U.S. Hosts Some of the Americas

    Lopez Obrador

 MEXICO CITY — 

Despite a major U.S. lobbying effort, the president of Mexico hinted strongly on Friday that he will not attend a high-stakes regional summit next month in Los Angeles because the Biden administration refuses to invite a trio of leftist governments.

Mexico is arguably the most important Latin American participant in the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which administration officials have said will include a special focus on immigration. It starts June 6.

 

In his daily marathon press conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he was still awaiting a response from President Biden or the U.S. State Department to his demand that all countries in the Western Hemisphere be invited.

Every host nation for the summit, which occurs every three or four years, has discretion in drawing up the guest list, and most if not all countries are routinely included. This is the first time the summit is taking place in the U.S. since its 1994 inaugural session in Miami.

Administration officials have made it clear they will not invite Venezuela or Nicaragua, because those countries’ authoritarian leaders do not represent the model of democracy Washington and others in the region seek to promote.

U.S. officials also said initially they would not invite Cuba, then suggested they might welcome a “low level” delegation from Havana. A diminished status did not appeal to Cuban officials, however, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel said earlier this week he will not attend.

Lulac and Little Joe Lead Protests Outside NRA Event in Houston

 

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LULAC And Tejano Music Star Little Joe Lead Coalition Protest Outside NRA Event In Houston Nation’s Oldest and Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Welcomes Entertainment Legend For Friday Public Action After His Meeting with Victims’ Families in Uvalde, Texas Washington, DC – The League of United Latin American Citizens announced that it is staging a coalition protest outside the George R. Brown Convention Center where the National Rifle Association (NRA) holds its NRA 2022 Annual Meetings and Exhibit. “The data is clear about how to improve public safety,” says Gilbert Garcia, Vice-President of LULAC Council #19. “States with stricter gun regulations have lower rates of gun violence. We have to learn from their best practices and implement them in Texas. It’s that simple,” says Garcia. LULAC’s action is joined by other leading advocacy organizations and leaders, including NAACP, American GI Forum, Houston Area Urban League, PAX Christi, Houston Peace and Justice Center. Also, Garcia, Hamilton, and Associates, one of the nation’s largest Hispanic-owned money management companies. Tejano recording artist Little Joe is scheduled to attend after visiting with families of the victims in Uvalde on Thursday. “For more than fifty years, small-town communities like Uvalde have been my most loyal fans, and I felt that I needed to go see them, grieve with them, and try to do anything to give them hope,” says. “I am a Tejano of Mexican ancestry, but I am also an American, a very proud one. We need to change this country with leadership that truly cares about us. We the people have the power to make change with our vote, and this is the time to get it done,” he says. The protest is scheduled to take place at 10 AM outside the main entrance into the convention center located at 1001 Avenida de las Americas, Houston, Texas 77010. On-site LULAC contacts are: Isidro Garza – (832) 446-8647 and Johnny Mata – (832) 723-3110. # # # About LULAC The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.LULAC.org.

Make sure you receive email updates from LULAC. Add info@lulac.org to your approved senders list. LULAC National Office | 1133 19th Street NW, Suite 1000 Washington DC 20036, (202) 833-6130, (202) 833-6135 FAX Powered by ARCOS | Design by Plus Three

The Anti Cisneros Campaign in Texas

 

In Texas, a Proxy Fight Over Democrats’ Stance on Immigration

A runoff election in heavily Hispanic  (SIC)  Mexican American South Texas is revealing the party’s divisions on border issues.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/us/politics/texas-immigration.html?search

 

AIPAC’s Dangerous New Antidemocratic Project Ezra Oliff-Lieberman  May 20, 2022 The Nation In the name of supporting Israel, the lobbying group has created a new super PAC that is only too happy to boost candidates that threaten our democracy.

A protest in front of the home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner against Israel's possible annexation of the West Bank. , Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA via AP Images

I’ve been an organizer with the Sunrise Movement for two years, leading youth phone banks for inspiring candidates who support bold climate action. This week, our movement is celebrating Summer Lee’s win in Pennsylvania, lamenting some tough losses in North Carolina, and getting ready for Jessica Cisneros’s runoff in Texas. Each of these races is a fight between the majority of us who believe in multiracial democracy and a livable future—and the corporate, antidemocratic forces who, lacking a motivated base and an inspiring message, are spending millions of dollars to stop our rising power. To be sure, AIPAC and its backers will claim that they are doing this work to keep Jews safe. I find that idea insulting. The millions of dollars AIPAC is spending to defeat progressives are getting in the way of desperately needed change for all of us. That, of course, includes American Jews; the fight against deadly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is only made harder when pro-Israel lobby groups work to undermine democracy at home in order to ensure unconditional support for the Israeli government. The progressive movement can’t afford to be fooled or scared away by AIPAC’s smears. We must show up and back the candidates who are boldly championing our values, especially when those candidates are under attack. This will not be an easy fight, but it’s one we have to win. And when we do, we’ll finally have the future we deserve—a future in which all of us can thrive. That’s what these super PACs are spending millions to prevent. Ezra Oliff-Lieberman is an electoral organizer at the Sunrise Movement and a member of IfNotNow. He cofounded Sunrise New Orleans and currently lives in Philadelphia. But this cycle, there’s a new player in the game: the “United Democracy Project”—AIPAC’s new super PAC. In recent months we have seen just how low they’re willing to go, and Tuesday’s results should be an alarm bell. When we started phone banking for Summer Lee in March, our conversations were overwhelmingly positive. People loved that Lee, the first Black woman elected to state office from western Pennsylvania, was an unapologetic champion for working people. One poll showed her leading her main opponent, Steve Irwin, a former Republican, by double digits.

Labor, Life, and Organizing on Both Sides of the Wall

 More Than a Wall.

Más Que un Muro 

        By David Bacon 

- a book of photographs by David Bacon and oral histories created during 30 years of covering the people and social movements of the Mexico/U.S. border
- a complex, richly textured documentation of a world in newspaper headlines daily, but whose reality, as it's lived by border residents, is virtually invisible.
- 440 pages
- 354 duotone black-and-white photographs
- a dozen oral histories
-  incisive journalism and analysis by David Bacon, Don Bartletti, Luis Escala, Guillermo Alonso and Alberto del Castillo.
- completely bilingual in English and Spanish
- published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the Werner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford University

Publication date - May 1, 2022 (May Day, of course)

Price:  $35 plus postage and handling


To order, click here:  

https://david-bacon-photography.square.site/product/more-than-a-wall-mas-que-un-muro/1?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

Signing events coming in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere.

"The "border" is just a line. It's the people who matter - their relationships with or without or across that line. The book helps us feel the impact of the border on people living there, and helps us figure out how we talk to each other about it. The germ of the discussion are these wonderful and eye-opening pictures, and the voices that help us understand what these pictures mean." - JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund 
 

---

MORE THAN A WALL/MAS QUE UN MURO

Border Communities and their Social Justice Movements
Photographs by David Bacon

Sit down and read. Prepare yourself for the coming battle.  Mother Jones.  1837- 1930,.

Republicans + Plus Joe Manchin = seek to extend Title 42

 

It may seem strange that the notoriously anti-immigrant Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has been using Texas taxpayers’ money to charter buses to shuttle migrants to Washington, D.C., free of charge. This publicity stunt — which has been panned from both Abbott’s right and from his left — was intended as a protest against the Biden administration’s announcement to end the so-called Title 42 order, a provision which allowsthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to mandate migration restrictions if ​“there is serious danger of the introduction of [a communicable] disease.” Title 42 gave Border Patrol the authority to rapidly expel people who cross the border (or who try to present themselves at ports of entry) without any of the legal processes these migrants would normally be entitled to — such as the ability to request refugee protection, a right supposedly guaranteed under international and domestic law.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in April that it would stop using these Title 42 protocols in May, and instead resume processing migrants with its pre-pandemic procedures.

Abbott’s bus scheme was evidently intended to dramatically bring the ​“border crisis” to the Capitol. Of course, given that the federal government and the state of Texas regularly make a habit of throwing migrants into cells for months at a time, it actually seems counterintuitively nice to launch a voluntary program to bus migrants into a part of the United States with comparatively better immigration courts. Texas (and other conservative states) have, however, also challenged the end of Title 42 in less symbolic ways, bringing multiple lawsuits to argue that the Biden administration simply doesn’t have the authority to end it right now.

On April 27, a judge in one of these lawsuits issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the Biden administration from even beginning to wind down its use of Title 42 expulsions, and the usual cast of ​“moderate” Democrats, including Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), have joined with Republicans to propose legislation to dictate the terms under which the president might end Title 42, baking these demands in as amendments to a larger bill about Covid relief and aid to Ukraine.

There are a few important things to understand about Title 42 and the opposition to its wind-down. First, the use of Title 42 has never had much to do with public health. When the Trump administration first urged the CDC to allow the mass expulsions of migrants under Title 42, a top CDC official refused on the grounds that there was no evidence it would protect the public or slow the spread of Covid. It was only after Trump administration officials strong-armed the director of the CDC that the order was obediently issued.

Public health experts from a range of institutions have, meanwhile, regularly attacked the CDC’s reasoning as scientifically flawed. The CDC itself has conducted zero research into the relationship between Title 42 and its effect on Covid rates. As one unnamed former official, who spoke with The New Yorker, acknowledged, “[T]he official reasoning for Title 42 may be public health,” but the real reason the Biden administration found it ​“difficult” to abandon is because ​“as a migration tool it allows for quick and flexible expulsions.”

In short: Title 42 has always primarily been a tool to militarize the border, not to protect public health. And it is for these purposes of border militarization, not public health, that Title 42 supporters want it extended.

Tell Democrats - Don't sell out immigrants ¡

It is reported today in the NYT that Senate Democrats may give in to the Republican demand to extend the Trump era policy of Title 42 to ban almost all immigration across the southern border ( except for Ukranian refugees).

 

They demand the extension of this Trump era policy as their price for supporting an extension of Covid relief funding.  Continuing the Trump era policy of Title 42 is a race based process that excludes most immigrants from crossing the border.  They are arrested and sent back to Mexico, although they may be from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere. The continuation of Title 42 is an immoral use of a medical policy derived from Trump’s failure to develop a sound Covid policy. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/politics/covid-aid-immigration.html?

 

Opposition to the race based and race biased programs of the Trump era are central to our own strategy developed in Where Do We Go From Here?

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/our-strategy.html

 

As cited in our own strategy document,

A “go it alone” approach devalues coalition work and glosses over the importance – indeed, the necessity – of a center-left coalition to defend democracy from neo-fascism.

 

DSA had a Immigrants Rights Working Group, with 3 members of North Star on it. This group sought to build solidarity and to work cooperatively with other immigrant rights organization and activists. 

 

If you have a Democrat elected Senator , please contact them and insist that there must be no compromise to extend Title 42 of the current immigration practice. 

 

Additional ideas are welcome.

Duane Campbell 

 

 

Latino Voters Unaware of Key Issues

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Latino Community Foundation and BSP Research announced the results of their California statewide poll of 1,200 Latino voters, the largest sample of California Latinos to date ahead of the 2022 Midterms. As the largest ethnic voting group, California Latino voters will be a critical voting bloc that will decide the balance of power in Congress in this year’s midterms. Though Latinos hold progressive policy positions, those views are yet to be reflected in enthusiasm for candidates in the upcoming election.

“This poll shows that Latino voters in California still lean heavily in favor of progressive policy solutions, but Democrats are underperforming the 2022 ballot because Latinos report very low levels of information about what both political parties are currently doing”

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“Latino voters will be key in a half-dozen competitive Congressional districts from Orange County up to the San Joaquin Valley, and these voters are anxious about the economy and its effect on their families and livelihood,” said Jacqueline Martinez Garcel, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation. “More must be done to engage ou

Nearly half of the Latinos surveyed (48 percent) reported hearing little to nothing about $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to advance the Covid-19 recovery and the economy.

More than half of the Latinos surveyed (57 percent) said they knew little to nothing about the infrastructure plan passed in November — directing billions of dollars toward new construction of roads, bridges, airports and seaports. It will also expand the availability of broadband internet, replace lead pipes and build electric vehicle charging stations.

Latinos surveyed cited the rising cost of living, the economy and housing as the top three issues they want elected officials to address. Most of them also voiced support for progressive policy solutions on issues around housing, climate change, immigration and childcare, according to the poll. 

NBC news.

Texas Governor Seeks to Ban Immigrant Children from Schools.

 Texas Governor Ready to Challenge Schooling of Migrant Children

Gov. Greg Abbott may target a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that requires schools to educate undocumented children. Some conservatives see an opening for a fresh look at old precedent.

 

 

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has taken a hard stance on immigration, using the issue to beat back challengers in the Republican primary.Credit...Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

By J. David Goodman

May 5, 2022

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HOUSTON — With the Supreme Court signaling a willingness to reverse decades-old precedents like the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Thursday that he would seek to overturn a 1982 court decision that obligated public schools to educate all children, including undocumented immigrants.

Mr. Abbott’s comments opened a new front in his campaign to use his powers as governor to harden Texas against unauthorized migration. And they demonstrated just how expansively some conservatives are thinking when it comes to the kinds of changes to American life that the court’s emboldened conservative majority may be willing to allow.

The latest proposal for closing public schools to undocumented children significantly widens the range of precedents up for debate. After a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked this week, focus had been primarily on other rights that could be legally linked to the 1973 decision, such as access to contraception and same-sex marriage.

Little has changed in the legal landscape surrounding the education of undocumented children since 1982, when the court issued a 5-to-4 decision to strike down a Texas law allowing schools to refuse admission to unauthorized migrant children, legal experts said. Several attempts over the years to chip away at the decision in the case known as Plyler v. Doe have been unsuccessful, including an effort by Alabama more than a decade ago and in California in the 1990s.

“If Abbott is serious about raising a challenge to it, this would be the first time that this has been done in many years,” said Preston Huennekens, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for limits on both legal and illegal immigration.

What has shifted is the composition of the court and, Mr. Abbott said, the number of new migrants arriving from a diverse range of countries, a situation that he said had placed an “extraordinary” burden on Texas schools. The migrants now arriving speak many different languages, “not just Spanish,” he said. The governor said educating undocumented children would soon become “unsustainable and unaffordable” if the federal government lifts its pandemic policy of turning back many migrants at the border, known as Title 42.

Rebuild Asylum System that Welcomes With Dignity

TX 78703

People of Faith on Title 42 Announcement: Rebuild Asylum System that Welcomes With Dignity

·       Franciscans For Justice

·       In Action Alerts, Creation, Immigration

by Melissa Stek

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced its plans to terminate Title 42 by May 23. The public health order, first invoked by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration, has been misused for over two years to block migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border under the guise of protecting public health. Title 42 has resulted in approximately 1.7 million expulsions of asylum seekers back to harm, which has disproportionately impacted Black migrants. Over 10,000 documented incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape, and other violent attacks against vulnerable migrants have been reported since the start of the Biden administration due to Title 42. 

The Interfaith Immigration Coalition welcomes the decision to terminate Title 42 as a beginning step towards rebuilding a just and humane asylum system. Following the lead of immigrant groups, faith organizations have been persistent in their efforts to urge the Biden administration to put an end to Title 42, Remain in Mexico, and other inhumane, asylum-blocking policies, and to restore a humane and just asylum system built on the faith values of hospitality and welcome, with due process and without discrimination. 

Upon the CDC’s announcement and as the administration builds on its plans for governing the U.S. southern border in the coming months, member organizations of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition call on the Biden administration to: 

• immediately halt Title 42 expulsions and put an end to the Remain in Mexico policy (“Migrant Protection Protocols”) and all other border policies that restrict migrants’ access to asylum;
• collaborate and communicate directly with border organizations as partners to ensure they have the resources they need to welcome people in need of safety;
• work closely with sending and transit countries to holistically address root causes to forced migration;
• and restore a welcoming asylum system that protects people from detention and being returned to dangerous situations, and gives equal opportunity to all people fleeing violence and persecution, without discrimination.

Our faith traditions call us to welcome vulnerable people with warmth and open arms, and we call on the Biden administration to do the same. We urge him as a fellow person of faith to join us in being fully prepared to welcome all people with dignity by providing a comprehensive and clearly-communicated plan to build an equitable, humane, and anti-racist asylum system. We eagerly await these plans and we eagerly await the opportunity to welcome our new neighbors.