Saturday, October 29, 2016

Hate Rising with Jorge Ramos

Eva Longoria : I am more American Than Trump Is

Eva Longoria 


Eva Longoria is taking Donald Trump to task for his offensive comments about Latinos.
The actress, director and activist, who is of Mexican heritage, is the head of the Eva Longoria Foundation, a charity aimed at promoting education and entrepreneurship for Latinas in the U.S.
“The fact that he uses the word ‘Latino’ to be synonymous with ‘illegal’ is a mistake,” she told Ocean Drive Magazine in an interview published Friday. “I’m ninth-generation American—I’m way more American than Donald Trump!” (Trump’s mother, Mary Anne Trump, came to the United States from Scotland at the age of 18, according to the New York Times; his paternal grandparents immigrated from Germany.)
Since the beginning of his campaign, the Republican presidential nominee has faced strong criticism from the Latino community for his unceasing barrage of hateful comments. Recently, at the final presidential debate, he portrayed undocumented immigrants as violent criminals coming across the U.S.-Mexico border, referring to them as “bad hombres.” This was incorrect for two reasons. For one thing, not all undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or Latin America. And native-born Americans are more likely than immigrants to commit crimes.
Longoria also voiced her support for Hillary Clinton, whom she has vocally endorsed (despite someone mysteriously slapping her image on a pro-Trump flyer earlier this month.) She said she doesn’t really get why people don’t find the Democratic nominee “likable.”
“I know her on a personal level, and she is one of the most likable, amazing, engaged, compassionate human beings,” she said. Even so, she added that quality leadership, not likability, should be what voters actually care about.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liarrampant xenophoberacistmisogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.A. Eva Longoria’s Accomplishments Through The Years

Friday, October 28, 2016

Trump ad claim of Immigrant Crimes have Little Data to Support Them

Trump  Ad Claims of Immigrant Crimes have little data to support them. http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article110860897.html
Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liarrampant xenophoberacistmisogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. 

Sacramento Progressive Alliance Voter Guide: Candidates:
Voter Guide: Propositions



Monday, October 24, 2016

Defeat Trump- Defeat Racism: A call from 47 young left organizers

Dump Trump, Defeat Racism and Misogyny, Build the Left: A call from 47 grassroots organizers (see signatures below)

Right now it feels like we’re in an “emperor has no clothes” moment. A lot of us see something really clearly, but few of us – radical and revolutionary organizers – are willing to say it out loud.

So we’re going to say it. Defeating Trump in the presidential election is a top priority for the left. And at a minimum, that means mobilizing voters for Hillary Clinton in swing states even if you vote for another candidate in a safe state. We’ve got to beat Trump and Trumpism while building movements that will fight, resist, and disrupt a Clinton administration that will be militaristic and pro-corporate.

Most of us on the left feel about the Clintons the way we feel about leftovers that have been sitting in the fridge for too long: repulsed. NAFTA, mass incarceration, Palestine, the 2003 Iraq invasion, legitimizing the coup in Honduras, cozying up to Wall Street – take your pick of crimes that can be laid at the Clintons’ feet. And judging from the DNC, the Clintons will talk a good game on economic inequality while resorting to jingoism and nationalism throughout the election. But if the Clintons’ neoliberal politics induces nausea, then Trump's brew of racism and misogyny makes us projectile vomit.

Many of our friends believe that Democratic and Republican parties, and their candidates, are both worthless and the left should focus in this election on breaking the two party system; or they believe that a Clinton administration will just create more working-class disaffection and strengthen the extreme right. We disagree. And when we talk to people – whether community activists or simply our neighbors – about this election, we need to be clear about the stakes of this election. When we hear people say they don't know who to vote for because both candidates are equally bad, we get worried.

At every opportunity, Trump has doubled down on racism, sexism and bigotry, to the delight of David Duke, the American Nazi Party, and others like them. A Trump victory – do we even need to say this? – would embolden hard-core racists, Islamophobes, misogynists, and anti-immigrant groups, while promising an assault on workers' rights and intense, perhaps very violent repression of the inspiring social movements that have erupted in the past several years. If you have any doubt about this, listen to his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Ballot Propositions: Voter Guide

Sacramento Progressive Alliance

Voter Guide with Voting Recommendations

in November 2016 Elections, with prominent YES co-endorsers


YES on 51-Authorizes a statewide facilities bond for K-12 schools and community colleges to upgrade and repair older classrooms. (Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, California Labor Federation (AFL-CIO))


YES on 52-Maintains billions of dollars in federal matching funding to support health for low-income children and seniors. (Sacramento Labor Council (AFL-CIO), California Teachers Association, National Union of Healthcare Workers)


NO on 53-Right-wing measure requiring state approval of local bond measures, for schools, roads, other infrastructure.


NO on 54-Billionaire-funded measure that would institute waiting period for passage of legislation, giving lobbyists extra time to block.


YES on 55-Maintains tax on wealthiest Californians to prevent $4 billion funding cut to public schools and children’s health care. (California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California, Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce, Sacramento Rainbow Chamber of Commerce)

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Monday, October 17, 2016

Why I Pick Your Lettuce


Why I Pick Your Lettuce ...


Not many grandmothers could do the work I do six days a week. Most days, I work long shifts under the California sun, weeding and hoeing the lettuce that ends up in produce sections at grocery stores all over America. Many of my friends, neighbors and loved ones are also farm workers. I hear the stories of abuse and mistreatment. and I’ve been there, too. I hope you can help.

Javier Santiago works picking lettuce. Workers like him often handle 20 heads in a minute, about three seconds per head, bent over without standing or stretching. If he asks for a break, his boss yells at him. “Our supervisor exhorts us to work harder and says he does not care if we faint or die ... When it’s very hot, we aren’t allowed to rest in the shade and are pressured more. When it rains, we aren’t allowed to stop working, but aren’t given protective rain gear either.”

Virginia Isidro works in a lettuce field for a farm labor contractor. She has no benefits, no medical insurance, no vacations. And her boss cheats her wages. “When on occasion, we have to work a Sunday, they pay us with a personal check to avoid having to pay us overtime.”

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Tu Voto Es Tu Voz:

Tu Voto Es Tu Voz: A Forum on Why Your Vote Matters
Monday, October 18th | 1:30 – 2:30 pm
Redwood Room, University Union

CSU- Sacramento 

Saturday, October 08, 2016

Convergence on the Border: Oppose Racism and Xenophobia

SOA Watch

300 Human Rights, Social Justice, Faith-Based, Labor, and Immigrant Rights Groups are calling for an International Convergence at the U.S./Mexico Border from October 7-10, 2016.



, ,


Activists will Gather at the Border in the Lead-Up to the November Elections, to Highlight U.S. Foreign Policy as One of the Root Causes of Migration, and to Stage Protests and Nonviolent Direct Action against Racism, Xenophobia and U.S. Militarization at home and abroad.

Contact: Hendrik Voss, 202-425-5128, hvoss@soaw.org

Nogales, AZ – Thousands of activists throughout the United States and Mexico will gather on both sides of the border since the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) is moving its annual vigil to the line between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora from October 7-10, 2016.

Thursday, October 06, 2016

Hillary Clinton Is Winning Decisively The Latino Millennial Vote | Huffington Post

Hillary Clinton Is Winning Decisively The Latino Millennial Vote | Huffington Post

What Is Behind Some Millennials Support For Jill Stein and Gary Johnson ?

Harold Meyerson, 
On the afternoon of the opening session of this summer’s Democratic Convention, I was walking into the convention arena while hundreds of young demonstrators, many carrying signs backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein, shouted and occasionally hurled invectives at those entering the hall—an odd tactic, I thought, since more than 40 percent of the delegates entering the building were Bernie Sanders’s. The friend I was walking in with—a Latino legislator from California—cast a cold eye on the demonstrators and noted, “They’re all white.”
Two months have passed since that convention, and Hillary Clinton is still having trouble winning the allegiance of the young, a disproportionate number of whom are backing either Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson. But my friend’s take on the demonstrators is still an apt description of the millennials holding out for the third-party candidates: They’re all white.
Stein was getting 4 percent of white millennials, but just 2 percent of their black counterparts.
Well, not all—but damn near. A late-September survey of more than 1,750 millennials, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs and Research for the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, found that most national polls overstate young people’s support for Johnson and Stein because they under-sampled black, Latino, and Asian American millennials. The AP-NORC poll found just 11 percent of millennials backed Johnson, and just 4 percent Stein. Johnson had the backing of 15 percent of whites aged 18 to 30—but just 8 percent of Latinos, 6 percent of Asian Americans, and 4 percent of African Americans. Stein was getting 4 percent of white millennials, but just 2 percent of their black counterparts.Similarly, a second late-September survey by Latino Decisions found that 77 percent of Latino millennials were backing Clinton—exceeding by a full 10 points the 67 percent of older Latinos who said they’d vote for her.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

Farm Workers Win Election in Washington State

FARM WORKERS WIN A WATERSHED ELECTION IN WASHINGTON STATE
By David Bacon
The Nation, 10/3/16
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.de/2016/10/farm-workers-win-watershed-election-in.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-these-farm-workers-went-on-strike-and-why-it-matters/



The children of migrant farm workers and their supporters march to the processing plant at Sakuma Brothers Farms


Burlington, WA-There is not much love lost between the owners of Sakuma Brothers Farms and Ramon Torres, the president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia. Sakuma Brothers is one of the largest berry growers in Washington state, and Familias Unidas is a grassroots union organized by the company's workers. Torres used to work in the Sakuma fields. He was fired after the strikes by pickers in 2013 in which the union was formed.

This month, on September 12, the workers finally voted in an election to demonstrate what really needed no proof - that they supported the union they formed three years ago. This election is a watershed: Familias Unidas por la Justicia is the first union organized by farm workers in the United States in many years.

The balloting took place over four hours at the company office, two hours north of Seattle, surrounded by Sakuma's blueberry fields. After all the votes had been cast, Torres and a small group of workers and supporters drove over to the polling place to watch the count. A company manager balked, however. The ever.  The count couldn't take place as long as Torres was on the property, he said.

After a lot of arguing, the workers retired to a local schoolyard, together with Richard Ahearn, former regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. There, on the tailgate of a pickup belonging to State Senator John McCoy, Ahearn counted the ballots. The result: 195 for the union, and 58 against.

Jeff Johnson, who heads the Washington State Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, was part of the workers' group.  "The irony of where the votes were tallied was hard to miss," he said later. "The majority of students at that elementary school are Latino, Senator McCoy has been a fierce advocate for these workers, and this is as much a public victory as a union victory."

The union is a grassroots organization formed by the pickers themselves, and is led by indigenous Mixtec and Triqui migrants from the southern Mexico states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas. A union contract at Sakuma Brothers could give this union the stability and resources needed to make substantial changes in the economic conditions of its own members, and of farm workers across western Washington.

Strikes and organizing among agricultural laborers, especially indigenous migrants, has been on the rise all along the Pacific coast over the last several years.  The election in Burlington and a new contract will further raise the expectations of thousands of people working in the fields, from northern Mexico to the Canadian border.  "This is a new dawn," Torres said. "When we were celebrating afterwards, people began saying, 'From now on we know what the future of our children is going to be.'"

Monday, October 03, 2016

Su Voto es Su Voz


"Su voto es su voz" (your vote is your voice), Mexican American activist Willie Velasquez once said. The San Antonio leader of a grassroots movement forever changed our American political landscape
through his nonpartisan Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP). Now, his story is being retold through a new documentary, Willie Velasquez: Your Vote Is Your Voice, which airs on PBS on Oct. 3, 2016.

Velasquez is responsible for over 1000 voter registration drives in 200 cities and launching a nationwide political movement that continues to grow. 

Watch an exclusive clip from
 Willie Velasquez: Your Vote Is Your Voice
  
"Today there are over 27 million eligible Latino voters," said Sandie Viquez Pedlow, executive producer and executive director of Latino Public Broadcasting. "By encouraging Latinos to become invested in the democratic process by registering to vote, Willie Velasquez and SVREP paved the way for the continually increasing power of Latinos at the polls."

Prop 58: The LEARN Initiative - California Teachers Association

Progressive Politics After Bernie

Progressive Politics After Bernie

Harold Meyerson, American Prospect.