Project Economic Refugee

In case you missed the Air America – The Good, The Bad, The Ridiculous panel with Josh Norton, Laura Flanders, Nicole Sandler, and Sam Seder:

Here’s my previous post when I found out Air America had folded.  Suffice to say, I thought it was depressing to see Air America disappear from the air waves.

Most revealing tidbits from this panel for me: how a memo was discovered being circulated, advising sponsors not to advertise on Air America.  Also, sounds like management did not know how to really interact with their progressive audience … in other words, sounds like they were clueless about having an Integrated Marketing Communications strategy.  It was all old model and old ways of marketing and not really about building an interface to effectively interact with its progressive audience.

Anyway, how about you?  What did you find most revealing from what was said on this panel?

• What is Democratic Senator Kay Hagan’s position on the DREAM Act?  Three students recently staged a hunger strike to demand that Senator Hagan’s comes out in support of that piece of legislation.  Unfortunately, the Senator has not even agreed to meet with them.  The story was featured on the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh Public Record, and this blog.
• Today’s most machiavellian web of anti-immigrant groups, the white supremacist John Tanton Network, uses the issue of immigration to drive a wedge between communities of color.  This video takes an in-depth look at what is going on.
• Another of example of a politican going as low as he can go to advance his own political career: New York Republican Michael Allegretti viciously going after DREAM students to rile up the party’s anti-immigrant base in his favor during the nomination process.  Read the Silive.com piece here.  Make sure you thank his Democratic opponent, Rep. Mike McMahon, for standing up to Allegretti’s bullying.  Click here for the act.ly petition.  
• The New York Times: A 61-year-old Jamaican man who spent three decades living and working in New York, was stuck in an immigration detention center for over five years!  He was barely released last July 1st; here’s the official statement on this from the National Immigrant Justice Center.
• The United Farm Workers has teamed up with Stephen Colbert on the hilarious and thought-provoking ”Take Our Jobs” campaign.  Here’s a blog post on Crooks & Liars.  Also check out the Coming to a Farm Near You: Steven Colbert? post on DailyKos.
• Instead of passively waiting for copy cat laws of Arizona’s authoritarian policy law to pop in their own states, State Legislators for Progressive Policy are taking a pre-emptive strike in the battle against bigotry.  Read the Washington Post story here.
• The Immigrant Youth Justice League launched a campaign to demand on moratorium on deportations.  The next major action is scheduled for Saturday July 17th, 2010 at the Cook county Jail, located on 26th St. and California Ave.
• A new poll has revealed strong bipartisan support for the DREAM Act.  Click here to access it.  In fact, 70% of Americans support it.
• Bob Anderson, Democratic former lieutenant governor of Iowa, advocates for comprehensive immigration reform in this opinion piece.
• Immigration Talk with a Mexican American has an idea for President Obama: The U.S.A. Jobs for Americans Plan and Honors Program. 
• Sign this petition on Change.org thanking President Obama for filing suit against Arizona’s authoritarian police law.
• Brookings Institution: a new immigration policy is necessary to secure American competitiveness and long-term economic development.
• New York Times Editorial: The Constitution Trumps Arizona.
• If you haven’t seen checked it out already, make sure you take a look at Senator Durbin’s webpage on the DREAM Act (he’s one of the lead sponsors of this piece of legislation).
• Looks like President Obama has now moved away from loud and all-too-public ICE raids against economic refugees and instead is opting for so-called “silent” ones.  Find out the details here.
• Call to action: Mass DREAM mobilization in Washington D.C. on July 19th-21st.

I had to save this picture for posterity:

I think this is one of the coolest logo doodles that Google has ever done.  Just genious. 

Here’s a few links of the coverage it received:

Los Angeles Times

The Guardian

The Advocate

New York Daily News

ABC News

Here’s a list of previous Google doodles.

PS: have you seen the movie yet? Salma Hayek did great job playing Frida.

Update: here’s a cool list of Frida quotes. Here’s my favorite:

They are so damn `intellectual` and rotten that I can`t stand them anymore….I [would] rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those `artistic` bitches of Paris.

Missed the speech? Watch the whole speech online on CSPAN’s website here.

Click on the picture to access CSPAN's full video of the President's July 1st, 2010 speech on immigration.

Here’s President Obama’s entire transcript of what he said during his speech.


Positive: the President mentioned the DREAM Act.  Called out the mistaken notion that taking on immigration reform is “bad politics”.  Pointed out what few dare to admit with the passing of immigration laws similar to Arizona: how they actually increase crime because they plant fear in immigrants and deter them from trusting police to report crimes.  Recognized the nature of the humanitarian crisis going on in our borders: having thousands upon thousands of human beings risk their lives, with many dying in their treks in the quest to escape oppressive poverty for themselves and their families.

Negative: on parts of the speech the President relied too much on conservative buzz phrases, which tends to constrict the immigration debate to issues of legalese rather than on fighting the extreme poverty that drives people to flee their countries in the first place to take refuge in the U.S. economy, in other words: the root of “illegal immigration”.

Evocative: the choice of location was designed to evoke the memory of Senator Ted Kennedy, who was an icon for Latinos and other immigrants in the advancement of their civil rights. 

Follow up questions: what was the purpose of the speech? It was powerful, as President Obama’s speeches usually are.  There was no mention of a specific timeline for next steps, no mention of what are the actual next steps, no actual commitment to pass a specific part of immigration reform (like the DREAM Act, for example).  Was the speech intended to be more of a campaign promise for the Latino vote going into the upcoming difficult midterm elections?

Update: Reform Immigration for America has a great tool to send a message to Republicans to stop standing in the way of immigration reform.  Click here to send a fax to them. Putting pressure on the Republicans is a good starting point but Democrats and the President himself need to be held accountable as well.  Besides federal action against Arizona’s new authoritarian police law, we need a down payment on immigration reform this year.  Enough stalling; a DREAM Act and an AgJobs Bill would be two good down payments, starting with the DREAM Act.  America’s Voice Online has this great tool to tell the President and Congress to move the DREAM Act forward.  Here’s the petition too.

Like other fans that got caught the World Cup futbol soccer fever, I was elated to see team USA play their games, almost always coming from behind to win them.  I was also obviously saddened to see the USA team get eliminated by Ghana in this World Cup ’10.  Yet, I take solace in that at least USA has been progressively showing some solid signs of improvement in how it measures up against other powerhouses of soccer.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for those Latin American countries that continue to struggle on this arena, that is to say, those countries that are not Argentina or Brazil, among others.  Like many others of Mexican decent, I’m deeply disappointed but not suprised at Mexico’s relatively poor performance in the World Cup, having been eliminated from that tournament once again by Argentina for the second consecutive time.  In fact, the farthest that Mexico has ever gotten in a World Cup has been to quarter finals, and that was only in 1970 and 1986, when it hosted the World Cup.  It wasn’t until the 1990′s that the country started to experience a more consistent level of success, starting in 1994 with consecutive classifications to play at subsequent World Cups.  In addition, since the 1990′s, Mexican soccer clubs have enjoyed a surge in wealth, due in large part to lucrative television contracts.  Outside of Europe, Mexican clubs are currently considered to be the wealthiest in the world, and yet the skill in their players has failed to match up.  If you are a staunch believer of letting the market do its thing with no government regulation, then this notion probably doesn’t compute.   


Oftentimes people complain about how government bureaucracy stifles innovation, but perhaps the bigger threat against progress in Latin American sports has been corporate greed.  Truth is, profit maximization does not necessarily result in better sports talent, and ironically Argentina is living proof of that.  In fact, Argentina’s soccer clubs are presently experiencing painful financial woes, and yet they are still a force to be wreckoned with.  Argentina is not the only example of the disconnect between the uber commercialization of a country’s sports figures v. those athletes’ actual performance in world-class events. Take for example Cuba, which is a much smaller country with far fewer resources than Mexico, and yet it consistently outperforms Mexico in the Olympic games.  So just what is the driving force behind elevating the commercialization of the sport above actual athelete performance?  I would submit that one of the major culprits are the corporate monopolies that function with only one thing in mind as their sole priority: make the most money off of advertising marketing campaigns, wasting time doing TV commercial after commercial instead of sharpening the actual skills of the atheletes.   

So what is the solution? As with any other monopoly that is too big and bloated to aptly adapt to real-world situations, it needs to be dealt with by a force with large enough power to keep it in check.  The only force that can match a monopoly is the collective power of numbers in the populace, in other words, government intervention.  Taking Argentina again as an example, we see how that Latin American country dealt with a monopoly that had a strangle hold on the TV broadcasting of soccer matches.  Their leader, President Cristina Fernández, stepped in and opened up access to watch soccer games to everyone in the country, rather than just the few that could afford to pay for it.  Outside of Latin American, Australia is also an interesting case.  After an embarrassing performance in the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games when the country failed to win a single gold medal, that country’s government said “enough is enough” and so it founded the Australian Institute of Sport.  As a result, Australia went from being at number 32nd highest medal intaker in 1976 to 4th place in 2004.  In terms of sportmanship and specifically in terms of soccer, opening up soccer to everyone and thus grow the best skilled soccer players is key, rather than monopolizing it to those figures that are seen as profitable to make money off of them.   

Mexicans and other Latin American countries that are lagging behind need to get out of their worlds if things are to change, starting with their team trainers, who should be exploring Europe to learn in person the most of that continents’ soccer clubs.  Latin Americans and particularly Mexicans need to stop being afraid of criticizing their own sports systems and for that matter their soccer systems; silence is only breeding complacency.  Take Brazil for example: in that country only the truly best of the best players advance to be the chosen to play in world-class matches; they are not afraid of competition, which is exactly the antithesis of monopolies.  I’m not a connosieur of soccer politics of other Latin American countries that are facing the same challenges, but at least with Mexico I can point to two of my favorite sports commentators that are not afraid to tell the truth: José Ramón Fernández and David Faitelson, who in my opinion have consistently offered constructive critiques of exactly what Mexico needs to do and undo to bring about true change.  José Ramón Fernández has been specially vocal in his blog, posting this video and urging the following:

A radical change is needed, it’s unbelievable how a few monopolize soccer.  We have to look for and grow the best talents, otherwise, another four years will go by and we will be back here on the same spot.  I’ll say again what I have already said in multiple occasions: the boys that could potentially win something for Mexico have not been born yet but are coming … we have to grow our domestic soccer league with better players and create a filter so that we don’t have the unjustified influx of foreigners in our leagues that we have right now, we have to copy of the model of other countries that invest in their basic strengths, we have to have a renewal of our national team and above all we have to avoid the whims of stubborn coaches that cost the team so dearly.

David Faitelson, for his part in his blog, echoes the same sentiments:

Let’s leave behind the hypocricies and apperances: the Mexican soccer structure and its owners need to understand and accept that what happened in South Africa was a failure, that Mexican soccer suffers from an illness and that it needs fundamental in-depth changes, to guarantee that what happened in this World Cup does not happen again in four years. 

The most urgent changes are already well-known: reduce the number of foreigners playing in the Mexican soccer leagues, better quality of work in the development of players and trainers, go back to the tournaments that stretch out for longer periods of time, and place more importance on performance rather than on making profits for profits sakes.  With or without the current group in power, with or without the television stations, with or without Televisa, the owners of the teams have an obligation to push for those changes.  Will they be able to do it?

The first step is to admit failure and accept that the illness exists, which is much harder to do.  To deny that there is something wrong is a mistake, it’s a habit that is ingrained in Mexico’s culture: to envelope the situation in a smoke screen to cover things up.

 As a fan of Mexico’s team, I’m fed up with the state of things and the superficiality of analysis that we get in the major media conglomerates that congratulate mediocrity and with the Mexican government itself that passively chooses to get involved in the process only to do the convenient photo-ops.  I’m fed up with being disappointed every four years, precisely because I know that Mexico can be a winner and has potential to be the powerhouse that it should and can be.  In one sentence: it’s time to rescue soccer from the monopolies and give it back to the people.

• Demand justice for 14-year-old boy Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca; call on the White House to conduct an independent investigation of his murder.  Sign the petition here.
• Eric Balderas was detained earlier this month while trying to board a flight back to Harvard. He had gone home to visit his mother in San Antonio, who fled Mexico to escape domestic abuse when he was only four years old [...] a stellar student who dreams of curing cancer, is being threatened with deportation by the Department of Homeland Security. Read his story here.
• Interesting New York Times article from 2005: Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions.
• Nogales International: Sheriff’s deputies are investigating the shooting of an undocumented immigrant near Rio Rico, as well as the discovery of human remains in the same area. Here’s the KVOA.com story. Also check out this Phoenix New Times Blog: The Rio Rico Shootings, J.T. Ready, and Neo-Nazis in the Desert.
• [The recent] Supreme Court order banning automatic deportation of immigrants for minor drug offenses could impact thousands of of lawful permanent residents who were mislabeled as aggravated felons. Read the Huffington Post here.
• AFL-CIO President Trumka: …we cannot talk about any meaningful workforce strategy without confronting our own “contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration”. Read that blog. Here’s a follow up piece Mr. Trumka wrote on Huffington Post.

It is heart breaking enough to observe how British Petroleum’s negligence (and arguably Halliburton’s by extension) has resulted in the wasteful destruction of vast natural resources and on the death of countless innocent animals but as if that were not enough now we get word that the cleanup workers are getting sick due to lack of proper protective equipment.  Even more outrageous: there are now reports that BP threatens to fire its cleanup workers if they bring their own protective equipment.  Keith Olbermann recently featured Marylee Orr of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and discussed the atrocious working conditions that are causing cleanup workers to get sick:  

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As the gulf’s local ocean-dependent economic activities lie in shambles, it is not surprising to see people in the area impacted by the oil disaster risk their own health in desperate attempts to feed their families and help alleviate the disastrous situation.  There is no question that the unprecedented nature of BP’s oil catastrophe on America’s coastline has forced everyone to improvise quick responses.  Edward James Olmos was recently interviewed by Anderson Cooper and had this to say (to access video of his interview, click here):

[...] no one knows why things are happening the way they are here; I have friends and relatives who want to volunteer their boats, to come down here and help, save their backyard [...]

People are anxious to help, in fact, perhaps the diversity in cleanup workers should come as no surprise in the cause to clean up America’s waters. Last June 2nd, El Diario La Prensa reported (translation via New America Media):

NEW ORLEANS — As oil escapes from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and washes up on the coasts of Louisiana, hundreds of Latinos are working hard on the clean-up efforts.

Among them are 40 women. They are part of a group of 500 people who are preparing the dam near Hopedale, two hours from New Orleans, for the arrival of the oil slick. These 40 workers are employees of the subcontractor Tamara’s Group, which was contracted by the company Oil Mop.

..and what are the thank you’s that they are getting for risking their health?

Exhibit A.  AlterNet post: [Conservative] Cato Scholar Jokes About Using Undocumented Immigrants to Soak Up BP’s Oil.

Exhibit B.  Mother Jones’ report: ICE Running Immigration Raids on Oil-Spill Workers.

The gulf needs all the help that it can get, but it seems that the usual corporate exploitation of workers is unsurprisingly taking precedence over good will.  We need solutions to this disaster and we need them fast.  In fact, In light of all this urgency, the cleanup activities have been downright chaotic (as reported by The New York Times), to say the least.  Rachel Maddow on her blog highlights the conditions in which community members are forced to take actions into their own hands:

The local communities and shore areas most directly affected by the oil have been left, essentially, to fend for themselves. It’s a disgrace, it’s been a disgrace for weeks, and it needs to be fixed. 

Many commentators on the media argue that there are no true experts on how to deal with an oil explosion of this magnitude and so that makes the President’s job all the harder.  That may be partly true, but it ignores one key point that is not getting much play in the news: the expertise that does exist, is, in fact, not being tapped into.  Yes, that may be hard to believe, but it is something that is well-known among in the environmental circles and that the White House for some reason seems to be oblivious to.  Perhaps James Carville expressed best the urgent need for Obama to put an expert in charge.  Prior to Obama’s more public engagement in the crisis, Carville said the following during an interview with Good Morning America (Via the raw story):  

[...] The political stupidity of this is just unbelievable…

[...] Here you have a situation where you have eleven hard-working people blown off [an oil rig in the gulf] as a result of corporate malfeasance and maybe criminal negligence as a result of inept bureaucrats who were part of the — you can actually blame the previous Administration for this [...]

[...] These people are crying, they’re begging for something down here and he just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this, put somebody in charge of this thing and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.

Let me be frank: I am not a fan of Carville.  His connections with the conservative arm of the Democratic Party, the DLC, have always irked me.  However, I think James Carville made great points during his interview.  He was absolutely right in saying that there needs to be a person put in charge by Obama.  The person in charge should be someone that actually has expertise, unlike the mish-mash of bureacrats that have been handling the situation up to this point.  In fact, word on the environmental circles is that the White House has virtually shut the Environmental Protection Agency out of the cleanup decision making process.  In case you didn’t know, the EPA is the one agency in the nation that has the most expertise on oil spills and pollution response.  Yet, the White House for some reason seems to be tying their hands!  The current Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, would make an excellent choice to lead the cleanup efforts.  Mark Gold, President of the Southern California-based environmental organization Heal the Bay had the following to say on Huffington Post:

Change the face of the federal response. Lisa Jackson is telegenic, bright, articulate, a Princeton graduate in chemical engineering, a specialist in toxics, and a Louisiana native! What more can you possibly ask for? Oh yeah. She runs the agency with the most oil spill and pollution response expertise: the EPA. A Hollywood casting call wouldn’t give you a better candidate to lead the cleanup effort. The buddy team for 2010 should be Lisa J. and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. The public doesn’t want to see anyone from the MMS. Jane Lubchenko and the NOAA folks are mainly needed to trot out the latest scientific findings. And the other secretaries and special assistants just aren’t as reassuring to the public as Jackson. Stick a Saints hat on her head, give her some real authority beyond regulating dispersants, and let her lead. She will not disappoint.

It’s time to get our act together.  Instead of raiding Latinos and other immigrants, we need to ensure that all workers and volunteers are protected.  We need to make sure the cleanup efforts have the proper expertise and leadership behind them.  We need to get our priorities straight.  We need to protect America from the oil industry’s poisonous greed.

• Via Politico.com: looks like instead of immediately deporting them, Republican Gubernatorial candidate wants Arizona to keep economic refugees in tents; no word for how long.
• Arizona’s Brown Codes: A Generation’s Fight – By Kent Paterson: “Taken together, the Arizona laws resemble the Black Codes passed in the U.S. South immediately after the Civil War.” Read more here.    
• Boston.com has these dramatic pictures of the recent Central American natural disasters and reports the following: “In just the past seven days, residents of Guatemala and parts of neighboring Honduras and El Salvador have had to cope with a volcanic eruption and ash fall, a powerful tropical storm, the resulting floods and landslides, and a frightening sinkhole in Guatemala City that swallowed up a small building and an intersection.”  Sign this petition to ask the U.S. government to grant Guatemalans Temporary Protected Status.
• The Christian Science Monitor has this revealing analysis of President Obama’s own “misguided” immigration policy: the so-called “Secure Communities” program.  The piece states:

…a little-noticed federal enforcement program known as “Secure Communities” deserves greater national attention.

As with Arizona’s recent law, it is susceptible to racial profiling and a lack of due process in the jailing and deportation of illegal aliens. It’s a program that has potentially far-reaching consequences if not properly managed. In the rush to tackle immigration, and in the wrong hands, it could turn into a mass deportation program.

The program is intended to target “criminal aliens” – undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of serious felonies like rape, murder, or even immigrant smuggling, and who are already serving time in jail. It’s not meant to be used in routine law enforcement against persons stopped for traffic violations or accused of lesser crimes who later turn out to be illegal aliens.

But the federal government’s own data suggests that this is exactly what’s occurring.

• Boston.com: A 19-year-old Harvard biology student, who has been in the United States unlawfully since he was 4 years old, was detained at a Texas airport this week and is now fighting deportation to his native Mexico.  Read the story here.  Here’s the Facebook group in support of Eric, the Harvard student that Boston.com refers to.
• Police and Border Patrol agents detained U.S. citizens and legal residents along with illegal immigrants in 1997. Many fear the new law will make history repeat itself.  Read this L.A. Times piece.

While the violence and harassement on the border seems to be on the rise against immigrant economic refugees, the right-wing continues to deny that violence is on the rise against these immigrants, while at the same time typically claiming that border cities are riddled with crime; and of course they blame the immigrants for this. In light of the Obama’s recent decision to appease the conservatives and militarize the border by sending 1,200 National Guard troops there, Sam Seder discusses how a recent report showed that the cities with the lowest crime rates in the country have actually been, gasp, along the border!

In more disturbing news related to border violence: two Latino men were killed; Immigration Talk with a Mexican American is reporting that one of the men found dead was clutching his birth certificate covered in blood and that eerily, this happened the day after Barbara Coe, leader of the hate group California Coalition for Immigration Reform incited attendees of a “Phoenix Rising” Rally to “lock and load”. Read that post here. It may be that the two events (the Phoenix Rising rally & the murders) have no relation to each other, but taking previous experience into account on the consequences of violent anti-immigrant rhetoric, it raises concerns nevertheless about the potential for such links to eventually take place. Here’s the video of the local Phoenix News segment:

Update: MyFoxPhoenix.com report.

The victims had tattoos indicating that they’re from the area. The victims were not carrying IDs, but one had a birth certificate on him so blood-soaked it could not be read. The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has not made a conclusion on the victims’ legal status.

Here are some links to some local news outlets that reported on this: KTAR.com, azfamily.com, ABC15.com, CBS5, Arizona Daily Star, and CBS13, all of whom did not mention in their reports that one of the victims was found dead clutching a birth certificate covered in blood.  To add to the strangeness, American Chronicle has this bizarre note up on its website:

Pinal County Sheriff’s Deputies, Arizona State and Federal Investigators are just now on the scene of an apparent double homicide near milepost 150 on Interstate 8, which is the same area that the U.S. Border Fire Report, [...] reported recently showing the same area as the Arizona Concerned Citizens set up watch posts to help detect illegal smugglers just east of Gila Bend Arizona. [...]

[...]According to the Concerned Citizens they offered and alert authorities and the public to the dangerous area between Gila Bend and Casa Grande Arizona their efforts were to help observe and report the daily invasion across our southern border with Mexico.

[...]Concerned Citizens group had just lift the area a few days earlier they say in view of this latest shootings they are ready to deploy again, to video tape and educate Americans about the real threat to National Security and our public safety.

The group is in support of Jan Brewer signing SB1070 and say they want to help educate the public. They say “It´s time to bring back the” Minuteman Type Lines”

The group pointed out that there are 30 miles of area in a straight line that they covered the last time around. They’ll go back and do what they do best….. “DETERRENCE BY PRESENCE”

[...]The locations of deployment were the very area where these two killings took place. They established multiple base camps at major choke points.     

Update # 2: here’s the video of the Phoenix Rising rally that Immigration Talk with a Mexican American refers to.

Update # 3: Video of the ABC15.com report.