As Congress considered the bailout of Wall Street, there appears to have been little focus in the debate on the underlying causes of the larger economic situation that the United States is in. Our current predicament is not just about mortgages or the undercapitalization of the financial sector; it is also very much about the shift in priorities in this country over the last thirty years. We have come a long way from the idea of The Great Society, a productive national community that not only took care of itself, but grows consistently stronger for having done so. In the New York Times this past weekend, Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of bioethics at the National Institutes for Health, argues that in some ways, the current crisis is a symptom of "chronic problems," specifically the continued unfulfillment of our human right to health care:
[S]olving the deep problem of the economy cannot be done without solving the health care mess. Economic, tax and health care policy are inextricably linked. Middle-class incomes have hardly grown in 30 or more years (except for five years in the 1990s when health care costs were moderated), budget deficits are escalating and will only worsen and investment in education and other engines of long-term economic growth are declining.
These problems are all driven by health care. Rather than go to wage increases, almost all of the growth in workers' productivity has been swallowed up by rising health care costs.
Basic economic security cannot exist without good health, and without a foundation of economic security, our efforts to aspire to be a better nation--one that fulfills the interconnected promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--are in danger of proving futile. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his 1944 State of the Union address, "we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence."
It's been a big week for equality, as Congress has passed two major pieces of legislation that move the country in the direction of equal access for all Americans regardless of disability.
The major headline which you have probably heard about is the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments. These amendments restore the spirit of the original Americans with Disabilities Act, which had come under fire from Supreme Court rulings that put people with disabilities in a Catch-22 situation. As explained by Cristóbal Joshua Alex of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights:
In one case after another, the Supreme Court whittled away at the landmark Americans with Disabilities Actby ignoring Congressional intent and narrowly interpreting the definition of disability. [. . .] This created a Catch-22 situation: if a person is able to limit the effect of having a disability, say by taking medication or using a medical device, that person would no longer be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act and employers were free to discriminate at will. The result has been devastating. Plaintiffs lose 97% of employment-related cases under the ADA.
The absurdity played out in courtrooms across the country where judges, following the Supreme Court precedent, ruled that people with epilepsy, cancer, muscular dystrophy, mental retardation and even
blindness were not "disabled" under the ADA. But, as the bill's sponsor, Congressman Steny Hoyer points out, the ADA is not about disability, it's about the prevention of wrongful and unlawful discrimination.
The Amendments passed by an almost unheard of unanimous voice vote in both the House and the Senate. The impressive victory was a result of all stakeholders in the process, business, labor, and advocates for people with disabilities, recognizing that they were all part of the same community and could find common ground to restore the anti-discrimination protections of the law. When we unite around common American Values such as fairness and dignity, we can find commonalities with those who we might usually think of as our adversaries.
More good news came yesterday with the news that the Congress has also passed a long sought-after mental health parity bill that requires health insurers to treat mental health coverage on equal terms with physical health coverage. The legislation passed in the Senate as part of a larger renewable energy bill by a vote of 93-2, and in the House by a vote of 376-47. In the words of some of the Senators key to the passage of the legislation:
"This bill provides mental health parity for about 113 million Americans who work for employers with 50 employees or more," said Mr. Domenici, who has a daughter with schizophrenia.
"No longer will people with mental illness have their mental health coverage treated differently than their coverage for other illnesses like cancer, heart disease and diabetes."
With this bill, said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, "we are eliminating the stigma and affirming the dignity" of people with mental illness.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said, "Mental illness will no longer take a back seat to physical illness."
Mental health parity was one of the signature issues of the late progressive champion, Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who died tragically in a small plane crash while campaigning for re-election in 2002. His work, and those who have continued it, demonstrate that equality, opportunity, and dignity are American, not partisan, goals.
Our friends at the American News Project have posted a video on the usage of tax shelters by the super-rich. "Super-Rich Tax Cheats" shines a spotlight on the $1.5 trillion currently estimated to be hidden off-shore from the IRS by the very wealthiest of Americans.
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) estimates the resulting lost tax revenue at approximately $100 billion. The video puts this number into context by showing what the government spends on other programs. This is more than the federal government spends on education and training ($89.9 billion). It's triple what is spent on the environment and natural resources ($33.1 billion) and almost five times more than what we spend on temporary assistance for needy families, or TANF ($20.9). Besides looking simply at people clearly breaking the law, the video also has a short segment with Warren Buffet, one of the world's wealthiest men, arguing for tax fairness. This is key if our nation is to be stronger and we are to truly come together as a community.
• Department of Homeland Security officials have come out in support of a Center for Immigration Studies report that claims that border control measures are the cause of a decrease in immigration to the U.S. However, the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California, San Diego has rebutted those claims and determined that the border patrol apprehends fewer than half of the undocumented immigrants that come into the country through the Mexico/U.S. border. According to The Huffington Post, the Center for Immigration Studies (an anti-immigrant advocacy group) and the Department of Homeland Security failed to consider reasons other than border control measures that explain why immigration to the U.S. would naturally decline:
When citing the decrease in both apprehensions at the border and remittances sent by workers in the United States to family members in Mexico, Chertoff also failed to consider the fact that undocumented immigration naturally decreases when the U.S. economy is in recession. [Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Dr. Wayne] Cornelius' report shows that undocumented migration clearly responds to changing U.S. economic conditions, with significant decreases during economic downturns such as the one we are in now.
Moreover, Chertoff's border control measures are completely inconsistent with the fundamentally positive effect immigration has on American communities. Providing opportunity for immigrants has been a core value in the U.S. since its founding. To see more immigration myths dispelled, read The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Immigrants and Opportunity.
• In one of last month's blog roundups on The State of Opportunity, a story about a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona appeared. That same sheriff, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is in the news once again. An editorial in The Washington Post discusses how "Sheriff Joe" and his officers have been continuing the "policing strategy" of locking up all Hispanic people they encounter, regardless of if they have any evidence that they are undocumented immigrants or have committed any crime. According to Arizona Central, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has had to resort to calling for a media mobilization against Arpaio:
"He (Arpaio) has become the false messiah," Gordon said. "But when the light is shined on him, people will see that he isn't helping to fight illegal immigration and he's just making the situation worse. You've got an individual with a badge and a gun who's breaking the law and abusing his authority."
We need real solutions, ones that are brought about by comprehensive immigration reform and promote opportunity for all, not a gross miscarriage of justice carried out by a rogue officer like Arpaio.
• Thankfully, not all police officers feel the same way Arpaio does - George Gascón, a former assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, has written this op-ed for The New York Times. In it he argues that using local police officers as a means to enforce federal immigration policy will ultimately lead to the public, particularly in communities of color, distrusting the police department:
Here in Arizona, a wedge is being driven between the local police and some immigrant groups. Some law enforcement agencies are wasting limited resources in operations to appease the public's thirst for action against illegal immigration regardless of the legal or social consequences...
If we become a nation in which the local police are the default enforcers of a failing federal immigration policy, the years of trust that police departments have built up in immigrant communities will vanish. Some minority groups may once again view police officers as armed instruments of government oppression.
• The effects from the ICE raid in Postville are still being felt, reminding us just how detrimental this raid was to the Iowa community and America as a whole. The Des Moines Register is reporting that the new employees at the Agriprocessors plant have had a significant, negative effect on the local community:
The impact is evident: New laborers are changing Postville. The Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant, the site of the immigration raid, once employed men and women with families. Now, its workers are mostly young, single people with no stake in the community and nothing to lose...
The rise in crime has strained Postville's tiny police department. One night in June, the calls were so numerous that police asked the local bar to close early.
A protest rally also took place in Postville last weekend - it was documented in a video, which is now available on YouTube.
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a ground breaking executive order requiring all city agencies to provide language assistance services for people who speak Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian or French Creole. According to The New York Times, this is the first time that all New York City agencies will be forced to follow the same standard in providing translation and language interpretation services to people who do not speak English:
Immigrant advocates and city officials say it is the most comprehensive order of its kind in the country. The mayor refused to be specific about how much the services will cost, saying only that it was a "relatively small" amount given the size of the city's budget. He added: "This executive order will make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation."
The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All details the need for immigrants to have access to language assistance services in order to achieve their full potential. In providing immigrant groups with this access, Mayor Bloomberg has taken the entire city forward and empowered communities throughout New York.
• Politicians have also been busy down in Washington, D.C. working to provide language assistance for immigrant families across the United States. At noon today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman Mike Honda are introducing the "Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act of 2008." In addition to providing English language literacy and civics education to immigrant families who are in the process of becoming citizens, the bill:
will help immigrant communities become a more integral part of the American fabric and maximize their social and economic contributions.
Legislation like this is crucial to aiding immigrants on their way to becoming U.S. citizens, and is a necessary part of treating immigrants like full and equal members of our community.
• The aftermath of the ICE raids in Postville, Houston, and most recently Rhode Island, is still being felt in communities across America. However, a Washington Post article describes how it is not only workers and their families feeling this strife - now, it is employers as well:
The crackdown's relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.
• A story in the MetroWest Daily News calls attention to a local organization in Massachusetts, the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center, that is defending the rights of immigrant workers in the U.S. Immigrant workers are routinely subject to labor law violations, including the denial of compensation and overtime, as well as unnecessary injuries on job sites. In addition, the article points out that all immigrants, including undocumented ones, have worker rights:
Contrary to what many people think, illegal workers have rights. Although in the country illegally, those who work are entitled to be paid for their labor and overtime. If they are injured on the job, they are eligible for workers' compensation coverage, said [Diego] Low, [director of the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center] who has been advocating for immigrant workers' rights for the last 25 years.
• A DMI Blog posting points to an extremely upsetting Associated Press report of a beating in a Pennsylvania town that left a 25 year old Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez dead.
Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs in factories and farm fields.
• The New York Times is reporting that a recent study of the American health care system, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, has found that while the U.S. has the most expensive health system in the world, the quality it delivers is grossly inferior to other industrialized nations' health care. The report highlighted the fact that many of the improvements made in the U.S. health care system over the years, such as decreasing the number of preventable deaths, dwarfed in comparison to the greater achievements other countries made:
Other countries worked hard to improve, according to the Commonwealth Fund researchers. Britain, for example, focused on steps like improving the performance of individual hospitals that had been the least successful in treating heart disease. The success is related to "really making a government priority to get top-quality care," [Karen] Davis, [president of the Commonwealth Fund] said.
The report also emphasized the inefficiencies in the U.S. health care system and the role they play in diminishing quality:
The administrative costs of the medical insurance system consume much more of the current health care dollar, about 7.5 percent, than in other countries...
Bringing those administrative costs down to the level of 5 percent or so as in Germany and Switzerland, where private insurers play a significant role, would save an estimated $50 billion a year in the United States, Ms. Davis said.
• An article in Friday's Washington Post discusses the potential that community health providers have to save states millions of dollars in health care costs by shifting some of their health programs' emphasis to preventing illness. A recent Trust for America's Health report found that nonprofit community programs could have an enormous role in developing health initiatives such as anti-smoking laws, healthy eating and physical activity programs. However, despite the fact that many of these programs target at risk groups in impoverished areas, they face a serious lack of funding:
The researchers found that many such programs lack funding, a chronic problem for many preventive health initiatives.
"People think preventive health care pays off 20 or 30 years from now, but this shows you get the money back almost immediately, and then the savings grow bigger and bigger," [Senator Tom] Harkin [D-Iowa] said.
• An opinion piece in yesterday's Chicago Tribune calls attention to the health disparities among women with HIV. Black women have higher rates of HIV, despite the fact that studies have shown that they do not engage in "risky sex" any more than white women do:
A black woman in a poor neighborhood, for example, who engages in the lowest levels of risky behavior is dramatically more likely to acquire a sexually transmitted disease than higher-risk women in communities with low rates of infection, according to public health experts...
In short, who you are, and where you live and, consequently, the sexual partners you choose, matters when it comes to HIV prevention.
• "The Shame of Postville, Iowa," an editorial in Sunday's New York Times, calls attention to an essay written by Erik Camayd-Freixas. Mr. Camayd-Freixas is a professor and court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of last month's ICE raid on the Postville community. He was disgusted when he saw the injustice in the legal system that the workers were subjected to; instead of being deported immediately, over 260 workers were charged with serious identity fraud crimes and sentenced to 6 months in prison:
What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids' hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.
The editorial also added:
No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people's identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.
• Following the allegations of Guantanamo Bay-like treatment at ICE facilities, the Seattle Times has an article detailing numerous stories of abuse at an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington. The stories are part of a 65-page Seattle University Law School report titled "Voices From Detention". Detainees claim that they are routinely subjected to physical and verbal abuse, strip searches and manipulation:
The report's authors said conditions are consistent with those at detention centers across the country. They are calling on Congress to pass laws that protect the rights of detainees...
Detainees in the study say they were pressured to sign documents or asked to sign paperwork they didn't understand, a practice their attorneys say often leads to their unwitting deportation...
The report said one woman, after an attorney's visit, was strip-searched and told to open her legs while a female guard peeped into her private parts.
To learn more about detainee treatment at ICE facilities, see this posting on The State of Opportunity.
• Even after weeks of people discussing the horrific effects of the Postville and Houston raids, ICE has done it again - according to The Providence Journal, ICE agents arrested dozens of maintenance workers in a raid of Rhode Island court houses on Tuesday:
The raid led to a noisy demonstration by at least 100 people outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 200 Dyer St. last night. Police officers arrived as the crowd grew; at one point the police pushed a line of demonstrators across the parking lot.
For a full summary of the stories on the Rhode Island ICE raid, go to the Citizen Orange Pro-Migrant Sanctuary Sphere posting.
• The New York Times is also reporting that many immigrants in New York City, most of them Latino, face being disenfranchised in the November election because the federal government is taking so long to fully process their citizenship applications:
At stake are the applications of at least 55,000 people in the New York City area who have been waiting at least six months - and as long as four years - for their documents to be processed, the lawyers said.
On June 18, 49-year-old Esmin Green was admitted to the Kings County Hospital Center psychiatric ward. After waiting to be seen for 24 hours, she fell to the floor, began to convulse and then passed out. Two security guards and one doctor walked into the waiting room, looked at her and then walked away. After one hour, a nurse finally came over, kicked Ms. Green, and then proceeded to get a stretcher. Shortly afterwards, Ms. Green was pronounced dead. The entire incident was documented on a security camera, and is now on YouTube, thanks to the Associated Press.
Hospital officials said they fired three of the workers and suspended another three, the New York Times reported on July 7. However, it is clear that Ms. Greene's death is far from an isolated incident at Kings County Hospital. The New York Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with Mental Hygiene Legal Service and the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, filed suit against the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (the agency that runs Kings County Hospital) in May 2007. The plaintiffs claimed that patients at the hospital's psychiatric facilities were subject to conditions of squalor and filth, as well as abuse by hospital employees. A summary of the case can be found on the NYCLU website.
The evidence displayed in the lawsuit shows that Ms. Green's death is not solely the fault of the hospital employees who watched her die. The conditions in the hospital, particularly the psychiatric ward, and the treatment of the patients are the responsibility of the city agency that runs the hospital. It was not until over one year into the litigation, and after Ms. Green's death, that the city finally agreed to adopt a series of basic stop-gap measures, including:
* That every patient be checked every 15 minutes.
* That there be no more than 25 patients at any time in the psychiatric emergency ward.
* That detailed records on the ward be turned over every week to the advocates involved in the lawsuit.
* And that the advocates be active participants in the search for a new deputy executive director and emergency room director for Kings County Hospital's Behavioral Health department.
It is shocking that it took a lawsuit and the very public death of a woman to get New York City to agree to such basic levels of care for mental health patients. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said:
What's happening in Kings County Hospital is an affront to human dignity...In 2008 in New York City, nobody should be subjected to this kind of treatment. It should not take the death of a patient to get the city to make changes that everyone knows are long overdue.
What is even more distressing about Ms. Green's death and the allegations of gross negligence of patients at Kings County Hospital is that many residents in Central Brooklyn do not have access to other hospitals. This is mainly due to the fact that the predominantly black, low-income areas of Central Brooklyn, particularly the neighborhoods Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Canarsie, Crown Heights, East New York, and Flatbush have seen numerous hospital closures in the last few years.
The Opportunity Agenda has documented these hospital closures on its website Health Care That Works. Since 1985, Central Brooklyn has seen five local hospitals close their doors. Because of these closures, people in these minority communities have been forced to rely on Kings County Hospital even more. Local residents also begged the city to keep local clinics open - their requests can be seen in a video on The Opportunity Agenda's YouTube channel. At the same time all of these facilities were closing, allegations of mistreatment at Kings County were surfacing.
The fact that people of color have inferior access to health care in New York contributes greatly to the health disparities in the city. The Opportunity Agenda report Dangerous and Unlawful: Why Our Health Care System Is Failing New Yorkers and How to Fix It documents how areas with high concentrations of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans are more likely to have shortages of primary care physicians than predominantly white communities are. The distribution of hospitals and other health care services has a significant discriminatory effect on these communities of color - their health care access is simply inadequate.
Ms. Green's death should do more than signify the need for improvement of existing hospitals like Kings County. It should also remind us that many people in New York, and across the country, lack basic primary care and access to emergency services. Changing this reality needs to be a part of health care reform discussions. If it isn't, we will continue to see needless deaths like Ms. Green's occur.
Last Thursday, the American Medical Association issued an official apology for its past racism toward African American patients and physicians. Along with the apology were the findings of a study conducted by the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, a group that the AMA and the National Medical Association (an organization representing black physicians) co-chair. The study has found that between 1846 and the 1960s, the AMA's past transgressions included:
substandard care for black patients or segregated them to black hospitals; a lack of support for black physicians and for the Civil Rights Act; and exclusion of blacks from medical schools, hospital staffs and residency programs.
The apology can be found here, and the study is available in the online version of the Journal of the American Medical Association. To learn more about the work of the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, go to the AMA website.
It is also worth noting that a number of doctors were opposed to the AMA's discriminatory policies in the 1960s. A group of physicians picketed the AMA convention in Atlantic City in 1963 in order to call attention to the AMA's racist acts. Among these physicians was Dr. Robert Smith, a leader of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Mississippi (MCHR). The MCHR grew out of the Medical Committee for Civil Rights, and organized a number of volunteers to come down to Mississippi to provide care to black patients who were not being treated in their communities:
Though MCHR volunteers were not licensed to practice professionally in Mississippi, they could offer emergency first-aid anywhere and anytime to civil rights workers, community activists, and summer volunteers. Working without pay, they cared for wounded protesters and victims of police and Klan violence, assisted the ill, visited jailed demonstrators, and provided a medical presence in Black communities, some of which had never seen a doctor. They established and staffed health information and pre-natal programs in many Black communities. Appalled at the separate and unequal care provided to Blacks by Mississippi's segregated system, they soon involved themselves in political struggles to open up and improve Mississippi's health care system for all.
The Health Care Blog has a posting that discusses My Health Direct, the web-based solution to overcrowding in emergency departments. The idea of My Health Direct is for hospitals to use an online appointment system to re-route their Medicaid and uninsured patients to community and safety-net clinics. According to the blog posting, the program has been successful in increasing patients' access to primary care and improving the quality of care and treatment outcomes for those patients:
More than 12,000 health appointments have been made with the vast majority of these appointments for patients who are uninsured or enrolled in a Medicaid managed care plan. These appointments were made for patients who either presented for care with a non-emergent condition, or needed follow-up care in a primary care setting.
A utilization review of My Health Directs impact demonstrated that more than 92% of patients who received an appointment did not present to the ED again. Patients who obtained appointments were more than 4 times more likely to actually attend their appointment compared to previous referral efforts from the ED. Lastly, there was a 25% reduction in repeat non-emergent visits of those patients assisted by My Health Direct.
A recent Health Beat blog posting titled "The Realities of Rural Medicine" discusses the unequal access to health care for people who live in rural areas. The study on rural health care, conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, found that both patients and doctors feel significant strain in living in communities that do not have enough primary care options.
The Washington Post is reporting that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry is trying to limit the prevalence of fast food restaurants in South Central Los Angeles by placing a moratorium on new fast food locations in the area. Perry is a representative for District 9, an overwhelmingly African American and Latino constituency that has significant health disparities in comparison to the wealthier West L.A. area:
Perry quoted research showing that although 16 percent of restaurants in prosperous West L.A. serve fast food, they account for 45 percent in South L.A. Experts see an obvious link to a health department study that found that 29 percent of South-Central children are obese, compared with 23 percent county-wide.
• Detention Watch Network has created a new interactive map that is now accessible on their website. The map is a comprehensive tracking system that allows users to view the locations of detention centers, community organizations, ICE offices and immigration courts across the United States.
• A T Don Hutto Blog posting discusses the recent American Immigration Lawyers Association position paper on alternatives to detention for immigrants. The paper, which argues that the Department of Homeland Security should shift its focus from raids and electronic monitoring of immigrant populations to community-based, non-restrictive measures, can be accessed here.
• Some updates on recent ICE raids: a posting on Standing FIRM links to a New York Times report that two Agriprocessor employers have been arrested. Their arrests were connected to last month's ICE raid in Postville, Iowa; they were the first non "rank and file" workers to be targeted. Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, pointed out that the arrest of these supervisors does not show the full extent of the company's violations of workers rights:
What about the allegations of worker abuse? Does anyone really believe that these low-level supervisors acted alone without the knowledge, or even the direction, of the Rubashkins and other senior management?
In addition, the same Times story is reporting that last week five senior managers at Action Rags USA were arrested. Their arrests are connected to the ICE raid on the Houston Plant in late June.
• In response to these recent government crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants, business owners have begun to speak out in opposition to tough anti-immigration measures. A July 6 article that appeared in the New York Times claims that employers have begun fighting the government policies in state and local courts:
Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.
• A story that appeared in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle discusses the positive results of the city's 1989 immigration sanctuary law. The law bars local officials, including police officers, from questioning residents about their immigration status. The Chronicle also points out that San Francisco is not alone in enacting sanctuary measures:
San Francisco is among scores of cities in California and around the country with sanctuary laws, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Several states also have such policies.
A recent posting on The State of Opportunity also called attention to a California superior court decision upholding the Los Angeles Police Department's of neither arresting people based on their immigration status nor asking about one's immigration status during interviews.
Living Liberally is all about making cultural events places to become energized and educated about politics. Unfortunately I'm often too busy to attend Living Liberally events, sometimes because I'm running around New York with the liberal Jewish groups that I am part of, going to events that, oh yeah, are often places for people to become energized or educated about politics, either officially or unofficially. When I leave New York I have more than the nationwide network of Drinking Liberallys to rely upon for interesting political conversation, because all across the East Coast young progressive Jews are hanging out and praying - and then going and doing things that are pretty useful.
One of my good friend Julie Aronowitz's favorite books is Bowling Alone, and she seems determined to single-handedly reverse trends of Americans spending less and less time in community. When I spent a recent weekend at her place in Boston she invited 60 people to attend Jewish religious services and a potluck in her apartment and the apartment of her upstairs neighbors as a joint program with the Moishe/Kavod House. After the services her roommate gave a brief speech about organic produce, and how one of her friends volunteered in a community where many people were dying of cancer presumably because of exposure to the pesticides that they sprayed on the crops they were growing. She then distributed information about buying a share in a co-op, and encouraged people to split shares with those seated around them
Joelle Novey is one of the people who helps run an independent minyan called Tikkun Leil Shabbat in D.C. Every time they meet someone from a social justice organizations speaks, and provides participants with ways of getting involved with the cause that they are working for.
"We've heard [talks about how we could repair the world] about security guards organizing, efforts to clean up the Anacostia River, the local fight for marriage equality, activism to stop the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and...more... There are 150-200 folks at each of our gatherings, and almost 500 on our email list...We're placing ongoing social justice work at the center of our Jewish community life in a way that feels unprecedented and important," she said.
Ok you guys - in an effort to get organized here and on other sites, I'm using my diary today to post links to useful information on Hillary's record, and offer this up as a space for others to share their links as well.
I've posted this stuff in the past in the hopes that undecided Dems will actually read the information, and I get the sense that people are actually starting to cut through the noise and distortions, and are actually looking at her record. This is a good thing! I'm convinced that once people take a look at her record and listen to what she's got to say, the more impressed they'll be and will start to understand what I've known for a long time - that Hillary is our strongest candidate for the general election next year and will make one hell of a President.
So jump with me for more information and links - and to share what you've found...
This weekend, I attended the United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) Bargaining convention, their a leading union of health care professionals who are embarking on an 08' campaign to leverage worker organizing, presidential politics and possibly the "netroots" community for systemic health care reform in America. In my neck of the woods, 2008 cannot come fast enough as the federal government is set to pull the plug on the life line of the historic King-Drew County Hospital in Watts, California.
I've been blogging now for over 6 years - in other words, before there was a name for it.
I have also noticed a deep yearning for news at the local level that proves the effects the Federal government actions have on communities and families.
If the Progressive movement is going to be viable, the information/communication MUST come from the ROOTS up.
Progressive healthcare bloggers have flown under the radar for the most part. While the political blogosphere is rife with healthcare-related posts of outrage and patient predation, usually those are posts which are aimed at one particular event.
But there are a few of us who write about healthcare and health policy from a progressive frame of reference.
