Roberto Lovato goes down South to learn more about life as a Latino in Georgia. Lovato follows a seventeen year old girl, Justeen Mancha and describes her experiences with Juan Crow.
The toll this increasingly oppressive climate has taken on Mancha represents but a small part of its effects on noncitizen immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, and other Latinos. Mancha and the younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white—and black—children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos’ subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants.
To read more.
Yesterday was Israeli Independence Day; the 60th year of Israel’s existence. For some Israelis and Zionists, the day celebrates the birth of statehood for a people long without a land. But for me, as for many other’s, Israeli Independence Day is not a day of celebration but one on which to remember and reflect on violence, racism and the need for solidarity.
Observed in May 15th, the Nakba (Arabic for Catastrophe), is the day of commemoration of the 60 year long dispossession and systematic displacement of Palestinians that continues in the form of brutal military violence and the relegation of Palestinians to live in unlivable zones like the open air prison that Gaza has become. Israeli Independence day marks the anniversary of the beginning of this catastrophe.
This day reminds us of what happens when the identities of those with power and privilege become the basis of political organization. The result can be nothing but to create a racist polity. In the United States, when race is the organizing, animating substance of nation building, we see devastating effects. Whether in the context of immigration policy that excludes and criminalizes immigrants of color or inequitable and unforgiving criminal justice policies that construct black people as threats and incarcerate them, nations cannot be built on racist conceptions of belonging. When they are, we see the destruction of families, livelihood and senses of self.
In the Israeli context, Palestinians living inside of the 1967 Israeli borders, those who were not displaced after the Nakba in 1948, face debilitating racial disparities and exclusion. Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza are dehumanized to the point where Gaza is sealed off and made into a prison and in the West Bank, people’s homes and farms destroyed.
What is needed now is a heightened sense of solidarity. Around the world people are raising their voices in commemoration of the Nakba and in support of a just solution in Palestine and Israel. For me, this can only come when countries are not predicated on a racially exclusive notion of who belongs but open their doors and tear down their walls. This will be as true in Palestine and Israel as it will be here in the United States
Clinton: Only White People are “Hard Working Americans”
Despite the many hard working people of color who have supported Hillary Clinton since the beginning of her campaign, she appears to forget them (or at least call them worthless in her run for the presidency) in a recent USA Today interview.
As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
We aren’t endorsing Barack Obama but rather any candidate that works to close the gaps of the racial divide by appealing to all Americans. It seems that isolating her success among working class white people to prove her electability may not be a good move, to say the least.
To further ensure us that her comments were not meant to be divisive Clinton adds, “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”
Now, when Barack Obama made his claim about the “typical white person”, it didn’t mean anything, he was just talking generalities; and the same thing with Clinton here, but even less so [but a ‘gaffe’ in the same manner]. Clinton clarifies that she’s talking about working Americans that Obama is not doing well with, which are typically white, and she’s “ugly and divisive”? This is a lame stretch. In fact, had she had not clarified it to say “white Americans” it wouldn’t have been a true claim, because Obama is doing very well among black working Americans.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) filed a lawsuit against the NYPD in federal court on behalf of a New York Post crime reporter who was the victim of racial profiling. Despite the fact that the Post ran an editorial (h/t Stereohyped) that claimed racial profiling was not a growing problem, Leonardo Blair, 28, a Jamaican immigrant was harassed by police when walking to his car in the Bronx last year.
Blair’s case comes as the NYCLU releases a study of police shootings from 1996 to 2006 that reveals, “New York City police officers fire their weapons far less often than they did a decade ago, a statistic that has dropped along with the crime rate.”
The New York Times reports that officers hit their target only a third of the time, and they are more often shooting at someone who is not returning fire. The article also points out the NYPD’s precision when shooting animals is better than with humans. “When they fire at dogs, roughly 55 percent of shots hit home. Most of their targets are pit bulls, with a smattering of Rottweilers and German shepherds.”
In a series called “America-Hating Black Preacher,” Darrin Bell compares the media’s reaction to Martin Luther King in 1968 to the response to Rev. Wright in 2008.
Sean Bell Protesters Stop Traffic, 216 Arrested; Border Patrol Wants Immigrants Leaving Country, Too
Idaho Teacher Trashes Mexican Flag
“A high school student says he may file a lawsuit against a physical education teacher who took a Mexican flag he had brought for Cinco de Mayo and put it in the garbage.” Associated Press. Over 200 Arrested in Protest of the Sean Bell Verdict
More that one thousand people gathered at six different sites across the city to protest the acquittal of the three detectives who killed Sean Bell. Blocking traffic to major New York thoroughfares, 216 people were arrested by NYPD for praying in the street. New York Times.
FBI Investigates Indiana Cross Burning
An interracial couple found a cross burning on their lawn early Friday morning. The Southern Poverty Law Center sees the crime as intimidation, but the FBI investigation continues. Indianapolis Star.
First Aid Goes to Myanmar
In Myanmar, the ruling military junta has given the US permission to fly in relief supplies to the survivors of cyclone Nargis. Officials from Thailand mediated between the US and the junta, which mistrusts American intentions. Euronews.
Border Patrol Arrests Leaving Immigrants
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up checkpoints, boarding buses destined for Mexico and pulling off people who don’t have proper documentation.” Los Angeles Times.
That’s the sign that a group of freshmen will see when they walk through the doors of the Delaware Academy for Public Safety and Security in Wilmington, Delaware on a fall day in 2010.
As the brainchild of several lawmakers and a 72 year-old Jarhead, hand-to-hand combat expert, and Judo coach extraordinaire, the school will train young men and women (mostly from the “inner city”), for a wide variety of first responder Homeland Security jobs.
The school’s curriculum is designed to prepare kids for careers as prison guards, SWAT teamers, paramedics, demolitionists, and firefighters; you know, all the jobs that don’t necessarily require a high school degree and which you can qualify for after a two-week course.
This “innovative” plan has garnered support from Delaware’s Senate Minority Leader, House speaker, and many of our favorite organizations from the prison-military-industrial complex. They claim that their plan will not only grant every parent’s wish of seeing their kids read weapons manuals instead of Hemingway, but it will also help keep their children from succumbing to a life of “apathy or crime.”
TIGRA Wins Reinvestment of Immigrants’ Remittances
Yesterday, Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) announced an agreement with Dallas-based money transfer company, Virtual Money Inc., that will lead to new standards for the industry.
The agreement guarantees: (1) fair prices of at least 20% lower than the norm set by industry leaders like Western Union and MoneyGram; (2) adoption of socially-responsible screens on investments to ensure that resources do not foster further displacement of communities; (3) a customer service framework that values transparency, respect and non-discrimination; and (4) a commitment to genuine community reinvestment that allocates up to 10% of its pre-tax profits to sustainable development projects identified by local communities.
TIGRA’s director, Francis Calpotura says, “Today signals a new day for immigrants and their families around the world. A company has stepped up to say ‘We understand your aspirations. We are committed to your communities.’ and is willing to back this up with their money.”
Why is it every time I walk into a Home Depot people ask me where to find the plumbing fixtures? It’s not like I walk around wearing an orange apron. And why is it that when I dress up for a black tie event, people let me know that their table could use some more wine? Or how about when I walk into a Kinko’s copies, people tell me their ready to have their order rung up? They have uniforms too. They even have name tags and I usually don’t walk around wearing one.
Could it be that the color of my skin, a dark chocolate shade, tells people where my societal and economic status ought to be? I used to think it was just me, but maybe it’s really not.
40 Years Later, Should Athletes Boycott the Olympics?
In the Los Angeles Times, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar points of the parallels between the 1968 Olympics and the upcoming summer games in Beijing.
Here we are 40 years later and we are once again about to send our young athletes overseas to compete in games while we send our young soldiers overseas to fight in war. And, as before, there is a social agenda attached to the Olympic Games.
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