As Elvira Arellano once said, “We did not come here for the American Dream; we came here because of what the American nightmare did to our countries.”
By Familia Latina Unida
May 20, 2014
This film documents the efforts of Familia Latina Unida and La FuerZa Juventud to get President Obama to use his executive authority to stop the deportations while the Congress remained politically paralyzed.
The dreamers, encouraged by Democratic politicians, had pursued a bill that would have given only them a road to legalization. We were encouraged to say that we were "innocent" while our parents were guilty of breaking the law and so we only should get legalization. Many of the dreamers bought into this saying, "Don't blame us for what our parents did." We were being told we could have "the American Dream" but our parents would have to be deported like criminals."
To reunify the movement, Familia Latina Unida organized the Campaign for American Children and Families. The spearhead for this movement was a youth organization, La FuerZa Juventud, which included both Dreamers and U.S. citizen sons and daughters of undocumented parents. [...]
Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB6a5vJILCE
Monday, June 16, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The Story of Eulogio Solanoa
Photographs and Oral History
By David Bacon, New Labor Forum
May 2014
Eulogio Solanoa is a Mixteco migrant from Oaxaca and was a farmworker for many years. After leading strikes and community protests, he went to work as an organizer for the United Farm Workers. Today, he lives in Greenfield, California where he told his story to David Bacon. Thanks to Farmworker Justice for the support for this project of documenting the lives of farmworkers.
I have been here in Greenfield since 1992, so that is twenty years. But I am from a small town called San Jose de las Flores in the Putla district in Oaxaca. My family has ejido land there—not a lot of land, just what they call a cajon, less than a quarter of an acre. That is about the amount of land everyone has there. We only have enough to live but not enough to buy a house or car. My father did not even own any land—the land we have comes from my mother. [...]
Read the full article:
http://nlf.sagepub.com/content/23/2/84
By David Bacon, New Labor Forum
May 2014
Eulogio Solanoa is a Mixteco migrant from Oaxaca and was a farmworker for many years. After leading strikes and community protests, he went to work as an organizer for the United Farm Workers. Today, he lives in Greenfield, California where he told his story to David Bacon. Thanks to Farmworker Justice for the support for this project of documenting the lives of farmworkers.
I have been here in Greenfield since 1992, so that is twenty years. But I am from a small town called San Jose de las Flores in the Putla district in Oaxaca. My family has ejido land there—not a lot of land, just what they call a cajon, less than a quarter of an acre. That is about the amount of land everyone has there. We only have enough to live but not enough to buy a house or car. My father did not even own any land—the land we have comes from my mother. [...]
Read the full article:
http://nlf.sagepub.com/content/23/2/84
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Dominican Naturalization Law Met With Hope, Skepticism
By Voices of NY, from El Diario-La Prensa
May 22, 2014
Translated by Karina Casiano
Legal experts and Dominicans living in New York expressed hope as the Dominican Senate Wednesday approved a law to legalize the status of thousands of people of Haitian descent who are currently in legal limbo, El Diario/La Prensa reports.
A story by Juan Matossian says that the naturalization law presented by President Danilo Medina seeks to bring a “fair resolution” to a “cycle of irregularities” created by the Constitutional Court’s ruling in September of 2013. The law stripped people born in 1929 or later to undocumented foreign parents of their birthright to Dominican citizenship.
“This is a great advance in our quest for solutions to the problem of respecting the citizenship of people of Haitian descent and to solve the problem of migration in a fair manner,” said Milagros Ricourt, professor of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College. [...]
Read the full story:
http://www.voicesofny.org/2014/05/dominican-naturalization-law-met-hope-skepticism-ny/
May 22, 2014
Translated by Karina Casiano
Legal experts and Dominicans living in New York expressed hope as the Dominican Senate Wednesday approved a law to legalize the status of thousands of people of Haitian descent who are currently in legal limbo, El Diario/La Prensa reports.
A story by Juan Matossian says that the naturalization law presented by President Danilo Medina seeks to bring a “fair resolution” to a “cycle of irregularities” created by the Constitutional Court’s ruling in September of 2013. The law stripped people born in 1929 or later to undocumented foreign parents of their birthright to Dominican citizenship.
“This is a great advance in our quest for solutions to the problem of respecting the citizenship of people of Haitian descent and to solve the problem of migration in a fair manner,” said Milagros Ricourt, professor of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College. [...]
Read the full story:
http://www.voicesofny.org/2014/05/dominican-naturalization-law-met-hope-skepticism-ny/
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Book Review: Learning from Latin America’s Social Movements
By David L. Wilson, Upside Down World
June 10, 2014
Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, editors. Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements. PM Press, 2014.
One thing most social movements have in common is a striking ability to take the experts by surprise.
At a forum in New York last year, a senior analyst from a leading DC-based progressive research group admitted that until a June 2009 coup forced former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya out of office, “Honduras wasn’t on our radar.” The analyst’s organization was one of the best sources of information on the country in the months following the coup, but before the headline-grabbing event it overlooked one of the most interesting political developments in the hemisphere.
A mass movement had grown up in Honduras over the previous decades based on militant unions, increasingly assertive organizations of indigenous and African-descended Hondurans, campesinos demanding effective agrarian reform, and rapidly growing feminist and LGBT groups. [...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4891-book-review-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
June 10, 2014
Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, editors. Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements. PM Press, 2014.
One thing most social movements have in common is a striking ability to take the experts by surprise.
At a forum in New York last year, a senior analyst from a leading DC-based progressive research group admitted that until a June 2009 coup forced former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya out of office, “Honduras wasn’t on our radar.” The analyst’s organization was one of the best sources of information on the country in the months following the coup, but before the headline-grabbing event it overlooked one of the most interesting political developments in the hemisphere.
A mass movement had grown up in Honduras over the previous decades based on militant unions, increasingly assertive organizations of indigenous and African-descended Hondurans, campesinos demanding effective agrarian reform, and rapidly growing feminist and LGBT groups. [...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4891-book-review-learning-from-latin-americas-social-movements
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Victor Toro can stay in U.S., but with no ID
By John Catalinotto, Workers World
May 10, 2014
At an April 30 immigration hearing in New York for Chilean activist Victor Toro, the U.S. government changed its stance and stopped trying to show that Toro was a “terrorist,” but at the same time refused to honor his appeal for political asylum.
The hearing itself showed that Toro has strong support, as nearly 40 people came out to be with him and show their solidarity during the hearing. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/05/10/victor-toro-can-stay-u-s-id/
May 10, 2014
At an April 30 immigration hearing in New York for Chilean activist Victor Toro, the U.S. government changed its stance and stopped trying to show that Toro was a “terrorist,” but at the same time refused to honor his appeal for political asylum.
The hearing itself showed that Toro has strong support, as nearly 40 people came out to be with him and show their solidarity during the hearing. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/05/10/victor-toro-can-stay-u-s-id/
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Why Is This Farm Using Guest Workers as Strike Breakers?
By law, a company can’t hire H-2A guest workers if it is in a labor dispute with its US workforce. But that is exactly what this Washington State berry grower is trying to do.
By David Bacon, The Nation
May 2, 2014
In 2001 Rosario Ventura came to the United States from Mexico and went to work in Washington State, picking blueberries for Sakuma Farms. “I was expecting a different type of work here,” she recalls, “but this is all there is. I thought I would save up something here and go back, but I haven’t been able to do it. It is too difficult.”
The first job she had was pruning blueberry bushes. “It was really hard. After cutting the branches, they’d spring back and hit me in the face or all over. It really hurt.” She stuck it out though, working summers in Washington, and in the winter trying to find work further south in California, near Fresno. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/179651/why-farm-using-guest-workers-strike-breakers#
By David Bacon, The Nation
May 2, 2014
In 2001 Rosario Ventura came to the United States from Mexico and went to work in Washington State, picking blueberries for Sakuma Farms. “I was expecting a different type of work here,” she recalls, “but this is all there is. I thought I would save up something here and go back, but I haven’t been able to do it. It is too difficult.”
The first job she had was pruning blueberry bushes. “It was really hard. After cutting the branches, they’d spring back and hit me in the face or all over. It really hurt.” She stuck it out though, working summers in Washington, and in the winter trying to find work further south in California, near Fresno. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/179651/why-farm-using-guest-workers-strike-breakers#
Friday, June 6, 2014
Old Economic Policies Shape Today’s Migration Tragedies
This is the thing that is so frustrating about our immigration policy debate. We hold it as though it is domestic policy only, as though it has no relationship to U.S. foreign policy and global economic behavior.
By Rinku Sen Share, ColorLines
May 1, 2014
In “The Accidental American,” I write about Apolinar Salas, who had been a dishwasher and prep cook in New York City restaurants for more than a decade when I met him. Salas had grown up on his family’s two-acre farm in Puebla, Mexico, where they grew beans, corn and peanuts. They used to grow just what they needed to eat and to sell at local markets to earn enough for school clothes, supplies, medicine and other necessities. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) changed Salas’ life forever, bringing subsidized corn products from the U.S. into Mexico, raising the price of food, and pushing 2 million small farmers like Salas out of business. The government offered subsidies for growing sugar cane instead, but, as Salas told me, “you can’t eat sugar cane.” So he left for New York City, where he joined many people from the state of Puebla working in restaurants. [...]
Read the full article:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/05/rinku_sen_old_economic_policies_shape_todays_migration_tradgedies.html
By Rinku Sen Share, ColorLines
May 1, 2014
In “The Accidental American,” I write about Apolinar Salas, who had been a dishwasher and prep cook in New York City restaurants for more than a decade when I met him. Salas had grown up on his family’s two-acre farm in Puebla, Mexico, where they grew beans, corn and peanuts. They used to grow just what they needed to eat and to sell at local markets to earn enough for school clothes, supplies, medicine and other necessities. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) changed Salas’ life forever, bringing subsidized corn products from the U.S. into Mexico, raising the price of food, and pushing 2 million small farmers like Salas out of business. The government offered subsidies for growing sugar cane instead, but, as Salas told me, “you can’t eat sugar cane.” So he left for New York City, where he joined many people from the state of Puebla working in restaurants. [...]
Read the full article:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/05/rinku_sen_old_economic_policies_shape_todays_migration_tradgedies.html
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