The Stella D'Oro cookie factory workers--whom we last visited back in February as they toughed it out picketing through the dead of winter--have gotten a summer break. An administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling this week ordering that Stella D'Oro reinstate the workers and pay them back wages.

According to the decision, the company, owned by the private equity firm Brynwood Partners, had violated collective bargaining procedures and failed to turn over key documentation to representatives of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union.

The Obama administration's ambiguous promises on immigration reform are confusing enough, but the latest move to crack down on employers of undocumented immigrants may indicate that even if “comprehensive reform” legislation is on the horizon, justice for exploited immigrant workers is nowhere in sight.

The New York Times reports :

On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008. ...

The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.

Under the banner of reform and equal opportunity, the country is moving toward national education standards. But in education, a "common" standard isn't necessarily an "equal" one, especially for the communities hardest hit by failures in public schools.

EdWeek reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is using the federal stimulus to push states to adopt “voluntary” nationwide standards, designed to “eliminate the patchwork of academic standards across the country that result in students in the same grades learning different things in different states.”

Broad national standards would seem to complement No Child Left Behind's stated goal of pushing for equal opportunity in education. But in theory and practice, NCLB has alienated many progressive education advocates, who see it as a vehicle for narrowing the social mission of public schooling.

That’s the question Chevron is asking Richmond, CA. This Wednesday, a Contra Costa Superior Court Judge sided with environmentalists and community groups in a lawsuit against the refinery to stop the company from manufacturing cruder types of oil until it can get a new environmental impact report that answers key questions and a new permit from the city.

Even though the judge’s ruling didn’t kill the project completely, Chevron responded by swiftly laying off 100 workers right after the announcement with 1,000 more to go that were included under the upgrade, costing the city $50 million to $75 million in possible income. They also took back the promised $61 million to city projects.

The company is playing ugly in this long battle against the Richmond community whose asthma rates in children are twice as high as the national average and whose unemployment rate is 7.4% and growing with the recession.

Greg Karras, senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The workers shouldn't pay for Chevron's mistake. The real solution is to replace the refinery's ancient equipment. Design it right, design it for the same quality of oil."

As Richmond residents continue to suffer from health problems related to the refinery and high levels of unemployment, the company's moves so far haven't shown even the smallest compromise is possible.

On Sunday, June 28th, major media news outlets were still occupied with the topic of Iran’s sham election results, while a tedious insult against democracy was taking place in Central America. A small segment of the Honduran army, led by General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, a graduate of the School of the Americas, booted out the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. General Velásquez’s force kidnapped President Zelaya from his presidential palace, dragged him to the airport under gun-point, and flew him to exile in San Jose, Costa Rica: “I was brutally taken out of my house and kidnapped by hooded soldiers who pointed high-caliber rifles at me,” said the ousted elected president.

The event that took place at dawn on Sunday in Tegucigalpa, Honduras evokes scenes of Latin America’s past; for decades the U.S. openly supported many of coup d’etats in Latin America against the will and democratically exercised right of the people across the continent.

Hitherto, few voices have risen to condemn the assassination of democracy in the Honduras.

Several questions come to mind when we evaluate our approach to both episodes: Are we still operating in the Cold War mindset? Does the “dogma” of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” still thrive in Washington D.C., guiding our selective approach toward global democratic “values”? Do the compromised outcomes of the election in Iran have more value than the attack on democracy in Honduras?

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is the most extensive and, at over 1400 pages long, the largest climate and energy bill that’s ever been introduced onto the House floor. And if you’ve been following the battle to get it there, you probably know now that it’s been an uphill struggle for progressive communities.

What you may not know is that three weeks prior to the House vote, the first draft of the bill contained no opportunity for communities of color and low-income communities in its goals of energy independence, clean energy, lowering carbon emissions, and job creation.

Here it was, the largest climate and energy bill in the history of the U.S., racing at lightning speed towards the critical House vote, with virtually no provisions for marginalized communities, youth of color, and low-income people.

With over 3.8 million youth, ages 18-24, neither in school or jobs, it’s clear we have to provide better opportunities to engage our young people. Particularly for youth of color who have been locked out of the education process and won’t follow a traditional 4-year college path, we need viable alternatives to the streets. We need to scale up healthy, career-track jobs that will allow our youth to advance and not be left behind.

Vegas Mall Faces Discrimination Lawsuit
In Las Vegas, the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace are in the midst of a four-year long workplace discrimination lawsuit alleging that Latino janitors employed at the mall experienced harassment from their supervisor.

Immigration Law Under Scrutiny in Salt Lake
Following an incident perceived to be racial profiling, leaders of the Latino community in Salt Lake City are challenging a new immigration law, formerly Senate Bill 81, which allows officers to ask drivers about their legal status after committing a traffic violation.

LGBT and Latino Communities Link Up For Naturalization Efforts
In several cities across the country, the Human Rights Campaign is partnering with the "Ya Es Hora" Campaign to help 1 million Latinos with legal permanent residence to attain their citizenship in 2009 and 2010.

The Urban Institute and D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates have released a databook on youth in Washington, D.C. It offers an up-close snapshot of intense socioeconomic and racial disparities concentrated in a single urban area, where the vast majority of teens are people of color:

Among the findings on demographics and poverty:

Black teenagers were not only more likely to be poor than white teenagers, they were also more likely to be extremely poor. We calculated the share of teenagers who lived in families with incomes less than 50 percent of the federal poverty level and found that almost one-quarter (22 percent) of black teenagers in 2005–06 lived in families that were extremely poor, compared with 8 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 7 percent of white teenagers.

...more than two-thirds (69 percent) of black teenagers Districtwide lived in single female-headed households, compared with 31 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 11 percent of non- Hispanic white teenagers.

Is gay rights a white, middle class issue? Not if you're a gay, poor person of color. Emerging research around socioeconomic status and the LGBT community underscores how the movement for LGBT equality operates neither in isolation nor at the expense of other civil rights struggles.

The Center for American Progress notes that in civil-rights debates around same-sex marriage and anti-LGBT hate crime, access to these rights is seldom discussed in relation to how it impacts people's everyday lives. “Despite recent advances,” writes Nico Sifra Quintana in a new issue brief, “LGBT civil rights are rarely addressed in policy debates surrounding poverty.”

In a recent analysis of census data, the Williams Institute at UCLA law school examined the socioeconomic status of same-sex couple households along racial and gender lines. The study found that "After adjusting for a range of family characteristics that help explain poverty, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families." Lesbian couples and families face especially high rates of poverty.

Last month, the Oakland Police Department took the first disciplinary action in five years against an officer involved in the shooting of a suspect.

Officer Hector Jimenez was terminated for the fatal shooting of Mack “Jody” Woodfox in July 2008. Woodfox a 27-year-old Oakland man, was unarmed. Jimenez, a rookie officer who graduated from the academy in February 2007, was involved with another officer in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Andrew Moppin-Buckskin on New Year’s Day, 2008. Moppin was also unarmed. Both incidents occurred in the flatlands of East Oakland, where tensions between the police and the community abound.

Police officials said Jimenez’s shooting of Woodfox violated the department’s use of force policies because the 27-year-old was unarmed and posed no threat to the officer. Jimenez was cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of Moppin-Buckskin. In both incidents, Jimenez believed the men were reaching for waistbands as if to draw a weapon.

According to statistics submitted by the Oakland Police to Civilian Police Review Board, between 2004 and 2008 there were 45 officer-involved shootings. The overwhelming majority were men of color: 36 were black and 7 were Latino. None of the victims were white.

Safe Haven in Peril?
Rody Alvarado filed for asylum in the US after years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband while Guatemalan police stood by idly. Ten years later, Alvarado's case is still in limbo.

Karen Musalo, Alvarado’s attorney, believes the case has taken so long because many within the government fear that if asylum is expanded to include domestic violence cases, there will be thousands of applicants. “They also view domestic violence asylum as a cultural matter that the U.S. should not be handling,” Musalo said.

Home Lending That Works
A new bill in Congress would expand the Community Reinvestment Act to further protect Blacks and Latinos from discriminatory lending practices.

While the original act has had a profound impact, supporters say more work needs to be done around closing the racial disparity in lending practices. “It’s not enough to just break it down by household income; banks have historically not loaned to communities of color. Not because of their income, but because of their race,” said Jim Carr chief operating officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which helped Johnson introduce the bill.

Lil' Wayne Meets John Donne
What happens when rap meets literary analysis?

It’s not often that Lil’ Wayne and John Donne are mentioned in the same discussion of poetic meter, or that Biggie’s sexual innuendo is pitted against Shakespeare’s 17th-century puns. Then again, it’s not often that rap music is given a thorough literary analysis. Adam Bradley, professor of English at Claremont McKenna College, does just that in Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (Basic Civitas).

NYC City Council Passes Muslim Holiday Resolution
Religious, labor and immigrant groups are calling for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to rescind his rejection of a City Council resolution to close school for two important Muslim Holidays. The Mayor says the city is too diverse for schools to observe every holiday.

Quincy Jones May Try to Buy Back VIBE
A report published by EbonyJet.com said Jones intends on buying back the magazine after its shut down on Tuesday saying the magazine might have an “online-only” future.

Stimulus to Help American Indian State Banks
Obama’s stimulus plan will distribute $8 million dollars to 10 U.S. bank institutions that serve American Indian communities.

Border Patrol Agent Shoots Suspected Immigrant
A border patrol agent in South Texas shot an immigrant man after a brief altercation at a convenience store because he feared for his life.

Sandra Hines tells the story of her painful foreclosure in the Applied Research Center’s Race and Recession Report. “They busted up my mother’s antique furniture, our belongings that we had accumulated for 40 years. We lost the home our parents bought,” she said. “Now we’ve lost all of it.” Soon after the family moved into a rental, their landlord’s foreclosure forced them out of yet another home. Sadly, the Hines family is only one of many that are suffering from the result of years of predatory lending. Together with the recession, the negative impact on communities of color is spiraling out of control.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
May 2009 unemployment rate for Blacks or African Americans is a staggering 14.9%, compared with 9.7% a year ago; for Latinos, it is 12.7%, up from 7.0% last May. The New York Times reported that homeownership, which had increased over the past few years due to predatory subprime lending, was decreasing faster among Blacks and Latinos than whites. It isn’t hard to see what’s happening: Black and Latino homeowners are seeing a sharp decrease in income, which affects their ability to pay off their skyrocketing mortgages, resulting in more foreclosures. So given this snowballing housing crisis, what do you do if you’re a lender? Well, if you’re anything like the firms Peter Goodman investigated in a recent article published in the New York Times, you simply lose the paperwork that would help your clients out.

The New York City Council is considering a resolution to promote environmental and social justice in the city's food system through a "foodprint" initiative. The goal is to “encourage the maximum local food production, maximum sustainability and to involve the citizenry in the process,” said Council Member Bill de Blasio on the local WBAI news.

The idea stems from a report, "Food in the Public Interest," issued earlier this year by the Manhattan Borough President's office. While environmentalists have been discussing the concept of a community's “food print” for a while now, New York City may be among the first municipalities in the country to try to implement a coherent food policy that tackles climate change, economic development and public health together. It's far from a done deal, but the recommendations of the report center on key themes of local self-reliance, racial equity and food justice:

In the increasingly ugly debate over "universal coverage," various proposals are being bounced around among competing agendas.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a proposal recently floated in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--currently hammering out a reform plan that includes a public option--to mandate “employer responsibility” could end up hurting workers and deepening segregation in health care.

The proposed mandate would force employers to pay half the cost of Medicaid and “all of the average cost of subsidies for employees who purchase coverage through a health insurance exchange” based on certain income qualifications. Other employees would not require this. The CBPP says the policy "would make it considerably more expensive for employers who do not offer health insurance to hire workers from lower-income families than workers from higher-income backgrounds" and "likely would have racially discriminatory effects":