7:30pm Saturday October 18th
Rice Media Center
Entrance #8 to the Rice University Campus
University and Stockton

Featuring:
- Tables by more than a dozen grassroots media organizations in Houston.
- Films by Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services and Undocumented Productions on Hurricane Ike Recovery in Galveston
Speakers:
- Jesse Muhammad of Final Call Newspaper and Brother Jesse Blog
- Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn Magazine
- Haddasah Hill of $pread Magazine

Sponsored by Left Turn Magazine, ColorLines Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Spread Magazine, Free Speech Radio News, Make/Shift, and other radical and independent media projects from around the US, Co-Sponsored by Houston Indymedia and Sedition Books and Rice Media Center with participation from TEJAS, Undocumented Productions, Final Call, Free Press Houston, Houston Peace NEws, La Nueva Raza Newsmagazine, Southwest Alternate Media Project, Houston Zine Fest, Arcade Zine Distro, Greenwatch TV and Hip Hop Politics.org. List in formation. Why isn’t your crew represented?

HOUSTON TOUR PRESENTERS:

Jesse Muhammad: Energetic, inspiring and effective are just some of the words audiences have used to describe the writings and messages delivered by writer, news reporter, artist, publicist and photojournalist Jesse Muhammad. Brother Jesse, a native of Houston, Texas, started contributing to the Final Call Newspaper in 2004 and was appointed as its Southwest Regional Correspondent. In 2005, after receiving rave reviews for his reporting on stories that mainstream media tends to over look, he was appointed as an official Staff Writer for the FCN, which is the only national Black-owned newspaper. Since that time, he has gained worldwide recognition for his consistent coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the continuing struggle of its survivors. In 2007, he was credited with bringing national and international attention to the case of the “Jena Six”, and helped to mobilize the 50,000 plus attendees to the historic “Jena Six” rally in September of that year. He has been a featured commentator on various television and radio shows in Houston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and as far as Ghana. His writings are now read in many print and online newspapers and magazines throughout the world. In 2007, he became the co-founder and editor of For Youth Teens and Young Adults (FYTYA.com), which is a Houston based newspaper that highlights the accomplishments of high school and college students. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he has served in the youth and information departments. He is also the representative of the Ministry of Information for the Houston Millions More Movement Local Organizing Committee.

Hadassah Hill: is a Brooklyn-based queer femme writer, creative, and activist who performs under the name Axon D’Luxe. She has worked in independent print, web, theater and audio media production for 10 years, and is currently the Art Director of the award-winning $pread Magazine and is producing her second album and a graphic novel. She is committed to empowering individuals to speak for themselves using new technologies, and to creating representations of the diverse communities she embodies using self-taught multimedia techniques. She uses her experience learning technologies to promote and create her own projects to fund her expertise, and teaches a two-hour D.I.Y. New Media workshop on audio and web production and internet promotion.

Jordan Flaherty: is a writer and community organizer based in New Orleans. He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to national attention. His post-Katrina writing in ColorLines Magazine shared a journalism award from New America Media for best Katrina-related coverage in the Ethnic press.

Jordan is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and has written for a range of publications, from the Village Voice to Clarin in Argentina and Germany’s Die Zeit. He has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Race, Katrina and the State of the Nation, and the upcoming AK Press book Red State Rebels. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, News and Notes on NPR, and many other outlets. He has also produced news segments for Al Jazeera and TeleSur. On the tour, he will be using new video, photos and first-hand accounts to share the grassroots struggle around the Jena Six and New Orleans post-Katrina organizing.

Recently, the US Census Bureau reported 37.3 million (12.5%) people were living in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006. According to the Census, poverty rates were statistically unchanged for non-Hispanic Whites (8.2 percent), Blacks (24.5 percent), and Asians (10.2 percent) from the previous year, however, it increased for Hispanics (21.5 percent in 2007, up from 20.6 percent in 2006).

For many Americans, poverty is considered to be an unheard concept because it is assumed this country classless. To acknowledge that class does exist is to acknowledge poverty does exist in this country. When the topic of poverty does arise, popular images of poverty in America are typically associated with black ghettoes and white trailer parks. However, Mexican American barrios or the colonias of South Texas are rarely included in images and discussions of American poverty.

One of the poorest parts of the US can be found along the US-Mexico borders. Approximately 400,000 Texans live in colonias. Areas along the US-Mexico border that are invisible from the highway, where families crowd into battered trailers patched with plywood in communities that still lack of sewer systems and paved streets where ordinary rainstorm can fill yards with disease-ridden sewage from flooded septic tanks.

Poverty is a costly and wasteful brake on the nation’s economy and future. Addressing poverty and economic security takes on greater urgency in the new economy. Employment for millions is now less secure than at any point in modern American history. In a recent study, Latinos suffer negative effects sooner, more severely and for longer duration during economic downturns compared to their counterparts. The study also found “that the disparity in unemployment rates between white and Hispanic workers likely will not correct itself and recommends policy actions to address some of the underlying causes.”

As inequality continues to grow and take an ever larger toll, one way to end poverty is to elect and hold officials who are committed to the fight against poverty accountable. They must be willing to pass legislation that will repair the damage created by years of piecemeal attempts that have failed.

Widespread enthusiasm can be found across the country in the belief the proverbial “Latino sleeping giant” has awaken. The immigration debate has energized new citizens to join long-time US citizens of Latino descent to turn out for the first time in years. It is expected that millions of new voters are preparing to cast their first ballots in November. This election year has proven to be a political turning point for these voters, they are now realizing the power of the ballot box and how it can shape their future and the future of their families.

While passion of the immigration debate has galvanized immigrants to flex their political muscle this November, as Latinos, we must remember political action does not stop at the voting booth. We must hold our elected officials in all levels accountable to enact antipoverty policies that will cut the current poverty rate. Such policies advocated by The Half in Ten Campaign, which is committed to cutting poverty in half in the United States over the next 10 years.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chávez stood for equality, justice, and dignity for everybody. The people to whom Chávez dedicated his life did the work that almost no one else wanted to do. The situation is similar today: it is primarily immigrants from Mexico and Central America who do the dirty work in the hidden world of slaughterhouses that produces the neat packages of beef or bacon, which we buy in sanitized supermarkets. However, there are forces out there who want to tarnish Chávez’s record. One of those groups happen to be the immigration foes. Some claim Chávez was opposed to “illegal immigrants,” however, I and others would disagree. In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chávez and wrote an article about him for The New Yorker. Matthiessen noted that “half of the members of Chavez’s union are not United States citizens.”

Like many people whose dedication to a cause is total, Matthiessen noted, Chávez could be intolerant of those whose commitment was less than his. Yet for the most part, his dedication seemed ferociously selfless. Chávez could be “single-minded to the point of ruthlessness,” as some who worked with him confessed. Matthiessen noted that Chávez’s lieutenants neglected to tell him about some of their tactics that might make Chávez look like a hypocrite.

Regardless what some may think about this man, Chavez is still hailed as one of the country’s greatest civil rights leaders. Happy Cesar Chavez Day!

“We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice. But if you give yourself totally to the non-violence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone. And in giving of yourself you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” – Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez’s Commonwealth Club Address (Click to hear his speech)

[Text version of the speech]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lee, Mrs. Black, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty-one years ago, this last September, on a lonely stretch of railroad track paralleling U.S. Highway 101 near Salinas, 32 Bracero farm workers lost their lives in a tragic accident. The Braceros had been imported from Mexico to work on California farms. They died when their bus, which was converted from a flatbed truck, drove in front of a freight train. Conversion of the bus had not been approved by any government agency. The driver had tunnel vision. Most of the bodies laid unidentified for days. No one, including the grower who employed the workers, even knew their names. Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions, beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement near tomato fields in San Diego County; tomato fields, which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw at them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices and they carry in water from irrigation ditches.

Child labor is still common in many farm areas. As much as 30 percent of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are underaged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in states, conducted union elections, since they qualified as workers. Some 800,000 underaged children work with their families harvesting crops across America. Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population. Malnutrition among migrant workers’ children is 10 times higher than the national rate. Farm workers’ average life expectancy is still 49 years, compared to 73 years for the average American.

All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded. That dream was born in my youth, it was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked.

I’m not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn’t understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.

Later in the 50s, I experienced a different kind of exploitation. In San Jose, in Los Angeles and in other urban communities, we, the Mexican-American people, were dominated by a majority that was Anglo. I began to realize what other minority people had discovered; that the only answer, the only hope was in organizing. More of us had to become citizens, we had to register to vote, and people like me had to develop the skills it would take to organize, to educate, to help empower the Chicano people.

I spent many years before we founded the union learning how to work with people. We experienced some successes in voter registration, in politics, in battling racial discrimination — successes in an era where Black Americans were just beginning to assert their civil rights and when political awareness among Hispanics was almost non-existent. But deep in my heart, I knew I could never be happy unless I tried organizing the farm workers. I didn’t know if I would succeed, but I had to try.

All Hispanics, urban and rural, young and old, are connected to the farm workers’ experience. We had all lived through the fields, or our parents had. We shared that common humiliation. How could we progress as a people even if we lived in the cities, while the farm workers, men and women of our color, were condemned to a life without pride? How could we progress as a people while the farm workers, who symbolized our history in this land, were denied self-respect? How could our people believe that their children could become lawyers and doctors and judges and business people while this shame, this injustice, was permitted to continue?

Those who attack our union often say it’s not really a union. It’s something else, a social movement, a civil rights movement — it’s something dangerous. They’re half right. The United Farm Workers is first and foremost a union, a union like any other, a union that either produces for its members on the bread-and-butter issues or doesn’t survive. But the UFW has always been something more than a union, although it’s never been dangerous, if you believe in the Bill of Rights. The UFW was the beginning. We attacked that historical source of shame and infamy that our people in this country lived with. We attacked that injustice, not by complaining, not by seeking handouts, not by becoming soldiers in the war on poverty; we organized.

Farm workers acknowledge we had allowed ourselves to become victims in a democratic society, a society where majority rules and collective bargaining are supposed to be more than academic theories and political rhetoric. And by addressing this historical problem, we created confidence and pride and hope in an entire people’s ability to create the future. The UFW survival, its existence, were not in doubt in my mind when the time began to come.

After the union became visible, when Chicanos started entering college in greater numbers, when Hispanics began running for public office in greater numbers, when our people started asserting their rights on a broad range of issues and in many communities across this land. The union survival, its very existence, sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us, the poorest among us. The message was clear. If it could happen in the fields, it could happen anywhere: in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, but the coming of our union signaled the start of great changes among Hispanics that are only now beginning to be seen.

I’ve traveled through every part of this nation. I have met and spoken with thousands of Hispanics from every walk of life, from every social and economic class. And one thing I hear most often from Hispanics, regardless of age or position, and from many non-Hispanics as well, is that the farm workers gave them the hope that they could succeed and the inspiration to work for change.

From time to time, you will hear our opponents declare that the union is weak, that the union has no support, that the union has not grown fast enough. Our obituary has been written many times. How ironic it is that the same forces that argue so passionately that the union is not influential are the same forces that continue to fight us so hard.

The union’s power in agriculture has nothing to do with the number of farm workers on the union contract. It has nothing to do with the farm workers’ ability to contribute to democratic politicians. It doesn’t even have much to do with our ability to conduct successful boycotts. The very fact of our existence forces an entire industry, unionized and non-unionized, to spend millions of dollars year after year on increased wages, on improved working conditions, and on benefits for workers. If we were so weak and unsuccessful, why do the growers continue to fight us with such passion? Because as long as we continue to exist, farm workers will benefit from our existence, even if they don’t work under union contract. It doesn’t really matter whether we have 100,000 or 500,000 members. In truth, hundreds of thousands of farm workers in California and in other states are better off today because of our work. And Hispanics across California and the nation who don’t work in agriculture are better off today because of what the farm workers taught people about organization, about pride and strength, about seizing control over their own lives.

Tens of thousands of children and grandchildren of farm workers and the children and grandchildren of poor Hispanics are moving out of the fields and out of the barrios and into the professions and into business and into politics, and that movement cannot be reversed. Our union will forever exist as an empowering force among Chicanos in the Southwest. That means our power and our influence will grow and not diminish.

Two major trends give us hope and encouragement. First, our union has returned to a tried and tested weapon in the farm workers non-violent arsenal: the boycott. After the Agricultural Labor Relations Act became law in California in 1975, we dismantled our boycott to work with the law. During the early and mid ’70s millions of Americans supported our boycotts. After 1975, we redirected our efforts from the boycott to organizing and winning elections under the law. That law helped farm workers make progress in overcoming poverty and injustice.

At companies where farm workers are protected by union contracts, we have made progress in overcoming child labor, in overcoming miserable wages and working conditions, in overcoming sexual harassment of women workers, in overcoming discrimination in employment, in overcoming dangerous pesticides, which poison our people and poison the food we all eat. Where we have organized these injustices soon passed in history, but under Republican Governor George Deukmejian, the law that guarantees our right to organize no longer protects farm workers; it doesn’t work anymore.

In 1982, corporate growers gave Deukmejian one million dollars to run for governor of California. Since he took office, Deukmejian has paid back his debt to the growers with the blood and sweat of California farm workers. Instead of enforcing the law as it was written against those who break it, Deukmejian invites growers who break the law to seek relief from governor’s appointees. What does all this mean for farm workers? It means that the right to vote in free elections is a sham. It means the right to talk freely about the union among your fellow workers on the job is a cruel hoax. It means that the right to be free from threats and intimidation by growers is an empty promise. It means that the right to sit down and negotiate with your employer as equals across the bargaining table and not as peons in the fields is a fraud. It means that thousands of farm workers, who are owed millions of dollars in back pay because their employers broke the law, are still waiting for their checks. It means that 36,000 farm workers, who voted to be represented by the United Farm Workers in free elections, are still waiting for contracts from growers who refuse to bargain in good faith. It means that for farm workers child labor will continue. It means that infant mortality will continue. It means that — It means that malnutrition among children will continue. It means the short life expectancy and the inhuman living and working conditions will continue.

Are these make-believe threats? Are they exaggerations? Ask the farm workers who are waiting for the money they lost because the — the growers broke the law. Ask the farm workers who are still waiting for growers to bargain in good faith and sign contracts. Ask the farm workers who have been fired from their jobs because they spoke out for the union. Ask the farm workers who have been threatened with physical violence because they support the UFW, and ask the family of Rene Lopez, the young farm worker from Fresno who was shot to death last year because he supported the union as he came out of a voting booth. Ask the farm workers who watch their children go hungry in this land of wealth and promise. Ask the farm workers who see their lives eaten away by poverty and suffering.

These tragic events force farm workers to declare an international — a new international boycott of California grapes, except the three percent of grapes produced under union contract. That is why we — That is why we are asking Americans, once again, to join the farm workers by boycotting California grapes. The newest Harris Poll revealed that 17 million Americans boycotted grapes. We are convinced that those people and that goodwill have not disappeared. That segment of the population which makes the boycotts work are the Hispanics, the Blacks, the other minorities, our friends in labor and the Church. But it — But it is also an entire generation of young Americans who matured politically and socially in the ’60s and the ’70s, millions of people from — for whom boycotting grapes and other products became a socially accepted pattern of behavior. If you were young, Anglo and/or near campers during the late ’60s and early ’70s, chances are you supported farm workers.

For 15 — 15 years later, the men and women of that generation are alive and well. They are in their mid 30s and 40s. They are pursuing professional careers, their disposable incomes are relatively high, but they are still inclined to respond to an appeal from farm workers. The union’s mission still has meaning for them. Only today, we must translate the importance of a union for farm workers into the language of the 1980s. Instead of — Instead of talking about the right to organize, we must talk about protection against sexual harassment in the fields. We must speak about the right to quality food and food that is safe to eat. I can tell you the new language is working, the 17 million are still there. They are responding not to picket lines and leafleting alone, but to the high-tech boycott of today, a boycott that uses computers and direct mail and advertising techniques, which has made — which has revolutionized business and politics in recent years. We have achieved more success with a boycott in the first 11 months of 1984 than we achieved in the last 14 years, since 1970.

The other trend that gives us hope is the monumental growth of Hispanic influence in this country. And what that means in [is] increased population, increased social and economic clout and increased political influence. South of the Sacramento River, Hispanics now make up now more than 25 percent of the population. That figure will top 30 percent by the year 2000. There are now 1.1 million Spanish-surnamed registered voters in California. In 1975, there were 200 Hispanic elected officials at all levels of government. In 1984, there are over 400 elected judges, city council members, mayors, and legislators. In light of these trends, it’s absurd to believe or to suggest that we are going to go back in time as a union or as a people.

The growers often try to blame the union for their problems, to lay their sins off on us, sins for which they only have themselves to blame. The growers only have themselves to blame as they begin to reap the harvest of decades of environmental damage they have brought upon the land: the pesticides, the herbicides, the soil fumigants, the fertilizers, the salt deposits from thoughtless irrigation, the ravages of years of unrestrained poisoning of our soil and water. Thousands of acres of land in California have already been irrevocably damaged by this wanton abuse of nature. Thousands more will be lost unless growers understand that dumping more and more poison from the soil won’t solve their problems on the short or on the long term.

Health authorities in many San Joaquin Valley towns already warn young children and pregnant mothers not to drink the water, because of nitrates from fertilizers which has poisoned the ground water. The growers have only themselves to blame for an increasing demand by consumers for higher-quality food, food that isn’t tainted by toxics, food that doesn’t result from plant mutations or chemicals that produce red luscious-looking tomatoes that taste like alfalfa. The growers are making the same mistake American automakers made in the ’60s and ’70s when they refused to produce small economical cars and opened up the door to increased foreign competition.

Growers only have themselves to blame for increasing attacks on the publicly financed handouts and government welfare: water subsidies, mechanization research, huge subsidies for not growing crops. These special privileges came into being before the Supreme Court’s “one person, one vote” decision, at a time when rural lawmakers dominated the legislature and the Congress. Soon, those handouts could be in jeopardy as government searches for more revenue and as urban taxpayers take a closer look at front programs and who they really benefit. The growers only have themselves to blame for the humiliation they have brought upon succeeding waves of immigrant groups that have sweated and sacrificed for a hundred years to make this industry rich.

For generations, they have subjugated entire races of dark-skinned farm workers. These are the sins of growers, not the farm workers. We didn’t poison the land. We didn’t open the door to imported produce. We didn’t covet billions of dollars in government handouts. We didn’t abuse and exploit the people who work the land. Today the growers are like a punch-drunk old boxer who doesn’t know he’s past his prime. The times are changing; the political and social environment has changed. The chickens are coming home to roost, and the time to account for past sins is approaching.

I am told these days farm workers should be discouraged and pessimistic. The Republicans control the governor’s office and the White House. There is a conservative trend in the nation. Yet, we are filled with hope and encouragement. We have looked into the future and the future is ours. History and inevitability are on our side. The farm workers and their children and the Hispanics and their children are the future in California, and corporate growers are the past. Those politicians who ally themselves with the corporate growers and against farm workers and the Hispanics are in for a big surprise. They want to make their careers in politics; they want to hold power 20 and 30 years from now. But 20 and 30 years from now, in Modesto, in Salinas, in Fresno, in Bakersfield, in the Imperial Valley and in many of the great cities of California, those communities will be dominated by farm workers and not by growers, by the children and grandchildren of farm workers and not by the children and grandchildren of growers.

These trends are part of the forces of history which cannot be stopped. No person and no organization can resist them for very long; they are inevitable. Once social change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. Our opponents must understand that it’s not just the union we have built — unions like other institutions can come and go — but we’re more than institutions. For nearly 20 years, our union has been on the cutting edge of a people’s cause, and you cannot do away with an entire people and you cannot stamp out a people’s cause. Regardless of what the future holds for the union, regardless of what the future holds for farm workers, our accomplishments cannot be undone. La causa, our cause, doesn’t have to be experienced twice. The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm.

Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards, which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade, but it will come someday. And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament: “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed, and that fulfillment shall enrich us all. Thank you very much.

Recent events just how widespread and multifaceted the situation is:

• The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.
• Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.
• A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home
• Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

Stand up to violence against women! Today wear red to show your support. If you have a chance take a picture or video of yourself and friends wearing red. Send it to: beboldbered@gmail.com. They will post it!

Stop the violence, End the silence!!!!

For more info, or ways to participate see the site.

Surely after the DREAM Act is put into practice and if it truly is horrendous, can’t we focus our activism on that?

The political debate over undocumented immigrants in the US has largely ignored the plight of undocumented children. This ranges from education to health care. In this time of crisis, it is critical to have accurate information about the characteristics of the unauthorized population. It is estimated that the number of undocumented immigrants living in the country range from 11.5 to 12 million according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The number of children of undocumented immigrants living in this country account for 1.8 million, or 16 percent. These are the numbers that have been widely cited by advocates and policymakers.

According to Jeff Passel of the Urban Institute, the affected population nationally is about 65,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States five years or longer who graduate from high school each year would be eligible for conditional status; however, he also stated that number is too high.

…our previous estimate of approximately 65,000 undocumented alien high school graduates under age 21 who have lived in the United States for 5 years or longer enrolled in college should be considered substantially too high.

Using this information to convert the CPS data into a national estimate, estimated college enrollment probably amounts to about 7,000–13,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 5 years or longer (and have graduated from U.S. high schools.)

The difficulty in estimating the size of the undocumented population, coupled with the misleading and inaccurate reporting of high school dropouts and graduation rates in state after state, year after year, has, until recently, kept the public largely unaware of a serious educational and civil rights crisis. The fact is undocumented students face various challenges as they move along the academic pipeline. Once again, as I mentioned before I FULLY SUPPORT the educational component of the DREAM Act. We should all support the idea that higher education should be for all students, both documented and undocumented. However, I feel compelled to inform people on how the military will take the full advantage of the military component of the DREAM Act.

I understand the argument that is being made on how this Act could provide an incentive to continue their schooling and finish college, eventually contributing their education to the society and economy of the state. Many of these students came to the United States with their parents and have lived in the country for more than five years. A large percentage has either graduated from a public high school or obtained their GEDs. A report by the Texas House Research Organization showed that not helping students join college results in much greater costs to the state and further contributes to a uneducated work force. Yet only 15% of African Americans and 11% of Latina/o’s age 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree. For low-income students, regardless of race, on average only 23 out of 100 will even enroll in college.

The fact that the Dream Act was offered as an amendment to the Defense Department’s appropriations bill should have raised red flags. The military is no fool. They are aware that struggling K-12 public schools, dramatic increases in college tuition rates, and decreases in higher education funding have caused a leak in the pipeline for many of today’s youth. They are also aware of how states who passed a state version if the DREAM Act are doing.

But lets look at the facts, since 2001, there have been ten states which, have passed laws allowing undocumented students who attend and graduate from in-state high schools to qualify for in-state college. In 2001, California and Texas were the first states to enact legislation allowing in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. Following suit were Utah, Washington, New York, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, and Nebraska. In an analysis of the 10 states, Roberto G. Gonzales, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, found that they

“have not experienced a large influx of new immigrant students that ‘displaces’ native-born students or added financial burdens on their educational systems. In fact, these measures tend to increase school revenues by bringing in tuition from students who otherwise would not be in college.”

In CA, after the state passed Assembly Bill 540, 1,620 undocumented students were enrolled in the University of California and California State University systems in 2005. And in TX, in 2004, only 3,792 students were attending public colleges. The total number of students paying in-state tuition only amounted to 0.36% of the 1,054,586 students attending public colleges and universities in Texas. Gonzales also found that in other states that offered in-state tuition benefits, the number of undocumented students taking advantage remains low.

I know that one would argue that these students would benefit once they receive state or federally sponsored financial aid after they are granted their legal status. Just recently, the College Board released a report stating that Federal Student Aid to undergraduates shows slow growth, while tuition prices continue to increase.

Nearly half a million students received awards in 2006 under two new federal student grant programs. Though higher than the previous year, total federal grant funding to undergraduates was still lower in 2006-07 than it was three years earlier, after adjusting for inflation.

While the numbers are dismal, the one group capitalizing on the difficulties facing Latino youth are the armed services. Military recruiters have been preying upon the most vulnerable and economically challenged of our African, Latino, Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander communities. To put it simply, as long as the armed forces target people of color excessively, we will continue to die disproportionately in this unjust war.

According to the New York Times, the number of Latino/a enlisting in the Army rose 26 percent, and in the military as a whole, the increase was 18 percent from 2001 to 2005. The military will use any means to accomplish their goal of herding Latinos into the military corral. Latino youth is seen as a commodity, a group to be won and profited from, as opposed to living breathing people with futures.

One would argue that it is impossible to enlist if a person where to drop out, but what is not widely reported is how the military would benefit from the DREAM Act. In the Iraq war, citizenship would continue to be used as a recruiting tool aimed specifically at young immigrants, who are told that by enlisting, they will be able to quickly get citizenship for themselves and their entire families. As political conditions worsen for Latino families, many young Latinos will be unable to resist this offer. If one were to look closely, the DREAM Act would have required the student to register with the Department of Homeland Security, but, what is not mentioned in the Act is whether the empire would deport their parents? Even worse, the DREAM Act was also unclear as to what would happen to the siblings who do not meet the Act’s requirements.

While the military states that it only enlist qualified people, in truth, the military are signing up a large majority of new military recruits from GED programs and their Delayed Entry Program (DEP), which operates in high schools. Recruiters operate in high schools trying to get children as young as 14 to sign up for the military’s DEP, which allows them to finish high school before going on active duty.

Under the program, these young “men and women,” as recruiters are trained to call them, are targeted, tested, gifted, video-gamed, recruitment-faired and career-counseled into enlisting before they turn 18. They are also paid $2,000 for every friend they talk into signing up with them, and, until recently, were paid $50 for every name they brought in to a recruiter. The DEP website provides tips on how students can assist recruiters in signing up their friends. The student can:

• Provide your recruiter with names and numbers of anyone you know who is considering joining the military.
• Obtain the names and numbers of people who work with you or attend places you frequent and the best time to talk to them.
• Obtain the names and numbers of friends or acquaintances who sit with you in classes.
• Help your recruiter by screening his/her lists.
• Accompany your recruiter to places your friends normally hang out and make introductions.

For those who already are serving in the military, the immigration law clearly states what would happen if an immigrant where to decide to be a conscientious objector – “No person who … was a conscientious objector who performed no military, air, or naval duty … or refused to wear the uniform, shall be regarded as having served honorably or having been separated under honorable conditions.” According to military law experts, this means that although applying for conscientious objector status is not grounds for a dishonorable discharge, but attempting to act on it is considered dishonorable behavior. In other words, a person must engage in combat despite their beliefs or receive a dishonorable discharge which would have been a violation of the DREAM Act.

Because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires states to implement a school accountability system based on the absolute test scores of their students, this law has weakened the incentives for states to develop school accountability systems based on value-added measures of student performance. Under NCLB, schools with disadvantaged students generally face harsher sanctions than other schools, which some say is the cause for the dismal graduation rate.

We are losing an unacceptably high number of young people to education failure and labor market detachment. Communities are losing the battle to successfully educate huge numbers of youth. This means that the majority of Latino youth, most of which have been tracked out of the college system, will see military enlist as the only viable option.

Our students and our communities as a whole deserve full and immediate legalization without having to serve in the military. If DREAM Act is once again introduced in Congress again, it is important that we demand that the military option of the DREAM Act be replaced by a community service option, similar to the previous versions.

As Kyle has mentioned, I have not wavered from my principles. The teachings of Gandhi have a major influence in my own beliefs. I admired that he did not balk from taking his principles to their most logical extremes because he deeply felt they were an expression of the deepest love for all humans. He believed that in order to convince opponents of their injustice, one might have to suffer or die in order to win one’s own freedom. To do this it means standing firmly behind one’s ideals.

The difference between change and Revolutionary Change is its relationship to Truth. Regular change – shift in situation, alteration of state – transpires everywhere and anywhere. It occurs in the media, in our homes, in ourselves, and in our relationships. However, change becomes Revolutionary when heavy doses of honesty and past learnings are incorporated. Without truthfulness, there cannot be Revolutionary Change.

Is today the first day of the rest of your life?

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Click photo to see slide show

The protesters sat down in the highway in Tijuana a few hundred yards south of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, halting vehicles heading into the US.

A line of Mexican police in riot gear stood between the demonstrators and the US border. One the US side, the California Highway Patrol blocked southbound traffic on Interstate 5 with four Highway Patrol vehicles parked across the freeway stocked with police officers in riot gear. According to Mexico’s Frontera newspaper, police estimated the crowd at 2,500, however, our media claimed 200 to 300 people were involved. I wonder how KPBS reporter Amy Isackson concluded there were only 200 to 300 people. Was she even there? Did she even talk to the police? Or did she simply didn’t think care about this story because it was Mexico? Inquiring minds want to know.

Sixty years ago, George Orwell, wrote about the dangers of modern societies’ quest for a utopian society in his prophetic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. His totalitarian world of Oceania drew a striking resemblance to his world of 1948 and ours and the irony of the Houston Processing Center. In one passage, Orwell writes:

“… in the general hardening of outlook that set in … practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years — imprisonment without trial … the deportation of whole populations — not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

The Houston Processing Center is a minimum-security facility operated by the CCA, and it is where the private prison complex began. The site is located near Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport. The view behind prison privatization was to ease the strain on taxpayers by offering financial relief to overcrowded state-run prisons. In 1983, Thomas Beasley with assistance from venture capitalist Jack Massey, known for his role in building franchises like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), chartered Corrections Corporation of America. Prior to the facility being constructed, Immigration and Naturalization Service (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) called on CCA to build and then manage a detention center in Houston. CCA co-founders Tom Beasley and T. Don Hutto went to Houston to find a motel that would temporarily house detainees. Beasley and Hutto made an offer to the owner of the local Olympic Motel, a motel widely used for prostitution, which he gladly accepted. After a team of contractors modified the motel, INS approved the newly modified facility that would later house 86 detainees. Within a few months, Houston Processing Center was open for business. All of this took place in 1984 and this was the beginning of the Orwellian Ministry of Freedom.

One characteristic of an authoritarian society is its willingness to distort the truth while simultaneously suppressing opposition. While all governments sometimes resort to misrepresentations and lies, the Bush administration’s newspeak makes such action central to its maintenance of political power through the manipulation of the media and the public. Language is used in this context to mean one thing, but it actually means it’s opposite. We have now reached a point where discourse now goes unquestioned. The binding force of today’s society, largely, is a web of symbols that enables people to control and make sense of their experience in patterned ways, such as labeling immigrants as both “illegals” and “aliens.” The primary use of these terms is to denote the criminalization of a human being, without ever being explicitly charged or convicted.

One can even make the argument that using these terms can be compared to what Orwell called an “unperson” – people who were erased from existence by the government and put outside the law. By detaining them, in effect, this county has effectively made them “unpersons.” Once detained they are further dehumanized through systematic psychological torture – reminded with messages how they are not a person, they don’t exist, and they can do anything they like to them. All this only serves as a symbolic reminder to the general public how they are no longer part of society, they have been “vaporized.” The fact that many people are unwilling to question such thinking is disturbing because it overlooks how our business elites are exploiting them as cheap labor while continuing to perpetuate a world system, which ensures a steady supply of migrants into the US.

My experience at this protest, I must admit, was very different from the one I had at T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, TX. Like Hutto, you can tell this place is a prison; however, wrought iron fencing surrounded the facility instead two layers of fencing. Another distinction is the heightened security taken for this demonstration. The presence of law enforcement at the site was overwhelming; the protest was mostly patrolled by officers from the Houston Police Department. Throughout the event, HPD would patrol the area with squad cars and horses. HPD would drive around the block, but as they would approach us, they would drive very slowly to take a good look at us and take mental notes. I also noticed there were a few unmarked black cars monitoring the front of the Houston Processing Center and the warehouses next to the site. Homeland Security was also present at the demonstration; they had used a van to block the entry gate, which ended being a problem when a couple of ICE vehicles blocked traffic as they were forced to wait before entering the facility. During the event, ICE officer was doing a little videotaping – “domestic spying” – of all the protesters, speakers and the cars parked on the side of the road. This was definitely different from the Hutto protest, where only two CCA vans were blocking access to the facility along with two executives from the Taylor Police Department showing up and then leaving. From what I was told, it was higher than the last two protest.

I had taken pictures of the event; however, CVS’ photo processing machine strangely seems to be out of order the last few times I have tried to pick them up. I dropped off my disposable digital camera last Saturday. (As soon as I get those pictures, I will post them up.) Even though not many people showed up, that didn’t deflate the energy that was there, after a couple of speakers spoke, we started chanting, this included; “No Justice No Peace, Detainees must be Released” / “CCA -Shut it Down! ICE – Shut it Down! HPD – Shut it down!” / “En Las Luchas Obreras, no hay Fronteras.” I heard Ray Hill host of The Prison Show on Houston Pacifica Radio station KPFT, 90.1FM, Gloria Rubac from the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Rob Block from Houston Sin Fronteras Defense Committee and Ben Browning, one of the two activist from Houston Sin Fronteras who locked themselves to the entrance gate of the Houston Processing Center with a u-lock.

During the rally, I had the opportunity to say with Ben Browning and Ashley Turner, the other activist who locked themselves to the gate. I wanted to know at what point they felt they needed to do something. I believed it was important to know because we are told what occurred, what was done and why it was done, but what is left out is the underlying reasons that motivated them – the ganas to go for it. The way we are handling the social problems facing us today, is one of apathy, frustration, cynicism, and retreat into our private worlds? We do a lot of complaining about what is wrong with our lives and in our communities, but we don’t spend nearly enough time and energy empowering ourselves because we act as if we were powerless. So when a story like Ben Browning and Ashley Turner comes around, it good to highlight those who are fighting the conditions facing them and others. Just because we are not informed about who is trying to bring about social change, does not mean it is not happening. I feel as a blogger, I have a responsibility to inform people of the things taking place so that they too can see that what they are experiencing is similar to what other people are feeling, that they are not alone in their problems.

We have bought into the American dream, which is all about securing things, a market mentality that has invaded every sphere of our lives that have traditionally functioned as foci of collective purposes, history, and culture. We are caught up in our private pursuits; we allow the workings of our major institutions – the economy and government – to go on “over our heads.” The only way to break this monotony, it is important that we not only expose the current problems, but we must challenge the status quo. Moreover, as bloggers, we must take every opportunity to highlight the different type of activism that are taking place within our own neighborhood to provide people the information that is often censored, and with a perspective the mainstream media systematically ignores.

We must shatter the illusion that an individual, not groups of people, is the source of power in society. This line of thinking enables us to blame all social problems on the individual: If people are poor, it is their own fault. If they just applied themselves, they could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The truth of the matter, all social struggles are not won by one person, but by organizing many people together, by meeting, talking, strategizing and by people risking their lives.

However, to get there we must be willing to express our rage at the system. It is true that many people are trying to survive under increasingly difficult situations. We are so busy juggling our lives just to remain afloat; it often feels we are short on time to become socially and politically active. But in order to bring about change, we have to be more assertive and public about it. After talking to Ashley and Ben individually, they both expressed the same rage and frustration to the point, as Ashley expressed to me, “where they believed that someone had to do something.” Both Ashley and Ben knew the consequences of their actions, they understood they could be arrested, but they still went forward and did it.

We can no long keep the anger we have about all the deprivation and injustices inside, they are countless and it will eat us up inside like a cancer. However at the same time we must remain hopeful that there is a possibility to build a different kind of society where human needs can be met. Personally, what Ben and Ashley did took a lot of courage, and it is this type of courage people are craving to see, to know somewhere out there people still care for their fellow human being. As I mentioned before social struggles are never won by one person, however, as history shows, it only takes a few to create a spark that causes people to wake up, to dream again and have the courage to stand up, and to speak out and demand social justice.

We live in a critical time. It is time to put a halt to the increasing incarceration rate, the so-called anti-terrorist bills, and the attacks on affirmative action, welfare and immigrants created by the repressive apparatus of the state.