Thursday, July 30, 2015
Marie Corfield: My Review of the documentary 'Heal Our Schools' #EdBlogNet @idraedu
Marie Corfield: My Review of the documentary 'Heal Our Schools': Pick up a newspaper or turn on the television and reporters and other talking heads describe the grand experiment that is corporate educati...
Monday, July 27, 2015
Education, Inc. A documentary about how money and politics are changing our schools.
Education, Inc. A
documentary about how money and politics are changing our schools.
ANNOUNCING Education Inc.
National Grass Roots Screening!
National Grass Roots Screening!
American public
education is in controversy. As public schools across the country struggle for
funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the
future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S.
For free-market reformers, private investors and large education
corporations, this controversy spells opportunity in turning public schools
over to private interests. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and
for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing
America’s public education system under the banner of “school choice.”
Education, Inc. is told through the eyes of parent and filmmaker Brian Malone, as he travels cross-country in search of the answers and sources behind the privatizing of American public education, and what it means for his kids. With striking footage from school protests, raucous school board meetings and interviews with some of the most well known educators in the country, Malone zooms out to paint a clear picture of profit and politics that’s sweeping across the nation, right under our noses.
Education, Inc. is told through the eyes of parent and filmmaker Brian Malone, as he travels cross-country in search of the answers and sources behind the privatizing of American public education, and what it means for his kids. With striking footage from school protests, raucous school board meetings and interviews with some of the most well known educators in the country, Malone zooms out to paint a clear picture of profit and politics that’s sweeping across the nation, right under our noses.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
making police departments accountable
making police departments accountable
A friend posted this on Facebook:
1. Independent evaluations
of practice and procedure for every police dept that receives state or federal
funding.
2.
Daily report cards of how many people are stopped- disaggregrated by race. The
technology is trivial to make that a reality.
BUT IT MUST BE MADE
PUBLICLY AVAILABLE ON A DAILY BASIS.
The only way to fix this is
to make police departments accountable. And the only way to do that is to find
the places where police departments are profiling.
It's not sexy but it's
tangible.
Monday, July 20, 2015
From the Cradle to the Grave The Delusion By Rodolfo F. Acuña
From
the Cradle to the Grave
The
Delusion
By
Rodolfo
F. Acuña
I have read and reread 17th
century Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño countless times to remind me that my
life is an illusion, and that false dreams prevent my waking up -- so much so
that my illusions become delusions.
The United States is not the greatest nation in the world.
This is a dream that prevents change. Americans believe, for example, that they
have the best medical care in the world, which is true only if you have money
or the standard is the worse.
Our bodies are chemistry labs, and we ignore patterns that
are dangerous to society’s health. Everything is cured as long as there is a
pill that will cover up or “aleve” the symptom. In the past 50 years, I have
seen an increasing number of my students suffering from anxiety and depression.
Everyone knows it, but Americans remain ignorant of mental health to the point
that I have I heard explanations such as “It’s All a State of Mind.” True but
what is causing the pain? Why won’t it go away?
In 2013 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) reported that there were 41,149 suicides in this country, the 10th
leading cause of death for Americans. Someone died by suicide every 12.8
minutes. Most were not high profile suicides such as that of Robin Williams,
and went unnoticed. TPublic awareness of the risk of suicide poses is similar
to some Americans who have a gay child and rationalize it is all a state of
mind.
Middle-class Americans live under the illusion that their
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) provider will take care of the pain. They
never awaken to the reality that health care in the United States is based on
profit, the maintenance or the management of illness, and not the cure.
As I have mentioned the number of my students suffering
from depression and anxiety has grown. We know that "Both depression and
anxiety carry a high risk of suicide." Mark Pollack, MD, ADAA President
and a Grainger Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry at Rush University
Medical Center, says that "More than 90 percent of those who die by
suicide have a diagnosable illness such as clinical depression …. often in
combination with anxiety or substance use disorders and other treatable mental disorders."
At CSUN we have a good counseling center that is overwhelmed.
Dr. Jose Montes reaches out to students, but a limited staff prevents adequate
care for thousands of Latino students lacking insurance. Resources are diverted
to programs that benefit the few.
Suicide affects all age groups. The Centers for Disease Control reports that
more people die from suicide than from automobile accidents. The problem is
that it is only the tenth leading cause of death in the United States, and Americans
seem to be waiting for it to reach the top three for it to become important.
The tragedy is that few diseases are as preventable; more than 40,000 deaths a
year is not just a state of mind.
I was under the illusion that my family was getting good
health care. Over the years I have been a member of Ross Loos, Cigna, Blue
Shield and the granddaddy of the HMOs Kaiser Permanente. They all manage health
care and do just enough to keep you alive; however, for the most part they are
not in the business of curing you. Even prescription drugs are dispensed
according to the profit margin with generics used even when ineffective.
At Kaiser the response to mental illness is to try to manage
it. In a recent case, a patient sought
help on four separate occasions: he committed himself, pleading with the
provider that he needed help, fearing that he would commit suicide. In each
instance he was sent to a mental health care facility, kept for three days and
released. They told him to go to a
Kaiser Outpatient facility where he would receive care. In each case he went
and asked for a psychiatrist. He initially saw one but only to get meds. He was then assigned to a psychiatric nurse
who led classes and group sessions. He was not given individual therapy,
although he requested it as did his father.
The patient became discouraged, his cries were ignored
and he ceased attending. Meanwhile, his family waited for the next relapse.
There was no follow up by Kaiser. Totally discouraged he drifted between his
parents’ homes. Kaiser did not respond to complaints and the pain grew
intolerable and the young patient jumped off a bridge.
Kaiser is not the only failure. The patient had a brilliant
mind. He was a talkative and a happy child until middle school when he grew
quiet. The schools did not challenge him; they did not stop bullying although
his father complained nothing was done. The failure was the failure to
communicate – it was not a state of mind – pain never is. “People do not die
from Suicide. They die due to sadness or hurt”
But death does not end the pain for loved ones. Death was
very important to Mexican workers and their families. The principal reasons they joined mutualistas
(mutual aid societies) was a burial insurance that insured the socio would not
be buried in a potter’s field and that his family would be sent back to Mexico.
Driving along a Southwestern or Mexico highway, you often
see makeshift graves marked by crosses and flowers indicating where life had
ended. Often people do not have enough money to even cremate the deceased.
Today a burial on consecrated ground (a Catholic cemetery) is to too expensive for
the average worker. Death has been privatized.
In 2013, the Los Angeles
Times wrote “Los Angeles Archdiocese Gutted Cemetery Fund to Pay Sex Abuse
Settlements.” (Feb 11, 2013). Allegedly
the Los Angeles Archdiocese gutted cemetery fund to pay sex abuse settlements. Since at least the 1990s Catholic cemeteries
in Los Angeles have leased out mortuary services, and they have been converted
into fast food-like franchises. Just to buy
in, it costs $7000 depending on where your new barrio is located. Then the
incidentals are tacked on --- th total $12,000 or more.
The illusion of a premier or even adequate health system
is exposed as a delusion. When medical establishments cannot recognize simple
symptoms like a patient losing interest in things he/she used to care about,
makes comments “about being hopeless, helpless, or worthless, talks about suicide”,
and the system’s response is routine with the psychiatrist prescribing pills,
assigning him/her to a class, and has him attend group therapy instead of
talking about the causes of the pain then the nightmare begins – and if we can
afford it, we move to a new barrio in a green cemetery. The more you pay, the better the neighborhood.
We are unequal even in death. The only equality is in our
dreams.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive: Channeling the Rage - Child Watch - Marian Wright Edelman
Mrs. Edelman's Child
Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.
How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive: Channeling the Rage
The recent spotlight on systematic racial profiling and police brutality against Black boys and men has exposed a painful truth long known in the Black community: just about every Black youth and man seems to have a story about being stopped by the police, and all live daily with the understanding it can happen to any of them at any time.
Dr. Terrell Strayhorn is Director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise at The Ohio State University and a Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies in the College of Education and Human Ecology. He also has faculty appointments in the Ohio State John Glenn College of Public Affairs, Department of African American and African Studies, and Education Policy, Engineering Education, and Sexuality Studies programs. But none of these credentials mattered one bit when Dr. Strayhorn was pulled over by a White police officer a week before he spoke at the June Children’s Defense Fund training for college-age students preparing to teach at CDF Freedom Schools® sites across the country this summer. He shared this story with the 2,000 young mostly non-White leaders because it was an integral part of his message for the young teachers in training: “How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive.”
He’d just bought a beautiful new car. “So I’m driving my really nice car
because that’s what you can do in this country, right? You can work hard and
you can make good money, and then you can use your money to buy a car…So I’m in
my car, in my good hard-earned money car, and then comes a blue light in my
rearview mirror.” The promise of the American Dream was gone in an instant.
Instead he wasn’t even sure whether he would “live the next couple of
minutes”—“because my nice car, and my nice degree, and my nice money, and my
nice bracelet, and my nice looks, and my nice feel, my nice shoes—none of it,
none of it, none of it, none of it, none of it is a panacea for the problems
that we have in this country. And I watched an officer who does not know me
come up to my window and say, ‘Mister, I need to see your license and
registration.’ And I got ready to reach for it, and he reached for his gun—and
I said, ‘Oh, my God. I know how this ends.’”
Dr. Strayhorn had to make an immediate decision about how he would respond. “I put my hands back and I said, ‘Do I have permission to do what you just asked me to do?’ And the cop said, ‘Yes, you can now move.’” Only then did Dr. Strayhorn go ahead and pull out his registration and license, along with his university identification card, though the officer didn’t seem to care. “He said, ‘Do you know why I stopped you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Because you don’t look old enough to drive this car.’ It sounded like a compliment, but then I had to remind him—in my head, not out loud—that in this country actually, [when] you get a driver’s license, you’re free to drive any car.”
Dr. Strayhorn knew he’d been stopped for no legitimate reason—a version of the “show your papers” demands Black men have faced since slavery—and he was furious. But he also knew that in that minute he couldn’t show it. That was part of the lesson he wanted to share with our young leaders: “When you are mistreated, deemed guilty before you are innocent, and oppressed by that form of unbridled, misused power and authority, it is infuriating. It is offensive. It is enraging…The rage just started in my pinky toe and it climbed all up my body. But, thank God, I had what I’m going to say is the number-one thing: if you’re going to teach [our children] anything—teach them literacy, teach them numeracy, teach them vocabulary, teach them history, teach them political science, but listen—teach them how to control their rage.”
He explained what he meant: “Don’t deny the rage …but teach them how to control it. How do I control it? How do I channel it? How do I redirect it? Because the word ‘rage’ means violently angry. But I love the second definition of the word ‘rage.’ The second definition of the word ‘rage’ is impassioned enthusiasm. You’ve got to teach them that there is ‘something inside so strong’ [the Freedom Schools theme song]. Tell them, ‘I know you can make it. I know. I know it’s rough sometimes. I know. I know, I know, I know, I know it’s unfair how police officers treat you, how some teachers treat you, but control and redirect that rage.”
He went on: “We’ve got to remember that while we’re teaching them how to control their rage, giving them the language to have that conversation, they need words for that encounter with the police officer, that encounter with the neighbor. The reason why people fight is because words are not present for them to have the conversation. Give them the literacy tools so they can have the conversation. Teach them rage is natural; rage against this thing; rage against inequality—but control it in the face of authority that can take your life, because the end of the thing is we want them to live.”
Self-control over rage at the right moment might help save a Black boy’s life, though even that has certainly never been a guarantee. But no matter what, the critical next step still has to be channeling rage at deeply embedded structural racism and blatant injustice into “impassioned enthusiasm” for the larger fight. That larger fight can and must start with all of us by getting ourselves organized and providing our children positive alternatives to the miseducation in so many schools and the dangers on the street from law enforcement agents. Dr. Strayhorn said: “What allows a young man to [have enough control to] sit there and say ‘hands up’ is that he knows that while his hands are up, someone else’s hands are on the job. I’m willing to put my hands up if I know your hands are on something, right? So I’ll put my hands up if your hands are on the educational problems in this country. I’ll put my hands up so long as your hands are on the problem of inequality in neighborhoods. I’m willing to put my hands up so long as my Black sisters and my White brothers and my Native American brothers and my Latino sisters and brothers are also putting their hands on the problem of racism … We fight for their freedom, and if they know that we are fighting for their freedom, they are more willing, they are more capable, they are more empowered to go through what they have to go through.”
And, Dr. Strayhorn concluded, this all-hands-on-deck call to rage against injustice and fight for freedom is for everyone: “We’ve got to pursue freedom and justice not just for Black people, but pursue freedom and justice for Latino folks, pursue freedom and justice for Native American people, pursue freedom and justice for gay people, for LGBT, for poor people, for rich people, for tall people, for short people, for people who don’t have anything at all, for first-generation people, for welfare mothers, for everybody. Freedom and justice for all.”
That’s the message every child of every color who is “different” must internalize to break the vicious cycle of deeply embedded cultural and structural racism that pervades so many American institutions including those too prevalent in the criminal justice system that too often takes rather than protects lives.
Click here to share your comments and find out what
others are saying.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the
Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind®
mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start,
a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life
and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and
communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive: Channeling the Rage
The recent spotlight on systematic racial profiling and police brutality against Black boys and men has exposed a painful truth long known in the Black community: just about every Black youth and man seems to have a story about being stopped by the police, and all live daily with the understanding it can happen to any of them at any time.
Dr. Terrell Strayhorn is Director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise at The Ohio State University and a Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies in the College of Education and Human Ecology. He also has faculty appointments in the Ohio State John Glenn College of Public Affairs, Department of African American and African Studies, and Education Policy, Engineering Education, and Sexuality Studies programs. But none of these credentials mattered one bit when Dr. Strayhorn was pulled over by a White police officer a week before he spoke at the June Children’s Defense Fund training for college-age students preparing to teach at CDF Freedom Schools® sites across the country this summer. He shared this story with the 2,000 young mostly non-White leaders because it was an integral part of his message for the young teachers in training: “How to Keep Our Black Boys Alive.”
 |
Dr. Strayhorn had to make an immediate decision about how he would respond. “I put my hands back and I said, ‘Do I have permission to do what you just asked me to do?’ And the cop said, ‘Yes, you can now move.’” Only then did Dr. Strayhorn go ahead and pull out his registration and license, along with his university identification card, though the officer didn’t seem to care. “He said, ‘Do you know why I stopped you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Because you don’t look old enough to drive this car.’ It sounded like a compliment, but then I had to remind him—in my head, not out loud—that in this country actually, [when] you get a driver’s license, you’re free to drive any car.”
Dr. Strayhorn knew he’d been stopped for no legitimate reason—a version of the “show your papers” demands Black men have faced since slavery—and he was furious. But he also knew that in that minute he couldn’t show it. That was part of the lesson he wanted to share with our young leaders: “When you are mistreated, deemed guilty before you are innocent, and oppressed by that form of unbridled, misused power and authority, it is infuriating. It is offensive. It is enraging…The rage just started in my pinky toe and it climbed all up my body. But, thank God, I had what I’m going to say is the number-one thing: if you’re going to teach [our children] anything—teach them literacy, teach them numeracy, teach them vocabulary, teach them history, teach them political science, but listen—teach them how to control their rage.”
He explained what he meant: “Don’t deny the rage …but teach them how to control it. How do I control it? How do I channel it? How do I redirect it? Because the word ‘rage’ means violently angry. But I love the second definition of the word ‘rage.’ The second definition of the word ‘rage’ is impassioned enthusiasm. You’ve got to teach them that there is ‘something inside so strong’ [the Freedom Schools theme song]. Tell them, ‘I know you can make it. I know. I know it’s rough sometimes. I know. I know, I know, I know, I know it’s unfair how police officers treat you, how some teachers treat you, but control and redirect that rage.”
He went on: “We’ve got to remember that while we’re teaching them how to control their rage, giving them the language to have that conversation, they need words for that encounter with the police officer, that encounter with the neighbor. The reason why people fight is because words are not present for them to have the conversation. Give them the literacy tools so they can have the conversation. Teach them rage is natural; rage against this thing; rage against inequality—but control it in the face of authority that can take your life, because the end of the thing is we want them to live.”
Self-control over rage at the right moment might help save a Black boy’s life, though even that has certainly never been a guarantee. But no matter what, the critical next step still has to be channeling rage at deeply embedded structural racism and blatant injustice into “impassioned enthusiasm” for the larger fight. That larger fight can and must start with all of us by getting ourselves organized and providing our children positive alternatives to the miseducation in so many schools and the dangers on the street from law enforcement agents. Dr. Strayhorn said: “What allows a young man to [have enough control to] sit there and say ‘hands up’ is that he knows that while his hands are up, someone else’s hands are on the job. I’m willing to put my hands up if I know your hands are on something, right? So I’ll put my hands up if your hands are on the educational problems in this country. I’ll put my hands up so long as your hands are on the problem of inequality in neighborhoods. I’m willing to put my hands up so long as my Black sisters and my White brothers and my Native American brothers and my Latino sisters and brothers are also putting their hands on the problem of racism … We fight for their freedom, and if they know that we are fighting for their freedom, they are more willing, they are more capable, they are more empowered to go through what they have to go through.”
And, Dr. Strayhorn concluded, this all-hands-on-deck call to rage against injustice and fight for freedom is for everyone: “We’ve got to pursue freedom and justice not just for Black people, but pursue freedom and justice for Latino folks, pursue freedom and justice for Native American people, pursue freedom and justice for gay people, for LGBT, for poor people, for rich people, for tall people, for short people, for people who don’t have anything at all, for first-generation people, for welfare mothers, for everybody. Freedom and justice for all.”
That’s the message every child of every color who is “different” must internalize to break the vicious cycle of deeply embedded cultural and structural racism that pervades so many American institutions including those too prevalent in the criminal justice system that too often takes rather than protects lives.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Mass Teacher Layoff Letter: Stuart Egan, North Carolina teacher/parent about
Stuart Egan, a high school teacher and public school parent in
North Carolina, wrote the following letter in response to the legislature's
mass layoff of thousands of teaching assistants in the state's elementary
schools:
When public education has to defend itself against the state’s
General Assembly in order to function effectively, those in government should
reassess their priorities as elected officials.
Take for instance the political cartoon published in the
Winston-Salem Journal on July 9, 2015 which parodies the iconic advertisement
for the movie Jaws. It brilliantly depicts the NC Legislature as the man-eating
great white shark lurking in the waters ready to devour public education. John
Cole, the artist from ncpolicywatch.com makes reference to the battle over
charter schools, vouchers, veteran teacher pay, retirement benefit cuts, and
the latest development in the assault on public schools: the elimination of
teacher assistant jobs.
Arika Herron’s front page news story in the same edition of the
WSJ states, “By some estimates, the Senate cuts could mean as many as 8,500
fewer teacher assistants in elementary classrooms” in the state of North
Carolina. When study after study published by leading education scholars
(Ravitch, Kozol, etc.) preach that reaching students early in their academic
lives is most crucial for success in high school and life, our General Assembly
is actually promoting the largest layoff in state history.
As a voter, I am disappointed that the last three years with
this GOP-led NCGA has fostered a calculated attack against public schools with
more power and money given to entities to privatize education. By eliminating
teacher assistants, the NCGA would simply weaken the effectiveness of
elementary schools further and help substantiate the need to divert my tax
money to segregate educational opportunities even more.
As a teacher, I am disheartened that my fellow educators are
being devalued. Yes, teacher assistants are professional educators complete
with training and a passion to teach students. With the onslaught of state
testing, curriculum changes, and political focus on student achievement, these
people fight on the front lines and advocate for your children and your
neighbors’ children.
But as a parent, I am most incensed by this move to eliminate
teacher assistants because my own child has tremendously benefited from the
work of teacher assistants. Even as I write these words, my seven-year-old
red-headed, blue-eyed son, who happens to have Down Syndrome, walks through the
house articulating his thoughts, communicating his needs, and sharing his love
to explore. And I give much of that credit to those who teach him in school:
his teachers and their assistants.
When my wife and I explored educational pathways for our son two
years ago, we talked to both public and private schools about how they could
serve our child. Interestingly enough, we were informed that really the only
option we had was public schooling; most private schools will not take a child
with Down Syndrome. Simply put, they were “not prepared” to teach him. But his
current public school not only welcomed him, they nurtured him and valued him.
And it is because of the people – the teachers and the teacher assistants.
The rationale for eliminating teacher assistant positions
actually reveals the disconnect that our elected officials have with public
education. Last month in the Greensboro News and Record, Sen. Tom Apodaca said,
““We always believe that having a classroom teacher in a classroom is the most important
thing we can do. Reducing class sizes, we feel, will give us better results for
the students.” The irony in this statement is not only obvious; it is glaring.
That’s what teaching assistants already do. They mitigate class
size by increasing the opportunities for student interaction. More prepared
people in a classroom gives more students like my son the opportunity to learn.
Sen. Apodaca suggests that having two classrooms of 25 students with a teacher
and an assistant is weaker than having two classes of 22 students with just a
classroom teacher. That’s not logical.
Oddly enough, Sen. Apodaca and his constituents should already
know the value of assistants. He himself has three on staff according to the
current telephone directory of the General Assembly. Sen. Phil Berger has
fifteen staff members, three with “Assistant” in their title and five with
“Advisor”. Maybe dismissing some of these “assistants” would offer some
perspective.
Public schools are strongest when the focus is on human investment.
People committed to teaching, especially experienced professionals, are the
glue that holds education together. Eliminating jobs so that some political
agenda can be fulfilled really is like forcing a bleeding public school system
to swim in shark infested waters.
And we already have had too many shark attacks in North
Carolina.
Stuart Egan, NBCT
West Forsyth High School
And Parent
West Forsyth High School
And Parent
Friday, July 3, 2015
Latino Employment & Unemployment - The News Taco 7/3/15
FRIDAY
July 3, 2011
Good
Friday morning!
Here’s all you need to end your week and get your holiday weekend started.
►Friday’s numbers
6.6 – The June 2015 unemployment rate among U.S. Latinos
5.3 – The June 2015 overall unemployment rate
1.73 million – The number of unemployed U.S. Latinos
66 – The rate of U.S. Latinos either employed or actively looking for work
1.34 million – The number of U.S. Latinos not in the labor force
633,000 – The number of unemployed U.S. Latinas, 20 years of age and older
245,000 – The number of unemployed Latinos of both sexes between the ages of 16 and 19
1.9 – The percentage decline in month-to-month construction unemployment
2.9 – The percentage increase in month-to-month agriculture unemployment
Source: Bureau of Labor statistics
Here’s all you need to end your week and get your holiday weekend started.
►Friday’s numbers
6.6 – The June 2015 unemployment rate among U.S. Latinos
5.3 – The June 2015 overall unemployment rate
1.73 million – The number of unemployed U.S. Latinos
66 – The rate of U.S. Latinos either employed or actively looking for work
1.34 million – The number of U.S. Latinos not in the labor force
633,000 – The number of unemployed U.S. Latinas, 20 years of age and older
245,000 – The number of unemployed Latinos of both sexes between the ages of 16 and 19
1.9 – The percentage decline in month-to-month construction unemployment
2.9 – The percentage increase in month-to-month agriculture unemployment
Source: Bureau of Labor statistics
Thursday, July 2, 2015
National Hispanid Media Coalition NHMC Continues To Advocate Despite Trump's Lawsuit Threat
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2015
CONTACT
Marium
F. Mohiuddin
Director
of Communications
213.718.0732
marium@nhmc.org
213.718.0732
marium@nhmc.org
NHMC Continues To Advocate Despite Trump's Lawsuit Threat
(PASADENA, Calif. -
7/2/15) -- This afternoon, Thursday July 2, the National
Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) received a call from The Trump
Organization's chief counsel threatening a lawsuit against NHMC if it does not
cease its advocacy efforts.
NHMC
will not stand down in its defense of the American Latino community, especially
against the racist statements Trump made during his June 16 Presidential
announcement.
Tom Saenz, President and General
Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF),
has agreed to defend NHMC against any litigation threats.
The
NHMC is a media advocacy and civil rights organization for the advancement of
Latinos, working towards a media that is fair and inclusive of Latinos, and
towards universal, affordable, and open access to communications. Learn more at
www.nhmc.org.
Receive real-time updates on Facebook and Twitter @NHMC and
Instagram @NHMCorg.
.
Demand an end to the inhumane detention and deportation of LGBTQ immigrants. #ImmigrantJustice #HumanRights #LoveWins
It wasn’t easy coming out twice
-- once as undocumented and also queer. I
had to live with the constant fear of deportation to a place that would never
accept me and with the constant fear of the abuse I could face in detention.
Since then, I’ve received my green card, but the reality remains the same for
the more than 267,000 people who identify as both undocumented and LGBTQ.
So while last week’s marriage
equality announcement means that my own marriage to my partner Isabel is now
not only recognized by the both of us, but by every state in this country- it
isn’t enough.
That’s why on Tuesday, I
joined more than 70 protesters in front of the White House to demand an end to
LGBTQ detention and deportation.
Now it’s your turn to stand
with us.
6 of us blocked the busiest DC
intersection (and we’re arrested!) while nine others staged a “die-in” to
symbolize the undocumented LGBT immigrants who have died while in detention and
those who have lost their lives after ICE deported them to their countries of
origin.
For LGBTQ immigrants,
deportation isn’t just separation from friends and family, it can be a death
sentence. More than 80 countries around
the world criminalize same-sex relations, and many more countries offer no
institutionalized government protections for LGBTQ immigrants.
And in detention, transgender
immigrants are often tortured by being placed in solitary confinement for their
‘protection’ or continue to be placed in facilities with the inappropriate
gender where they are sexually harassed and even raped. This is
unacceptable and has to stop.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
