Immigration
Ted Kennedy & the Future of American Liberalism
Published August 27, 2009 @ 02:31PM PT
In Boston, local news channels have been running live coverage of Senator Ted Kennedy's death since it was announced. A motorcade from Hyannisport through Boston has just wrapped up; Kennedy's body will lie in repose until tomorrow evening. President Obama will speak at the Senator's funeral on Saturday; all former Presidents will attend. This ceremony, in its pomp and public draw, is Reaganesque. And like Reagan's passing for conservatives, Senator Kennedy's death signals, I fear, the end of an era. As I watch, I wonder if we're also witnessing American liberalism's funeral.
Poverty @ Netroots Nation
Published August 14, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Many of my fellow bloggers have gone to Netroots Nation for the weekend; ironically, I suppose, I lack the funds for the trip.
It's too bad; Netroots Nation is one of the best known coalitions of progressively-minded activists in the country and certainly the best known for those of us who use the web and media for our work. The annual conference is taking place in Pittsburgh this year, a city I'd love to visit some day.
So let's pretend I'm at NN, and take a look at a few of the key convenings I'd be joining on behalf of Poverty in America:
Finding & Keeping Affordable Homes
Published July 15, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Two articles caught my eye this week on interesting efforts in the NY region to provide decent, affordable housing for distressed residents - including their own homes.
Happy 4th: On Class, Ethnicity & Immigration
Published July 04, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
My fiance and I are dog-sitting for my mom this weekend. Hopefully we're walking them along the beach in her CT town, enjoying the sun, whose warmth I've forgotten in the cloudiest June in Massachusetts in over 100 years.
Here's some interesting links for that downtime between the BBQs and naps I hope you're enjoying today:
MySpace is the ghetto, trailer park, or barrio of the internet. Discuss.
The Obama Administration is halting Bush's Nothin' But Raids approach to immigration and going after employers who hire undocumented workers. It's most high-profile case is against American Apparel, which raises questions about the effectiveness of this approach. It's definitely more humane. But will a fine of $150,000 make a remote bit of difference?
Police Chiefs from Miami, Austin, and Sacramento come together to call for immigrant legalization and a separation of duties between local police forces and immigration enforcement. Money quote: “When you remove the emotion from the debate,” [Austin] Chief Acevedo said, "no one can argue that it is in the best interest of public safety to keep these people living in the shadows.”
Finally, Richard Trumka is on track to move from Secretary-Treasurer to President of the AFL-CIO. Perhaps most famous for his moving speech on racism in the labor movement during Obama's candidacy last year (video above), Trumka "a former coal miner and fierce critic of corporate America...would bring a more combative style to running the federation at a time when organized labor seems to be growing weaker in the nation’s workplaces but stronger in Washington."
This fighting style is right up my alley, of course. Others worry he'll be too polarizing. There's a hilarious-in-its-irony quote from an exec at the US Chamber of Commerce, fretting about Trumka's aggressiveness and potential bad publicity for the "employer community." As we document here at Poverty in America, I think Corporate America's already doing a bang-up job there! Good luck to Trumka and the labor movement. Don't forget: Support EFCA!
Bank of America Accused of Latin@ Exploitation
Published July 01, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
A group of whistle-blowers has come forward, with the backing of SEIU, claiming that as employees of BOA they were taught to prey on low-income, Latin@ customers to sign up for a plethora of services - of redundant ones - in order to extract as many fees from them as possible. It's a pretty interesting read for the multiple competing interests in the article, and notable for its absence of any input from current or former customers.
The whistle-blowers, current and former employees, are mostly Spanish-speaking women on the front lines of customer sales. Some have been fired for expressing interest in unionizing, and SEIU is supporting them in what's becoming a campaign against BOA because it's trying to organize the nation's largest bank. BOA, of course, insists that it's practices are legal and customary in the industry, which is probably at least technically true, and that customers and employees alike are satisfied. What a mess.
Action Alert: Congress Must Move on Immigrants' Rights & Gender Equity
Published June 24, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Apparently all the dawdling in Congress is getting under the skin of the NY Times Editorial staff, evidenced by three editorials yesterday demanding Obama lead on the Dream Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and legal aid. Read on to learn more about these bills and why we must nudge the Senate (and House) towards passage of these bills that will go a long way towards fighting poverty.
Poverty in America's Image Problem?
Published June 22, 2009 @ 09:49AM PT
Sorry for the long delay posting this weekend and today. I've been traveling around CT, NY and MA for wedding-related activities. I had a chance to catch up with a group of friends Saturday night that included fellow political junkies and writers and some finance types. People were pretty interested in my blogging gig, and Change.org more generally, which was very cool. A friend of mine's husband who I don't know too well wanted to know what the other causes were at Change.org, and was surprised to learn how popular global warming was compared to domestic poverty - and not because he's particularly interested in the latter. It was an interesting conversation in its randomness and it got me thinking - again - about how or whether people think about poverty in the U.S.
On the road yesterday with my fiance, I ventured that domestic poverty needs an appealing iconic image. He offered the migrant mother - taken by immigration, I responded. Homelessness is its own category; children offer represent hunger, child abuse or neglect, or the failure of public education. Or child poverty as its own issue area. Poor men are often memorialized as white homeless men, perhaps with mental illness or substance abuse problems, or as African-American criminals. Thanks to Reagan and the rest, all we're left with is the "welfare queen." Native American poverty is virtually invisible to the public eye, and the current economic crisis has disappeared the working poor, who, in their employee uniforms waiting for the bus, were the emerging image of domestic poverty in the 21st century.
The other challenge for domestic anti-poverty activists is to distinguish our work from global anti-poverty efforts. Of course, there's an indelible connection between our exploitative, global economic systems and poverty at home and abroad, and we'd benefit from a global workers' movement. But the surge in activism in recent years to significantly cut global poverty often overshadows the enduring problems we face here at home. The combination of our siloed approach to social justice with the scope of global poverty with our negative, individualistic approach to poverty in the U.S. really creates a rough road for us fighting economic hardship here at home.
I cruised around Flickr and Google this morning, comparing search results for the different Change.org causes and our respective blogs Google rankings. "Poverty" on its own is actually the biggest topic after immigration. But the more one encloses parameters around poverty, adding "America" or "domestic" or "United States", the more the web and image results shrink. "Poverty in America" is one of the smallest.
I'm pleased that this blog is in the top 20 Google results for "poverty in America" (3), "poverty" + "America" (6), and "domestic poverty" (14). I really believe a renewed anti-poverty movement is afoot in this country, but it's not going to look like the War on Poverty of years past, but more likely will grow hand-in-hand with rights-based movements for workers, immigrants, women, and as part of racial justice, environmental justice and economic human rights movements. Social justice is not neatly packaged nor successfully achieved within single-issue activist frames. The beauty of Change.org is its aggregation of a multiplicity of social causes in one place. But we must work together and learn from one another to make our world a more just and equitable place.
You want to know more about Poverty in America? Believe me, have we got it covered here at Change.org.
(Top photo from Newark, NJ by Tony the Misfit; bottom photo of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign's March for Our Lives at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN by Andrew Ciscel)
