee.

When Juan's friends marched to Capitol Hill to plead his case, immigration was a hot issue. But now, the dismal state of the economy has superseded everything else. Nevertheless, Juan's lawyers are lobbying Dodd to reintroduce his private bill in the Senate. If Dodd or another senator doesn't, Juan and Alex will likely face a deportation order.

As Juan begins his second semester, many friends are already making plans for the summer. But Juan isn't interviewing for internships like they are; he doesn't know if he'll still be here by then. He's also not sure if he should apply for a $4,000 loan for the expenses his scholarship doesn't cover. His uncle would have to co-sign for the loan, and Juan doesn't want to stick him with the bill if he's ordered to leave the United States.

Each week, the possibility of getting deported looms larger. Juan can no longer block it from his mind so easily. "If I have this deadline that's going to come up in some form or another, it's not like I can look that far ahead into the future," he says.

For now, though, there are new classes to study for, basketball games to attend and a fresh start at the online investment game. In the midst of this now-familiar pace of student life, Juan finds himself stopping every once in a while and standing still. He can't help but gaze in awe around the campus, just as he did on that first day.

Phuong Ly is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to the Magazine. She can be reached at phuongyenly@gmail.com.

Diversity and the Military

2009-02-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

America's Imperial Police Force
How did the American military become the French Foreign Legion?

Editor's note: This article also appeared on TomDispatch.com.

By William Astore
Feb. 17, 2009 | A leaner, meaner, higher tech force -- that was what George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to transform the American military into. Instead, they came close to turning it into a foreign legion. Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions, yet serve the least in its ranks.

Now would be a good time for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to begin to reclaim that military for its proper purpose: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now would be a good time to ask exactly why, and for whom, our troops are currently fighting and dying in the urban jungles of Iraq and the hostile hills of Afghanistan.

A few fortnights and forever ago, in the Bush years, our "expeditionary" military came remarkably close to resembling an updated version of the French Foreign Legion in the ways it was conceived and used by those in power -- and even, to some extent, in its makeup.

For the metropolitan French elite of an earlier era, the Foreign Legion -- best known to Americans from countless old action films -- was an assemblage of military adventurers and rootless romantics, volunteers willing to man an army fighting colonial wars in far-flung places. Those wars served the narrow interests of people who weren't particularly concerned about the fate of the legion itself.

It's easy enough to imagine one of them saying, à la Rumsfeld, "You go to war with the legion you have, not the legion you might want or wish to have." Such a blithe statement would have been uncontroversial back then, since the French Foreign Legion was -- well -- so foreign. Its members, recruited worldwide, but especially from French colonial possessions, were considered expendable, a fate captured in its grim, sardonic motto: "You joined the Legion to die. The Legion will send you where you can die!"

Looking back on the last eight years, what's remarkable is the degree to which Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration treated the U.S. military in a similarly dismissive manner. Bullying his generals and ignoring their concerns, the Secretary of Defense even dismissed the vulnerability of the troops in Iraq, who, in the early years, motored about in inadequately armored Humvees and other thin-skinned vehicles.

Last year, Vice President Dick Cheney offered another Legionnaire-worthy version of such dismissiveness. Informed that most Americans no longer supported the war in Iraq, he infamously and succinctly countered, "So?" -- as if the U.S. military weren't the American people's instrument, but his own private army, fed and supplied by private contractor KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary whose former CEO was the very same Dick Cheney.

Fond of posing in flight suits, leather jackets, and related pseudo-military gear, President Bush might, on the other hand, have seemed overly invested in the military. Certainly, his tough war talk resonated within conservative circles, and he visibly relished speaking before masses of hooah-ing soldiers. Too often, however, Bush simply used them as patriotic props, while his administration did its best to hide their deaths from public view.

In that way, he and his top officials made our troops into foreigners, in part by making their ultimate sacrifice, their deaths, as foreign to us as was humanly possible. Put another way, his administration made the very idea of national "sacrifice" -- by anyone but our troops -- foreign to most Americans. In response to the 9/11 attacks, Americans were, as the President famously suggested only 16 days after the attacks, to show their grit by visiting Disney World and shopping till they dropped. Military service instills (and thrives on) an ethic of sacrifice that was, for more than seven years, consciously disavowed domestically.

As the Obama administration begins to deploy U.S. troops back to the Iraq or Afghan war zones for their fourth or fifth tours of duty, I remain amazed at the silent complicity of my country. Why have we been so quiet? Is it because the Bush administration was, in fact, successful in sending our military down the path to foreign legion-hood? Is the fate of our troops no longer of much importance to most Americans?

Even the military's recruitment and demographics are increasingly alien to much of the country. Troops are now regularly recruited in "foreign" places like South Central Los Angeles and Appalachia that more affluent Americans wouldn't be caught dead visiting. In some cases, those new recruits are quite literally "foreign" -- non-U.S. citizens allowed to seek a fast-track to citizenship by volunteering for frontline, war-zone duty in the U.S. Army or Marines. And when, in these last years, the military has fallen short of its recruitment goals -- less likely today thanks to the ongoing economic meltdown -- mercenaries have simply been hired at inflated prices from civilian contractors with names like Triple Canopy or Blackwater redolent of foreign adventures.

With respect to demographics, it'll take more than the sons of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin to redress inequities in burden-sharing. With startlingly few exceptions, America's sons and daughters dodging bullets remain the progeny of rural America, of immigrant America, of the working and lower middle classes. As long as our so-called best and brightest continue to be AWOL when it comes to serving among the rank-and-file, count on our foreign adventurism to continue to surge.

Diversity is now our societal byword. But how about more class diversity in our military? How about a combat regiment of rich young volunteers from uptown Manhattan? (After all, some of their great-grandfathers probably fought with New York's famed "Silk Stocking" regiment in World War I.) How about more Ivy League recruits like George H.W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, who respectively piloted a dive bomber and a PT boat in World War II? Heck, why not a few prominent Hollywood actors like Jimmy Stewart, who piloted heavy bombers in the flak-filled skies of Europe in that same war?

Instead of collective patriotic sacrifice, however, it's clear that the military will now be running the equivalent of a poverty and recession "draft" to fill the "all-volunteer" military. Those without jobs or down on their luck in terrible times will have the singular honor of fighting our future wars. Who would deny that drawing such recruits from dead-end situations in the hinterlands or central cities is strikingly Foreign Legion-esque?

Caught in the shock and awe of 9/11, we allowed our military to be transformed into a neocon imperial police force. Now, approaching our eighth year in Afghanistan and sixth year in Iraq, what exactly is that force defending? Before President Obama acts to double the number of American boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan -- before even more of our troops are sucked deeper into yet another quagmire -- shouldn't we ask this question with renewed urgency? Shouldn't we wonder just why, despite all the reverent words about "our troops," we really seem to care so little about sending them back into the wilderness again and again?

Where indeed is the outcry?

The French Foreign Legionnaires knew better than to expect such an outcry: The elites for whom they fought didn't give a damn about what happened to them. Our military may not yet be a foreign legion -- but don't fool yourself, it's getting there.

U.S. Latino Demographics

2009-01-24T14:33:00.001-08:00

The Latino Body at War

2009-01-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

Paul Flores, "Brown Dream"

The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez, a film by Swiss director Heidi Specogna (2007)

Latino Workers in the Ongoing Recession: 2007 to 2008

2009-01-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Pew Reports
Latino Workers in the Ongoing Recession: 2007 to 2008
by Rakesh Kochhar

A small but significant decline has occurred during the current recession in the share of Latino immigrants active in the U.S. labor force, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of Census Bureau data. In a year when jobs have become scarce for everyone, the proportion of working-age Latino immigrants participating in the labor force has fallen, at least through the third quarter of 2008, while the proportion of all non-Hispanics as well as of native-born Hispanics has held steady.

Jobs attract many Hispanic immigrants to the United States, and their labor force participation rate -- the proportion of the working-age population that is either working or actively seeking work -- is typically higher than the rate in the native-born population. That remains the case now.

However, among Latino immigrants, 71.3% were in the labor force at the close of the third quarter of 2008, compared with 72.4% a year earlier. This 1.1 percentage point decrease follows on the heels of a steady increase in the labor force participation rate of foreign-born Latinos since 2003 when the economy started its recovery from the 2001 recession.1 The drop in labor market activity was about twice as high among immigrants from Mexico and among immigrants who arrived in the U.S. since 2000. Among all non-Hispanics, the labor force participation rate was essentially unchanged during this period -- it was 66.2% at the end of the third quarter of 2008, up marginally from 66.0% a year earlier. Among native-born Hispanics, the rate was 66.4%, up from 66.0% a year earlier.

The absolute number of immigrant Latinos in the labor force did increase slightly -- by 150,000 -- between the third quarters of 2007 and 2008. But this increase is much smaller than it had been in previous years. And because it is also much smaller than the growth in the working-age population of Latino immigrants, the share that is active in the labor force has declined.

It is not possible to conclude from these data whether or not some of the foreign-born Latinos who left the labor force have returned to their countries of origin. The growth in the immigrant Latino population has leveled off in recent years, but it is not clear whether this has been due to an increased outflow of migrants. Passel and Cohn (2008) do find a decrease in the annual inflow of undocumented migrants to the U.S. since 2005. About four-in-five undocumented migrants come from Latin America.

The labor market data do not paint an unrelentingly negative picture for Latino immigrants, who make up about 8% of the total U.S. labor force. Their unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2008 was 6.4%, not much higher than the 6.1% rate for the total U.S. workforce and much lower than the 9.6% rate for native-born Hispanics (who account for about 45% of the Hispanic labor force in this country). However, workers who withdraw from the labor force are not counted among the unemployed. If foreign-born Latinos had remained as active in the labor market in 2008 as they were in 2007, their unemployment rate would be much higher today.

These findings emerge from the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau. Most of the data are from the Current Population Survey, a monthly Census Bureau survey of approximately 55,000 households. Data from three monthly surveys were combined to create larger sample sizes and to conduct the analysis on a quarterly basis.

Prop. 8: The Musical

2008-12-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

CSU May Cut Future Enrollment by 10,000

2008-11-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
Cal State Long Beach and other campuses have moved up their deadlines as more students apply. For the first time, the system might turn away qualified students. Minority and low-income groups would probably be hardest hit by the cuts, which could amount to a 10% drop in freshman enrollment.

By Gale Holland
November 18, 2008
The California State University system for the first time in its history is proposing to turn away qualified students due to a worsening state budget crisis.

As part of a plan to slash its 450,000 enrollment by 10,000 students for the 2009-2010 academic year, the 23-campus system, the nation's largest, will push up application deadlines and raise the academic bar for freshmen at its most popular campuses, Chancellor Charles B. Reed said Monday.

The university has never tried this type of enrollment cap, and Cal State officials said they cannot be sure how it will work. While sophomore transfers and out-of-state and international students will be squeezed, California high school graduates probably will bear the brunt of the downsizing, officials said. The university typically admits 45,000 to 50,000 freshmen each year; if even half the reductions land on them, it would mean a 10% drop in first-year admissions.

"These are going to be kids who have done everything they're supposed to do, and told year after year they'll have this opportunity," said Kathy Rapkin, chair of the counseling department at Arcadia High School and past president and Southern California regional representative for the California Assn. of School Counselors. "These kids are not going to get a place."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convened a special session of the Legislature this month to deal with a budget shortfall that could swell to $24 billion by mid-2010.

Reed said the Cal State system anticipates $66 million in midyear budget cuts, and further reductions for 2009-2010. He refused to discuss whether a fee hike is in store for next year. His enrollment plan comes as demand for Cal State admission soars; applications are up 10% from the same time a year ago, officials said.

Reed said he would consult with Cal State's Board of Trustees at their meeting Wednesday, but he already has the authority to impose enrollment restrictions and is planning to act soon.

"This is something California State University has never done," he said in a conference call with reporters.

Cal State is not the only higher education institution reporting financially driven enrollment issues. The University of California said it might have to limit admission to its most popular campuses and send more students to those with extra space, typically Riverside and Merced. At the state's community colleges, actual enrollment probably won't be limited but students' access to classes may be, officials said.

"We won't be able to offer them the classes they need," said Diane Woodruff, chancellor of the California Community Colleges.

She predicted that the lack of classes could drive away 250,000 full- or part-time students; 2.7 million are now enrolled in that system.

The basic requirements for admission to Cal State are high school graduation, completion of college prep course work and a B average. Students with a C average or above can get in with good SAT or ACT test scores.

A number of Cal State's sought-after campuses have for several years cut off some or all applications in the fall, but the official deadline was in the spring and some colleges accepted eligible applicants up to and including the first day of classes.

This year the cutoff for many campuses is Nov. 30, and all colleges will stop taking applications by March 1. San Francisco State has set a Dec. 10 deadline.

Some campuses, including Sonoma, Channel Islands, Northridge, Chico, San Jose, San Marcos and San Francisco, will continue to take all fully qualified students from their own communities. But students from other parts of California may have to show higher grade-point averages and test scores to make the cut at these and other campuses, officials said.

San Diego State, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the most popular campuses, have imposed similar academic restrictions for several years.

Reed said the enrollment cutback will be felt most deeply by students of color already underrepresented in the four-year college system.

"Many students from under-served groups and families of color . . . are unsure about financial aid, when and how to apply . . . and do not make up their minds until spring," he said. They are "who I worry about most."

Lourdes Garcia-Meza, a counselor at John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, said low- and middle-income minority students at her school could be hit hard.

"These are good students and they worked really hard to make it at Cal State Northridge and Cal State L.A.," she said. "It's going to be heartbreaking."

Cal State officials said the cap is a better option than increasing class size or dropping course sections, as they did during a previous economic downturn in the early 1990s. Many students could not enroll in the classes they wanted and dropped out, bringing enrollment figures down.

Cal State currently receives $2.97 billion of its budget from the state's general fund and $1.5 billion from student fees. The system has raised fees six times in seven years. The cost of attending a Cal State college, not including housing, books and other living expenses, is about $3,800 a year.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell urged the state Legislature to raise enough revenue to provide higher education to all eligible students.

"Providing access to higher education for all qualified students is key to strengthening our economy in the future," O'Connell said in a written statement.

Holland is a Times staff writer.

"So I be written in the Book of Love..."

2008-11-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

TRANSCRIPT:
"Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.

This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

More below the fold.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.

If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

---

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person...

Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.

"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:

"So I be written in the Book of Love;

"I do not care about that Book above.

"Erase my name, or write it as you will,

"So I be written in the Book of Love."

---

Good night, and good luck."

Join the Impact - Protest Prop 8 on November 15th!

2008-11-13T23:35:00.000-08:00

Tips For Saturday - Your Checklist
To everyone organizing and participating in Saturday’s INTERNATIONAL protest:

As Saturday’s events come closer, it’s time for that last minute check list to ensure that everything is covered:

Do you have permits? If you do not have permits yet, please work with your local LGBTQ organization to quickly obtain these. If you do not have a local LGBTQ organization, then please contact your local police and government to get their help
Please be as transparent with the police as possible. If you, like many of us, have found that your event grew from 300 to 3000 overnight, don’t hesitate to tell the police about these new projections. They are there to protect you and shouldn’t be stretched thin.
Make sure you don’t bring anything that would be considered a weapon - I know this sounds like common sense, but few people realize that the sticks they use for their signs have to be no thicker than 1/4″ or else they are considered a weapon.
Do you have speakers? Every city is handling this differently and that is perfectly fine. If you want to have speakers but don’t yet, here are some suggestions: Local religious leaders that are also gay allies, local members of the media, local LGBTQ advocates, local radio personalities, you - are you the organizer? Then you should speak.
Find your protest location. Contact the local organizer if you wish to volunteer.
Organize your volunteers. Give everyone who you can manage a job to help you keep things moving. Gather emails (we will soon compile all of these with you).
Finally - I want to make sure that we are always always always focusing on peaceful demonstrations. Please remain respectful of your neighbors and reach across the aisle to our opponents (I’m sorry for that extremely trite phrase considering how it’s been hammered into our heads this election year). This is an amazing opportunity to continue the conversation and drive change. Please keep promoting peace, respect, and outreach.
There are always loose ends to tie up. Please utilize the resources made available to you at HERE, and those available to you from your local organizations joining in this movement!

Thanks!

The JoinTheImpact Team
From JoinTheImpact

Obama and the Politics of Uncritical Exuberance

2008-11-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

Uncritical Exuberance?
Judith Butler

Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on the left write to me that they feel something akin to "redemption" or that "the country has been returned to us" or that "we finally have one of us in the White House." Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes ("we are all united") or that we propose ("he is one of us"), we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times. There have always been good reasons not to embrace "national unity" as an ideal, and to nurse suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her audience and says, "I love each and every one of you."

It becomes all the more important to think about the politics of exuberant identification with the election of Obama when we consider that support for Obama has coincided with support for conservative causes. In a way, this accounts for his "cross-over" success. In California, he won by 60% of the vote, and yet some significant portion of those who voted for him also voted against the legalization of gay marriage (52%). How do we understand this apparent disjunction? First, let us remember that Obama has not explicitly supported gay marriage rights. Further, as Wendy Brown has argued, the Republicans have found that the electorate is not as galvanized by "moral" issues as they were in recent elections; the reasons given for why people voted for Obama seem to be predominantly economic, and their reasoning seems more fully structured by neo-liberal rationality than by religious concerns. This is clearly one reason why Palin's assigned public function to galvanize the majority of the electorate on moral issues finally failed. But if "moral" issues such as gun control, abortion rights and gay rights were not as determinative as they once were, perhaps that is because they are thriving in a separate compartment of the political mind. In other words, we are faced with new configurations of political belief that make it possible to hold apparently discrepant views at the same time: someone can, for instance, disagree with Obama on certain issues, but still have voted for him. This became most salient in the emergence of the counter Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the economy." Such voters got to keep their racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs without having to resolve them.

Along with strong economic motivations, less empirically discernible factors have come into play in these election results. We cannot underestimate the force of dis-identification in this election, a sense of revulsion that George W. has "represented" the United States to the rest of the world, a sense of shame about our practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense of disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and propagated racist views of Islam, a sense of alarm and horror that the extremes of economic deregulation have led to a global economic crisis. Is it despite his race, or because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred representative of the nation? Fulfilling that representative-function, he is at once black and not-black (some say "not black enough" and others say "too black"), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one. The public figure who allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence nevertheless appears as a figure of "unity": this is surely an ideological function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason without their political force.

As the election approached, there has been an increased focus on the person of Obama: his gravity, his deliberateness, his ability not to lose his temper, his way of modeling a certain evenness in the face of hurtful attacks and vile political rhetoric, his promise to reinstate a version of the nation that will overcome its current shame. Of course, the promise is alluring, but what if the embrace of Obama leads to the belief that we might overcome all dissonance, that unity is actually possible? What is the chance that we may end up suffering a certain inevitable disappointment when this charismatic leader displays his fallibility, his willingness to compromise, even to sell out minorities? He has, in fact, already done this in certain ways, but many of us "set aside" our concerns in order to enjoy the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless of the attributions of "socialism" proffered by his conservative opponents. In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, "I know that he is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway," there are surely also people on the left who say, "I know that he has sold out gay rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption." I know very well, but still: this is the classic formulation of disavowal. Through what means do we sustain and mask conflicting beliefs of this sort? And at what political cost?

There is no doubt that Obama's success will have significant effects on the economic course of the nation, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new rationale for economic regulation and for an approach to economics that resembles social democratic forms in Europe; in foreign affairs, we will doubtless see a renewal of multi-lateral relations, the reversal of a fatal trend of destroying multilateral accords that the Bush administration has undertaken. And there will doubtless also be a more generally liberal trend on social issues, though it is important to remember that Obama has not supported universal health care, and has failed to explicitly support gay marriage rights. And there is not yet much reason to hope that he will formulate a just policy for the United States in the Middle East, even though it is a relief, to be sure, that he knows Rashid Khalidi.

The indisputable significance of his election has everything to do with overcoming the limits implicitly imposed on African-American achievement; it has and will inspire and overwhelm young African-Americans; it will, at the same time, precipitate a change in the self-definition of the United States. If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority of voters to be "represented" by this man, then it follows that who "we" are is constituted anew: we are a nation of many races, of mixed races; and he offers us the occasion to recognize who we have become and what we have yet to be, and in this way a certain split between the representative function of the presidency and the populace represented appears to be overcome. That is an exhilarating moment, to be sure. But can it last, and should it?

To what consequences will this nearly messianic expectation invested in this man lead? In order for this presidency to be successful, it will have to lead to some disappointment, and to survive disappointment: the man will become human, will prove less powerful than we might wish, and politics will cease to be a celebration without ambivalence and caution; indeed, politics will prove to be less of a messianic experience than a venue for robust debate, public criticism, and necessary antagonism. The election of Obama means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle, and we would be very unwise to regard it that way, even provisionally. We will doubtless agree and disagree with various actions he takes and fails to take. But if the initial expectation is that he is and will be "redemption" itself, then we will punish him mercilessly when he fails us (or we will find ways to deny or suppress that disappointment in order to keep alive the experience of unity and unambivalent love).

If a consequential and dramatic disappointment is to be averted, he will have to act quickly and well. Perhaps the only way to avert a "crash" – a disappointment of serious proportions that would turn political will against him – will be to take decisive actions within the first two months of his presidency. The first would be to close Guantanamo and find ways to transfer the cases of detainees to legitimate courts; the second would be to forge a plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to begin to implement that plan. The third would be to retract his bellicose remarks about escalating war in Afghanistan and pursue diplomatic, multilateral solutions in that arena. If he fails to take these steps, his support on the left will clearly deteriorate, and we will see the reconfiguration of the split between liberal hawks and the anti-war left. If he appoints the likes of Lawrence Summers to key cabinet positions, or continues the failed economic polices of Clinton and Bush, then at some point the messiah will be scorned as a false prophet. In the place of an impossible promise, we need a series of concrete actions that can begin to reverse the terrible abrogation of justice committed by the Bush regime; anything less will lead to a dramatic and consequential disillusionment. The question is what measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice.

Black Bodies Politic in Paris, Texas

2008-10-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Texas Dragging Death May Have Been a Racially Motivated Crime
Associated Press

In a gruesome case with powerful echoes of the dragging death of James Byrd a decade ago, a black man was killed underneath a pickup truck in East Texas and two white men have been charged with murder. Paris is the same Texas town in which a black girl was sentenced to up to seven years in a juvenile prison for shoving a teacher's aide at school. That same judge sentenced a white girl to probation for burning down her parents' house.

Dead Citizenship and The Latino Body at War

2008-10-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Paul Flores, "Brown Dream"

The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez, a film by Swiss director Heidi Specogna (2007)

Michelle Malkin on "Illegal Loans"

2008-10-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

You knew it was just a matter of time before immigrants would be the likely scapegoats for the country's current financial and credit meltdown. One of the country's most conservative and reactionary bloggers, Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang), blames the current economic crisis on "the rapidly expanding illegal-alien home-loan racket."

This is not surprising given her willful distortion of the facts. See her below for her take on immigration.

And speaking of willful distortion, here she is claiming that former presidential hopeful John Kerry shot himself for the sake of getting a purple heart. "This one" throws what she can on the national wall to see what sticks. Leave it to an immigrant to attack immigrants?

College Access: Who Gets to Attend College?

2008-09-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

from Who Gets to Attend College?
By Tram Nguyen

"...At UCLA, Proposition 209 resulted in a decline of Black students from 221 freshmen in 1997 to 96 admitted in 2006. University officials scrambled to come up with some creative ways around the law—appointing an alumni commission to offer scholarships to encourage admitted Blacks to choose UCLA and revamping the process of judging applications to better acknowledge students for overcoming disadvantages. By fall 2007, Black admissions had more than doubled from the year before.

But the focus on admissions numbers is still a limited one in the larger context of anti-affirmative action and systemic public school inequities. Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209, has won ballot initiatives banning affirmative action in two more states—Washington and Michigan—and is close to getting it on the November ballot this year in Colorado, Arizona and Nebraska (his supporters have gotten enough signatures in the three states, but opponents are claiming voter fraud and suing)."