A Farewell From WireTap

Posted by Kristina Rizga at 12:00 AM | Comment Now | Permalink

Dear WireTap Supporters,

Despite a year of intense fundraising, WireTap will lose its funding at the end of January.

We are currently talking to several organizations and magazines about moving some parts of the project to another home, and I will keep you posted on our progress. It would be a shame to lose 10 years of archived content, and a newsletter list of 12,000 young, politically engaged readers from diverse backgrounds. In the meantime, I will keep the lights on at both WireTap and Future5000.com with money from my own pocket. Unfortunately, that means a significant decline in our content flow.

At this moment of difficult transition, I want to express my deepest gratitude to our staff, advisory board, donors and foundation supporters, especially Anna Lefer-Kuhn, our research and copy editor Onnesha Roychoudhuri, and our brilliant web developers Michael Gharabiklou and Shawn Sutherland. Above all, I am grateful to our editors Jamilah King and Tomas Palermo, who have inspired and developed countless young writers and leaders.

Five years ago, on a sunny spring day in San Francisco, Jamilah and I decided to launch a political magazine that spoke to our generation. We wanted to build a daily platform for young voices that had no access to media, money or political power. The fact that we -- two young women without any high-powered connections -- were able to do that for five highly productive years is reassuring, and says something about the state of democracy in our country. I am confident that our model would have continued to grow, had we not faced one of the worst recessions since the '30s.

Despite our inability to weather this recession, I think it's important to celebrate the great run we've had. Over the past five years, we have built a long-term foundation for many emerging journalists and organizers, whose voices will continue to articulate a new vision for America, give voice to the voiceless and shine light on the abuses by the powerful.

I think of Latricia Wilson -- a young woman from Memphis, Tennessee, who published an essay in which she recounted her successful fight over the unfair denial of her high school diploma. Latricia's writing at WireTap inspired her to move from her work in beauty salons to studying journalism. Our editor Tomas Palermo worked closely with Latricia to help her appreciate her potential and develop her writing skills. She just wrote us yesterday to let us know she got a 4.0 GPA in the first semester of her writing program. Latricia said that WireTap inspired her to one day become "the next Oprah Winfrey."

I also think about the 25-year-old Iraq War veteran, Zechariah, who in 2008 told us that he believed our leaders when they said Saddam Hussein was hiding "Weapons of Mass Destruction." He joined the army only to experience lies, chaos, lack of strategy and the death of close friends in Iraq. After he returned, Zechariah received treatment for PTSD. He was having nightmares every day about Iraq and the friends he lost there. After Zechariah spoke out and his interview was published, he wrote to us: "Thank you for letting me speak. I was able to sleep peacefully for the first time in years."

Then there are Kameelah Rasheed and Antonio Ramirez -- two young teachers from working-class backgrounds sharing their experiences, in their own voices, about teaching in public schools. Through their ongoing contributions to WireTap, Kameelah and Antonio have shared countless survival tips for other young teachers of color who are as determined as they are to work with marginalized children.

I think about Anand Gopal, who wrote his first dispatches from Afghanistan for us before moving to The Nation and now the Wall Street Journal to report on the region.

I think about M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, one of the most brilliant writers at WireTap, who, as a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, has grappled with his identity and our country's role in the world though his WireTap articles.

Finally, I think about my personal favorite writer, and our co-founding editor, Jamilah King, whose heartbreaking essay about losing her sister to gun violence taught me more about what's wrong with our media model -- and what we can do to begin to change it -- than anything I've read so far. (Hint: it's not just the economic model.)

These are just a fraction of the voices we were fortunate to work with in these short five years with a staff of three. While our collective journey faces uncertainty, I am confident that all of the writers and leaders we worked with will continue our mission, in their own ways, wherever they go.

I thank our writers and readers for being a part of our dedicated, inspiring and extremely thoughtful community. On behalf of the staff and board at WireTap, we are wishing you peaceful holidays, and new beginnings in 2010.

Kristina Rizga
Editor and Publisher, WireTap
Kristina@WiretapMag.org

WireTap and Arts Fellowship Success

Posted by Tomas Palermo at 12:00 AM | Comment Now | Permalink

Dear Friends and Readers,

As stated by Kristina in her post today, WireTap in its current incarnation is coming to an end. I've really enjoyed and have been enriched by my three years of work with Kristina, Jamilah and all of our excellent contributors. You've made me laugh, think and have inspired action.

My tenure with WireTap began three years ago after spending the previous two years studying education at SF State. Prior to that I had edited and written for music magazines. WireTap provided me with a forum to mentor young writers, edit and work with some exceptional reporters and explore arts activism.

With that in mind, this year WireTap began our very first Arts and Culture Writing Fellowship (supported by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Nation Institute) and introduced our readers as well as other outlets to two incredible young voices: Zoneil Maharaj and Geoffrey Dobbins. Whether they were talking about punk, hip-hop, visual arts or film, Dobbins and Maharaj offered fresh, progressive takes on culture that didn't shy from asking tough questions.

I'm happy to say that both in their blog posts for WireTap and work placed in other publications, these two young writers succeeded on every level and improved the art and craft of reporting. Indeed, in my estimation, Maharaj's "Deepblak Recordings" story for the East Bay Express and Dobbin's "Scribble Jam" piece for Urb (see links for both below) were two of the best music features I've read anywhere this year. Here are some links:

Zoneil's work:

Blue Scholars in XLR8R

Deepblak Recordings in East Bay Express

Geoffrey's work:

Scribble Jam in Urb

Eprhyme in Zeek

I'd also like to acknowledge the hard work, dedication and sacrifice of my two co-workers, Founder/Publisher Kristina Rizga and Editor Jamilah King. These two women were not only great friends and colleagues but led the WireTap community through panel discussions and workshops, Blog-A-Thons and investigative articles. I truly couldn't have asked for better folks to work with. I'll miss our small cubicle discussions, white-board editorial planning sessions and Cuban veggie lunches.

Finally, it is with great respect that I thank you, the WireTap readers. Your comments, suggestions, submissions and enthusiasm over the years have been much appreciated. As a new decade dawns and the publishing industry evolves, I hope our paths cross again.

Yours in solidarity,

Tomas A. Palermo, Managing Editor

My Goodbye to WireTap

Posted by Jamilah King at 8:11 AM | Comment Now | Permalink

If you come to this site regularly, you've probably already heard the news: We're closing our doors.

The first time I seriously looked at WireTap was on a muggy spring afternoon in 2006, while I was holed up in a small, two-story apartment along Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica. I was on my computer, finishing up a research project for my study abroad program in between scouring Craigslist for potential summer internships, and figured that if I was ever going to take writing seriously, this was my chance to start.

I was headed into my senior year of college and had skirted journalism for years. Never reported for any school paper, and didn't have a byline or writing clip to my name. I'd always imagined that real reporters walked around with voice recorders, obsessively and loudly charging their way into their next stories.

But me? I was different. On a good day, you might call me pensive. On a bad one, you might call me obsessively shy. Either way, I was curious about the way the world was, and wanted to write about it. Didn't know I had anything truly important to say, or if anyone would care. But I figured, what the hell? If I can find a paid summer internship, I can at least say that I tried.

From there, the rest is history. Call it fate, or luck, but I ended up working with Executive Editor Kristina Rizga, who sat me down on the first day and gave me a brief tutorial on how to pitch a story. We went from working in the offices of AlterNet.org to a small stint working out of her home, where I probably spent more time looking through her husband's massive music library than fact-checking.

And I still can't believe how unbelievably lucky I've been. I found a home that actually invested time in developing the voices of young writers, a place where I could pitch outlandish stories on sneakers and flashy bicycles and not get laughed out of the room. More than anything, though, I found a place that believed strongly in the nexus between journalism and activism.

I don't think I'm the only one. For over ten years, WireTap's offered a beginning for many writers. After reporting for WireTap, current board member Dani McClain went on to report for the Miami Herald and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Anand Gopal's now reporting on the frontlines of Afghanistan. Kameelah Rasheed somehow found the time to balance full-time teaching with writing her popular WireTap column. And the list goes on: Anika Brown, Aaron Tang, Naima Coster, M. Junaid Levesque-Alam.

We've always searched for overlooked voices, and often found them in unconventional ways. We met Anika Brown as an ambitious fashion student with thought-provoking questions. Last May, we launched our Nathan Cummings Art and Culture Fellowship, which received more than 300 applications. The eventual fellows, Geoffrey Dobbins and Zoneil Maharaj, have landed exciting assignments all over the music industry.

Along the way, there've been so many people to thank. First and foremost, my coworkers Kristina and Tomas Palermo, who've been invaluable in maintaining WireTap's mission and focus, along with providing me with extraordinary mentorship along the way. Onnesha, our amazing contributing editor, our board, and most importantly, you, our readers.

All that to say that this is an important beginning, not just an ending. Maybe even a call to action for the worlds of youth activism and media to band together more strongly and continue to take their work seriously. It's also a call to the larger media landscape to say that young voices are here -- and not just at election time. And perhaps even more importantly, a call that says that developing young journalists takes resources -- time, money and a genuine desire to hear what we have to say.

The 'Breathtaking' Race That's Just Begun

Posted by Aaron Tang at 4:33 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

As we prepare to enter a new year that may or may not see significant reform over federal education policy, this much is clear: there will continue to be plenty of action in the states.

The impetus for that action has been the perfect storm created by plummeting state revenues due to the economic downturn in combination with an innovative federal stimulus proposal, the Race to the Top Fund (RTTT).

I wrote in July about how the fund was producing promising state level policy changes in response to the four criteria that states need to satisfy in order to be eligible for RTTT funding.

That promising start has turned into a "breathtaking impact" according to Joe Williams, the president of Democrats for Education Reform. A recent Education Week article describes the dizzying array of states that have made substantial policy changes to allow charter schools, enable student achievement data to be tied to teacher pay, and to enact new school turnaround plans.

If $4 billion in one-time competitive grant funding by the feds can lead to such wholesale change on issues that recalcitrant stakeholders have long fought, one has to wonder whether the Department of Education could do more with the rest of its nearly $50 billion in outlays. Perhaps RTTT has demonstrated that the recipe for meaningful school reform is for the federal government to provide cash and political cover to states to do the heavy lifting themselves. One major reform that could get accomplished in the future through a similar formula: enactment of national standards.

Yet if the RTTT becomes a victim of its own success, there is cause for concern. The $4 billion slated to be given out can only be sliced up in so many pieces. What if so many states have enacted policy changes to qualify that there is a shortage of grant money to reward deserving actors? Will the backlash of denied RTTT grant applications lead state lawmakers to backslide on their earlier changes? Only time will tell.

Proposed Student Tax Hurts Local Economies

Posted by Viany Orozco at 4:27 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink

In this recession, the highest priority in higher education among political leaders should be college access and affordability. Anything short of this will exclude low- and moderate-income students from gaining the preparation they need to not only gain better salaries but also to contribute more to their communities.

Research by CEOs for Cities found that if each of the nation's 51 largest metropolitan areas improved their educational attainment by just one percentage point, the nation would realize a $124 billion annual dividend.

Yet as students are struggling to pay for rising tuition costs resulting from severe cuts in higher education funding by the states, the mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl, has proposed a one percent tax on the college tuition of students in Pittsburgh. Students throughout the state are already sacrificing financially to pay for their college educations.

Half of Carnegie Mellon students who graduated in 2008 had an average debt of $29,346. At the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, 92 percent of its 2008 graduating class had debt averaging $26,463. This tax will not only translate into more debt, it will significantly impact the ability of low- and moderate-income college students to enter college or stay enrolled.

There is no question that the recession exacerbated Pittsburgh's tenuous financial landscape but students cannot be the scapegoat of these financial troubles, not only because it's wrong but because it makes no economic sense.

Even before the recession, students throughout the state were paying the price of stagnant financial aid and increasing tuition. In the long run, Mayor Ravenstahl's strategy will certainly hurt the interests of Pittsburgh residents, especially its middle class.

Louisiana on the Cutting Edge of Teacher Prep

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:00 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

For the longest time, schools of education have gotten a free pass. Amidst the tough talk of school reform and real accountability for schools, teachers and students, very little has been said or done to hold schools of education accountable for what they produce.

Until now. Enter Louisiana's new system for tracking teacher performance based on the schools that teachers come from. It's the first statewide system of its kind, but it likely won't be the last.

The key to the system is the buy-in of the state's various schools of education. As E. Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, observes, the state's system is "accountability on steroids."

Under the new program, data will be compiled on value added learning gains (how much students improve from year to year) and aggregated based on teacher training schools, the vast majority of which are based in the state's universities and colleges. Schools that consistently produce graduates who struggle to improve student achievement can face mandatory reforms and even closure.

Undoubtedly there will be those in the anti-standardized testing crowd who criticize this proposal as further entrenching the role of standardized assessments in K-12 education. There will also be some who believe that evaluating teachers is itself an impossible endeavor, much less evaluating where they were trained.

But these criticisms miss the crucial mark: what Louisiana's data system does is provide policy makers with key information about what is working and what is not. A college that regularly graduates first-rate teachers should not only be recognized and rewarded, it should serve as a model for schools that churn out low-performing teachers.

The potential downstream effects of this kind of data system and public recognition (and shaming) device are profound: some day it might be seen as prestigious to enroll in a school of education that is recognized for producing high-performing teachers, and school districts would do well to use signals such as graduation from a top teacher-training program in hiring decisions.

In the long run this may lead to a higher education landscape where students actually compete for spots in the best programs -- the exact kind of message we want to send to talented young people who are interested in the teaching profession. In other words, what starts with the simple process of gathering data may well lead to cultural changes in the way teachers and teacher training is perceived by society writ large.

Revealing Pew Report on Latino Youth

Posted by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam at 7:00 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink

The Pew Hispanic Center just released a new report about young Latinos in the United States, finding high rates of pregnancy, gang affiliation and school dropouts. It also revealed an optimistic streak and an emphasis on education and career success, and contextualized the latest immigration pattern by comparing it with historic patterns of immigration to the U.S.

Part of a Pew Center series on American youth, the report was based on a survey conducted in August and September of this year "among a randomly selected, nationally representative sample of 22,012 Hispanics ages 16 and older, with an oversample of 1,240 Hispanics ages 16 to 25." It was done in both English and Spanish.

The report notes at the outset that Latinos are "the largest and youngest minority group in the United States." One in five schoolchildren is Latino, as are one in every four newborns. The solid majority of Latino youths -- two-thirds -- are not immigrants.

On the whole, it has to be said that the report's major findings in areas with hard data were pretty grim. For instance, native-born Latino youths are almost all proficient in English, compared with 47 percent foreign-born, and 59 percent are enrolled in high school or college, compared with only 35 percent foreign-born. But on the other hand, native-born Latino youths are twice as likely to be mixed up in gangs and more likely to be in prison.

Another indication that this isn't the classical trend of immigrant success is this: "[T]een parenthood rates and high school drop-out rates are much lower among the second generation than the first, but they appear higher among the third generation than the second. The same is true for poverty rates."

The high school dropout rate for Latino youth is dramatically high -- at 17 percent, it's almost twice as high as it is for blacks -- and 19-year-old women who are Hispanic are more likely to be pregnant (26 percent) than any other racial group.

Interestingly, the survey showed that about half of Latino youths identify themselves first and foremost by the country that their parents came from. Another 20 percent used the term "Hispanic" or "Latino" and just a quarter use the term "American" first.

One likely reason for the lack of a clear, linear trend of economic and social improvement from first to third generation of immigrants is the structure of the economy -- service-oriented and unstable, with less mobility for all Americans in recent years. Other potential reasons, however, are also cited in the report -- the sheer scale of immigration in terms of raw numbers (unprecedented), the reality of modern global communication reducing the need for acculturation, increased tolerance for diversity and so on.

To read a summary of the report, you can go here. The full thing is here (PDF). And an NPR "Talk of the Nation" segment featuring a report contributor and two commentators is here.

A Look at Newly Elected Gay Officials

Posted by Denise Tejada at 2:35 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

(From Youth Radio)

This weekend saw a few barrier-breaking political victories. Houston elected their first gay mayor, Annise Parker. She beat her opponent and former city attorney Gene Locke with 53.6 percent of the vote. She is expected to take office on January 2, 2010.

Parker was elected to city council and then spent five years as city controller. According to CNN, Parker has been open about her sexual orientation. "I have always stood up for the fact that I am gay. It's part of the resume that I bring to the table, but it's just a piece of the package." She has been together with her partner for 19 years and has adopted children.

Parker's victory resembles a huge change for the city. A few years ago Houston rejected a ballot that offered benefits to same-sex partners of city workers. Texas is also a state where gay marriage is against the law.

Houston wasn't the only city with a newly elected gay official. An openly gay Los Angeles assemblyman, John Perez, was elected leader of the lower house in the state assembly by the Democratic Caucus. Perez was a former union organizer and the political director for a Southern California local of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Perez also served as chairman of the Democratic Caucus this year and is a cousin of current Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. What job role does an assemblyman play in California?

"As speaker he will not only be responsible for uniting Democrats for controversial votes, but he will also be key, along with Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, in budget negotiations with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger." (via SFGate)

Gay advocates were quick to praise Perez's election, calling it a historic moment for not just the state but for the nation.

Report: Low Literacy Among Youth Inmates

Posted by Laura Goode at 2:27 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

(From New America Media's EthnoBlog)

Today's New York Times publishes a new and confidential report, released by an unnamed "state agency," that substantiates the shortcomings (to use a generous word) of the New York juvenile justice system.

Though little of it would surprise anyone who's ever worked with the American juvenile justice system, it's hard to know what horrifies me most about the new report's findings. Is it the fact that an estimated half of these young people suffer from diagnosed mental illnesses, one-third have developmental disabilities, and the system fails to employ a single psychiatrist who can issue medication?

Is it the 15-year-old boy who died after being restrained by the prison workers employed, at least in part, to protect him, or the other reports of shattered bones and teeth inflicted by these state employees?

Is it the stunning racial disparity of the inmates? Is it the fact that the article didn't breathe a word of the violence against LGBT and transgender youth in prison?

Though I'm outraged by the injustice of those facts, they're actually not what I find most appalling about the report, and its reflection upon how we as a culture are regarding our youth.

"And though the median age of those admitted to juvenile facilities is almost 16, one-third of those held read at a third-grade level."

Much is implied by that statement: that our schools are underfunded and faltering, that standardized testing is an imperfect rubric, that high school dropout rates especially among black and Latino communities are at a crisis point, that low-income communities of color are still disproportionately illiterate or low-literacy (or at least disproportionately to the New York Times' readership).

As a writer and educator, though, all I can infer from that statement is that many of New York's at-risk youth have never been able to enjoy the unique pleasure of a chapter book.

To me, this is not a small problem.

I don't presume to know how to solve the problem. Neither does The Beat Within, a New America Media youth initiative that facilitates weekly writing workshops in juvenile halls in Northern California, Arizona and Washington, D.C., and publishes a weekly magazine of those young peoples' written work.

But by engaging our students in reading and writing, as well as providing high-performing students with transitional job opportunities upon their release, we are addressing it.

There are many in America today who believe and propagate the belief that kids in juvie are dangerous, recidivists, lost causes. It's convenient for many to believe that, to keep them far away from their comfort zones. But I'm reminded of the words of one of the Beat's longest-serving veterans, Michael Kroll (and Michael, I'm paraphrasing):

"I've noticed many things about the children I've worked with in juvenile halls. But what I have noticed above all other things is that they are, primarily, children."

Here's an example of the power of literacy: a few weeks ago, I was with the Beat in my usual second-hour unit, B8, a max-security boys' unit in the Santa Clara country hall. December is a tough month on the inside; it reminds the kids that another holiday is approaching that they won't be able to celebrate with their families. They were quiet during the class discussion.

I walked around the room to speak with students individually, and landed in a longish conversation with a 16-year-old student. He'd had a hard week, he told me. It was his little brother's seventh birthday, and he'd wanted his mom to bring his brother to visit so he could wish him a happy birthday. He'd sent his mother a letter telling her when she could come and see him. The birthday came and went without a visit. Later, he found out that his family hadn't visited because his mom can't read, and no one had been around to help her.

I'm happy to report that this particular student reads quite well, though his confidence in reading is low. Unfortunately, in this context he serves to illustrate a point too rarely examined: that illiteracy has consequences beyond education level and job viability, that it affects families and children, and that it alone has the power to relegate a person to the underclass -- and also that it is an eminently treatable affliction. America has no excuse to be 19th in the world's literacy rankings.

I thought J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians was a good book when I read it in high school. I remember one passage in particular, one that occurs while the book's narrator is imprisoned:

"...my torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body which can entertain notions of justice only when it is whole and well, and very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it. ... They came to my cell to show me the meaning of humanity, and in the space of an hour they showed me a great deal."

Perhaps we have forgotten the bodies of the young men and women we stash upstate, far away from your children's parks and playgrounds and schools; certainly the report released in the Times demonstrates we have done those bodies no justice. What are we teaching our children -- in effect, by failing to teach them -- about humanity?

Young Activist Faces Deportation in Florida

Posted by Jamilah King at 3:17 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink

Distressing news out of Florida.

Last week, ICE officials in Broward County detained 24-year-old undocumented community organizer Andrea Huerfano after committing the criminal act of trying to pay a traffic ticket.

Authorities could deport her as soon as Tuesday.

Huerfano is a graduate of Florida State University, where she majored in international relations and was active in student organizing efforts to pass the Dream Act.

After graduation, she went to Portland, OR to participate in PolitiCorps, a political leadership training institute. During her fellowship, she spearheaded efforts to inform low-income voters on criminal justice issues. Later, she was active in get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio during the presidential election.

Huerfano has been in the states since 2001, after she and her family fled violence in their native Colombia. They fled using a valid visa, and tried for several years to seek political asylum. However, a Florida judge with a notoriously high rate of rejecting asylum claims denied the family's request after Huerfano's father died of liver cancer and the family could no longer prove a well-founded fear of persecution.

If deported, Huerfano wouldn't be eligible to return to the states for 10 years. Having lived most of her life in the U.S., friends say that she has no close family left in Colombia.

Advocates, including organizers from the Bus Project and Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER), are pushing for deferred action to allow Huerfano to stay in the U.S. while Congress continues its work on Dream Act legislation, which could provide a path toward legalization for thousands of undocumented students.

While students in Wisconsin were successful in pushing a state-based iteration of the Dream Act last spring, activists are still attempting to pass a federal version.

According to the latest census data, there are about 2.5 million (PDF) undocumented youth under 18 living in the U.S. Roughly 65,000 undocumented youth who have lived in the United States for five years or longer graduate from high school each year. But only 20 percent (PDF) of undocumented students who have lived in the U.S. for five years or longer enroll in post-secondary education.

For activists familiar with Huerfano's political work, these statistics provide important context for her academic achievements.

"Andrea deserves a chance to achieve her American dream," says Caitlin Baggott, director of PolitiCorps, in a press release issued over the weekend.

Take Action:

Activists are also calling for folks to sign a petition and put in calls to ICE offices in Washington, D.C. and Florida to request Huerfano's release:

http://immigration.change.org/actions/view/stop_andreas_deportation

For more information about the actions they are pursuing and details of Huerfano's case, please contact Mollie Ruskin at 503.928.2988, mollieru@gmail.com or Caitlin Baggott 503.804.7644, caitlin.baggott@gmail.com.

UPDATE: After several days of intense networking, letter writing and hundreds of phone calls to ICE, authorities have just announced that Andrea Huerfano will be released from detention this afternoon.

She will have six months to assemble her case.

Organizers are in the process of planning next steps.

Is Obama Doing Enough for Black People?

Posted by Biko Baker at 10:56 AM | Comment Now | Permalink

(From 99problems.org)

Earlier this week, President Obama announced a new plan to rebuild America's economy. Yet the speech, which focused on the importance of building a new green economy, was criticized by the Congressional Black Caucus' Barbara Lee for not doing enough for black people.

What do you think? Is Obama doing enough to make sure that African Americans are getting jobs?

All statistics show that African Americans are one of the hardest hit populations by the recession. Check Obama's speech and the CBC statement after the jump.

Obama's speech:

Statement from Barbara Lee (via Politico):

"We need a concerted effort from the Federal government to expand access to education, job training, direct job creation, infrastructure development and economic opportunities to provide pathways out of poverty and opportunities for all.

The Congressional Black Caucus remains committed to working with President Obama and our Congressional leadership to address the very real economic crisis gripping our nation, which is particularly acute in communities of color.

Not only is the unemployment rate for African Americans nearly twice that of whites, these racial disparities persist in other areas as well. Nearly 28 percent of African Americans receive food aid compared to 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Recent African American college graduates are unemployed at higher rates than their white counterparts and African American workers remain unemployed an average of five weeks longer than the rest of America. The gaps are very real.

With more than 24 percent of African Americans living below the poverty line and African Americans 55 percent more likely to be unemployed than other Americans, the existence of racial disparities is undeniable.

As a candidate, President Obama said in his speech on race during the Democratic primary, 'race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.' The facts speak for themselves. The Congressional Black Caucus recognizes that behind virtually every economic indicator you will find gross racial disparities."

CDC: Swine Flu's Not That Bad

Posted by Youth Radio at 10:40 AM | Comment Now | Permalink

(From Youth Radio)

A new study finds that swine flu kills only 26 out of every 100,000 people who contract it, suggesting that the virus is far less deadly than initially suspected.

The number of swine flu deaths also dropped in Canada. In the United States, a new Center for Disease Control estimate says that one in six Americans has contracted swine flu, and nearly 10,000 people have died worldwide from swine flu.

The British study found that while the numbers were lower than expected -- there have been only 138 deaths attributed to H1N1 in England -- one-third of the deaths were among people deemed "too healthy" to be eligible for the vaccine.

According to the report, the virus is most fatal among the elderly -- who are less likely to contract it -- but it has also affected a "substantial minority" of healthy young adults. Even though swine flu has not targeted healthy adults, the report concludes "wider population vaccination... merits consideration."

Could Your Neighborhood School Be On the Chopping Block?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 5:14 PM | 1 comment | Permalink

As the president struggles with complex and politically sensitive issues like the war in Afghanistan, healthcare and how to accept a Nobel Peace Prize, there are some in the education world who worry that Mr. Obama will not have any political juice left to make the tough decisions needed in K-12 education.

Not to worry, says Jay Mathews over at the Washington Post, for he has an interesting proposal as to what the president can do to placate friends and foes of serious school reform alike: lead a charge to close down chronically low-performing schools.

The idea has its merits. As one study has reported, just 2,000 American high schools -- 13 percent of the nation's total -- produce more than 50 percent of our dropouts. Many of these so-called "dropout factories" have shown little progress in changing their ways.

But as Mr. Mathews correctly points out, closing these schools isn't as simple as one would think. Because it is the states (and local school districts) who control schools, the federal government can't just come in and shut down dropout factories on its own.

Instead, Mr. Mathews suggests that the president's school-closing initiative should focus on charter schools, because those are the schools that are most susceptible to state and federal influence and there is broad consensus -- among teachers unions and even charter school proponents alike -- that bad charter schools should be shuttered wherever they are identified.

As someone who has taught in one of these bad charter schools in St. Louis, I can attest to the value of ending an experiment that has gone wrong, especially when it brings the hopes and dreams of children down in the process.

The problem with the idea is two-fold. First, shutting down charter schools (or even failing public schools) only has value if the schools that children would attend instead are any better. And the sad reality is that families are only opting in to charter schools because the other options, including nearby traditional public schools, aren't very good.

Secondly, while it's true that closing a charter school wouldn't incur the same wrath as would closing an ordinary public school (since most charters don't have unionized teaching staffs that are a part of a powerful collective bargaining base), charter schools still serve students and parents. Many of these parents, despite the fact that their charter schools may not be performing well academically, report (PDF) increased satisfaction with the schools nonetheless.

Which brings us to the big-picture question that Mr. Mathews and President Obama need to consider when it comes to school reform in the first place: What is the end-game? Is the goal giving parents choices? If so, it doesn't seem like closing down any school is in line with that. If no one wants to send their child to a particular school it will get closed by default.

Or are we striving for an American education system where every kid has a first-class academic education? If that's the case, it's unlikely that any feel-good, everybody-wins type idea will get us there: the president will have to knock quite a few heads and need some help from other stakeholders -- unions, school leaders, parents and students themselves -- to get there.

Why not put pressure (through federal incentive grants like the Race to the Top Funds) on states to close down any and all failing schools. A parent's satisfaction seems like a red herring, after all, if her child can barely read and write.

L.A. Gang Tours: Innovative or Dehumanizing?

Posted by Leticia Miranda at 2:57 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink

Hmm.. voyeuristic, dehumanizing, fetishizing and exploitative sound right to me.

Alfred Lomas (pictured above) is leading the L.A. Gang Tours which will host paid bus tours through South Central Los Angeles for people who want to learn about local gangs and gang culture.

For 65 bucks, tourists will get a two-hour tour through Los Angeles, Calif. Stops include the L.A. County Jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center and the Jordan Downs Housing Project. And, all of the profits from the tours will go towards encouraging capitalist entrepreneurs through jobs, franchised tours in new areas, and microloans to inner-city entrepreneurs, according to the Boston Globe.

Organizers of the tours are also seriously confusing gangs with elements of hip-hop. They are considering selling T-shirts painted on the spot by a graffiti artist (oh, I mean "tagger") and staging breakdance-offs between locals with the winner to be picked by the tourists for a cash prize. These came after they nixed an idea to give tourists a T-shirt that reads "I Got Shot in South-Central" after youth shoot them with water pistols.

To his credit, Lomas plans to talk with tourists about city planning and how this created tensions between racial communities. But I really doubt the quality of these discussions considering the context -- a bunch of white middle- and upper-class progressive tourists listening to an ex-Florencia 13 gang member teach them about "the hood."

Lisa Gray-Garcia at POOR Magazine writes:

"One of the many oxymoronic aspects of this concept is the notion... that our neighborhoods, our communities, our corners, our schools, and our homes, are crazy, dirty, sick, disgusting and must be cleaned up, cleaned out and eradicated, hygienic metaphors about humans scattered about with impunity.

And the complete and utter disregard for the fact that in every one of these so-called, blighted neighborhoods, filthy apartment buildings and poor people schools, homes and communities, there are families and elders and children of color who are living, thriving, learning and resisting.

There are heroes, and leaders, and lecturers and healers, and dreamers and teachers, and poets and artists, revolutionaries and scholars. And it is only the people who have engaged in philanthropy pimping, colonized learning and formal institutions of helping that get honored, recognized and listened to for their heroism, beauty, power and agency."

Although I see there might be some good intentions with this project, I don't think it's our responsibility to "teach" people about our lives. Not only does this objectify our community, but it fails to get "tourists" to be self-critical and self-reflexive about how they (and all of us) participate in institutional racism and classism that create this kind of extreme poverty and violence.

South Philly Students to Walk Out Over Racial Assaults

Posted by Christina Chen at 5:29 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink

Last Thursday, 26 Asian high school students, many of whom are recent immigrants from China and Vietnam, were targeted in a series of racial attacks in the hallways of South Philadelphia High School.

Xu Lin, a community organizer with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, reported "a gang of other students" were "searching for victims" throughout the day, resulting in a spate of beatings that landed seven Asian students in a nearby hospital.

As somebody who has worked with low-income, immigrant students affected by anti-Asian violence in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (and encountered my fair share of it growing up in the Bay Area) I have a bone to pick with the way in which school administrators, law enforcement officials and the media have handled the case.

It's easy to buy into the cut-and-dry, mainstream coverage of the incidents, but these articles often lend credence to counterproductive stereotypes and aggravate longstanding tensions in our schools.

For starters, reports of anti-Asian violence often lapse into tired "model minority" tropes. In profiling Asian students as defenseless victims of the assaults, these articles overlook the brio with which these same students speak up and fight back. As Helen Gym, an activist with Asian Americans United (a community advocacy group that has helped document and address these and similar offenses) points out:

"Many of these immigrant students have become articulate and impassioned leaders for youth voices. They've written platforms about what they need from their principals and teachers. They need to be heard -- and the recommendations they've made over the year taken seriously."

South Philadelphia High's Asian immigrant students, like Wei Chen, president of the school's Chinese American Student Association, may be harassed because of "cultural barriers" and their status as non-native English speakers. This doesn't mean, however, that they are complacent in the face of escalating violence.

On Sunday, Chen announced that South Philadelphia's students will be mobilizing an all-week walk out. These budding student activists will be convening in Chinatown to work "on their own plans, conduct research... and meet with community and district leaders" to formulate their own solutions to the attacks.

Chen stated in a press release:

"It is our opinion that South Philadelphia High School is still not a safe place for us. Because we are Asian immigrants, we are targeted. We have been working with the school a long time, but still the school has failed to provide a concrete plan to address our safety inside and outside the building."

Chen and his peers are looking beyond law enforcement mechanisms to foster a more secure campus. Let's be real here: South Philadelphia High is 70 percent black and 18 percent Asian. The "disciplining" of those involved in the attacks often translates into the further criminalization of youth of color. High school students in Philly, New York, the Midwest, the South, and yes, even in California, are being taunted and physically attacked for being Asian, and yet schools and police respond by criminally prosecuting kids. What these perpetrators did is wrong. But how will these measures curb the racism and hostility faced by Asian immigrant students?

These incidents of cross-cultural, interpersonal violence warrant the creation of strong, anti-oppression curriculum that deals with the powerful stereotypes generated by the systemic relations between this nation's racial groups. And it's no help that the model minority myth, which mainstream coverage of anti-Asian violence often perpetuates, has long pitted Asian Americans against other communities of color.

South Philadelphia's students are a far cry from the powerless, academically obsessed victims that the media make them out to be. This week, they will disabuse folks of whatever notions they may have about Asian immigrant students as "mere victims" involved in incidents over which they have no agency.

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South Philadelphia High youth have put out a call for assistance for Mandarin and Vietnamese translators and for contributions to help pay for the students' transportation as well as meals during this time. Contributions may be sent to:

Asian Americans United

1023 Callowhill Street

Philadelphia, PA 19123

215-925-1538

aau@aaunited.org

www.aaunited.org