Anti-Immigrant Fervor Translates to Terror for Women
By Melissa Nalani Ross
Originally printed in On The Issues Magazine
I was contacted recently about a woman without documentation who worked at a fruit stand in the northeast. A male customer approached her and asked if she had any waitressing experience, as he needed servers at his restaurant. Seeing this as an opportunity to make a little more money to support herself and her family, the woman agreed to stop by the establishment for an interview. When she arrived, instead of sitting down and discussing a job opportunity, the woman was met by a group of men who took turns raping her. They then told her that if she went to the authorities, they would have her deported.
Too afraid to go to the police out of fear of being separated from her family and livelihood, she will be left in isolation, with no recourse, no justice and no security. Her tale will not be covered by the mainstream media. The men who raped her will never be brought to justice. Read more
Geert Wilders, the Dutch Anti-Immigrant Microphone
When you ask the Average Joe what they know about Holland, the answer you get is almost always the same; a country that is one of the most liberal in the world whose capital Amsterdam is famous for its Red Light District and its relaxed laws on drugs. The Dutch people are often thought of as carefree men and women who don’t like to mix work with pleasure. With this mental image it is hard to picture the Dutch as a nation getting upset or angry over a single issue and blowing it totally out of proportion. However this is exactly what they are doing regarding the issue of immigration and more specifically immigrants who practice the Islamic faith. Read more
Welcomed Home: Part 3 (finale)
The farm has always been my home. Even after the years of California sun has tanned my skin and bleached my long brown hair to sandy blond. Even after the years of going home to a house that was surrounded by dozens of other houses, that looked exactly alike, even when move after move has left me disoriented and lost. When I close my eyes, I go home. Home is where my grandmother works in her garden of tomato plants, and tall green corn stocks and carrots that are pulled from the dark brown soil with a single, tug of her hand. Home is where we sit and shell peas and watch the swallows shoot in and out of the old barn with rapid tucks and swoops. Home is where all the problems of my world were enveloped in one strong embrace. It is here the gopher and the squirrel harvest their food for the winter cold and oak leaves fall in orange and yellow flight on mid-October nights. It is where my grandmother and I watch the world develop and decline. Read more
The ‘Proximity Effected’ Fan
Many people like rooting for a sports team because of the proximity effect; they live in or near a city and therefore feel the need to root for that team. This, I believe, is possibly one of the stupidest reasons to root for a team.
I must preface this article by saying that I live in a major metropolitan city with two professional teams on the verge of heading to the playoffs and I hate one and feel indifferent to the other. I am a fan of one of these team’s rivals which often results in me getting perturbed looks and jabs. Aside from maybe rooting for a team because they have cute or likable players (i.e. many Yankees “fans” rooting for the team because of how nice Derek Jeter is or how hot A-Rod looks in his uniform), the proximity effect is just about the laziest reason to root for a particular team. Read more
The Scary Side of Genetically Modified
In Cudahy, Wisconsin, Sister Luigi Frigo conducts the same experiment with her second grade class every year. The children keep a group of mice in the classroom, and for four days feed them highly processed junk food (containing genetically modified ingredients and preservatives). On the first day the students notice a dramatic difference in the mice’s behavior. They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. In a similar experiment at a high school in Appleton Wisconsin, the mice “destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it.” according to author Jeffrey Smith. When they returned the mice to a healthy diet for a couple of weeks, they began to act normal again. One year, the class tried to repeat the experiment with the same group of mice a couple of months later, but they refused the food. Read more
“What About Illegal Don’t You Understand”
Every so often when I am speaking or writing about the issue of immigration someone will inevitably say to me “what is it about illegal that you don’t understand?” This “gotcha” statement is usually stated with an underlying smugness and finality that I suspect is supposed to undercut the very foundations of my main two arguments. One, that each person in our society has a fundamental right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and two, that it is impossible for every American to achieve these inalienable rights with a broken immigration system that denies individuals and families fundamental civil and human rights in the United States.
I’ve heard that the argument over “legality” brings many conversations regarding immigration to a halt sending Americans, documented and undocumented running for cover. I don’t happen to be one of those people. Read more
Floods, Drought, & a Population on the Brink
Several years ago my Dad said something rather prophetic during a family conversation about living in California. A few of us were expressing our reservations about ever moving to a state that was a couple dozen earthquakes away from falling into the ocean. He said “Californians are going to sink themselves long before earthquakes do.” He was referring to the housing market there, where lenders were handing out mortgages like candy. Of course many who followed the financial markets knew what was coming, the writing, as they say, was on the wall. But ordinary Americans were blissfully unaware and lenders liked it that way. The bubble unfortunately hasn’t burst in one catastrophic moment, it seems to be bursting in slow motion, the devastation mounting with each passing month. Read more
What Consumers Need to Know About Organic Food
In Eastern Oregon resides the headquarters of a major beef conglomerate, Beef Northwest. They produce meat that is sold under the “Country Natural Beef” (CNB) label. The cows raised to produce this beef are brought up by small family farmers who allow the cattle access to pasture for the first 16-18 months of their lives. After that, they are sold to CNB. They are shipped to a feedlot, and fattened on a mix of corn, potato, and alfalfa feed (which cannot be guaranteed to be GMO free) for the remaining three months of their lives.
These feedlots have been under scrutiny in the past by organic food advocates, for administering illegal quantities of drugs to their animals. Now things are heating up again, this time the focus is on the workers. Read more
Welcomed Home: Part 2
Inside, I shut the door and run my hand over an antique desk where She used to sit and do her make-up. The tainted mirror reflects my image and behind me, I can almost see her standing, searching in the closet for one of her rarely worn evening dresses. Her scattered fragrances fill my senses. Her powders and forget-me-nots still occupy the drawers, dresser and closet. So many times I have wanted to touch these things, to investigate their mystery, they seemed so foreign and strange to me these useless pretty nick-naks and fancies. I will not be shooed out tonight; there is no one here to defend her properties that she so intimately kept.
Audio: September 2008 Imagine 2050 Blogcast
Around the globe people have always immigrated from one country to another. The U.S. is a unique place in that our nation was founded on exactly that movement of people. Since day one a multitude of cultures and ethnicities have made the United States home. In my eyes, this mix of people defines exactly what it means to be American.
However, even with that history there remains read more
The American Economy and the Greedy People
The federal government has now bailed out three major US financial institutions: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the American International Group. Some folks disagree with this decision. You hear people shout, “No More Big Government.”
The people who support the popular catch phrase, “Big Government,” believe that the free market can fix itself. Free market die-hards, like libertarians – Ron Paul’s Revolutionaries - believe that human beings are rational enough to fix the mortgage crisis and inflation (the rise of food and gas). Libertarians believe that a person’s financial interests will always supercede a person’s emotional desires, like greed.
What’s the Biggest Threat to Small Town America? The Government
When the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant, AgriProcessors, was raided last Spring by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), the effects were devastating to the small town community. Like many small towns across America’s heartland, Postville had struggled for years to maintain a viable economy, as well as with the increasing cultural differences within their community as hundreds of Latinos moved in to fill hard labor jobs at the plant.
With hundreds of Postville’s community members rounded up and either detained or deported, Postville’s future looks bleak. The people left behind must contend with empty apartments, restaurants, and stores, and the reality that their little town was dependant on immigrants. Read more
The Roast
Anorexia Doesn’t Discriminate
As a teenager I had a close friend with some serious problems: severe depression, violent behavior, anxiety, etc. He was afflicted by stomach aches and it wasn’t uncommon for him to throw up when he was emotionally unstable. He was a picky eater which isn’t that abnormal, but I often noted that he seemed disgusted by food and deprived himself of it when he was unhappy. It wasn’t until years later that I realized he had at best a mild eating disorder. If he was a white female it would most likely have been obvious, but being an African-American male meant that a serious disease went untreated. Read more
ANNOUNCEMENT: Imagine 2050 blogcast will air Monday on 89.5FM in Chicago!
Recently, 89.5 FM in Chicago aired Noah Chandler’s August podcast, Imagine 2050’s audio blogger! In fact, the radio station based an entire show off of Imagine 2050’s premise and Noah’s interviews.
Since then 89.5 FM has repeatedly run his blogcast and will rebroadcast his interviews on the airwaves or net-waves today, Monday, September 15, 2008 on their 1pm– 4pm program.
Please tune in from 1pm - 2pm central time at www.vocalo.org for the portion of the program that will feature Imagine 2050 and Noah’s interviews.
Show Imagine 2050 your support and take a moment to listen, call, email, and text 89.5 Monday afternoon between 1:00pm-4:00pm Central Time.
Thanks for your support! Read more
Welcome Home: Part I
The yellow gravel road meanders down a sunken patch of farmland covered by green and the occasional brown of oak. A small brook trickles beneath a two way bridge, whispering through the melodic calling of the bullfrogs, that hush, as a beat-up rusty Ford truck crosses, and then disappears, leaving a line of mustard smoke and muddy tracks. I wait in silence until the motor can be heard only faintly through the buzzing call of locus. I have stopped here on many read more
Standing up to Hate Speech
Posted by Bobfulkerson at 9/9/2008 3:40 PM PD
PLAN to KKOH: “You’ve dirtied your hands by promoting a hate-group; use this soap and brushes to wash off the muck”
On Wednesday, September 10, 10:30 a.m. at the KKOH offices, PLAN staff and allies will deliver soap and brushes to KKOH management to highlight the station’s participation in a hate group’s anti-immigrant conference.
KKOH will broadcast on Wednesday, September 10 from “Radio Row’ at the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Immigration Reform) conference in Washington, DC. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently classified FAIR as a “hate organization” along with the Ku Klux Klan.
KKOH has read more
SPORTS: United through Disaster
The world of sports has found itself between a rock and a hard place. With the landfall of Hurricane Ike, expected to be this weekend, numerous high school, college, and professional sports teams have been forced to postpone, cancel or relocate their games.
At least five college football games have been forced to make adjustments to their plans. Three high school football games have been affected by the hurricane, with one read more
Keep Growing Power to the People
“Organic” can mean a lot of different things these days. Chemists define the word as a class of chemical compounds that have a carbon basis. Some people merely associate “organic” with something they bought at Trader Joe’s last week. “Organic” is most commonly thought of by American consumers as food that has been grown or raised without the use of conventional pesticides, antibiotics, or growth hormones. I know I always assumed that if something was labeled “organic” it meant it was probably produced in a more conscious, personal manner. But that is not always the case. Read more
White Nationalists Defend “Immigrant Reform” Organization
A chapter of one of the most influential white nationalist organizations in the United States, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), sought to defend the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) from charges of injecting racism into the national discussion on immigration. While conveniently ignoring its own national ties to FAIR, the read more
Polls
Loading ...Categories
Authors
