You can read this one on your own... the brief: Hazelton, PA's anti-immigrant law was struck down.
I hope their mayor does appeal it as far as he can, so it can go in the law school books under this title:
THIS IS WHAT HATE LOOKS LIKE...
or maybe:
CLASSIC SCAPEGOATING
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Worth a Read...trust me
I would just give you the link and urge you to go there, but it's a NY Times Select Article, so if you aren't a subscriber, you can't see it (unless you pay, of course). Check out the quote about Condi; if she was scary before, this is slasher movie scary...
I also know that this hardly counts as MY POST when all I am doing is passing it along, but indulge and forgive me. I am still recovering from hectic two job weeks...
I also know that this hardly counts as MY POST when all I am doing is passing it along, but indulge and forgive me. I am still recovering from hectic two job weeks...
A Crack in Team Bush
By JUDITH WARNER
Published: July 21, 2007
It was a shock to see Defense Secretary Robert Gates battling tears Wednesday evening as he spoke about Maj. Douglas Zembiec, a Marine and father of a 1-year-old daughter, who was killed in May after requesting a second tour of duty in Iraq.
Shocking and yet somehow profoundly validating and cathartic.
Choking, pausing, visibly suffering and clearly fighting off an onslaught of unwelcome emotion as he addressed the Marine Corps Association’s annual dinner, Gates seemed, for a moment, to tap into national sentiment in a way that the Bush team has never before done.
Sure, they tapped into our anger, fear and hatred in the days and months after 9/11. Sure, their swagger stoked our desires for vengeance and soothed some of the terror that took up residence in our guts in the weeks following the attacks.
But here was something new: an acknowledgment, however unbidden, of the complex range of negative emotions — sadness and frustration and, yes, I think, guilt — that’s now weighing upon the nation’s soul after four disastrous years in Iraq.
We’d never seen anything like it in the “Henny Penny” brush-offs of Gates’s predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. We probably never will discern any inkling of it in Condoleezza Rice’s robotic equanimity. President Bush is known to meet privately with wounded soldiers and families of the fallen and is said, at those times, to become emotional, but little of that softness seeps into his often cocky — and defensive — public demeanor.
It’s hard to imagine much sympathy emanating from a man who admits to no soul-searching on Iraq, who vacationed through the panic and devastation of Hurricane Katrina and who recently shrugged off the issue of health care reform with the line, “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
Rice, I read in the recent biography, “Twice as Good,” is so incapable of empathy that, in her late teens, and after years of assiduous and ambitious practice, she was forced to give up her dreams of becoming a concert pianist because her teacher felt she didn’t have the “interest or inclination” to “make someone else’s thoughts and emotions [her] own.”
We’ve all seen by now where such emotional sterility, coupled with a ferocious attachment to ideology, leads. And I think, as a nation — as Gates just did so publicly — we’re starting to show cracks from the strain.
I kept waiting yesterday for signs that, after his almost tearful performance, Gates would be labeled a “nut” or a “wimp” or some kind of national disgrace.They didn’t come.
Instead, on a discussion board at Military.com, an online organization for active members of the military and veterans, I found Gates referred to as “a man of honor and integrity” by a former Marine Corps officer, who admitted that he himself, hearing Zembiec’s story, had broken down and cried, for the first time, before his 9- and 11-year-old children.
“He is obviously a man who tries his best to serve his country as best he possibly can, and he isn’t afraid to show his emotions,” wrote another poster.
Another wrote of being moved to tears nightly by the evening news: “I ache when I think of America’s sons and daughters being killed in a distant land. I am so relieved that Robert Gates is the decent, caring man he is proving to be.”I pictured Vice President Dick Cheney miming, “Gag me,” and Rumsfeld swaying with the motions of playing an imaginary violin. And I thought: how wonderful it is that someone, on high, has had the strength to own the pain that’s been caused by our disastrous course in Iraq. One has to wonder, of course, what public opinion would have been if the first cabinet official to lose it — just a bit — had been not the stoic bureaucrat Gates but instead our female secretary of state. Had it been Rice up on that podium, and were she constitutionally capable of that degree of non-Bush-centered feeling, would she have been denounced? Would she have been belittled, punished politically, dismissed as too irrational and emotional — too girly — to deal with the ugly realities of war?
We’ll never know, because she — like all powerful women in politics — will never let us find out. They can’t afford to. Not unless much more of official Washington decides it’s man enough to truly feel our nation’s inner disarray.
Judith Warner is the author of “Perfect Madness” and a contributing columnist for TimesSelect. She is a guest Op-Ed columnist.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Read about a hands-on civics lesson... AND VOTE!
NYTIMES: CITYWIDE; Raising Young Voices for Illegal Mexican Immigrants
By DAVID GONZALEZ
Who knew a civics lesson awaited every time Daisy and Moises Mendoza looked around their neighborhood in East Harlem? Their parents came to New York from Mexico and raised them the hard way, earning pennies at a time handing out fliers on street corners and selling shaved ice snacks in parks. Other teenagers gave up on school to deliver food or bake pizzas. Their neighbors often slipped into the dreary low-profile routine of the illegal immigrant, sweating in gardens or construction sites and not complaining.
''Supposedly, they can't be heard,'' Daisy said.
That is where the civics lesson kicked in. Lucky enough to be born in New York, Daisy and Moises are citizens, for whom voting and civic participation are a birthright and duty. They grew up as pint-size bilingual guides helping their parents understand what was happening at school meetings and visits to the doctor's office. They are active in a youth group at Esperanza del Barrio, a local advocacy group that started out helping street vendors. And while they have to wait to cast their first ballots -- Daisy is 17 and Moises 15 -- they already feel a special responsibility to help their neighbors.
''We have more rights and they don't,'' Daisy said. ''We're legal and they're not.''
Her brother, a spiky-haired laid-back sort, finished her thought.
''They need somebody to have a voice for them,'' Moises said. ''That's our job to do.''
With Washington having failed to pass an immigration overhaul, advocates are increasingly turning to immigrants' children as allies in their political efforts. Many young people raised in this country know their way around a system that sometimes baffles their parents. Those who are citizens can speak out for those who have yet to get their papers. And they can vote.
Robert C. Smith, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College who has extensively studied New York's Mexican population, estimated that the city's half-million Mexicans could have as many as 150,000 children born in the United States. Another big chunk of children came to New York in the early 1990s, when they were reunited with parents who benefited from a 1986 amnesty law that made them legal residents, allowed them to bring their children here and put them on the path to citizenship. And many more are on the way right here, thanks to a rising birthrate.
''We're beginning to see people coming of voting age,'' Dr. Smith said. ''Already Mexicans have surpassed Dominicans in terms of birth. For the next 20 years, Mexicans have the tremendous potential to become a political force.''
The image of the Mexican community for years was one of an illegal and politically apathetic group. But in recent years there have been signs that the younger generation is willing to speak out, starting with issues that most directly affect it, especially education.
In 2002, immigrants successfully pushed for the City University system to preserve in-state tuition rates for students here illegally. Currently, they are seeking to keep alive the Dream Act, federal legislation that proposes to offer tuition help and a path to citizenship to immigrant high school graduates.
Marisol Ramos was born in New York 23 years ago to parents who were here illegally at the time. Her mother worked as a seamstress, but lost her job after production shifted to Mexico. Her father has worked for 30 years as a cook at a restaurant on City Island. They benefited from the 1986 amnesty. When they finally became citizens a few years ago, Ms. Ramos tutored them in American history.
''I was the first in my family to go to college,'' she said. ''I became politically aware and I tried to pass it along to my family members.''
She is now trying to help other immigrant children go to college, working with a coalition that is seeking passage of the Dream Act. Next month, she said, the group plans to start a voter registration drive focusing on the children of immigrants. It is a first step toward nudging them into civic engagement, she said, rather than being complacent as citizens.
''There is ambivalence,'' said Ms. Ramos, who is applying to law school. ''So many second-generation youth can be allies to the undocumented but are not. And they are not voting, so their voice is nonexistent, when it should be there.''
Advocates at groups working with the city's Mexican immigrants said politicians had become more responsive to their concerns. Some said they were ignored or even rebuffed in earlier attempts to meet with officeholders.
''The undocumented are phantoms who are not here legally, so they do not exist,'' said Dr. Gabriel Rincón, a dentist in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and founder of the advocacy group Mixteca Organization. ''Politicians did not see any benefit because these people do not vote. So we need to get people registered or else the politicians will never listen.''
Joel Magallan spent much of last year reminding local politicians that the children of the immigrants who come to him for help are all potential voters. Mr. Magallan is the executive director of Asociación Tepeyac de New York, an education and advocacy group he founded 10 years ago. When he started the group, his focus was on religious and cultural events that eased the isolation of recent immigrants. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he scrambled to help the hundreds of laborers affected by the disaster. Now, without an immigration overhaul, he has redoubled his efforts among the young.
''I had been thinking about this for a long time,'' he said. ''We were just waiting for the time when their children could be able to vote. And we have a lot of children.''
He admitted there are challenges. Many young adults are focused on work, rather than community. And others come from homes where parents made them suspicious of politicians, thanks to the corruption that marked Mexican politics. Mr. Magallan focused his efforts on the children of his group's earliest members, figuring they knew the issues and were willing to help. He hopes they will reach out to friends and encourage them to register to vote.
''The fight for immigration reform in 2009 starts now,'' Mr. Magallan said. ''We have to register all the children of immigrants who are 17 now so they can vote in the next election. These are the people who can then lobby our legislators in 2009.''
Estrellita Montiel's uncle was among the founders of Tepeyac, so volunteering there was a family tradition. Her parents, who worked cleaning hotels and offices, came to New York illegally three decades ago and took advantage of the 1986 amnesty. She was born here 22 years ago and now attends St. John's University. This summer she has been working with several dozen schoolchildren at the group's day camp in Queens.
''Their parents don't know the language, so by working here we're helping those who came here like my parents,'' she said Wednesday as she took the group out to a playground.
Just as important to her is finding her own political voice to help young adults -- including some of her friends -- who are about to get college degrees, even though they have yet to become legal residents.
''They'll have a diploma, but they won't be able to work,'' she said. ''They came here with their parents, but they have been here so long, what are they going to do? They can't go back to Mexico.''
Juan Carlos Aguirre, 27, has also been involved with Tepeyac since he was a teenager. He spent much of his early life raised by relatives in Mexico and joined his mother in New York 17 years ago. After a stint in the United States Navy, he became a citizen in 2004. Now he works at Tepeyac's English program and is studying communications at St. John's University.
Mr. Aguirre feels he ''belongs to this country'' and says he may one day get involved in politics. He is worried about teenagers like his brother, who dropped out of school to go to work and help pay the rent.
''A lot of them have not been as lucky as I was,'' he said. ''Those of us who can do something, especially for the undocumented, we should do it. ''
By DAVID GONZALEZ
Who knew a civics lesson awaited every time Daisy and Moises Mendoza looked around their neighborhood in East Harlem? Their parents came to New York from Mexico and raised them the hard way, earning pennies at a time handing out fliers on street corners and selling shaved ice snacks in parks. Other teenagers gave up on school to deliver food or bake pizzas. Their neighbors often slipped into the dreary low-profile routine of the illegal immigrant, sweating in gardens or construction sites and not complaining.
''Supposedly, they can't be heard,'' Daisy said.
That is where the civics lesson kicked in. Lucky enough to be born in New York, Daisy and Moises are citizens, for whom voting and civic participation are a birthright and duty. They grew up as pint-size bilingual guides helping their parents understand what was happening at school meetings and visits to the doctor's office. They are active in a youth group at Esperanza del Barrio, a local advocacy group that started out helping street vendors. And while they have to wait to cast their first ballots -- Daisy is 17 and Moises 15 -- they already feel a special responsibility to help their neighbors.
''We have more rights and they don't,'' Daisy said. ''We're legal and they're not.''
Her brother, a spiky-haired laid-back sort, finished her thought.
''They need somebody to have a voice for them,'' Moises said. ''That's our job to do.''
With Washington having failed to pass an immigration overhaul, advocates are increasingly turning to immigrants' children as allies in their political efforts. Many young people raised in this country know their way around a system that sometimes baffles their parents. Those who are citizens can speak out for those who have yet to get their papers. And they can vote.
Robert C. Smith, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College who has extensively studied New York's Mexican population, estimated that the city's half-million Mexicans could have as many as 150,000 children born in the United States. Another big chunk of children came to New York in the early 1990s, when they were reunited with parents who benefited from a 1986 amnesty law that made them legal residents, allowed them to bring their children here and put them on the path to citizenship. And many more are on the way right here, thanks to a rising birthrate.
''We're beginning to see people coming of voting age,'' Dr. Smith said. ''Already Mexicans have surpassed Dominicans in terms of birth. For the next 20 years, Mexicans have the tremendous potential to become a political force.''
The image of the Mexican community for years was one of an illegal and politically apathetic group. But in recent years there have been signs that the younger generation is willing to speak out, starting with issues that most directly affect it, especially education.
In 2002, immigrants successfully pushed for the City University system to preserve in-state tuition rates for students here illegally. Currently, they are seeking to keep alive the Dream Act, federal legislation that proposes to offer tuition help and a path to citizenship to immigrant high school graduates.
Marisol Ramos was born in New York 23 years ago to parents who were here illegally at the time. Her mother worked as a seamstress, but lost her job after production shifted to Mexico. Her father has worked for 30 years as a cook at a restaurant on City Island. They benefited from the 1986 amnesty. When they finally became citizens a few years ago, Ms. Ramos tutored them in American history.
''I was the first in my family to go to college,'' she said. ''I became politically aware and I tried to pass it along to my family members.''
She is now trying to help other immigrant children go to college, working with a coalition that is seeking passage of the Dream Act. Next month, she said, the group plans to start a voter registration drive focusing on the children of immigrants. It is a first step toward nudging them into civic engagement, she said, rather than being complacent as citizens.
''There is ambivalence,'' said Ms. Ramos, who is applying to law school. ''So many second-generation youth can be allies to the undocumented but are not. And they are not voting, so their voice is nonexistent, when it should be there.''
Advocates at groups working with the city's Mexican immigrants said politicians had become more responsive to their concerns. Some said they were ignored or even rebuffed in earlier attempts to meet with officeholders.
''The undocumented are phantoms who are not here legally, so they do not exist,'' said Dr. Gabriel Rincón, a dentist in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and founder of the advocacy group Mixteca Organization. ''Politicians did not see any benefit because these people do not vote. So we need to get people registered or else the politicians will never listen.''
Joel Magallan spent much of last year reminding local politicians that the children of the immigrants who come to him for help are all potential voters. Mr. Magallan is the executive director of Asociación Tepeyac de New York, an education and advocacy group he founded 10 years ago. When he started the group, his focus was on religious and cultural events that eased the isolation of recent immigrants. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he scrambled to help the hundreds of laborers affected by the disaster. Now, without an immigration overhaul, he has redoubled his efforts among the young.
''I had been thinking about this for a long time,'' he said. ''We were just waiting for the time when their children could be able to vote. And we have a lot of children.''
He admitted there are challenges. Many young adults are focused on work, rather than community. And others come from homes where parents made them suspicious of politicians, thanks to the corruption that marked Mexican politics. Mr. Magallan focused his efforts on the children of his group's earliest members, figuring they knew the issues and were willing to help. He hopes they will reach out to friends and encourage them to register to vote.
''The fight for immigration reform in 2009 starts now,'' Mr. Magallan said. ''We have to register all the children of immigrants who are 17 now so they can vote in the next election. These are the people who can then lobby our legislators in 2009.''
Estrellita Montiel's uncle was among the founders of Tepeyac, so volunteering there was a family tradition. Her parents, who worked cleaning hotels and offices, came to New York illegally three decades ago and took advantage of the 1986 amnesty. She was born here 22 years ago and now attends St. John's University. This summer she has been working with several dozen schoolchildren at the group's day camp in Queens.
''Their parents don't know the language, so by working here we're helping those who came here like my parents,'' she said Wednesday as she took the group out to a playground.
Just as important to her is finding her own political voice to help young adults -- including some of her friends -- who are about to get college degrees, even though they have yet to become legal residents.
''They'll have a diploma, but they won't be able to work,'' she said. ''They came here with their parents, but they have been here so long, what are they going to do? They can't go back to Mexico.''
Juan Carlos Aguirre, 27, has also been involved with Tepeyac since he was a teenager. He spent much of his early life raised by relatives in Mexico and joined his mother in New York 17 years ago. After a stint in the United States Navy, he became a citizen in 2004. Now he works at Tepeyac's English program and is studying communications at St. John's University.
Mr. Aguirre feels he ''belongs to this country'' and says he may one day get involved in politics. He is worried about teenagers like his brother, who dropped out of school to go to work and help pay the rent.
''A lot of them have not been as lucky as I was,'' he said. ''Those of us who can do something, especially for the undocumented, we should do it. ''