Originally published in The Nation

By Roberto Lovato

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

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."

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."

Jerome Armstrong says on MyDD.com in Clinton's defense,

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."

If you need any more proof that police treat Black men worse that dogs, check out the video of Philadelphia police beating three robbery suspects.

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.

Go to the Candorville archives for the entire series.

The most recent strips after the jump.

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.

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.”

Photos by Jorge Rivas

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.

Of course, this is the same Rush Limbaugh that called Senator Barack Obama a “Magic Negro.” This is, also, the same Limbaugh who resigned from ESPN for saying NFL quarterback Donavan McNabb was overrated because people want to see a Black quarterback succeed.

But even Senator Barack Obama sometimes suffers from mistaken identity. When he tried to speak to one North Carolina resident, he was waved away with little acknowledgment. The man later explained that he doesn’t care for Muslims. Isn’t it interesting that the Senator would be called a Muslim, as if that’s a bad thing, while being knocked for having an outspoken Christian preacher.

It makes me wonder. If an accomplished Latino and potentially the first Black American President are met with such disrespect, will the day ever come when someone won’t assume they know what my tax bracket or my life story by the color of my skin? Maybe someday, but it’s clearly not this day.

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.

Instead of turning our backs, we need to continue a dialogue with the Chinese. When people stop communicating with each other, the situation doesn’t get better, it gets worse. The more we talk with each other, the more we understand each other and can reach compromises that will benefit the lives of those we are trying to help. Getting innocent people freed from prison or preventing others from being persecuted is much better than just wagging our fingers from across the ocean. Jackie Robinson once said that the great thing about athletics is that “you learn to act democracy, not just talk it.” That’s what our athletes will demonstrate to the 1 billion Chinese who may be watching.

What do you think? Should US athletes boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing in response to the Chinese arguable support of the atrocities in Darfur?

On CL.com, we are also conducting a survey of ColorLines and Racewire readers. This is your opportunity to talk back to us. Let us know what you like, what you don't, and what you think we should be doing.

Take Our Survey.

Everyone who completes our ColorLines 2008 survey is eligible to enter in a random drawing to win either a Flip Video camera or iPod Shuffle.

Check out these short audio interviews from May Day in Washington DC. Featured interviews include immigrants, activists, filmmakers, and hip hop artists.

Check out some of these interviews here:

* Nicola Wells, organizer with FIRM - Fair Immigration Reform Movement, with a shout-out and a welcome

* Eugene, student at Howard University highlights the intersections between communities of color and immigrant communities

* David Thurston, from the New Sanctuary Movement, on the faith community and immigration issues.

More interviews here.

For MVL photos from across the country

By Jennifer Carnig

The NYPD is arresting more than 35,000 New Yorkers a year on marijuana charges, a remarkably aggressive arrest policy that began during the Giuliani years and has carried on full throttle through the seven years of the Bloomberg administration. And young men of color are unfairly bearing the brunt of this ill-conceived crackdown.

These shockingly high arrest rates offer no demonstrable reduction in serious crime, but they do have an impact on the everyday lives of New Yorkers.

The racial bias of the hostile arrest policy mapped out in Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in NYC is stunning: Blacks are five times more likely to be arrested, and Latinos are three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites. Though men and women use marijuana in roughly the same proportions, men account for more than 90 percent of the arrests in New York City.

The marijuana arrests, which cost taxpayers up to $90 million a year, are indicative of the NYPD’s “broken windows” approach to law enforcement, in which police focus on minor offenses as a method of reducing overall crime. This approach, also called quality of life policing, has resulted in a dramatic spike in stop-and-frisk encounters between police and city residents.

In 2007, the NYPD stopped, searched or interrogated nearly half a million New Yorkers – about 1,300 people every day. Eighty-eight percent were found completely innocent of any wrongdoing and released with a charge or even a ticket. The racial disparity in these stop-and-frisk encounters is almost identical to the disparity in marijuana arrests: Though blacks make up only a quarter of the city’s population, more than half of those stopped were black. Another 30 percent were Latino.

Similarly, according to an investigation by the Daily News, though blacks and Latinos account for fewer than half of subway riders, 90 percent of the citizens stopped and questioned on the subway are black or Latino.

Clearly something is wrong with how policing is conducted in our city. Laws are being enforced selectively, and there are devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of black and brown New Yorkers who are unfortunate enough to get caught up by the NYPD’s racially skewed street tactics.

New Yorkers – overwhelmingly young black and Latino men – are being pushed into the prison pipeline. Walk into any high school classroom in Brooklyn or the Bronx and ask who’s been stopped by the police and it’s a sea of hands. The racial police tactics that target these kids do not create safer streets. Instead, they foster distrust between the police and the community, and strip hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers of their dignity.

Beyond the countless personal tragedies this creates, our society as a whole pays a price, too. For each stop-and-frisk, for each trumped-up marijuana arrest, the NYPD’s vast database of black and Latino New Yorkers’ personal information expands.

Sadly, even today we do not know the full extent of New York’s two-tiered justice system. The NYPD continues to stonewall advocates, policy makers and even the City Council from discovering the breadth of the racial disparities in their stops and arrests in New York City. The New York Civil Liberties Union has even had to sue for access to the stop-and-frisk database, and still the city insists on hiding the record of its racial profiling.

Until the NYPD commits to an open and honest dialogue about these issues, we cannot know for certain just how deep these problems go. It’s time for the city to stop giving the police the benefit of the doubt and figure out what’s really happening here.

This report cries out for serious review by the City Council, by the State Legislature, by the Attorney General and by the Distract Attorney’s office in every county in the state: It is time that we demand an explanation from Mayor Bloomberg and an end to these racially biased street tactics.

Only when we do will justice in New York be truly just.

Protests Planned for Imam Facing Deportation
Organizers, who say at least 18 buses are are headed to Paterson in support of a New Jersey Imam who is facing deportation, hope thousands will attend three days of rallies planned around his immigration case. Newsday.

Justice for Gitmo Detainees Delayed
Nearly seven years after September 11, 2001, not one of the approximately 775 terrorism suspects who have been held on this island has faced a jury trial inside the new complex, and U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of the suspects will before the Bush administration ends. Washington Post.

Immigration Advocates Protest Bay Area ICE Raids
Immigrant rights advocates and religious leaders are congregating today in front of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Francisco office to protest recent raids in the Bay Area. San Jose Mercury News.