The Ongoing Crises Facing Latino Americans And The Abject Failure Of The U.S. Government To Support and Protect Them

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/us/hopes-frustrated-many-latinos-reject-the-ballot-box-altogether.html?emc=edit_cn_20140331&nl=us&nlid=7889556&_r=0

 

Lizeth Chacon of Aurora, Colo., who signs up Latinos to vote, reports growing disinterest in registration. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times
 

All,

This article underscores the abject failure of the Obama administration in general to properly engage and vociferously FIGHT the proto-fascist right in Congress and beyond on a strictly partisan national level since 2009. This massive strategic, tactical and ideological blunder on the part of not only the White House but the entire hopelessly neoliberal Democratic Party over the past five years is a political disgrace and we are all going to suffer mightily for it even more after the November 2014 midterm elections which are--let's face it--going to be a national disaster and will ensure that Obama--one of the weakest political leaders in recent historical memory--will remain a defeated lame duck President for the last two years of his second term in office. The really sick aspect of this gigantic failure is that we--meaning what shamelessly passes for 'the left' in American politics (both in and out of power in Washington) have far too often been complicit in foolishly giving the 'first black President' a pass instead of engaging in an organized and disciplined struggle/movement nationally that would seriously address and oppose both the neoliberal Democrats and the virulently rightwing Republicans/Tea Party. Now I'm deeply afraid we have lost/squandered our truly historical opportunity to change the trajectory of this country in a progressive direction and that the WORSE is certainly yet to come. I shudder when I think that in all probability the utterly rancid "choices" in 2016 are going to be Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush (yeah ANOTHER ONE). Folks, we are in deep, deep trouble (much deeper I think than anyone could have rationally predicted even a year ago) and I fear that the real madmen in this country are on the verge of taking over in much the same way that the Nazis took over the liberal government in Germany and defeated the smug, myopic, corrupt, and hubris filled Weimar Republic in 1933 without having to fire a shot (until a few years later that is when this new fascist government made the even more insane move to conquer the globe). Yeah it's just that frightening to me and I think anyone who has thought about it for more than a few seconds would readily and depressingly concur. The stark fulfillment of "NATAMBU'S LAW" is a horrific prospect and I seriously hope that I'm dead wrong about all this...but I doubt it....Stay tuned...

Kofi

P.S. For the uninitiated NATAMBU'S LAW states the following: "No matter how bad things are or appear to be one can rest assured upon further investigation that in reality things are far worse than anything you could possibly imagine."

Hopes Frustrated, Many Latinos Reject the Ballot Box Altogether
By JACKIE CALMES
MARCH 30, 2014
New York Times

AURORA, Colo. — As the weather warms, Lizeth Chacon is anticipating a new season of registering Latino voters — yet dreading experiences like one late last year, when she came upon a skate park full of older teenagers.

“I thought, ‘The perfect age! They’re turning 18,’ ” said Ms. Chacon, just 26 herself, born in Mexico and now the lead organizer at Rights for All People, a local immigrant organizing group. But among the roughly 50 people she approached in this increasingly diverse city east of Denver, “not a single person” was interested in her pitch, including those already old enough to vote: “They were like, ‘Why? Why would I bother to vote?’ ”

Across the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in voting participation that have reshaped politics to Democrats’ advantage nationally, and in states like Colorado with significant Latino populations. High hopes — kindled by President Obama’s elections and stoked in June by Senate passage of the most significant overhaul of immigration law in a generation, with a path to citizenship for about 11 million people here unlawfully — have been all but dashed.

Latinos mainly blame Republicans, who control the House and have buried the Senate bill, but they also have soured on Mr. Obama. The federal government has so aggressively enforced existing immigration laws that one national Hispanic leader recently nicknamed the president “deporter in chief” for allowing nearly two million people to be deported.

A day after that widely reported gibe in Washington, at Denver’s Spanish-language radio station KBNO (“Que Bueno” to its audience), the host Fernando Sergio devoted his three-hour talk show to asking listeners whether they agreed with the criticism, or “has President Obama done the best he can against Republican opposition?”

“The majority were very angry at the president,” Mr. Sergio said in an interview at the station, where pictures of John and Robert Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama hang on the walls. “People feel like he’s made some promises that he hasn’t fulfilled, that he can do more” — like expand his 2012 order that deferred deportations of young people brought to the country as children, a group known as Dreamers.

“If I were a Democratic consultant,” Mr. Sergio added, “I would have been concerned.”

Democrats indeed are worried. While the growing Latino electorate is a force in presidential elections, and one expected to give Democrats an edge for years unless Republicans shed an anti-immigrant image, Latinos are relative bit players in this midterm election year. Their turnout typically drops in midterm years; nationally and in Colorado, about half of registered Latinos voted in 2008 and 2012, but less than a third did in the 2010 midterm elections and many Democrats lost. This fall, with many Latinos caught between hostility toward Republicans and disappointment with Mr. Obama, participation could dip further.

“There’s a sense from some people that there’s nowhere to turn, and I’m afraid they’re just going to be frozen in frustration,” said Lisa Duran, executive director of Rights for All People, and Ms. Chacon’s supervisor. “It’s absolutely imperative that we not let that happen.”

A depressed vote threatens Democrats in a number of races, notably in Colorado, where Latinos were 14 percent of the state’s 2012 electorate and about 70 percent voted for Democrats. Their Senate majority at risk, Democrats are hustling to help Senator Mark Udall now that a formidable Republican, Representative Cory Gardner, has challenged him. They also hope to snatch the House district, including Aurora, from Representative Mike Coffman, a Republican. His Democratic rival is Andrew Romanoff, a former State House speaker.

While Mr. Coffman lately has moderated his stance on immigration, Mr. Gardner has not. He has opposed the deportation stay for young people and objects to the Senate’s path to citizenship as amnesty, and Democrats plan to emphasize that to Latino voters.


Voter Participation:

Hispanics have typically had lower rates of voter turnout than whites and blacks, and frustration with Republicans and President Obama alike could cause rates to dip even further in this fall’s midterm elections.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey
Note: Comparable data for Asian voters and voters of other races is not available.

“This is a turnout election for Democrats, and we’re shifting focus and resources because we know that,” said Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “We can’t outcompete the billionaires on the airwaves. It’s going to have to be a ground game.” Mr. Bennet won in 2010 by mobilizing more Latinos, women and young voters than many in either party predicted.

Discouraged Democrats take some comfort that the closest Senate races are mostly in states without many Latinos. As for the House, a couple of dozen races could turn on Latino votes — including in California, Florida, Nevada and Texas — but Republicans are expected to retain their majority.

Still, Mr. Obama wants to reconcile with Latinos, a group that gave him 71 percent of its votes in 2012. He recently met with several Hispanic lawmakers and days later with 17 leaders of immigration groups, but the meetings only underscored each side’s frustration with the other.

In the meeting with the immigration groups, Mr. Obama did most of the talking for nearly two hours, participants said. He argued that by being united, they had they won public support for immigration changes, passed the Senate bill and put House Republicans on the defensive. By now attacking him, the president said — and he chided Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, for her “deporter in chief” taunt — the activists were relieving the pressure on Republicans, he said. Privately, Republicans agree.

The president told them that his secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, would review the deportation system. But Mr. Obama lowered expectations by reiterating that administration lawyers say he cannot take action beyond his 2012 order benefiting the so-called Dreamers. The advocates expressed skepticism.

The exchange reflected Mr. Obama’s bind: If he suspends more deportations, he could mend relations with Latinos and perhaps motivate more of them to vote. But he could lose what chance remains for new immigration law, his second-term domestic priority, since House Republicans have signaled they would cite such executive action as proof that he cannot be trusted to enforce any law.

Back in Colorado, Leticia Zavala follows the Washington maneuvering from the vast eastern plains, in the ranching center of Fort Morgan where she was born, in what is now Mr. Gardner’s House district. The county is one-third Latino, and her experiences there capture the community’s conflicted feelings.

Ms. Zavala, 26, recently was packing to drive to Mexico with her two young children for their first visit with her husband since he was deported in December, more than two years after he was snared in an immigration raid at a dairy plant, and six years after he began seeking legal status. While she knows perhaps 10 people who have been deported, until her husband’s ordeal, “I didn’t really know how it affected families,” she said, wiping tears.

Yet she has become more politically active, not less. Ms. Zavala takes heart from Latinos’ legislative victories in Colorado. She formed a small immigrants assistance group, enrolled in community college, and helps a local lawyer with citizenship classes. Everywhere, she carries a backpack with voter registration forms, envelopes and stamps.

Ms. Zavala estimated that she has helped register about 100 people, though it has not been easy. “Many people are angry and upset because Obama promised so much and it’s been how many years?” she said. “But the Republicans aren’t doing anything. We have something; there’s a bill. And for us to sit here in March 2014 with nothing — people are just really upset.”

The Crucial Coalition Of Immigrants and African Americans in the Pivotal Struggle of Labor Vs. Capital in the United States Today

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14540-charging-through-the-archway-of-history-immigrants-and-african-americans-unite-to-transform-the-face-of-labor-and-the-power-of-community

All,

There is a wonderful and endlessly profound proverb from the historical depths of the inspiring and extraordinary African American collective experience in the United Hates and it has been passed down in countless intimate conversations and liberatory gatherings and blues and rhythm and blues and gospel and Jazz songs and it goes like this:  "No matter what happens always remember that GOOD NEWS IS COMING so you better be ready to receive and embrace it when it gets here."  The article below conjures up yet another shining dynamic example of this boundless and eternal truth--and like always the news comes NOT A MINUTE TOO SOON.  Can I get a witness?   YES!!

Kofi

"Politics is an activity," C.L.R. James famously said. "It is not a lecture room where the people are supposed to listen to all the government has done for them. The more active the people are, the more active the government can be."

Charging Through the Archway of History: Immigrants and African-Americans Unite to Transform the Face of Labor and the Power of Community
Saturday, 16 February 2013
By Paul Ortiz, Truthout | Op-Ed

 

Francisco Martinez, 17, protests policies of President Barack Obama that have deported record numbers of Latinos, during a protest outside President Obama's campaign headquarters, at One Prudential Plaza in Chicago, August 16, 2011. (Photo: Peter Hoffman / The New York Times)

A budding coalition of immigrants and African-Americans - modeled on the outstanding community- and labor-organizing example of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 - is potentially the largest progressive force in America - one capable of transforming the trajectory of US history.

"I was taught that justice wears a blindfold, so as not to be able to distinguish between the colors, and thus makes everyone equal in the eyes of the law. I propose we remove the blindfold from the eyes of Lady Justice, so that for the first time she can really see what's happening and check out where the truth lies and the lies hide. That would be a start. Viva the children of all colors! Punto!"

- Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets

Part I: A Tale of Two Speeches

Why did President Obama travel to Las Vegas to make a speech on immigration? Las Vegas is a union town. The city is the home of one most powerful unions in the Americas, an organization built and led largely by Latina, African-American and Asian-American women who work as maids, housekeepers and food service workers on the Las Vegas Strip and beyond.

Many of the rank-and-file members of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 are single mothers, and without their support Obama would not be President of the United States. The president understands this and herein lays the symbolic power of his speech, as well as the transformations in American life that it reveals. The new president of Local 226 is the brilliant organizer Geoconda Arguello-Kline. She was a picket captain during the epic Frontier Hotel Strike (1991-1998) where not a single one of the 550 hotel workers crossed the picket line. The strike "showed us all what unity and perseverance are," she recalled. Arguello-Kline originally hails from Managua, Nicaragua and is a former hotel housekeeper.

Black and white photograph of Hattie Canty marching with other women during a union strike.

In the 1990s, Local 226 became the fastest-growing private sector union in the United States. It was led by the legendary African-American unionist Hattie Canty, who migrated to Las Vegas from rural Alabama. In contrast to the AFL-CIO's George Meany, who bragged that he had never been on a picket line, Canty was one of the greatest strike leaders in US history. Her patient leadership helped knit together a labor union made up of members from 84 nations. "Coming from Alabama," Canty observed, "this seemed like the civil rights struggle ... the labor movement and the civil rights movement, you cannot separate the two of them."

Whether they hail from Alabama, Thailand, Central America or someplace else, the members of Local 226 represent the future promise of the Americas. This is not about demographics; it is about corazón (heart), the willingness to struggle together and the courage to challenge corporate America when others have surrendered.

The place where a president chooses to deliver a major address is important. In 1980, Ronald Reagan traveled to Neshoba County, Mississippi - the least unionized state in the country - to make a speech on "states' rights." He was trying to build a base of white southern support pursuant to the 1980 Presidential Election.

He gave his speech a few miles away from the place where three civil rights activists had been murdered in 1964. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed by people who held the doctrine of "states rights" to be a sacred part of their Confederate heritage. While Reagan may have been ignorant of the civil rights movement, he was well aware of the role that the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" played in his electoral chances. The goal was to play upon white pride and to undermine the Democratic Party in the South. In the short term, it worked.

Analysts are saying that the re-election of Obama may signal the end of the Reagan Era.

But elections decide nothing. The zombie-like grip that policies implemented by cohorts of Reagan/Ayn Rand acolytes will only be broken by collective action. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the United Farm Workers did not wait for John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson to do for them what they could do for themselves. Freedom schools, strikes, boycotts and voter registration campaigns were engines of social change in the 1960s and yes, they were sometimes timed to push Washington, DC to action.

The 2006 General Strike of Latinos on International Workers' Day made the election of Barack Obama possible. The mass walkouts demonstrated the ability of Latinos to shut the economy down in defense of social justice and equality. It taught us that the real strength in our communities is in our custodians, manual laborers and service workers - not in our intellectuals, executives or experts who garner corporate endorsements for interpreting "Latin culture" for Madison Avenue. In the 1960s, we learned, much to our surprise, that the future of Latino aspirations rested on the creative energies of farm workers. In turn, the Grape Boycott awakened and trained a new generation of young community organizers who went on to play pivotal roles in rebuilding progressive politics through vehicles such as the Rainbow Coalition, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and finally, the "Obama ground game."

The general strike signaled a renaissance of working-class culture in the US that we have yet to fully understand. It reminded the nation that politics is not the property of the rich; it occurs on soccer fields, in union halls, in churches and in tiendas where immigrant workers gather to share information on the latest activities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the neighborhood. In both 2008 and 2012, a significant amount of the electoral ground game hinged on the energy of local labor councils in canvassing, multi-lingual phone-banking and other outreach activities. Many of these activists had been rejuvenated by, or even earned their organizers' stripes, during International Workers' Day, 2006. In south Florida, an epicenter of the General Strike, Latinos were a decisive part of Election Day. According to Gihan Perera, "In Homestead, undocumented workers who couldn't even vote pitched in with a mariachi band and barbecue," to encourage thousands of African-Americans, Latinos, and progressive whites to stay in line and vote. Black and brown power made the difference in Florida.

"Politics is an activity," C.L.R. James famously said. "It is not a lecture room where the people are supposed to listen to all the government has done for them. The more active the people are, the more active the government can be." Nearly 300,000 Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-American workers joined unions in the months leading up to the general election. Even the mainstream media noted that strike activity increased significantly around the time of the election campaign. "The number of union-related work stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers, which reached an all-time low of just five in 2009, rose to 13 this year as of October. And unions aren't done yet," reported the Los Angeles Times.

People are on the move.

I believe the president's Las Vegas speech is a microcosm of a larger movement that may create an expansion of democracy. Everything hinges on the next act of this drama. If a US president is pushed by grassroots pressure to create an opening for social change to occur and he engages in flowery rhetoric to facilitate the process, one doesn't pause at the archway of history to criticize the rhetoric: One charges through the damn door.

African-Americans did not wait in 1863 to see if Abraham Lincoln was serious about the Emancipation Proclamation. A quarter of a million of them enlisted in the US Army in order to drive the Confederate States of America into oblivion.

Is President Obama deeply committed to immigration reform? That's the wrong question to ask. We know that he promised Helen Chavez, the widow of United Farm Workers' co-founder César Chávez, to "do something" about the issue. A better question to ask is: What are we willing to do to welcome millions of struggling workers into our polity? Immigrants traveled to the United States from all over the world during the past two decades and contributed to one of the greatest economic booms in history. They are the solution to an aging Baby Boom generation; they are replenishing tax coffers and they are bringing much-needed changes to our archaic, monolingual culture. What will we do to make them fully empowered citizens of the republic?

Immigrant energy is contributing to a revival of progressive American political culture. It finds its echoes in the heroic DREAMista activists (who have pushed the federal government hard on immigration reform), the Florida Dream Defenders, who organized in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin, as well as the Occupy insurgencies. All of these initiatives are part of the rising tide of new social movements that we must nurture, support and sustain.

In a recent newspaper poll taken in the college town of Gainesville, Florida, where I live, 62 percent of the respondents voted against the premise that people "currently in the US illegally" should have a path to citizenship. This is going to be a battle.

Part II:  A New Century

Tens of millions of immigrants with lineages from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East voted in significant majorities to re-elect Barack Obama. The choices that first- and second-generation immigrant voters made in this election may signal a turning point in American history. In line with their early 20th century predecessors, these voters could have settled for the tragic bargain of whiteness that Toni Morrison has so eloquently critiqued. In her essay, "On the Backs of Blacks," Morrison observed that, "In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens. Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African-Americans."

The phenomenon of "whiteness," as scholars call it, meant the country's newcomers often alienated themselves from the democratic legacies of the anti-slavery movement as well as from freedom fighters such as Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells Barnett and Mary McCleod Bethune, in favor of assimilation to Jim Crow/Juan Crow segregation before the 1950s.

Scholars have long been predicting a massive "turn towards whiteness" among late-20th century immigrants, but it has not happened yet. In fact, we may have broken the old curse. Recent immigrants, such as those who have become members of Local 226 in Las Vegas, are increasingly aligning their politics, trade union membership and their ballots with African-Americans. In the run-up to the 2012 Presidential Election, everyone who had access to radio, television or the internet understood that 90 percent of African-Americans were going to be voting for Obama. As novelist Ishmael Reed observed in Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown:

"Though progressives still cling to a fantasy to which they've been attached since at least the 1920s - that class determines one's status in American society - to millions of whites, we are all underclass. Notice how images hostile to the president show him as an underclass hoodlum, or associate him with food stamps, or fast foods like KFC, or an email circulated by a candidate for governor of New York, a pimp and his wife a whore."

It isn't as if newer generations of immigrants are completely immune to the virus of racism (and frankly, many of us brought racist attitudes from our mother countries). However, the ballots have been counted: Latinos, Asian-Americans and Americans of Middle Eastern descent rejected two solid years of race-baiting, heavy petting and courting from the Republican Party to stand in solidarity with the black electorate.

In Florida, we were given innumerable opportunities to assimilate to this country's older, miserable norms on race, to "become white" so to speak. Mitt Romney's boosters bombarded our airwaves with racial propaganda. We were warned via the notorious "Chinese Professor" video spot of an imminent Asian takeover of the US should Obama win re-election. We were encouraged to believe that African-Americans were lazy, but this is always a hard sell given slavery, and a century of the Jim Crow labor system. The fact that one cannot travel from one side of this country to the other without relying on black and brown workers to handle one's baggage, prepare one's meals or to clean up one's mess makes the "minorities need to work harder and lift themselves up by their bootstraps" argument ridiculous and insulting.

Other "softer" versions of racism or national discrimination were trotted out. A few days before Election Day, Sen. Marco Rubio bungled a play for the Latino vote by telling a Florida audience that people had fled "corrupt" countries to find freedom in the US only to discover to their dismay that Obama was plotting to import these same policies here. Rubio helpfully clarified that he was referring to Mexico and Latin America as the corrupt places in question. Rubio's gaffe illustrates a fundamental reason why the Republican Party stumbles with Latino voters: Most Mexican-Americans have a nuanced understanding of our mother country. We understand its shortcomings, but we also take pride in the accomplishments of the early 19th century Mexican War of Independence, and the fact that the abolition of slavery in Mexico preceded abolition in the United States by approximately four decades. Most of us also know that the United States invaded Mexico in order to expand slavery, steal land and rob resources from Native Americans. So, which country is more corrupt? Until the GOP drops its devotion to American Exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is as pure as the driven snow, and all other countries are lacking in the character department, the party will continue to shrink in relevance.

Hailing from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the great centers of world population, this may be the most remarkable cohort of immigrants that has ever journeyed to the United States. They believe in hard work and self-help, but because of the places they come from and the traditions they pay homage to, many of them deeply believe in tenets of equality, social democracy and mutual aid.

Of course, these are just the kind of overarching generalizations that social critics rightly distrust, but I would argue that generations of anti-colonial struggles, experiences with post-colonial letdowns and an abiding distrust of the Washington Consensus make this generation of world citizens more worldly wise than their storied Ellis Island ancestors.

For example, more than a few recent immigrants from the Korean peninsula are importing militant trade union practices to the US, and they have a direct knowledge of the mischief that IMF-style policies wreak on workers. Highland Maya bring organizing experiences with Liberation Theology from Guatemala, and Mexican migrants are steeped in the egalitarian (if unrealized) traditions of the Mexican Revolution.

These cohorts of immigrants are less likely to grasp at the straw of racism that so many of their predecessors did because they arrive with a much more critical understanding of US society and a greater capacity to change the world without exploiting others.

What all of this might mean in political terms is not yet quite clear. However, one thing is certain. If community organizers allow this incipient coalition - potentially the largest progressive force in US history - to slip away, we are missing the opportunity that only comes once in a generation to change the trajectory of American politics.
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 presents us with an outstanding model of community and labor organizing. This is a union where members stay active, and this energy drew President Obama to Las Vegas.

Many of the people who are rank-and-file activists of Local 226 are dishwashers, fry cooks and maids. They labor in what is known in Las Vegas parlance at "the back of the house," an apt metaphor for the position of the American working class since the 1980s. With women such as Canty, the union's founder, and Arguello-Kline, its new president, these workers have moved to the forefront of social change. They marched by the thousands in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday last month with banners reading "Labor Rights Are Civil Rights," even as they organized another picket against an unfair employer in the Vegas Strip.

Arguello-Kline and Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, appeared on local television immediately following Obama's speech on immigration. Both vowed to mobilize members of the house of labor to support immigration reform. The waiting is over. It is now possible to imagine a new social movement where labor organizing, mariachi music and MLK celebrations become integral to the rejuvenation of this nation. It's time to get busy.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.




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When Is President Obama Going To Address the Specific Needs and Aspirations Of Black America?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/obama-black-america_n_2499138.html

All,

This particular "chickens come home to roost" historical moment was-- as anyone who has been paying any attention at all to the actual political, economic, and cultural realities of this society-- absolutely inevitable.  In fact, it is a measure of just how strangely and tragically successful President Obama, his administration, and the Democratic Party generally have been in systematically ignoring, dismissing, and repressing any and all fundamental public criticism of his domestic policies and programs in general--and especially as they pertain to the national African American and Latino American communities. This also goes for all vestiges of critical grassroots political leadership coming out of these major "minority" constituent groups that aside from a few largely marginal media imposed exceptions (like the often valid but unjustly villified critiques of Cornel West) have also been subjected  to the egregious neglect that has been occurring since day one of Obama's presidency.  What ironically makes this ongoing problem even worse politically is that it would have been virtually IMPOSSIBLE for the President to have won the national election in 2008 and especially re-election in 2012 without the large concentrated voting power of this groundbreaking coalition of black and brown voters--a powerful coalition that between them gave the President a whopping 84% of its national vote (with blacks voting in favor of Obama by a margin of 94%!) or nearly 30 million of his final total of 65 million votes.  Keep in mind in this crucial context that Obama lost the national white vote by a LANDSLIDE in both 2008 against McCain/Palin, where Obama received only 43% of white votes nationwide and even less (a feeble 39%!) to Romney/Ryan in 2012.  What's so important about the following article and so much ekse that has been written since the president's second term inauguration last monday is that for the first time since Obama became President in 2008 a broad based coalition of moderate black civil rights organizations who heretofore have been nothing but passively uncritical lapdogs, flacks, hacks, and official mouthpieces for the President (a long largely opportunist list that now includes everyone from the Rev. Al Sharpton and Toure to Michael Eric Dyson, Ben Jealous, and Melissa Harris-Perry, among others) in these communities of color are finally making some real noise like some outspoken activists of the black and Latino left have been since the President's first inauguration four years ago. It will be very interesting indeed to see if this very necessary critique and public rhetoric of discontent and disappointment will actually lead to any broader and far more progressive alternatives in terms of structural analysis and most importantly policy decisions on behalf of the masses of poor, working, and middle class African American citizens.  Stay tuned...

Kofi

Obama Needs A Plan To Help Black America, Say Activists, Economists 

01/18/2013
Huffington Post


WASHINGTON -- Less than a month after President Barack Obama won his second term, the National Urban League summoned Bernard Anderson to a meeting in the capital.

The invitation was no surprise. Anderson is a giant: an economist and prominent author, the first African American granted tenure at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor and chair of the National Urban League's Council of Economic Advisers.

The real surprise was the meeting agenda: not to celebrate Obama's historic victory, but to develop a strategy forcing him to pay more attention to Black America.

Anderson was one of more than 40 civil rights, social justice, health care, business and community development leaders in attendance. And at that Dec. 3 gathering just across Lafayette Square from the White House, no single issue occupied more time or generated more discussion than Anderson's report on the fragile economic status of black Americans.

"What happened in that room is indicative of what so many of us, including the president and I know his wife, have known and felt for some time," Anderson told The Huffington Post. "It would not bother me if he never made another speech before the Urban League or the NAACP. What he needs to do is use his office, the bully pulpit and actual policy to address the persistence of racial inequality in economic life. If he does that, then I think his presidency will be redeemed."

That redemption may be a long time in coming. The White House declined to make available an official to speak on the record about a specific new agenda -- or lack of one -- to deal with life in Black America. On background, a senior White House official cited support for measures such as extended unemployment insurance and new financial regulations, but suggested that political and budget constraints make sweeping new initiatives unlikely.

The Black America that views Obama as its president, that helped to make him America's president, has a list of critical concerns and priorities -- many of which are shared with the nation's fast-growing Latino population. Together, these are the people who are struggling hardest to make ends meet, whose grasp on a stable middle-class life remains the most tenuous and to whom the economic recovery has been the least kind.


As Obama prepares for his second inauguration, civil and labor rights leaders, economists, political scientists, social critics, leading thinkers, researchers and observers want the president to acknowledge this more openly. And they want that acknowledgement to come through policy and deeds, not speeches and spin.

Obama's presence in the White House, path-breaking and historic as it is, hardly means that race no longer matters in America, these experts say. Ironically, his ascendance may have promoted the palliative idea that the wounds of racial inequality have been healed, when some matters have actually grown worse.

Even a cursory list reveals troubling facts: Blacks and Latinos disproportionately attend subpar schools, are taught by the least-qualified teachers, face sky-high incarceration rates and suffer from low levels of health care coverage.

"Voting, health care and criminal justice were all on the agenda," said Anderson, about the summit. "But the disparities in income, employment and wealth are so pervasive, so long-standing that there were people in that room who rarely write the word 'economics' raising their hands."

Without a doubt, the problem predates Obama.

For 34 of the last 39 years, annual average black unemployment, a measure of those actively looking for work but unable to find it, has sat at or above 11 percent, according to federal data. And black wealth -- the cash and other assets that families have to see them through a crisis after accounting for their debt -- dropped a collective 53 percent between 2000 and 2007.

But the Great Recession has brought more trouble.

The foreclosure crisis (along with a 14 percent black unemployment rate) has helped to push a disproportionate number of black homeowners out of their neighborhoods and out of the middle class. By 2010, a full 35 percent of black homeowners -- and 41 percent of Latino homeowners -- reported they were underwater, meaning they owed banks or mortgage lenders more than their homes were worth, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Just 18 percent of whites said they were in the same situation.

Even more troubling, over 25 percent of black Americans were living in poverty as of 2011 -- 10.9 million people, up slightly from 10.7 million the year before, according to the most recent Census data.

Algernon Austin, a labor sociologist and researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, said these problems have been exacerbated by the failure of policymakers to accept that inequalities in the education system and the labor market continue to exist. The perpetuation of stereotypes, the more intense policing of black communities, and other biases within the criminal justice system have produced disproportionate levels of incarceration in Black America and rendered a large share of the black male population unable to qualify for affordable housing or federal college aid or to find work due to criminal convictions, Austin said.

"What's happened for too long is that people see the criminal offending and say that's bad culture, bad behavior, and therefore Black America's economic problems are really a cultural problem," said Austin. "I am saying if we really want to address crime, poverty, and inequality, then we have to see them as interrelated problems, and the the place to start is jobs."

For Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans, the implication is clear: Black America played a critical role in helping to reelect Obama. Now that the worst of the nation's financial crisis is over, there are social and political obligations that must be met. They exist not because Obama shares a phenotype or genetic heritage with Black America, but because Black America is American, he said.

"A coalition of women, young voters and people of color -- blacks, Latinos and Asians -- put this man back in office," said Morial. "We were with him in the sense that the first term was about putting out fires and addressing emergencies. We understand the legislative climate. We know what the stimulus did and how hard he had to fight for that. But four years later, so much of the recovery has bypassed people of color and middle-class America that we are not going to let the counsel of cynics dissuade us or stop us from making demands and getting some tangible, sustainable progress. The silent tiger is going to roar and roar and roar."

As the nation's first black president, Obama must solve a complicated political calculus, said Cornell Belcher, president of Brilliant Corners, a political strategy firm that was deeply involved in Obama's campaigns.

He cannot appear to favor black America, nor can he appear completely disconnected from it, Belcher said. He cannot appear weak, but must also avoid embodying stereotypes such as the angry or dangerous black man. And on the rare occasions that Obama has hinted at or explicitly expressed the way that race continues to shape experience in America, he has had to steady himself against withering charges of racism, communism and worse, Belcher said.

"There has to be a maturity about how politics works," said Belcher. "There's no doubt that the president is constrained in some ways. However, as an interest group, should leaders of black organizations make the case for what their communities need? Absolutely. If they don't, who will?"

Even if the country and the second Obama administration still clings to a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach to policy, Black America's economic situation has grown so dire, along with that of the Latino population, that any policy that fails to target these groups' challenges will likely fail to resolve the nation's biggest problems, Austin said.

For instance, the administration's willingness to limit cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients will have a far greater impact on black and Latino senior citizens, boosting poverty. After a lifetime of what are often lower wages, higher-cost borrowing and a limited ability to save, 26 percent of black seniors and 25 percent of Latino seniors depend on Social Security for 100 percent of their income, compared to about 14 percent of white retirees, a December 2012 Economic Policy Institute analysis found.

"We simply have to start having more sophisticated policy conversations," said Austin, "even if they make some of us uncomfortable."

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Obama administration is deeply concerned about Black America's economic condition. The official touted the fact that the administration used billions of dollars in stimulus funds to save or create an estimated 682,000 jobs, the vast majority of which were in local, state or federal government agencies -- the single largest employer of black men and the second most common for black women.

The White House also pointed out that the administration has cracked down on employers that use discriminatory hiring practices and on banks that engage in discriminatory lending. The Justice Department has funded programs that seek to reduce the number of people who return to prison, worked to trim sentencing disparities, and defended the rights of blacks and Latinos to participate fully in the political process. And the administration's crowning achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is expected to help millions of black Americans gain health insurance.

"I think we have at least tried to push forward legislation that would support and address the economic needs of the African-American community," the White House official said. "Realistically, as a country, we are in a place where we can't afford everything we want, and a lot of stuff that we have been trying to push through Congress has been stonewalled."

The White House did not offer much in the way of specific policies the administration is planning to help Black America in the second term, choosing instead to highlight big-ticket items like rebuilding the economy, expanding domestic manufacturing, pursuing immigration reform and developing the green energy industry.

"An economy that continues to improve is going to benefit everyone, African Americans included," the staffer said. "That's not just a catch phrase. That's true. Are we where we want to be? No. Are things getting better for most Americans? Yes."

The question, though, is not about the "most" but the "rest." That's why Anderson and others like him came to Washington in December, and why they will be watching the second term so closely.

This article is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post that closely examines the most pressing challenges facing President Obama in his second term. To read other posts in the series, click here.

Read more from Huffington Post bloggers:

Benjamin Todd Jealous: 'Employment Discrimination 2.0' and What President Obama Can Do About It in His Second Term

As a candidate Obama promised to focus on jobs. In direct contrast to his opponent, he pledged to lift all boats -- especially those boats that had gotten stuck in the mud. Now that he is about to begin his second term, the black community is watching to see how he will follow through.

Gregory D. Squires: What Does Barack Obama Owe the Black Community?

Obama owes quite a bit to the black community, but not because of the vote, his color or even the presumably more liberal politics of his Democratic Party but because the federal government, among others, has an obligation to address the continuing significance of race in America.

Dr. Boyce Watkins: How Black America Grew as a Result of the Obama Presidency

Millions of black folks were watching the throne when Obama was sworn in and gladly putting his picture right next to Martin Luther King and Jesus. But the Obama presidency has served as a marvelous and intriguing political education for the African American community.

PEW Research Center Report Reveals the Grave Impact of the National Recession On the Massive Expansion of Racial Disparities in U.S. Wealth

http://www.xydo.com/toolbar/25075980-study_shows_racial_wealth_gap_grows_wider

"The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

The declines have led to the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the bureau has been collecting the data, according to the report.

Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

“It’s a very stark reminder of the high share of minorities who live at the economic margins of this country,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and an author of the report. “These data really show their economic vulnerability.”

Study Shows Racial Wealth Gap Grows Wider
by PAM FESSLER
July 26, 2011

There's long been a big gap between the wealth of white families and the wealth of African-Americans and Hispanics. But the Great Recession has made it much worse — the divide is almost twice what it used to be.

That's according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, which says that the decline in the housing market is the main cause.

The numbers are astounding. The median wealth of a white family in 2009 was 20 times greater than that of the average black family, and 18 times greater than the average Hispanic family. In other words, the average white family had $113,149 in net worth, compared to $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks.

That's the largest gap since the government began collecting the data a quarter of a century ago, and twice what it was before the start of the Great Recession.

Real Estate Downturn

Rakesh Kochhar, one of the authors of the report, says white households went into the recession in a much stronger position and, as a result, were better able to weather the storm.

One reason was investment in real estate. Minority families had most of their wealth in their homes, so when the housing bubble burst, Kochhar says, those households took a bigger hit.

"Especially Hispanics, for example. Sixty-six percent of their net worth derives from home equity," Kochhar says. "And they are concentrated geographically in parts of the country such as California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada, where the housing downturn was most severe."

The result is that the average Hispanic family lost two-thirds of its wealth between 2005 and 2009, according to the Pew report. Black families lost more than half of theirs.

White households, on the other hand, were more diversified. They had a greater share of their money in stocks, mutual funds and pensions. They lost wealth, but only about 16 percent on average.

Lingering Effects Of The Recession

But there were other factors at work, too.

Take Helena Edwards of San Francisco. Two years ago, she found herself, her partner and three children facing eviction from an apartment. Their landlord had foreclosed on the property, but didn't tell them. Edwards, who is African-American, was able to eventually buy a home with the help of a nonprofit group called EARN, which promotes savings by low-income families.

But she says it's not easy balancing all of her bills. Her partner lost his job, and she had her pay and health benefits cut back because of the economic downturn.

"Am I able to save $5 a month? Not really no more. Do I still live paycheck to paycheck with the house? I still live paycheck to paycheck with the house," Edwards says.

Kochhar says Hispanics and African-Americans are far more likely to be unemployed because of the recession, and that has put an additional strain on assets. It means tapping into savings and pension funds, or going into debt just to make ends meet.

As a result, about a third of black and Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth at the end of the recession in 2009. That's twice the level of white families.

Tom Shapiro of Brandeis University, who has studied the racial wealth gap for years, says he's concerned about the long-term impact. He thinks the wealth gap will likely grow even more, unless the economy turns around soon.

"If a family doesn't have enough for a safety net for itself, it can't think about moving forward or moving ahead," he says.

That means fewer resources for things like education or buying a house or starting a business. Shapiro says that only puts the average minority family further behind, and less able to weather the next economic storm.

It's a cycle Edwards hopes to break by scraping together the money for her mortgage payments. She wants to pass her house on to her daughter, so her daughter has the head start Edwards never had.

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=145

All,

Don't look now but the already horrific economic reality is actually FAR WORSE than anything that has been generally reported on over the past three years...A devastating and very depressing confirmation of Maxim One of "Natambu's Law" ("No matter how bad things are or appear to be at any given time one can rest assured that upon further investigation the actual reality is far worse than anything one could possibly imagine." )

Kofi


7.26.2011

The Toll of the Great Recession

Hispanic Household Wealth Fell by 66% from 2005 to 2009


Median household wealth among Hispanics fell from $18,359 in 2005 to $6,325 in 2009. The percentage drop—66%—was the largest among all racial and ethnic groups, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project. During the same period, median household wealth declined 53% among black households and 16% among white households.

The Pew Research report provides the first look at how the Great Recession impacted household wealth. It finds that plummeting house values were the principal cause of the erosion in wealth among all groups. However, because Hispanics derived nearly two-thirds of their net worth in 2005 from home equity and a disproportionate share reside in states that were in the vanguard of the housing meltdown, Hispanics were hit hardest by the housing market downturn.

The Pew Research analysis also finds that the median wealth of white households is 18 times that of Hispanic households and 20 times that of black households. These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest in the quarter century since the government first published such data, and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession.

These findings are based on a Pew Research Center analysis of newly-available data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), an economic questionnaire distributed periodically to tens of thousands of households by the U.S. Census Bureau. It is considered the most comprehensive source of data about household wealth in the United States by race and ethnicity.

Among the report's other key findings:

About a third of Hispanic (31%) and black (35%) households had zero or negative net worth in 2009, compared with 15% of white households. In 2005, the comparable shares had been 23% for Hispanics, 29% for blacks and 11% for whites.

About a quarter of all Hispanic (24%) and black (24%) households in 2009 had no assets other than a vehicle, compared with just 6% of white households. These percentages are little changed from 2005.

During the period under study, wealth disparities also increased within the Hispanic community. The top 10% of Hispanic households saw their share of all Hispanic household wealth rise from 56% in 2005 to 72% in 2009.

The report, "Twenty to One: Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics," is available on the Pew Social & Demographic Trends website.

Vanessa Vick for the New York Times

A taco restaurant owned by Armando Moya, a Mexican immigrant, in Woodbridge, Va., outside Washington. He opened it in 2005, the same year he bought a house, which he has had to sell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/26hispanics.html

Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest
By Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times

WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

The declines have led to the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the bureau has been collecting the data, according to the report.

Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

“It’s a very stark reminder of the high share of minorities who live at the economic margins of this country,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and an author of the report. “These data really show their economic vulnerability.”

Household wealth, also referred to in the report as net worth, is made up of assets, like a house, a car, savings and stocks, minus debts, like mortgages, car loans and credit cards. It is tracked by the Census Bureau in the Survey of Income and Program Participation, a broad sampling of household wealth by race and ethnicity.

Nearly two-thirds of Hispanics’ median net worth in 2005 came from home equity, according to the report, and when the housing market collapsed, so did their wealth. Median home equity for Hispanics fell by 51 percent in the period of the survey. The drop was compounded by the fact that Hispanics tended to live in the places that were hit hardest in the recession, like Florida and California, the report said.

Armando Moya, a Mexican immigrant from Woodbridge, outside Washington, experienced these swings of fortune first-hand. For a few happy years, he believed he had avoided his father’s fate of scraping by. He bought a house with a backyard and opened a taco restaurant with his brothers. His bank account was growing, and he took his family on vacations several times a year.

Mr. Moya lives in Prince William County, where the Hispanic population more than tripled from 2000 to 2010, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with many newcomers working in construction trades that were flourishing in the rapidly growing suburbs of Washington.

To capitalize on the influx, Mr. Moya, who is now 38 and had been working in restaurants since he came to the United States in the early 1990s, decided to start his own, and together with his brother opened Ricos Tacos Moya in 2005.

In the same year, he bought a house valued at $350,000. His monthly payments were more than $2,300, and with hungry workers filling his restaurant, he managed.

But when the collapse of the housing market swept like a wave through this Northern Virginia county, taking his house, and his bank account, and many of his customers along with it, he lost his middle-class lifestyle.

“Everything was going down,” he said.

Now he is back where he started, living with his family in a rented apartment, and working seven days a week in the taco restaurant. His house sold for $135,000 to a couple from Morocco, he said.

“My money changed,” he said. “I lost my house.”

The share of Americans with no wealth at all rose sharply during the recession. A third of Hispanics had zero or negative net worth in 2009, up from 23 percent in 2005. For blacks, the portion rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, and for whites, it rose to 15 percent from 11 percent.

About a quarter of all black and Hispanic households owned nothing but a car in 2009. Just 6 percent of whites and 8 percent of Asians were in that situation.

Whites were less affected by the crisis, largely because their wealth flowed from assets other than housing, like stocks. A third of whites owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005, compared with 8 percent of Hispanics and 9 percent of blacks.

The median value of stocks and mutual funds owned by whites dropped by 9 percent from 2005 to 2009. In comparison, the median value of holdings for those blacks who held stocks dropped by 71 percent, most likely because they had to sell when prices were low, Mr. Taylor said.

The median wealth of Hispanic and black households is at its lowest point since 1984, when the Census Bureau first conducted the study, the report said.

Mr. Moya counts himself lucky to still have his restaurant. He has to work weekends at a nightclub in Washington to keep up with his rent. His life is increasingly resembling his father’s — subsisting, without saving — but he has pinned his hopes for a better life on his sons, and he has discarded the idea of returning to Mexico.

“I want my house back,” he said. “I’m working for my house right now.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 27, 2011


An article on Tuesday about the decline in wealth among Hispanic families misstated the name of the group that published the study detailing the decline. It is the Pew Research Center, not the Pew Foundation.

White Supremacy Thinks It Has Defeated the Rise and Triumph of Brown Power in America--But It Is Mistaken!

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Supporters of the "Dream Act" measure consoled each other Saturday after senators blocked it

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/politics/19immig.html?ref=politics

All,

Just how relentlessly cruel, racist, stupid, and oppressive is the Republican Party? As always it is clearly a rhetorical question. There are obviously no limits to their vicious demagogic attacks on the human and civil rights of immigrants-of-color in the United States. And with 63 new Republican representatives in the House and 6 new Republican senators due to take their seats in Congress in January, 2011 this reactionary rightwing opposition to millions of Latino American citizens will not only continue but increase in intensity. The only good news in this entire rotten and outlandishly unjust outcome is that this criminal action by the Senate is certain to further ignite an already dynamic and rapidly growing national civil rights movement of Latino youth and adults across the country in support of genuine immigration reform and political, economic, and cultural justice, freedom, and equality for the unconscionably marginalized 45 million Latinos in this country (an exploding demographic in which 60% of its national population is now under the age of 30!). So look out America, Brown Power is coming to a community near you VERY SOON and like its very determined African American counterpart of the 1960s and '70s NOTHING is gonna stop it (especially not a bunch of clueless old racist white male politicians with delusions of the maintenance of white supremacy tottering in their decaying brains). When I saw and heard Senator Robert Menendez (Democrat from New Jersey and one of the leading supporters of the defeated bill) say on C-Span tonight after the vote that not only "Latinos would remember in the national elections in 2012 how senators had voted" but that "This is a vote that will not soon be forgotten by a community that is growing not just in size, but also in power and political awareness” I knew in my bones the fight had escalated to a whole new level and that the national Latino American population was more than ready to take their enemies on and defeat them come what way. What really cinched my conviction that this new emerging movement would not be turned around at this point in history is when Senator Menendez then quoted the following lines from a famous poem ("Harlem") by the legendary black poet and former revolutionary activist Langston Hughes (1902-1967):

What happens to a dream deferred?
does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
...Maybe it sags like a heavy load

or does it explode?

So despite what the reactionary white senators may ignorantly think, they haven't stopped a damn thing; they've only ensured that the struggle will continue with even more energy, power, and determination than ever before and that they, the senators, will lose and the human subjects of their hatred and indifference will win. As history (and Bob Marley) always reminds us: "None of them can stop the time." Watch and see in the days, months, and years to come...

Kofi


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/politics/19dream.html?_r=1&hpw


Immigration Vote Leaves Obama’s Policy in Disarray
By JULIA PRESTON
December 18, 2010
New York Times

The vote by the Senate on Saturday to block a bill to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students was a painful setback to an emerging movement of immigrants and also appeared to leave the immigration policy of the Obama administration, which has supported the bill and the movement, in disarray.

The bill, known as the Dream Act, gained 55 votes in favor with 41 against, a tally short of the 60 votes needed to bring it to the floor for debate. Five Democrats broke ranks to vote against the bill, while only three Republicans voted for it. The defeat in the Senate came after the House of Representatives passed the bill last week.

The result, although not unexpected, was still a rebuff to President Obama by newly empowered Republicans in Congress on an issue he has called one of his priorities. Supporters believed that the bill — tailored to benefit only immigrants who were brought here illegally when they were children and hoped to attend college or enlist in the military — was the easiest piece to pass out of a larger overhaul of immigration laws that Mr. Obama supports.

His administration has pursued a two-sided policy, coupling tough enforcement — producing a record number of about 390,000 deportations this year — with an effort to pass the overhaul, which would open a path to legal status for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. Now, with less hope for any legalization measures once Republicans take over the House in January, the administration is left with just the stick.

Part of the administration’s strategy has been to ramp up border and workplace enforcement to attract Republican votes for the overhaul. The vote on Saturday made it clear that strategy has not succeeded so far.

Mr. Obama will now face growing pressure from immigrant and Latino groups to temper the crackdown and perhaps find ways to use executive powers to bring some illegal immigrants out of the shadows. Latino voters turned out in strength for the Democrats in the midterm elections, arguably saving their majority in the Senate.

The Republicans in the new Congress are especially keen on tough enforcement. The presumed incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration is Representative Steve King of Iowa, a vigorous opponent of legalization measures, which he rejects as amnesty for lawbreakers. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who will be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is also an outspoken and well-versed opponent of such proposals.

Groups favoring reduced immigration cheered Saturday’s vote as a watershed victory marking the end of a period when they have been on the defensive. Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which lobbied hard against the bill, said the new Congress “has the strongest pro-enforcement membership” in at least 15 years.

“Now, we look forward to moving aggressively to offense,” Mr. Beck said.

During the last year, administration officials considered proposals to allow immigration authorities to use administrative powers to halt deportations of illegal immigrants who might have been eligible for legal status under the student bill. They also sought ways to ease deportations for other illegal immigrants with no criminal record.

Republican lawmakers criticized those proposals as “backdoor amnesty” and pledged to stop the administration from carrying them out.

The administration’s efforts to manage its policy dilemma played out this week. Speaking on Friday before the vote, John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would continue the brisk pace of deportations, focusing on immigrants convicted of crimes. On the same day, the agency released from detention an 18-year-old Guatemalan student from Ohio, Bernard Pastor, granting him a one-year reprieve from deportation to continue his education.

Despite the defeat, Democrats who supported the bill said they would continue to push for it. “As long as these young people are determined to be part of this great nation, I am determined to fight for them to call America home,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the bill’s main champion.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, another sponsor, said Latinos would remember in the elections in 2012 how senators had voted.

“This is a vote that will not soon be forgotten by a community that is growing not just in size, but also in power and political awareness,” Mr. Menendez said.

Yet much pressure on the administration may come from immigrant organizations. Despite their illegal status, several hundred immigrant students watched the vote in the Senate gallery. Afterward, they held a somber prayer vigil in the basement of the Capitol, but moved on to a news conference that turned into a pep rally.

“They did not defeat us, they ignited our fire,” said Alina Cortes, a 19-year-old Mexican-born immigrant from Texas who lacks legal status. A self-described conservative Republican, she campaigned for the student bill, saying she hoped to join the Marine Corps.

The movement has been driven by thousands of students who “came out” to reveal that they did not have legal status, and to recount their academic achievements and the barriers they faced. Now that their status is public, they have nowhere to hide. Meanwhile, an estimated 65,000 illegal immigrants are graduating from high school each year.

“We have woken up,” said Carlos Saavedra, national coordinator of the United We Dream Network, a student group. “We are going to go around the country letting everybody know who stands with us and who stood against us.”




Senate Blocks Bill for Young Illegal Immigrants
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
December 18, 2010
New York Timea

The Senate on Saturday blocked a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements, including passing a criminal background check.

The vote by 55-41 in favor of the bill, which is known as the Dream Act, effectively kills it for this year, and its fate is uncertain. The measure needed the support of 60 senators to cut off a filibuster and bring it to the floor.

Supporters said they were heartened that the measure won the backing of a majority of the Senate. They said they would continue to press for it, either on its own or as part of a wide immigration overhaul that some Democrats hope to undertake next year and believe could be an area of cooperation with Republicans, who will control a majority in the House.

Most immediately, the measure would have helped grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students and recent graduates whose lives are severely restricted, though many have lived in the United States for nearly their entire lives.

Young Hispanic men and women filled the spectator galleries of the Senate, many of them wearing graduation caps and tassels in a symbol of their support for the bill. They held hands in a prayerful gesture as the clerk called the roll and many looked stricken as its defeat was announced.

President Obama had personally lobbied lawmakers in support the bill. But Democrats were not able to hold ranks.

Five Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the bill. They were Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Jon Tester of Montana.

And three Republicans joined the balance of Democrats in favor of it: Robert Bennett of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Mr. Obama, in a statement, called the outcome “incredibly disappointing” and said that he would continue fighting to win approval of the bill.

“It is not only the right thing to do for talented young people who seek to serve a country they know as their own, it is the right thing for the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said. “Our nation is enriched by their talents and would benefit from the success of their efforts.”

“The Dream Act is important to our economic competitiveness, military readiness, and law enforcement efforts,” he said, adding, “It is disappointing that common sense did not prevail today but my administration will not give up.”

In a floor speech, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, a main champion of the Dream act, urged a yes vote. “I want to make it clear to my colleagues, you won’t get many chances in the United States Senate, in the course of your career, to face clear votes on the issue of justice,” he said.

“Thousands of children in America who live in the shadows and dream of greatness,” he said. “They are children who have been raised in this country. They stand in the classrooms and pledge allegiance to our flag. They sing our ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ as our national anthem. They believe in their heart of hearts this is home. This is the only country they have ever known.”

At a news conference after the vote, Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado and a former superintendent of the Denver school system, said he was thinking about all the students he knew there as he cast his vote in favor of the bill.

“Please don’t give up,” Mr. Bennet said. “Don’t be disappointed because we couldn’t get our act together.”

But opponents of the measure said it was too broad and would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.

“As part of this legislative session there has been no serious movement to do anything that would improve the grievous situation of illegality at our border,” said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who led the opposition to the bill as the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “Leaders in Washington have not only tolerated lawlessness but, in fact, our policies have encouraged it.”

Mr. Sessions added, “This bill is a law that at its fundamental core is a reward for illegal activity.”

Ms. Murkowski, in a statement, chastised Democrats for bringing the bill to the floor when it was “doomed to fail” but said that she broke with most Republicans because the legislation was important.

“I support the goal of the Dream Act which is to enable children who were brought to the United States by their parents to earn citizenship through service in the armed forces or pursuit of higher education,” Ms. Murkowski said. “ I do not believe that children are to blame for the decision of their parents to enter or remain in the United States unlawfully. The reality is that many of these children regard America as the only country they ever knew. Some were not even told that they were unlawfully in the United States until it came time for them to apply for college. America should provide these young people with the opportunity to pursue the American dream. They have much to offer America if given the chance.”

Ms. Murkowski also expressed an openness to dealing with the wider immigration issue. “ I firmly believe that Congress needs to embrace the wider immigration question, starting with securing our borders, and I plan to work with my colleagues on this issue in the new Congress,” she said.

We Must Organize To Oppose and Defeat California Anti-Immigration Legislative Campaign Sponsored by State Tea Party

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/11/calif-petition-drive-can-start.html

All,

Needless to say not only must California voters and citizens do everything in our collective power to thoroughly oppose and defeat this openly racist and repressive petition campaign and proposed legislative measure dead in its xenophobic tracks, but we all especially need to organize and unite nationally against these insidious state initiatives sponsored and backed by local and national Republican and Tea Party affiliates as well as other various independent rightwing groups who are virulently anti-Latino and Asian immigrant like the heinous California based Tea Party group described in the article below.

In the meantime: Please respond and let me know what you think of these and related issues with respect to your own local circumstances throughout the country...

Kofi




LATEST ON CALIFORNIA POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

November 23, 2010

California petition drive cleared for Arizona-style immigration law

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, speaking at a videotaped rally on his initiative's website, said he worked with a legal team to draft a version of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, which requires that police investigate a person's legal status if an office has reasonable suspicion of that status.

"Since we're never going to get something like this passed through the Democrat-controlled Legislature, it's going to be we the people who are going to make it happen," Erickson said at the rally.

Erickson told the Bee Tuesday 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.

The measure would also require all highway patrol, police, sheriff's deputies and other officers to investigate a person's immigration status if they are "reasonably suspicious" that a person who they stopped is in the country illegally.

The difference with Arizona's law, Erickson said, is that officers would have to contact federal immigration authorities and conduct such a check within a "timely manner" and could not hold a person for a long period of time.

Like the Arizona law, the proposal would also seek to allow legal residents to sue officials or agencies if they refuse to carry out this type of immigration enforcement.

Posted by Susan Ferriss