Injustice Somewhere is Injustice Everywhere

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned  from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid  the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

By Sandy Merilan

This year I lost twelve loved ones after the earthquake hit Haiti.  Every day, after January 12, 2010, I waited for a phone call from family members telling me about someone passing.  The anxiety I felt while waiting to hear if someone had been taken away from me was indescribable.  This anxiety is felt by Latino immigrants in this country every day, and it is not caused by a natural disaster but by government agencies.  Being an American used to mean that you proudly descended from immigrants or you were originally from somewhere else and came to this country for a better life.  That’s what the American dream was; to be able to come here and have the opportunities that your homeland couldn’t offer.   Now this dream is only promised to those who fit a narrower definition of American.  The idea of ripping families apart based on the fundamentals this country was built on is something I didn’t imagine was still happening in this country.

This anti-immigration movement  goes against the pillars of this country. To see such racism, classism and oppression in this century, shows the fight for social equality isn’t over. Social injustices and struggles for the American dream are just as American as immigration.  Every minority group that has come to this country from the Chinese to the Italians has faced some form of oppression and discrimination.   This struggle one of race, but more of a class issue.  All races are interdependent on each other, this relationship between different groups of people needs to be understood and accepted to truly evolve and change the concept of race and the importance of Human rights. Races are interdependent of each other because we must cohabitate and work together to achieve the dream of universal peace. Our stories are a lot more similar then they are different. Read more

Cross-Post: The Roma in France

Originally Published in The Irish Times:

ONE MEMBER of his own UMP party has compared President Sarkozy’s crackdown on illegal Roma camps to “rafles”, the roundups of Jews in Nazi-occupied France. Romania’s Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi has cautioned against stigmatising an entire ethnic group and fomenting xenophobia, while a spokesman for the European Commission has warned that group expulsions may well be illegal.

Following July riots sparked by the deaths of itinerant youths, Mr Sarkozy ordered the dismantling of 300 illegal Traveller and Roma camps as part of a broader campaign against crime. But the move has all the hallmarks of electoral grandstanding in the face of plummeting ratings. To date 51 camps have been dismantled, and Thursday saw the first charter flights taking 79 Roma back to Romania on a voluntary repatriation scheme. Some 700 of France’s estimated 15,000 Roma are to be expelled by the end of the month. Read more

Somalis in Minnesota Celebrate 50 Years of Independence

Somalis in Minnesota marked the 50th anniversary of the Somali Independence Day on Thursday at Saint Cloud’s State University Hall. Hundreds of Somalis and their friends gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary. In 2007, Ghana became the first African country to celebrate fifty years of independence from European colonial rule .This year sees several African countries celebrating half centuries of independence - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Niger and a couple more.

Several parts of Somalia gained independence from different colonial powers on or around July 1, 1960: former Italian Somaliland gained independence from Italy and British Somaliland gained independence on the 26th of June from Great Britain. July 1 the Republic of Somali was formed when the North and the South merged as one nation. Read more

Politics Mixes with Everything!

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered the keynote for the International Conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals on April 13, 2010. As he addressed 3,000 professional fundraisers from dozens of countries, I wondered how his remarks would be received. The 79 year old slightly stooped priest was the only major speaker who did not use props, gimmicks, or PowerPoint. He just gripped the podium and preached to the crowd. You could have heard a pin drop.

As any good speaker he began with a joke, and then praised the audience. He reminded the audience of the importance of the organizing by college students in America and England in the 1980’s. They pressured their universities, then the businesses in college towns, and then the biggest businesses in the country like Coca-cola and General Motors to disinvest in South Africa as long as racial apartheid continued. Read more

Fighting Fascism is a Global Effort

Since early last year the United States has seen rapid growth in many sectors of the radical right. There has been unprecedented expansion of anti-government militia groups, increased anti-immigrant rhetoric in the tea party movement, and deeply troubling proof of the relationship between anti-immigrant groups and white nationalists. With all this rage in our own backyard, it has been easy to forget that fighting fascism is truly a global effort. While the outcome may be disappointing, one effort stands out amongst all others.

Over the course of the last year and a half in Poland, the anti-racist organization ‘Nigdy Wiecej’ (translated as Never Again) has patiently attempted to convince the online auction website, Allegro.pl, to discontinue its sale of Nazi memorabilia, white power music, and racist propaganda. The website is Poland’s largest internet trader and similar in format to E-Bay. Read more

Haiti Also Needs Psychological First Aid

The earthquake in Haiti this past month is reportedly the region’s worst in over 200 years. In the immediate aftermath, Haiti’s President René Préval called the devastation “unimaginable” with the quake destroying the country’s infrastructure and claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. An early estimate by the Haitian government puts the death toll at 150,000. Sadly, the number of lives lost may never be known because many Haitians were forced to bury their own family members and some bodies may never be recovered from the rubble.

In disaster relief missions of this magnitude, the first response is to provide immediate relief to the region. This includes medical care, food, water, and shelter. It is important to note that those involved with this effort are doing a heroic job providing these absolute necessities. They help to create stability and safety while reducing the ultimate death toll. However, some in the mental health community are concerned that not enough will be done to take care of the emotional needs of the Haitian people. Many of whom are in acute distress and run the risk of long-term trauma-related illness if adequate crisis care is not provided. Read more

Obama Sends Mixed Messages to Haitians

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced plans to relocate hundreds of detainees from the Krome detention center in Miami to make room for Haitian migrants they fear will swarm America ports.

This is in addition to the other drastic measures, like broadcasting messages from US cargo planes flying over Haiti, that DHS has taken to make sure no Haitians try to migrate here.

This stands in stark contrast to Obama’s message of support for the Haitian people. “You will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten,” he said last week, and stopped to compose himself. “In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you.”

Maybe he meant to say, “We stand with you as long as you stay put and do as we say.”

Read more

Haiti Cannot Wait: an Open Letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama,

Haitians should not be made to wait any longer for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). You’ve been in office for nearly a year, which provided ample time for your administration sign off on TPS for Haitians. As the U.S. continues to delay temporary protected status for Haitians the situation in Haiti becomes direr.

Yesterday’s earthquake is just the latest disaster the people of Haiti have suffered in the last few years. In August and September of 2008, Haiti was hit by four consecutive hurricanes (Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike) which killed over 800 people, displaced tens of thousands of Haitians and devastated the Haitian economy. If there was ever a country which fit the description and had a need for temporary protective status, it is Haiti. Read more

Good Will Towards All Men

Walter Orlando Trochez was just 27 years old when he was gunned down in the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa. An HIV/AIDS outreach worker who had been active both in the LGBT movement and in political activity opposing the coup, Trochez had recently reported to the Attorney General’s Office that four armed men in civilian clothes attempted to kidnap him and that there had been a series of threats against his life because of his sexual orientation and participation in the resistance movement.

He made that report on December 5th. He was killed on December 14th. Read more

The Balkans – Twenty Years Later

This year marks the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the same year that Slobodan Milosevic seized power in what is now former Yugoslavia. It is not surprising that the two events took place the same year. 1989 marks the end of Soviet-style Communism in Europe. The Balkans was commonly considered a crossroads where east meets west. Before Tito’s death, Yugoslavia often did not comply with economic and political pressures from the East or West. In the wake of his death in 1981, the region drastically changed. Read more

Crosspost: Criminals Target Hispanic Immigrants

An interesting article, Criminals Target Hispanic Undocumented Immigrants, by the Utne Reader discusses how immigrant communities are victims of crime more often than ordinary citizens, and how a lack of trust in law enforcement contributes to the problem.

Thieves and violent criminals frequently target Hispanic immigrants in U.S. cities, zeroing in on a community that, due to an often justified distrust of law enforcement, is unlikely to report being victimized. Especially vulnerable are people who are undocumented.

“Day read more

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