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Thursday, May 28, 2009

'A Last Vestige of Slavery & Segregation' ~ By Dick Meister

http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A3=ind0905d&L=PORTSIDE&E=0&P=291063&B=--&T=text%2Fplain

'A Last Vestige of Slavery & Segregation' ~ By Dick Meister

It's been three-quarters of a century since enactment

of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S.

workers the basic legal right of unionization - the

right to bargain with employers on setting their wages,

hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly

exploited workers have been denied the law's

protections - farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies,

and other domestic workers.

Congress should remedy the situation by amending the

law to include the excluded workers. Which is the goal

of a campaign - "Labor Justice" -- that's been launched

by two veterans of United Farm Worker union campaigns,

longtime UFW activist LeRoy Chatfield and former UFW

attorney Jerry Cohen. They've already won the backing

of labor, political, civil rights, academic, religious

and community leaders and organizations in more than 30

states.

Chatfield and Cohen played key roles in passing the

1975 law that granted union rights to California's farm

workers. There have been drives to enact similar laws

in other states, but none have even come close to

passing. Neither have drives for state laws to grant

union rights to domestic workers.

The need to extend the legal protections is obvious.

Most farm workers' pay is at or near the poverty level.

They typically have few fringe benefits and very little

legal protection from employer mistreatment.

Domestic workers, some of them self-employed, some of

them employees of companies that hire them out, also

generally earn little more than poverty-level pay and

have few benefits. Most are women, who often are

subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Some have

formed union-like organizations to seek better

treatment, but need the force of law behind them.

The "Labor Justice" campaign leaders call the exclusion

of farm workers and domestics from the protections of

the Labor Relations Act "one of our nation's last

vestiges of slavery and segregation."

Certainly the exclusion is at the least racist, since

the vast majority of U.S. farm and domestic workers are

Latino immigrants. In a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda

Solis urging the Obama administration to back the

proposed expansion of the law, Cohen compared the

exclusion of farm workers and domestics to the

situation in racist South Africa under Apartheid.

"Blacks," Cohen noted, were specifically excluded from

the protections of South Africa's equivalent of the

National Labor Relations Act.

It was racism, in fact, that kept farm workers and

domestics from being granted the protection of the U,S.

law originally, although it was a more subtle racism -

a "sleight of hand," as Cohen said.

At the time of the law's introduction in 1935 as part

of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, most

farm workers and domestics were African-American. The

segregationist Southern Democrats in Congress, an

important part of FDR's political base, absolutely

refused to vote for a law that would grant

African-American workers the same rights as white

workers.

So, as presented to Congress by Roosevelt and as

passed, the Labor Relations Act, the basic labor law of

the land, specifically excluded from its legal

protections "agricultural laborers" and anyone "in the

domestic service of any family or person."

But now, 74 years later, we finally have the

opportunity to correct that shameful exclusion.

Finally, we have the chance to provide every worker -

every one of them - the vital right of unionization.

Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has

covered labor and political issues for a half-century

as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and

commentator. Contact him through his website at

http://www.dickmeister.com

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Grappling with San Diego's Latino high school dropouts By Vince Vasque

http://www.sddt.com/Commentary/article.cfm?Commentary_ID=191&SourceCode=20090527tzc

Grappling with San Diego's Latino high school dropouts

By Vince Vasquez ,

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Over the past month educators at the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) have been trumpeting new state statistics that indicate a dramatic cut in the number of high school dropouts. Though this is good news, we shouldn't ignore the growing "Latino achievement gap" in the region.

Changing the status quo on student retention is critical, as teenagers that fall through the cracks will dramatically diminish our region's economic growth and prosperity. Adults who drop out of high school are more likely to be poor, unemployed, be in poorer health and spend time in the corrections system. A high school dropout is the loss of not only thousands of taxpayer dollars, but the loss of a young resident who will find it harder to compete in our globalized economy, where higher skills and academic degrees are required to attain high-paying employment.

On the surface the numbers from the California Department of Education tell an encouraging story. San Diego Unified School District reduced the number of high school dropouts by 490 students in the 2007-2008 academic year, slashing the 4-year dropout rate by 37 percent.

The tallies in the rest of the region are not nearly as promising. Of the 25 high school districts in San Diego County that reported to the state, nearly half (12) saw a year-to-year rise in overall student dropouts. On the whole, 6,126 students dropped out of San Diego County high schools, a figure which is essentially unchanged from last year.

Where trends appear especially bleak is the drop out rate among Latino teens. Though they make up less than half of all students in San Diego County public schools (44 percent), Latinos composed more than half (56 percent) of all county dropouts in 2007-08, a rate which increased from the previous school year. Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD), which educates more than one out of every three Hispanic high school students in the county, stood out as being especially troubled, with a 44 percent year-to-year increase in the number of Latino dropouts.

There are some proven policy options that can help address this problem. One is taking aggressive steps to increase the number of charter schools. The flexibility and diversity in teaching methods that charters encourage have been shown to help keep students in school and get them to graduation ceremonies. UC San Diego's Preuss Charter School, for example, which enrolls 758 low-income students and is 60 percent Latino, reported zero dropouts in 2007-2008. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of San Diego Unified charter high schools have lower Latino dropout rates and overall dropout rates than the district average.

Unfortunately, in this respect Sweetwater has lagged the rest of the region. There is currently only one chartered high school, MAAC Community Charter School, which focuses on at-risk students who have already dropped out of school. Another school, High Tech High Chula Vista, which opened its doors in fall 2007 and is modeled from a highly-popular educational philosophy, is not part of the district and has yet to graduate its first full class of students. The SUHSD School Board should consider setting new goals to approving charter schools, including transitioning existing high schools into charters, giving school administrators the tools they need to raise academic expectations and deliver results in the classroom.

A second problem is that too many of our high schools in this region are simply too large to meet the needs of students. Eighty-two percent of all Latino public high school students in San Diego County are currently enrolled at a high school with population of at least 1,823. At the Sweetwater District, 11 of its 12 high schools reach this size, including three with enrollments of almost 3,000. In contrast, at San Diego Unified only 27 percent of all mainstream public high schools have enrolments greater than 1,800.

Breaking down school sizes has been accomplished regionally with the aid of private dollars. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, three historically large schools within SDUSD (San Diego High, Kearny High and Crawford High) were divided into 14 smaller schools in 2004. Eight of these 14 institutions have now posted Latino dropout rates that are lower than the district average. Cultivating higher achievement is not exclusive to San Diego; earlier this decade, New York City officials broke 12 large high schools in 47 small schools and witnessed a 38 percent graduation rate increase in 2007.

Dramatic success with either small schools or charter reforms is not guaranteed. Nor is it the only thing that needs to change. As Bill Gates stated in his Foundation's 2009 Annual Letter, the schools that failed to make a dent in graduation rates or student achievement "tended to be the schools that did not take radical steps to change the culture, such as allowing the principal to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum." It will take true classroom pioneers and undaunted professionals to change the state of South Bay public schools, and when they do emerge, they are deserving of the full support of parents and teachers.

No parent, no matter what ethnic background, should be forced to send their child to a failing school and sentence them to an unproductive adulthood. By working together and setting higher goals for all, our community can achieve more scholastic success for the benefit of every student.

Vasquez is the senior policy analyst at the National University System Institute for Policy Research. Send comments to editor@sddt.com. Letters may be published as Letters to the Editor.

Welcoming the First Latino Supreme Court Justice: Gabriela Lemus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriela-lemus/welcoming-the-first-latin_b_208116.html

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Gabriela Lemus

Chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and Executive Director of LCLAA

Posted: May 27, 2009 11:07 AM

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Welcoming the First Latino Supreme Court Justice

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Read More: Sonia Sotomayor, Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court, Sotomayor, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justices, US Supreme Court, Politics News

Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced his decision to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to sit as the next Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. This unprecedented and historical announcement is a reflection of our nation: the first African-American president nominates the first Latina to the Supreme Court, and only the third woman in its history to hold that position.

But historical moments aside, the qualifications of this judicial nominee are outstanding and merit careful examination. Judge Sotomayor has more than three decades of experience bringing more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.

This judge is no intellectual lightweight. In her role on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- one of the most demanding circuits in the nation -- Judge Sotomayor participated in over 3000 panel discussions and authored some 400 opinions. She has handled everything from constitutional law to complex procedural matters and complicated business organizations. There is plenty of concrete information to draw from regarding her intellectual rigor and legal acuity.

A qualified Latina on our highest court will diversify judicial deliberations and bring firsthand experience to issues faced by not only ordinary Americans, but also under-served individuals and communities. This nomination will undoubtedly increase public confidence in our legal system by reinforcing our Constitution's axiom of "equal justice under the law."

Sotomayor has been widely admired by her colleagues as a judge with a sophisticated understanding of legal doctrine, but also as a judge who has keen knowledge of how laws and courts impact every-day lives. This is an important point to keep in mind as rule of law extends beyond legal theory to ensure common-sense application to real-world facts. This factor does not mean that she would base her decisions on some type of emotional reaction -- to the contrary -- it would serve to enhance the richness of the discussions taking place between the justices as they make their deliberations. Sotomayor is a moderate who forges consensus.

Her nomination comes at a time when the Latino community is at the heart of a number of highly politicized issues and attacks on its civil liberties. Someone like Sotomayor could help bridge the gap that exists in our communities today -- the gap between fear (and hatred) and understanding (and compassion).

As the Senate moves forward with her confirmation, Latinos everywhere will be watching and evaluating. Both parties should treat Judge Sotomayor with the respect that she deserves. Her record is there -- examine it, but render judgment with the same impartiality that will be expected of her should she be confirmed as Justice to the highest court in the land.

The president demonstrated the courage and political will to do what is right by opening the doors of the least diverse Supreme Court in history. A new day has dawned and hope has been reinstated for all whose belief in the American Dream had become tarnished.

Aztlan-Network-News Blog

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Peter added you as a friend on MyLife!

Thursday, May 28, 2009

'A Last Vestige of Slavery & Segregation' ~ By Dick Meister

Grappling with San Diego's Latino high school dropouts By Vince Vasque

Welcoming the First Latino Supreme Court Justice: Gabriela Lemus

Gabriela Lemus

Welcoming the First Latino Supreme Court Justice

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