A new report this week from Mayors Against Illegal Guns reveals the massive--and growing--role played in the Mexican drug war by crime guns trafficked into Mexico from US states--particularly border states, with Arizona leading the way on a per-capita basis. This comes just on the heels of a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center, showing a dramatic drop in the rate of illegal immigration.
A press release from Mayors Against Illegal Guns that accompanied the report stated:
The more than 500 members of the bi-partisan coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns today released a new report, entitled The Movement of Guns Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, that reveals that Southwest border states supplied a disproportionate number of crime guns to Mexico from 2006 to 2009. The report analyzes new data made available to Mayors Against Illegal Guns by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The new data, released by the coalition co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, builds on the coalition's first groundbreaking source state analysis, The Movement of Illegal Guns in America, released in December 2008.
"Illegal guns and their accompanying violence devastate communities across our country, now we know more about how guns purchased here have helped sustain violent drug wars in Mexico," said coalition co-chair and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "I hope this report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a wake up call for policy makers - it is too easy for criminals and traffickers to get guns."
Just as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer finally admits that there are no beheaded corpses in her state's deserts. these two reports combine to show that the entire wave of hysteria she's been riding and helping to foment has everything exactly backwards: hard times are not just reducing illegal immigration, according to Pew, but are actually reducing the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US, at the same time that US-bought guns are exporting violence to Mexico.
Perhaps most striking is the dramatic decrease in the "Time-to-Crime" in Mexico, which experts regard as a key indicator of illegal gun trafficking:
This is the second and third parts in a series of blogs Nourishing the Planet will be writing about workers in the food system. Nourishing the Planet research intern Ronit Ridberg recently spoke with Erik Nicholson, National VP of the United Farm Workers of America. In the first part of this two-part interview, Erik talks about the global agricultural system and the role American consumers play in it. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
Name: Erik Nicholson
Affiliation: National Vice President, United Farm Workers of America; International director of the Guest Worker Membership Program. Founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers of America is the nation's first successful and largest farm workers union currently active in 10 states.
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Bio: Erik Nicholson has worked extensively on pesticide issues affecting farm workers and their families as well as child labor, housing, consumer outreach, education and legislative issues. He currently serves as one of two national farm worker representatives to the Environmental Protection Agency's national pesticide advisory committee, the Pesticide Program Dialog Committee.
Nicholson led the two-and-a-half year organizing campaign at the national guest worker labor-contracting firm Global Horizons, resulting in the first national guest worker union contract in the history of the United States. He currently is working to develop an international infrastructure to better advocate on behalf of guest workers.
Can you please contextualize the work you do, in what has become a global system of agriculture?
We are now importing the majority of the food we eat. The overwhelming majority of workers who harvest the food we eat in the United States are not from this country. And many if not most of the workers employed in the fields in the United States are displaced farmers from their own countries (mostly Mexico but not exclusively.) So we're seeing that many of the same pressures and challenges that are facing farmers in the US are the very same ones that are displacing small farmers in the global South and resulting in them coming in search of employment to the United States, Canada, Australia, and European Union. At the same time, farmers and sometimes their spouses in the US are looking for second jobs in more urban settings.
When Vietnam entered the global market with coffee we saw an unprecedented exodus of coffee farmers out of eastern Mexico. When NAFTA was signed, mass exodus of corn farmers - so we see a direct correlation between these international trade policies and agricultural practices and kind of the global crisis of agriculture that we're facing.
Within that context you look at agriculture in the United States and pretty much anyone born in this country has no aspirations to work in the fields. And I think if we're honest with ourselves, the reason is because we all know the conditions are not good, the pay is pretty bad, and there's really no benefits. As a result we have depended on immigrant workers to come up and do the work that we haven't wanted to do. And so if you look at the history of the United Farm Workers, we've had workers literally from around the world as members - from Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Yemen, African Americans and of course, Mexicans, Central Americans, and the internationalization of the work-force continues. We now have workers working under contract from Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and it's very much become a global workforce that is harvesting the food we eat.
UFW recently hosted an international gathering of farm workers from 14 different countries. Can you share some of your impressions of that gathering?
It was just amazing to have people who are doing the same work we've been doing for fifty years in the United States, together in the same room. We were in awe of just how bad it is out there. We think it's bad here, and then you talk to folks from Ecuador or Peru, who come to the States telling us, "What are you guys complaining about? You don't know the half of it." And so as we really compared notes, the contexts were different but it was appalling just how bad it is for farm workers across the world. That was sobering.
But at the same time, it was tremendously exciting to meet people who give a damn, and who are actually out there in the trenches trying to make a difference. It was a very lively conversation. We did a lot of work just getting to know each other and the different contexts in which we're working and actively looking for ways to collaborate. One of the first things that came to mind for all of us was that we need to educate the world about how bad it is for farm workers and why everyone who eats should care! We've established relationships that have never existed before, and are actively working to build upon those to see what we can do for workers globally.
What do the popular "food movements" of today have to do with farm workers' rights, and how can individual consumers get more involved in supporting change around the world?
Just look at the whole conversation about "sustainability", the Buy Local fad, and that was preceded by the organic fad, and the whole mythology that was erected around those concepts that included somehow that workers were going to be treated better. When the reality is there are local farmers I would never ever in a million years buy something from, and gladly pay a premium to have it flown in 2000 miles because I know workers are treated well. And while workers aren't exposed to as many toxins in organics, there are still toxins in the organic world that are allowed, and organics does nothing on the labor front. So I think we need to make sure that labor is part of the equation.
I've found that people are frequently reluctant to dirty their hands because you're dealing with three very politically charged issues: the sustainability of small farmers, immigration policy, and labor. If you really want to stand with the people who are out there right now in the field, rather than projecting a better future theoretically, find out who's picking your food and how you can stand with them. Boycott Arizona and let your voice be heard that those types of laws are unacceptable. Support immigration reform, so we can provide legal status to the hundreds of thousands of people that put food on our table. And then really be an advocate to help support the people that are here, now, in their struggle to make a better life for themselves.
It is incumbent on us as people who care about food and care about the viability of small farmers, to understand that these realities are the same for hundreds if not millions of people worldwide.
A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 14-year-old Mexican boy on June 7. At RaceWire, Julianne Hing reports that "Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca [was] on the Mexican side of the El Paso-Juarez border [and] was shot and killed by a Border Patrol officer, who was on the U.S. side." The incident has been condemned by the Mexican government and sparked investigations by the Customs and Border Protection agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The exact details are still being investigated. The Border Patrol claims that the teen was throwing rocks at agents, but eye-witnesses on the Mexican side of the border say otherwise.
Over Memorial Day weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in Phoenix, AZ to protest SB1070, a law that immigrants to carry papers at all times and makes it possible for any police officer to detain on suspicion of immigration status alone.
On Monday, climate activists, nonprofit leaders, and governmental officials will gather in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to look for new ideas to address climate change. The conference, organized by leading social organizations like 350.0rg, "will advocate the right to "live well," as opposed to the economic principle of uninterrupted growth," as Inter Press Service explains. In the absence of real leadership from the world's governments, the conferees at Cochabamba are looking for solutions "committed to the rights of people and environment."
The United States certainly isn't stepping up. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), were supposed to release their climate legislation next week, just in time for Earth Day. But yesterday the word came down that the release was being pushed back by another week, to April 26.
No matter when it finally arrives, like other recent environmental initiatives, this round of climate legislation falls short. Even if Congress manages to pass a bill-and there's no guarantee-it will likely leave plenty of room for the coal, oil, and gas industries to continue pouring carbon into the atmosphere. And a wimpy effort from Congress will hinder international work to limit carbon emissions: As a prime polluter, the United States needs to put forward a real plan for change.
Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman
Although the text of the bill is not public yet, it is likely that this attempt at Senate climate legislation will limit carbon emissions only among utilities and gradually phase in other sectors of the economy. On Democracy Now!, environmentalist Bill McKibben called the bill "an incredible accumulation of gifts to all the energy industries, in the hopes that they won't provide too much opposition to what's a very weak greenhouse gas pact."
Climate reform began with a leaner idea, a cap-and-trade system that limited carbon emissions while encouraging innovation. The Nation's editors document the transformation of climate reform from the Obama administration's original cap-and-trade proposal to the behemoth tangle it has become. Both the House and the Senate fattened their versions of climate legislation with treats for the energy industry. The Senate's new idea to gradually expand emissions reduction through a bundle of energy bills only opens up more opportunities for influence.
"Some of these pieces of legislation may pass; others may fail; all are ripe for gaming by corporate lobbies," the editors write. "Kerry-Lieberman-Graham would also skew subsidies in the wrong direction, throwing billions at "clean coal" technologies, nuclear power plants and offshore drilling, a questionable gambit favored by the Obama administration to garner support from Republicans and representatives from oil-, gas- and coal-producing states."
Even with these goodies, the climate bill may not pass. The Washington Independent rounds up the D.C. players to watch as the next fight unfolds, including the Chamber of Commerce's William Kovacs and the Environmental Protection Agency's Lisa Jackson.
Green leftovers
In theory, the climate bill should not be America's only ride to a greener future. But the other vehicles for green change choked during start-up. The EPA was going to regulate carbon emissions, but Congress has reared against that effort. The climate bill could snatch away that power from the executive branch.
If companies won't limit their carbon emissions, individuals still have the option for action. But as Heather Rogers explains in The Nation, carbon offsets, one of the most popular mechanisms for minimizing carbon use "are a dubious enterprise."
"To begin with, they don't cut greenhouse gases immediately but only over the life of a project, and that can take years--some tree-planting efforts need a century to do the work. And a project is effective only if it's successfully followed through; trees can die or get cut down, unforeseen ecological destruction might be triggered or the projects may simply go unbuilt."
The pull of carbon offsets should diminish as energy use in buildings, cars, food, and flights gains in efficiency and uses less carbon. But if the green jobs sector is any indication, that revolution has been slow in coming. ColorLines reports that "there are no firm numbers on how many newly trained green workers are still jobless. But stories abound of programs that turn out workers with new, promising skills-in solar panel installation and weatherization, in places like Seattle and Chicago-and who nonetheless can't find jobs."
Cochabamba's unique approach
These failures and setbacks don't just affect Americans; they keep our leaders from negotiating with their international peers. The United Nations led a conference last winter in Copenhagen that promised to hash out carbon limits, yet produced no binding agreement. This coming winter, the UN will try again in Mexico, but if the United States shows up with the scant plan put forward by Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman, those negotiations have little promise.
In Cochabamba, leaders from inside and outside the government will attend a summit to discuss the future of climate change action. In The Progressive, Teo Ballve writes that,
"One of the bolder ideas is the creation of a global climate justice tribunal that could serve as an enforcement mechanism. And conference participants are already working on a "Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights" meant to parallel the U.N.'s landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948."
With U.S. government action paling, it might take outside ideas like these to revitalize the push towards a green future. By the end of next week, we'll see if the Cochabamba group made any more progress than the bigwigs at Copenhagen.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Americans don't know what to think about climate change anymore. A few years ago, the public more or less trusted the science that said human activity was raising global temperatures, but now that Congress and the Obama administration have hemmed and hawed about climate issues, we're not longer so sure.
Forty-eight percent of Americans-more of us than ever before-believe that reports of global warming are "generally exaggerated," according to a new Gallup poll. Climate science hasn't changed, so it's not crazy to look at these numbers and think that conservatives' incessant critiques of climate change may be working.
A perfect political storm
These shifts in opinion started around 2008. Aaron Wiener at the Washington Independent argues that the politics of climate change are driving American opinions about the reality of global warming. The percentage of Americans willing to put the blame for climate change on humans is about equal to the percentage of Americans still behind President Barack Obama's agenda, he notes.
"What was once a broad moral and scientific issue is now a centerpiece of the Democrats' legislative agenda," he writes.
Republicans have taken a political stand on climate change, too, one that reinforces the message that we can afford to ignore global warming. At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links the Gallup numbers to confusion about Copenhagen and to negative "Climategate" stories about a few climate scientists' unprofessional emails.
But taking a wider view, Drum points out another big problem: "The Republican Party has largely decided that climate change simply doesn't exist. It's a hoax," he says.
Green xenophobia
It's also politically convenient for a party that throws a tantrum every time the president produces a policy idea. But in another corner of the right's world, conservatives are eager to defend the country's environment against the burden of immigration.
Jamilah King reports for ColorLines that Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), which is linked to a conservative anti-immigrant group, is warning that immigration "is pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit."
King refutes this notion, citing reports that population and pollution are not directly linked. "In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around," she writes. "They're more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food."
Impacts of climate change
Conservatives who'd prefer that immigrants stay on the other side of the border would do better to worry about Republicans' studied blindness to climate change. Without action, global warming could send waves of people north, as places like Mexico grow warmer and can no longer support the same amount of agriculture.
Inter Press Service lays out some of the detrimental effects of climate change on poorer countries, particularly on the female half of the population. Women are more vulnerable to the natural disasters that accompany global warming, and the tasks that they take on, like collecting water and firewood, will grow harder as water becomes more scarce.
Overall, Thalif Deen reports, "The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men."
Slow Senate progress
The Senate is trying to move forward on climate change legislation. A key group of Senators met this week at the White House with President Obama, but coming out, the legislators had only "vague observations" to share about progress, according to Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.
Part of the problem with the Senate's process is that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have already said that they'll likely discard the sort of cap-and-trade provisions that the House bill used to regulate carbon emissions. From an environmental point of view, the Senate is getting close to doing nothing at all.
"It's really clear that whatever attains 60 votes in the US Senate at this stage in the game is at best an extremely incremental step forward," Gillian Caldwell, campaign director at the environmental group 1Sky, told Sheppard.
The new progressive energy
The Senate seems more eager, along with President Obama, to embrace nuclear energy as a climate solution.
"I happen to be one of the Senators who's concerned about waste," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said at a recent summit, reports TPMDC. "But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time."
"If we don't expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) added. "Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives."
Considering the political will the Senate has been able to muster behind climate legislation, one might as well believe that reports of global warming are "greatly exaggerated." After all, you'd think that if there was a potentially catastrophic threat looming in the future, our elective representatives might want to, you know, do something about that.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
There is an increasing concern that the overuse of antibiotics in the food supply is a major contributor to the rise in drug-resistant supergerms.
This column is based on a single and quite extraordinary statistic: Food animal production accounts for 70 percent -- 70 percent! -- of the antibiotics used in the United States. That doesn't even include the antibiotics used for animals that actually get sick. That figure is for "non-therapeutic use" such as growth promotion and disease prevention.
This week's Wire focuses on the opportunities for change that crisis can introduce. From the H1N1 "Swine" flu's declining fervor to 2009's May Day marches for worker rights and immigrant solidarity; from the tragic killing of Luis Ramirez to legislative movement on immigration, these are tumultuous times. But it is precisely such conflict and challenge that provides the best opportunities to make lasting change.
So far, swine flu hasn't developed into the deadly global pandemic that many feared. Was it all media hype, as Cervantes argues for AlterNet? Or did all that quarantining and hand-washing actually help? While we'll never know what might have been, perhaps we should consider the relatively mild swine flu as a cheap lesson--a dry run, if you will.
It's no shock that those long-opposed to All Things Immigrant are using the Swine Flu outbreak—which has mostly affected Mexicans at this point—to ratchet anti-immigrant rhetoric up to an irresponsible level. It's disappointing though, especially because the last few weeks saw more rational dialogue emerging in media coverage. This week's Wire examines the voices talking about immigration both in the media and on the ground, from those recycling age-old "eliminationist" rhetoric to those who put their own bodies on the line to fight for inclusive justice.
In 2008, a disturbing trend developed in mainstream media regarding Mexico. While Mexico's President Felipe Calderón began his aggression against the Cartels roughly two years ago, the resulting uptick in violence was of no real interest to mainstream media. But when the U.S. Joint Forces Command reportJoint Operating Environment (JOE 2008) was issued in November, 2008, and declared Mexico and Pakistan nations in danger of a "rapid and sudden collapse," mainstream news outlets and certain politicians began broadcasting fears of violence spilling over into the US.
Last week, President Obama announced his intention to address immigration reform in the next few months in a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The statement came as a relief to many, especially with recent reports of human rights abuses within the U.S. detention system. But, as most of the President's statements seem crafted to appeal to warring political constituencies, his actual intentions are still elusive.
As of Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to be in Mexico City for the rest of the week. I'm there for a family event, but I'm also there because I've never been, and have always wanted to go, and I expect to do some reporting there.
I'm really excited to be going because Mexico is one of the great countries in the world, and Mexico City specifically has such an incredible history. I'm hoping my brief visit there will give me some exposure to that history and to Mexican culture, and if you have any suggestions for must-see or must-do things in Mexico City, please use the comments section to let me know.
I should have access to the Internet there, so I will be posting throughout the week, though I expect posting at times will be a lot lighter than it usually is for me. But rest assured, I'll be online and trying to keep up with work!
STATE BLOGS
Name: Erik Nicholson