Politics

Sanctuary Means Safety for All

Written by Jill Garvey

Cities that place protection of residents over prosecution make safer communities for everyone. In light of the recent detention and possible deportation of long-time Chicago resident, Rigo Padilla, it’s important to understand why upholding sanctuary policies is important to all residents. Anti-immigrant groups often malign the word “sanctuary” in public discourse on immigration and obscure what the policies actually do and who they benefit. Groups like FAIR whip up fear by criticizing sanctuary policies as contributing to terrorism, saying “The underground society of illegal aliens, with street sales of fake identity documents, creates a nurturing environment for terrorists.”

A recent report by Immigration Policy Center found vastly different results; debunking many claims by anti-immigrant groups.… Read more

Right Prepares to Woo Left on Immigration

Written by Eric Ward

The civil rights organization Center for New Community announced in the most recent edition of its e-bulletin “FAIR Exposed” that the Tanton Network has launched a front group called Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR). PFIR is the latest cell to emerge from a self-multiplying, umbrella coalition of anti-immigrant groups named after its founder and ideological figurehead, rank white nationalist John Tanton.

(Their key entities include the Center for Immigration Studies, Social Contract Press, and the Coalition for the Future American Worker.)

Rarely meeting with even token successes, those steering the Tanton Network have nonetheless repeatedly attempted to recruit within progressive circles by targeting environmentalists, labor rights groups, and… Read more

International

I Am More Than My Body

Written by Ana Turck

Women’s experiences of war are almost exclusively examined through the prism of rape and sexual torture. With the mass scale and the organized nature of rape during the Bosnian war, these stories were important to tell. In many ways, they helped illuminate and examine violence against women in the most meaningful ways and nest the discourse about gender politics into the public sphere.

However, more often than not, the ways in which these stories were told helped drown and silence the voices of many women who endured horrific aggressions against their bodies and souls, as well as having witnessed the suffering of those around them. Their stories of pain and destruction were synthesized, examined and… Read more

Politics

Food Safety Bill May Criminalize US Farmers

Written by Katie Bezrouch

A broad food safety bill may have dire consequences for struggling U.S. farmers. The H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act requires closer scrutiny before being passed. In all of its glorious ambiguity, H.R. 875 claims to be setting legislation that will prevent food-borne illness and ensure the safety of food. A primary concern is that while the bill does “focus” on these issues, it leaves most of the real rule-making up to one person, a food safety “Administrator” who will be appointed by the President. It also includes several extremely vague new “regulations” applying to “food production facilities” that are punishable by exorbitant fines and/or jail time.

The… Read more

Politics

Chicago Immigrant Rights Activist Faces Deportation After Traffic Stop

Written by Stephen Piggott

Rigo Padilla is a 21 year-old college student facing deportation after a traffic stop. Padilla was detained and interviewed by the public defender. After the public defender found out that Padilla was not a US citizen, he walked out of the interview. Minutes later Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived. After an interrogation he was transferred to a federal prison where he was interrogated again.

Once in federal prison, Padilla was offered the choice of paying a bond or wearing a tracking bracelet. The latter being described as a privilege by ICE officials for Padilla’s clean record up to that point. All of this is of course 100% illegal.

Everyone has the right to… Read more

Blog Highlight: ‘Is Oakland somewhere near Missouri? Watching Glenn Beck, it’s hard to tell’

Written by Jill Garvey

Check out David Neiwert’s recent blog about right-winged extremism and Glenn Beck’s denial that these militias are a threat. Good reading.

Glenn Beck spent a little while on his Fox News show yesterday explaining to his audience that law enforcement in Missouri shouldn’t be concerned about right-wing extremists because the real problem is cop-killing parolees on the loose in Oakland, California.

Or something like that. It was hard to piece the argument together, but the nub of it seemed along those lines. First he went on at length about how the weekend’s horrible shootout in Oakland, which left four police officers dead alongside the shooter/parolee, was another sign of things going to hell

… Read more

Pulido Damages Illinois Republicans With Anti-Islamic Statements

Written by Jill Garvey

Rosanna Pulido is the Republican candidate for Illinois’ 5th Congressional Seat formerly occupied by Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. As the director of the Illinois Minuteman chapter, Pulido has been a regular on Chicago’s anti-immigrant scene for years. Generally viewed as an outspoken puppet for more polished anti-immigrant outlets like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), she has recently secured her fifteen minutes of fame as the Republican nominee for Congress (mind you this only required 745 votes out of 54,558). Despite the slim chances of Pulido securing the seat, she is fitting right into Chicago’s penchant for political drama. But this time it… Read more

Politics

ICE and Border Drug Violence: Paving the Way with Deportees

Written by Rev. David L. Ostendorf

In spite of yesterday’s White House response to mounting border security issues, one has to wonder if federal law enforcement agencies and officers really do communicate on the pressing issues of the day, like ICE’s deportation of alleged gang members and criminals back to the border cities of Mexico where they filter into the drug wars and deadly violence that now backflows into the U.S.

  • Victor Clark Alfaro, the courageous Director of Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos in Tijuana recently reported that, of some seven hundred deportees dropped off buses daily by ICE in that city, a third were criminals—some two hundred people per day were “looking for work,” experienced with weapons,

… Read more

podcast

Audio: March 2009 Blogcast

Written by Noah Chandler

As you have most likely read on the 2050 blog, there has been some heavy anti-immigrant activity in Arizona lately. Many of the people caught in this war on immigrants are the regions Native (American) population. In light of this population, it begs the question, who IS the immigrant? And is someone’s ‘immigrant status’ really the issue? But now I’m getting a little realistic for our conservative counter-parts. But I’d like to argue that the issues in Arizona are not as black-and-white as many ideologues would like you to believe.

So, in this edition of the Imagine 2050 podcast we visit with some local Arizonians and get their thoughts on people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio.… Read more

Politics

Food is Not Safe Until Workers are Safe

Written by Jessica Acee

On March 14 President Obama used his weekly radio/video address to talk about food safety and to announce the nomination of Margaret Hamburg as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner. His announcement came as recent cases of salmonella poisoning in peanut products forced the recall of millions of dollars worth of product.

“These cases are a painful reminder of how tragic the consequences can be when food producers act irresponsibly and government is unable to do its job,” Obama said, noting that contaminated food outbreaks have more than tripled to nearly 350 a year from 100 incidents annually in the early 1990s.

The president is also creating a Food Safety Working Group to coordinate… Read more