Immigration

Real Health Reform Leaves No Human Behind

Written by Eric Ward

Rosa Parks was well respected in Montgomery’s segregated world of black and white. Nearly fifty-five years ago today she chose to represent those who faced the daily indignities of being treated as a second class citizen by refusing to give her bus seat up to a white passenger. To be clear, the struggle to secure full civil and human rights continues to exist today.

Discrimination continues to deny many equal access to employment, housing, education, and health care—opportunities no person should be unfairly denied. It is clear that what made a defiant Rosa Parks successful was a movement which had come to realize that no one, from the most powerful clergy to the lowliest sharecropper,… Read more

Finding the Birds Eye View

Written by Guest Blogger

by Tom Lally

I have been passionate about birds all of my life. Since I was a little kid, if it had wings and feathers, I was fascinated by it. Consequently, I have always tried to share this passion with those around me.

Recently, the family and I were enjoying a very pleasant fall evening on some friends’ rooftop patio. While we were sitting there, a young Cooper’s Hawk landed on the building next door. My friends commented on how they have never seen anything like that here. Cooper’s Hawks, a bird of prey, slightly larger than a crow, are relatively common, even in a large city such as Chicago. They have learned to… Read more

Politics

Lou Dobbs Eyeing Public Office?

Written by Imagine 2050 Editors

Joshua Holland at AlterNet posted this fantastic article on Thursday, Lou Dobbs, Eyeing Public Office, Endorses Policy He’s Long Spun as “Amnesty for Illegals”.

First, under pressure from above, Lou Dobbs gave up on the birther conspiracy theories.

Then he said that perhaps he’d been wrong to assert that illegal immigrants were spreading leprosy far and wide across the U.S. (or at least he claims to have said he’d been wrong).

And now, in the ultimate betrayal of the faux-populist shtick he’s been riding all these years, Dobbs told Telemundo (in an interview caught by the

… Read more

Let’s Pause

Written by Amy Spicer

I was put back together again-literally. After a major accident, resulting in a traumatic brain injury, I experienced what could be called another passage through childhood learning how to walk, talk, dress myself, tie my shoes, brush my teeth, bathe, write and even spell again. I would mix up people, places and yes, things; naturally sometimes I still do.

A little over three years later the changes are astounding. Although I still suffer from various after affects, I am leaps ahead of where they predicted I would be. It’s a testament to the care I received, the encouragement and support of my friends and family, and my determination to get better. I’m not going to… Read more

Ecopolitics

Have a Happy, Sustainable Thanksgiving

Written by Amy Mehta

Thanksgiving – the time to think about whom and what we are thankful for – has arrived! After you figure out where to go, what to eat and who to see today, consider the individuals responsible for your thanksgiving meal.

Conditions for workers are instrumental in making sure that the food that comes to us is safe. Workers (often immigrants and refugees) at meat processing plants do the most dangerous jobs in America at low wages. Recently, there were cases against facilities for not paying their employees. If this wasn’t bad enough, mentally disabled Iowa turkey workers were being exploited. Alarmingly, as the NY Times highlighted last week, work related injuries are… Read more

Immigration

Give Thanks to the People who Process Turkeys

Written by Rev. David L. Ostendorf

The original article was published in The Progressive on Nov. 22, 2009.

We should know where our turkeys come from, and who processes them for us.

The turkeys piled into supermarket freezers carry their own stories. Raised primarily in massive confinement buildings by low-paid growers under contract to corporate food giants, they are genetically designed for plentiful breast meat to grace our Thanksgiving platters. They are then trucked to a processing plant, where they meet their demise.

Politics

Safe Food Relies on Safe Workers

Written by Carlos Rich

I recently attended a conference that addressed the safety of food. It was called Empowering Employees to Protect Food Integrity and Protection for Whistleblowers, and was coordinated by the Government Accountability Project in Washington DC. Joining me was an immigrant worker named Maria, who spoke about the working conditions at her job and how safety for workers affects the quality of food which they produce on a daily basis. Maria called on the Government Accountability Project and others to look into the working conditions in the meat processing industry, which remains one the most dangerous places to work in this country.

I admire Maria, and the thousands of immigrants, refugees and workers of color that… Read more

Immigration

Anti-immigration is White Nationalism

Written by Sarah Viets

After reading about the John Tanton Network’s relationship to eugenics and possibly sterilization, I finally broke down in tears. As a researcher who studies white nationalism and anti-immigration for a civil rights organization, the majority of what I read is deeply offensive. It usually doesn’t bother me; I see my work as a necessary tool to educate people about white nationalism in a post-civil rights era. But as I re-read how eugenics scholars may have advocated for the forced sterilization of non-Christian people who weren’t white, I turned off my desk lamp and went home for the night.

As Barry Mehler points out in the video, Immigration and the White Nationalist Movement, modern… Read more

Health

Blog Highlight: The War on Soy

Written by Imagine 2050 Editors

Tara Lohan of AlterNet published the following article, The War on Soy: Why the ‘Miracle Food’ May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare. Looks like soy is proving to be too much of a good thing.

Vegetarians aren’t the only ones who should be concerned; there’s soy in just about everything you eat these days — including hamburgers, mac ‘n cheese and salad dressing.

These days, you can get soy versions of just about any meat — from hot dogs to buffalo wings. If you’re lactose-intolerant you can still enjoy soy ice-cream and soy milk on your cereal. If you’re out for a hike and need a quick boost of energy, you can

… Read more

Hate Group FAIR Looking for “Ethnically Ambiguous” Actors

Written by Jill Garvey

Adam Luna posted this excellent blog yesterday: Hate Group FAIR Looking for “Ethnically Ambiguous” Actors—Think You Have What it Takes? Live in Atlanta and feel like having a little fun today? Find out what it takes to be one of FAIR’s “ethnically ambiguous” bigots.

We just got word that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group, is holding a casting call in Atlanta tomorrow for a new web video that will change the hearts and minds of the average American.

Think you have what it takes to be a mouthpiece for hate?

They will pay $500 to “ethnically ambiguous” actors in their

… Read more