Dream Act caravan

Thursday December 2nd, 2010 11:00am-12pm    

Sacramento Capitol Building (North side steps on Ist) 

1. Dream Graduation

*PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR CAP AND GOWN and creative signs. 

The goal of this action is to bring to light the thousands of students caught in the horrible, perpetual limbo of being educated, bright and ready to work, but denied the chance to because of their illegal immigration status. We come together to send our representatives the message that we need the DREAM Act now, our economy needs it. We also aim to raise awareness to our community and our state legislators about this growing student movement. 

Thursday December 2, 2010 11 am-12 pm

Please check FACEBOOK for updates

WHO:  Immigrant students, including AB540 students, families, and district residents.  Members of the California DREAM Network, a project of CHIRLA, Wise Up!, the Korean Resource Center, S.T.A.N.D., and Sac State Coalition

CARAVAN SCHEDULE:‬

Loretta Sanchez:  Fullerton Community College, Cal State Fullerton.  Rally to welcome the Statewide Dream Caravan which will be driving from Palm Springs to Sacramento lining up the votes for the DREAM Act. Diplomas symbolizing the thousands of unresolved Dreams of students across the nation.‬

Tea Party Politics seek to establish Arizona 1070 in California

The California Secretary of State's office today authorized a signature drive to place an Arizona-style immigration law before California voters.

Called the "Support Federal Immigration Law Act," the proposal was submitted to state authorities in September by Michael Erickson, a Tea Party activist in in the Bay Area city of Belmont and former chair of the Sonoma County Republican Party.

Erickson said  that he's tried to draft his proposal -- which also makes it a state crime to hire illegal immigrants -- to avoid constitutional pitfalls. The Arizona law now faces challenges that it is unconstitutional and an overreaching of state law into federal responsibility for immigration enforcement.

Initiative supporters must gather at least 433,971 signatures of registered voters by April 21, 2011, to qualify for an election. Erickson said he'd aim to put the measure before voters during the 2012 election cycle.

The effort will rely largely on volunteers from California's Tea Party network, Erickson said.

The California proposal would make it a state crime for undocumented persons to seek work while hiding their immigration status, and a state crime for employers to "intentionally or negligently" hire an illegal immigrant.

I understand the  people so full of fear that they support such measures. The purpose of the effort is to generate fear and bigotry. Remember, California was once part of Mexico. It was taken by force. In the 1850's newly arrived Irish and German immigrants drove Mexican and Chinese miners from the mines with the foreign miners tax. Then the Anglos came and took the land. Anti immigrant campaigns have a long history in the California; 1878 Constitution was anti Chinese, 1911 Anti Japanese, 1930's-1950's, Anti Mexican. 1940's anti Japanese. 1994, Prop.187. It will take hard work, but reasonable people will be able to defeat these fear filled campaigns. Immigrants are not the cause of the economic crisis- it was Wall Street. But, Tea Party folks want to protect Wall Street by focusing fear on immigrants.

Movimiento Tea Party empuja proyecto antiinmigrante

LOS ANGELES - La secretaria de Estado de California autorizó el martes que se empiece a recolectar firmas para proponer a los electores locales una ley de inmigración similar a la polémica legislación de Arizona, SB1070, tiene como propósito criminalizar a los indocumentados en ese estado fronterizo con México.

La propuesta, titulada "Apoya la Ley de Inmigración Federal", fue presentada en septiembre a las autoridades estatales por Michael Erickson, un activista del movimiento ultra conservador Tea Party en la zona de San Francisco (norte de California y tradicionalmente liberal).

We Are America » DREAM Stories

We Are America » DREAM Stories

Gabe Gonzalez: No More Dreams Deferred (features Carlos Roa and Michael Nazzario videos)

Right now it's a dream deferred. A dream for people like Michael Nazario, a young man who grew up in Arizona and wants nothing more than to serve in the Marines. Or Carlos Roa, a 23-year-old man who is now studying architecture after being denied an opportunity to enlist in the armed forces.

San Francisco student to be released from federal custody (Steve Li story)

Federal immigration officials are releasing San Francisco college student Steve Li, who was jailed for more than two months as officials sought to deport him to Peru.

Harry Potter Is a DREAM Act Kid, on the Run in America (Yves Gomes featured)

I do not know whether, like countless American teenagers, Yves Gomes will be watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I this weekend. If he does, he will probably not recognize himself in the film. Gomes has no lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. But like Harry, 17-year-old Gomes is bespectacled, owlishly serious, an unlikely warrior thrust into a battle much bigger than him. It’s a fight that has already claimed his parents.

Arizona boycott is working - conferences cancelled

Arizona’s enactment of harsh, anti-immigrant legislation—S.B. 1070—sparked an incendiary national debate over the role of states in making and enforcing immigration policy. Some states and localities rushed to copy Arizona’s draconian approach; others adopted resolutions condemning Arizona’s intolerance. But all states would be wise to consider the practical implications of their decisions before following Arizona any further down the proverbial garden path.

Passage of the Arizona legislation triggered a fierce, national public-opinion backlash against the state and led many national organizations and opinion leaders to call for economic boycotts. Arizona’s business community, especially those in the tourism industry, anticipated and feared this type of response to S.B. 1070. And the convention industry felt the effects of this backlash immediately when major groups and associations started canceling events and conventions in the state. Arizona’s Hotel and Lodging Association publicly reported a combined loss of $15 million in lodging revenue due to meeting cancellations just four months after the bill’s passage.

Unemployed ask for your assistance

Congress returns this week and it's time to raise our voices with a clear, simple message:
Congress must continue the expanded federal unemployment benefits program, and not extend tax giveaways to millionaires.
To help deliver that message, we are urging you to call your Senators as part of a National Call-in to Congress Action Day this Tuesday, November 16.
Call Congress!  Tell your Senators to continue the expanded federal unemployment benefits program through 2011, and not extend tax giveaways to millionaires.
The federal unemployment benefits program will end November 30th unless Congress acts.  Two million unemployed job-seekers face the threat of having their benefits cut-off prematurely this holiday season alone.  Millions more would confront that prospect after the New Year, unless Congress acts.
Never before has Congress decided to cut-off extended unemployment benefits when the jobless rate was so high.  And not since the 1930s have so many unemployed job-seekers been out-of-work for so long.
Congress, meanwhile, is considering extending budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest two-percent -- revenue that should be going to job creation programs.  We have to ask:  what kind of person would extend tax giveaways to millionaires while cutting off unemployment benefits to job-seeking Americans?
Call Congress!  Tell your Senators to continue the expanded federal unemployment benefits program through 2011, and not extend tax giveaways to millionaires.
You can call your Senators toll-free at 1-866-606-1189 or Click to Call here.
Many thanks.
The Unemployedworkers.org Team
Mitchell, Chris, Andy, Maurice, Judy, Christine, Rebecca, Mike, Rick, George, Norman, Claire and Blase
www.Unemployedworkers.org
Follow us on Twitter

Dying in Haiti

A Million Haitians Dying Slowly by Bill Quigley,
Monday, October 11, 2010

Nine Months After the Quake -- A Million Haitians Slowly Dying

"If it gets any worse," said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, "we're not going to survive." Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling "tent" with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to five thousand people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.
Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

Haiti looks like the quake could have been last month. I visited Port au Prince shortly after the quake and much of the destruction then looks the same nine months later.

The Associated Press reports only two percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.

With other human rights advocates from CCR, MADRE, CUNY Law School, BAI and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, I am huddled under faded gray tarps stamped US Aid. Blue tarps staked into the ground as walls. This is not even the hot season but the weather reports the heat index is 115.

The floor is bare dirt, soft from a recent rain. Our guide works with a vibrant grassroots women's organization, KOFAVIV, which is working with women in many camps, and she encourages residents to tell us their stories.

In California Latino Votes made the difference

Unlike 1994, the Latino vote made the critical difference in keeping California in the Democratic Party column on election day in 2010.   Democrats actually increased their majority in the State Assembly. While the rest of the nation was swept by a Republican wave, California became more Democratic.

According to exit polls, Latinos made up 22 percent of the California  electorate Tuesday,  compared with 18 percent in 2008 and 12 percent in 2006. Brown won 64 percent of the Latino vote, while Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman won 30 percent. The Latino vote was higher and more partisan toward Democrats than had been predicted by the Field Poll just days prior to the election. 

The poll also showed 42 percent of voters identifying themselves as Democrats, 31 percent as Republicans and 27 percent as nonpartisans or minor-party members.

Arizona and Multicultural Education

Multicultural education conference

The  Sacramento conference  on November 6 began with an excellent presentation by Dr. Eugene Garcia, a prominent researcher on Latino school achievement. and a  vice president for education partnerships at Arizona State University.  The morning speech was to some 600 students and teachers from the Sacramento community.

Garcia explained Arizona’s new immigration policies and the infamous SB 1070, and how it affects the education of children. 

"Arizona is taking a set of steps to mitigate what they perceive to be the negative effects of immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants. There's a very ambiguous and negative climate towards Latinos in Arizona," Garcia said. "The idea here is to present a set of commentaries and analysis, research that we've done."

Garcia described dramatic demographic changes in Arizona ,  California and the Southwest leading to a 400% increase in Latino students in the last 30 years.  Of these students over 70% are U.S. citizens, but they are citizens impacted by the immigration experience.

In Arizona specifically, crime is down.   Employment and prosperity was actually up prior to the current national economic crisis.