The second article in my Sunday series on the economy and Latinos.
Immigrants aren't leaving, despite harder times in U.S.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/01/immigrants_arent_leaving_despi.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Friday January 23, 2009
As temperatures dropped below freezing and snow amassed on cars and rooftops, Maria, her husband Zenon, and their two small children huddled in the tiny kitchen of their unheated trailer. The entry door was broken, letting in an icy draft.
Nine years after arriving from the Mexican state of Michoacan, the undocumented parents are without jobs, barely scraping enough food for their U.S.-born children to eat.
Is the family thinking of going back to Mexico?
"We really have not thought about going back," Maria said. "It hasn't occurred to us."
That's true of many Latino immigrant families who find themselves out of work and resources in the lagging economy. There has been no exodus of area Latinos back to Mexico and Central America, and no such exodus on a national scale. The crisis, Latinos say, is still better than the poverty they faced back home. And with increased enforcement at the border, leaving the United States could mean never being able to come back -- a chance few want to take.
The choice between staying or returning to the country of origin is a matter of survival, especially for undocumented immigrants, experts say.
"Leaving is not a decision you just take one morning," said Demetrios Papademetriou, director of the nonpartisan Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. "These are acts of desperation."
Activists against illegal immigration, who want also to reduce the level of legal immigration, hoped that a bad economy and increased immigration enforcement would push undocumented Latinos out of the country.
"We won't get rid of all illegals, but we can have policies and an environment that cause deportation through attrition," said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, at an immigration debate in Wilsonville this month.
The opposite seems to be true.
A report released by the Migration Policy Institute this month, which Papademetriou co-authored, says no definitive return migration trend can be tied so far to the U.S. economic crisis. That's because return migration, the report says, is historically connected with improved social, economic and political conditions in the immigrants' countries of origin.
But the economy has dwindled also in Latin America, especially in Mexico, where about 80 percent of exports are bought by U.S. markets. Mexico's economy is probably headed for a recession, government officials there said this month. And a slowdown in money that U.S. Latinos send home may further hinder growth. Remittances make up nearly 3 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, according to the World Bank, and are the second source of foreign revenue after oil exports.
A tighter border
Similarly, stepped-up enforcement at the border has reduced circular migration and led more Latinos to settle in the United States with their families, Papademetriou said.
More patrols, improved technology and miles of border fences have pushed illegal immigrants to cross in areas more secluded and more dangerous. Many make dozens of attempts to cross before they succeed. The dangers and difficulties, in turn, have inflated the prices paid to smugglers to several thousand dollars a person.
Latino immigrants know that "if you leave the U.S. now, it will be extremely difficult to come back in," Papademetriou said.
Once immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens, going back becomes even harder. And Mexico's unstable security climate fueled by narco-trafficking adds to the hesitation.
"Going back home would be an act of total desperation," Papademetriou said, "almost equivalent to the one that made them take any chance necessary, including losing their lives, to cross the border to the United States."
Javier Serrano, an expert on migration at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, a university in the Mexican state of Tabasco, says another ephemeral factor may also keep immigrants in the United States: the fulfillment of a dream.
"Migration involves hopes, expectations and ambitions that don't necessarily adjust to economic calculations," Serrano said. "Once they have moved, immigrants try to fulfill their expectations, and they persist even when the situation becomes unfavorable."
No work in village
Maria and Zenon, who for fear of deportation would be interviewed only if their last names were withheld, left their villages in Mexico in 1999 because no work was available.
Since arriving in Oregon, Zenon has worked full time in nurseries. Maria raised the children, now 3 and 5 years old, and worked in the fields picking blueberries and other fruit. The couple saved their modest incomes and bought a trailer in the Portland area last year.
But six months ago, Zenon was laid off "because the plants were not selling," he said. Since then, the family has subsided on the bare minimum.
"We never thought it would be like this," said Maria in Spanish. "We don't even have enough money for lunch."
When Zenon gets work for a day or two -- covering berry shrubs, odd construction jobs -- the money goes toward paying rent on the trailer lot. They have lapsed in the mortgage on the trailer and their water bills. Their car broke down. Just last week, their electricity was cut off. They have no savings or assets.
The family survives on food donations from the SnowCap and Salvation Army shelters. They also receive food stamps for the two children, who are U.S. citizens. The couple are not eligible for any government benefits, such as unemployment. But the parents say they're waiting for jobs to come back because they want to give their children a better future, one without poverty.
"We're used to living here," Maria said. "And there is nothing to go back to."
There may be a tipping point in the decision-making of immigrants such as Maria and Zenon, Papademetriou said.
"At which point are horrible conditions over there better than the horrible conditions here?" he said. "If you have to live on the margins, with no income, in a place where people don't want you and don't help you, there is only so much time you can move in with relatives and tighten your belt before you hit bare bones."
If the recession continues for six to nine months, Papademetriou said, and if the recovery is "jobless," undocumented Latinos may reconsider. But the decision to return to poverty in Latin America would still be agonizing, especially in light of the potential for U.S. immigration reform.
"The deck is stacked and they are stuck," Papademetriou said. "The question is, which gives first, the economy, Mr. Obama with legalization, or a realization that I can't survive anymore."
Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com
Read more!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Article 1: Where recession hits hardest
Here is the first of my two articles on how U.S. Latinos are affected by the economic crisis. It's running on the front page of the Business section this Sunday (but is already online). It took a lot of work to put all the data together.
Oregon Latinos hit hard by recession
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/01/oregon_latinos_hit_hard_by_rec.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Benjamin Brink
Saturday January 24, 2009
The national recession obliterating jobs in Oregon nurseries, construction sites and manufacturing facilities is hitting Latinos harder than any other group, primarily because they face distinct challenges that most people in the U.S. don't.
As a group, native and foreign-born Latinos often lack a financial cushion to sustain them in hard economic times, studies and data show. They tend to earn less and they financially support families in Latin America.
They're overrepresented in the industries most battered by the economy, may be at a greater risk of foreclosure because of risky loans and are ineligible for some government benefits, making them vulnerable to prolonged poverty.
"People want to work and they can't," said Carlos Hernandez, the Latino pastor at Gresham's St. Anne's church. "We had people who were established and lost everything, including their homes."
Though African Americans tend to have economic indicators similar to those of Latinos, Oregon's Latino population is much larger --10 percent of the population, compared with 2 percent -- so the economic crisis affects more Latino families.
Local agencies say they have seen unprecedented numbers of Latinos inquiring about food boxes, rent and utility assistance, and foreclosure advice, said Gloria Wiggins, director of El Programa Hispano.
More Latinos also are looking for emergency shelter, said Edith Murilla, shelter coordinator for Human Solutions, who gets at least half a dozen calls from Latinos each week.
"People are afraid," Wiggins said. "They are stretching their resources. Someone has a friend or cousin or uncle, someone is staying in someone's living room. Without that, a lot of people would be living in their cars or on the streets."
All groups losing jobs
Latinos, just like other racial and ethnic groups, have lost thousands of jobs in recent months. Nationally, unemployment rates have risen at roughly comparable rates -- from 4 to 6percent for whites, from 6 to 9percent for Latinos, and from 10 to 11.5 percent for African Americans.
Until the recession, Latinos were closing the unemployment rate gap with whites, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director for the Pew Hispanic Center. As recently as 2006, the gap had shrunk to historic lows of 1percentage point or less.
A fourth of Oregon's Latino families live below the federal poverty level, according to the 2007 American Community Survey, compared with 9percent of non-Latino white families, 10 percent of Asian families and 26 percent of African American families. The destitution is even greater for foreign-born Latinos, the survey showed. The federal poverty threshold for a family of four in 2007 was $21,200 -- about $400 a week.
Many Latino families lack any financial cushion to help survive economic emergencies. They earn significantly less and save less. The median weekly pay of full-time, salaried Latinos in 2007 -- $503 -- was lower than that of blacks ($569), whites ($716) and Asians ($830), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Oregon, the median income of a Latino family was $34,600, compared with $57,700 for the total population, according to the survey.
Latinos are less likely to have savings or even checking accounts. A 2008 study of low- to moderate-income individuals by the polling firm Encuesta Inc. found that three in four Americans are "banked" -- they frequently use financial institutions -- compared with fewer than half of Latinos. Using cash, the survey found, is part of the daily course for many Latinos.
Many send money to families
Though earning little, the majority of immigrant Latinos send monthly remittances to their families in Latin America. A 2006 study by Bendixen & Associates for the Inter-American Development Bank shows that 70 percent of Oregon's 177,000 Latin American-born and Caribbean-born adults send money regularly to their families, for a total of $383 million in 2006 -- about $257 a person each month. The national average for a Mexican immigrant, according to the Bank of Mexico, is $350 a month.
Other immigrants also send money home and may even send larger amounts -- China, India and Mexico are the top receiving countries for remittances worldwide -- but they tend to be wealthier than Latinos, so the money is a smaller percentage of their earnings. In recent months, Latin America's remittances have leveled from their record decade-long growth.
"I feel really bad, but I'm not able to send so much money right now," said Irene Robles, a legal U.S. resident who lives in Portland. She and her husband usually send monthly payments to the couple's elderly mothers in Mexico, but it's been sporadic in recent months. Instead, they help their adult son, who lost his job as a welder last year and has two children and a wife.
Latinos are overrepresented in some of the industries hardest hit by the economic crisis, such as construction, manufacturing, retail trade and leisure/hospitality, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In Oregon, those sectors lost the most jobs in December, according to the Oregon Employment Department.
The slump in the construction industry, which has been the mainstay of job growth for Latino workers, hit immigrants and undocumented Latinos especially hard, the Pew report showed.
Those Latinos may have more difficulty finding new employment than other groups, experts say, because of poor English skills, low education and, in some cases, the lack of immigration documents or driver's licenses. And the pressure to find a job can push workers into dangerous or unfair working conditions.
Latino homeowners may also be at a greater risk of foreclosure. At all income levels, Oregon's Latino and African American borrowers are more likely than whites to have received risky subprime loans, according to a 2008 analysis by the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Subprime loans usually have higher interest rates, which frequently are adjustable over time. The loans were typically made to people who could otherwise not afford buying a house.
The analysis showed that more than half of Latino middle-income borrowers received subprime loans in 2006, compared with 25 percent of whites and 47 percent of African Americans. The report showed the same trend for low-, moderate- and higher-income Latinos and blacks.
And undocumented Latino immigrants are not eligible for most government aid, such as unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Medicaid. Many legal immigrants who are not citizens are excluded from access to major federal benefits, such as welfare and food stamps.
Stores have fewer clients
As Latino families scramble to survive, their hardships are affecting local merchants.
"Our business has really slowed," said Raul Toro, owner of Portland-based restaurant La Isla Bonita. Toro said he's trying to keep afloat by offering more coupons for discount meals in his restaurant.
"It has definitely affected us," said Isabell "Chavela" Mendoza, owner of Su Casa Imports, two large Latino supermarkets in Hillsboro and Southeast Portland. "We are at a point where we have to think about what people need rather than what they want."
The supermarkets, whose clientele is about 95 percent Latino, now focus on core items, Mendoza said, such as masa for tortillas, eggs, milk and beans. Mendoza has had to lay off a few people, but mostly reduced the hours of all employees.
Mendoza said more people have asked for free food in recent months. She feeds them, then sends them to area food banks. But, she said, she doesn't see the same families for long.
"You have the sense that community members help each other," she said. "We know what it feels like, we were all once newcomers here. We remember where we came from."
-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com
In the past year, many Latinos who have lost their jobs have turned to the day labor site in Cornelius to find work. But on many days, no employers drive by. Some of the men have not worked for weeks, while payments lapse -- rent, bills and remittances sent to families in Latin America. The men have a sixth sense about any car pulling down North 11th Avenue just off Adair Street. As the car slows, they rush to be the one picked. (Photo by Benjamin Brink, The Oregonian)
Read more!
Oregon Latinos hit hard by recession
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/01/oregon_latinos_hit_hard_by_rec.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Benjamin Brink
Saturday January 24, 2009
The national recession obliterating jobs in Oregon nurseries, construction sites and manufacturing facilities is hitting Latinos harder than any other group, primarily because they face distinct challenges that most people in the U.S. don't.
As a group, native and foreign-born Latinos often lack a financial cushion to sustain them in hard economic times, studies and data show. They tend to earn less and they financially support families in Latin America.
They're overrepresented in the industries most battered by the economy, may be at a greater risk of foreclosure because of risky loans and are ineligible for some government benefits, making them vulnerable to prolonged poverty.
"People want to work and they can't," said Carlos Hernandez, the Latino pastor at Gresham's St. Anne's church. "We had people who were established and lost everything, including their homes."
Though African Americans tend to have economic indicators similar to those of Latinos, Oregon's Latino population is much larger --10 percent of the population, compared with 2 percent -- so the economic crisis affects more Latino families.
Local agencies say they have seen unprecedented numbers of Latinos inquiring about food boxes, rent and utility assistance, and foreclosure advice, said Gloria Wiggins, director of El Programa Hispano.
More Latinos also are looking for emergency shelter, said Edith Murilla, shelter coordinator for Human Solutions, who gets at least half a dozen calls from Latinos each week.
"People are afraid," Wiggins said. "They are stretching their resources. Someone has a friend or cousin or uncle, someone is staying in someone's living room. Without that, a lot of people would be living in their cars or on the streets."
All groups losing jobs
Latinos, just like other racial and ethnic groups, have lost thousands of jobs in recent months. Nationally, unemployment rates have risen at roughly comparable rates -- from 4 to 6percent for whites, from 6 to 9percent for Latinos, and from 10 to 11.5 percent for African Americans.
Until the recession, Latinos were closing the unemployment rate gap with whites, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director for the Pew Hispanic Center. As recently as 2006, the gap had shrunk to historic lows of 1percentage point or less.
A fourth of Oregon's Latino families live below the federal poverty level, according to the 2007 American Community Survey, compared with 9percent of non-Latino white families, 10 percent of Asian families and 26 percent of African American families. The destitution is even greater for foreign-born Latinos, the survey showed. The federal poverty threshold for a family of four in 2007 was $21,200 -- about $400 a week.
Many Latino families lack any financial cushion to help survive economic emergencies. They earn significantly less and save less. The median weekly pay of full-time, salaried Latinos in 2007 -- $503 -- was lower than that of blacks ($569), whites ($716) and Asians ($830), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Oregon, the median income of a Latino family was $34,600, compared with $57,700 for the total population, according to the survey.
Latinos are less likely to have savings or even checking accounts. A 2008 study of low- to moderate-income individuals by the polling firm Encuesta Inc. found that three in four Americans are "banked" -- they frequently use financial institutions -- compared with fewer than half of Latinos. Using cash, the survey found, is part of the daily course for many Latinos.
Many send money to families
Though earning little, the majority of immigrant Latinos send monthly remittances to their families in Latin America. A 2006 study by Bendixen & Associates for the Inter-American Development Bank shows that 70 percent of Oregon's 177,000 Latin American-born and Caribbean-born adults send money regularly to their families, for a total of $383 million in 2006 -- about $257 a person each month. The national average for a Mexican immigrant, according to the Bank of Mexico, is $350 a month.
Other immigrants also send money home and may even send larger amounts -- China, India and Mexico are the top receiving countries for remittances worldwide -- but they tend to be wealthier than Latinos, so the money is a smaller percentage of their earnings. In recent months, Latin America's remittances have leveled from their record decade-long growth.
"I feel really bad, but I'm not able to send so much money right now," said Irene Robles, a legal U.S. resident who lives in Portland. She and her husband usually send monthly payments to the couple's elderly mothers in Mexico, but it's been sporadic in recent months. Instead, they help their adult son, who lost his job as a welder last year and has two children and a wife.
Latinos are overrepresented in some of the industries hardest hit by the economic crisis, such as construction, manufacturing, retail trade and leisure/hospitality, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In Oregon, those sectors lost the most jobs in December, according to the Oregon Employment Department.
The slump in the construction industry, which has been the mainstay of job growth for Latino workers, hit immigrants and undocumented Latinos especially hard, the Pew report showed.
Those Latinos may have more difficulty finding new employment than other groups, experts say, because of poor English skills, low education and, in some cases, the lack of immigration documents or driver's licenses. And the pressure to find a job can push workers into dangerous or unfair working conditions.
Latino homeowners may also be at a greater risk of foreclosure. At all income levels, Oregon's Latino and African American borrowers are more likely than whites to have received risky subprime loans, according to a 2008 analysis by the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Subprime loans usually have higher interest rates, which frequently are adjustable over time. The loans were typically made to people who could otherwise not afford buying a house.
The analysis showed that more than half of Latino middle-income borrowers received subprime loans in 2006, compared with 25 percent of whites and 47 percent of African Americans. The report showed the same trend for low-, moderate- and higher-income Latinos and blacks.
And undocumented Latino immigrants are not eligible for most government aid, such as unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Medicaid. Many legal immigrants who are not citizens are excluded from access to major federal benefits, such as welfare and food stamps.
Stores have fewer clients
As Latino families scramble to survive, their hardships are affecting local merchants.
"Our business has really slowed," said Raul Toro, owner of Portland-based restaurant La Isla Bonita. Toro said he's trying to keep afloat by offering more coupons for discount meals in his restaurant.
"It has definitely affected us," said Isabell "Chavela" Mendoza, owner of Su Casa Imports, two large Latino supermarkets in Hillsboro and Southeast Portland. "We are at a point where we have to think about what people need rather than what they want."
The supermarkets, whose clientele is about 95 percent Latino, now focus on core items, Mendoza said, such as masa for tortillas, eggs, milk and beans. Mendoza has had to lay off a few people, but mostly reduced the hours of all employees.
Mendoza said more people have asked for free food in recent months. She feeds them, then sends them to area food banks. But, she said, she doesn't see the same families for long.
"You have the sense that community members help each other," she said. "We know what it feels like, we were all once newcomers here. We remember where we came from."
-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com
In the past year, many Latinos who have lost their jobs have turned to the day labor site in Cornelius to find work. But on many days, no employers drive by. Some of the men have not worked for weeks, while payments lapse -- rent, bills and remittances sent to families in Latin America. The men have a sixth sense about any car pulling down North 11th Avenue just off Adair Street. As the car slows, they rush to be the one picked. (Photo by Benjamin Brink, The Oregonian)
Read more!
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The new (multicultural, multiracial) first family
This is very cool, I say.
The New York Times
January 21, 2009
A PORTRAIT OF CHANGE
In First Family, a Nation’s Many Faces
By JODI KANTOR
WASHINGTON — The president’s elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.
When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.
As they convened to take their family’s final step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obama’s memoir — no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new president’s promise of change.
For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
To continue, click: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/politics/21family.html?em
Read more!
The New York Times
January 21, 2009
A PORTRAIT OF CHANGE
In First Family, a Nation’s Many Faces
By JODI KANTOR
WASHINGTON — The president’s elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.
When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.
As they convened to take their family’s final step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obama’s memoir — no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new president’s promise of change.
For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
To continue, click: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/politics/21family.html?em
Read more!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Obama! the 44th and the first
watch the oath and the speech:
To read the text of Obama's speech, go to the White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/
And here is the very elegant benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery:
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand, true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.
We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.
We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.
He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.
Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.
For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.
We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption -- and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.
With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back . . . when brown can stick around . . . when yellow will be mellow . . . when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen. Say amen. And amen.
Source: CQ Transcriptions
Read more!
To read the text of Obama's speech, go to the White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/
And here is the very elegant benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery:
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand, true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.
We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.
We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.
He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.
Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.
For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.
We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption -- and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.
With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back . . . when brown can stick around . . . when yellow will be mellow . . . when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen. Say amen. And amen.
Source: CQ Transcriptions
Read more!
Monday, January 19, 2009
"I have a dream"
On the eve of Obama's historic inauguration, listen to the famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr., delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
For the video, audio and transcript of the speech, go to:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Waiting for inauguration on MLK day
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. How fitting that Mr. Obama becomes president tomorrow. If you're listening to the news at all, it's abuzz about the inauguration. I want to share a small article that was on the inside of the NY Times yesterday. It's about the place where the inauguration will take place: the Capitol. The Capitol, the White House, and other important Washington structures were built by slaves. The National Mall, which Obama will be overlooking as he gives his speech, sits near the site of the city's most bustling slave market. We have made good progress. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech "I have a dream" in 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (that's on the National Mall). Now Obama will make the next step.
January 18, 2009
A Civil Rights Victory Party on the Mall
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Joseph Burrucker, 82, was an air traffic controller with the Tuskegee Airmen in the 1940s. For the last few weeks, he has been working out at a gym near his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, trying to get in shape so that when he comes to Barack Obama’s inauguration, he will be able to walk, albeit with a cane, to his seat.
The Tuskegee Airmen, the elite and segregated corps of black pilots and support crew from World War II, are among the few with inaugural tickets and seats. Their bravery during the war, on behalf of a country that actively discriminated against them, helped persuade President Harry S. Truman to desegregate the military; today, after being ignored for more than half a century, they are considered civil rights pioneers.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama sparingly addressed matters of race. But as he prepares for his swearing-in on Tuesday, his inaugural is shaping up as a watershed event in the nation’s racial history — the culmination of the long struggle for civil rights.
Just over a generation ago, blacks in the South could not vote without restrictions. On Tuesday, more than 1.5 million people — among them about 200 former Tuskegee Airmen — are expected to pack the capital in honor of the nation’s first black president.
“It is a huge civil rights moment,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “Barack Obama has run the last lap of a 54-year race for civil rights.”
The inaugural program and surrounding events will feature some of the nation’s most prominent black artists and public figures, including Tiger Woods, Colin L. Powell, Aretha Franklin, Denzel Washington and Beyoncé Knowles.
Adding to the inauguration’s significance is that it comes just one day after the celebration of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when Mr. Obama will participate in a day of community service in the District of Columbia, a largely black city often ignored by official Washington. Mr. Obama has already signaled his interest in the community.
The Tuskegee Airmen make up just a piece of the inaugural tapestry. Seats were also offered to the Little Rock Nine, who faced violent mobs when they tried to enter an all-white school in 1957 after schools were supposed to be integrated.
“People have a sense of ownership,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, a civil rights veteran. Mr. Lewis’s office received 14,000 requests for tickets, though he, like other members of the House, had just 193 to distribute. “People in the rural Deep South, in Greenwood, Miss., in Selma, they feel they helped bring this about, that they should be there.”
One of Mr. Obama’s guests, Dorothy Height, 96, will have a place of honor on the platform — in her wheelchair. Ms. Height, a longtime social activist, was accepted at Barnard College in 1929 but was turned away when she arrived because the school had met its quota of two black women.
“I never thought I would live to see this,” she said of the inauguration of a black president. “This is real recognition that civil rights was not just what Dr. King dreamed. But it took a lot of people a lot of work to make this happen, and they feel part of it.”
The inaugural itself will be at the Capitol, which was built by slaves who baked the bricks, sawed the timber and laid the stone for its foundation. When Mr. Obama delivers his Inaugural Address, he will be looking out across the National Mall, which was once a slave market, beyond the White House, also built by slaves, to the Lincoln Memorial, honoring the president who freed the slaves.
The outpouring is for a man who was rarely explicit about race in nearly two years on the campaign trail. He started out quoting Dr. King by name, but as his candidacy rolled toward the nomination, the words and cadences still reflected Dr. King, but the name vanished.
Mr. Obama made implicit references to race, as when he won the Iowa caucuses. “They said this day would never come,” he said in his victory speech.
It was only when confronted with controversy over his former pastor that Mr. Obama addressed the subject directly, with a well-received speech.
Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, said that many people, not just the Obama team, wanted to mute the issue of race during the campaign.
“There was this silent understanding on the part of a lot of blacks that you couldn’t surface things in this campaign because they would redound to the enemies of Barack Obama and be used against him,” Mr. Walters said.
But now, he said, with Mr. Obama’s election, many African-Americans feel safer expressing their pride. “Some African-Americans feel we can put forward our claim on the campaign and it’s not going to hurt Barack,” he said. “The campaign is bowing to this because this is part of what made his election possible.”
Roger Wilkins, a former journalist and history professor, said that during the campaign, Mr. Obama “had the task of presenting himself to a country in which it’s clear that being black was not, at least initially, a terrific asset, and being a niche candidate, as Jackson and Sharpton were, wasn’t going to work.”
David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said of the emerging civil rights aura at the inauguration: “We have not stressed the historic nature of this, but it is hard to miss. However people voted, whatever their background, I think there is a pervasive sense of pride among Americans about another barrier broken. It’s an affirmation that we live our ideals.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who grew up under Jim Crow laws, said he had more than 11,000 requests for his 193 tickets and he gave most of them to people who had fought for civil rights.
Mr. Clyburn reserved tickets for a constituent, Lillian Martin, 73, who was determined to go despite having terminal cancer and regardless of whether she had a ticket.
Mrs. Martin died a few days ago. But her husband plans to go in her honor. In an interview shortly before she died, Mrs. Martin said her cancer was “growing by leaps and bounds but it can’t overtake me — there’s too much I’m looking forward to with the inauguration of a black president.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Read more!
January 18, 2009
A Civil Rights Victory Party on the Mall
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Joseph Burrucker, 82, was an air traffic controller with the Tuskegee Airmen in the 1940s. For the last few weeks, he has been working out at a gym near his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, trying to get in shape so that when he comes to Barack Obama’s inauguration, he will be able to walk, albeit with a cane, to his seat.
The Tuskegee Airmen, the elite and segregated corps of black pilots and support crew from World War II, are among the few with inaugural tickets and seats. Their bravery during the war, on behalf of a country that actively discriminated against them, helped persuade President Harry S. Truman to desegregate the military; today, after being ignored for more than half a century, they are considered civil rights pioneers.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama sparingly addressed matters of race. But as he prepares for his swearing-in on Tuesday, his inaugural is shaping up as a watershed event in the nation’s racial history — the culmination of the long struggle for civil rights.
Just over a generation ago, blacks in the South could not vote without restrictions. On Tuesday, more than 1.5 million people — among them about 200 former Tuskegee Airmen — are expected to pack the capital in honor of the nation’s first black president.
“It is a huge civil rights moment,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “Barack Obama has run the last lap of a 54-year race for civil rights.”
The inaugural program and surrounding events will feature some of the nation’s most prominent black artists and public figures, including Tiger Woods, Colin L. Powell, Aretha Franklin, Denzel Washington and Beyoncé Knowles.
Adding to the inauguration’s significance is that it comes just one day after the celebration of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when Mr. Obama will participate in a day of community service in the District of Columbia, a largely black city often ignored by official Washington. Mr. Obama has already signaled his interest in the community.
The Tuskegee Airmen make up just a piece of the inaugural tapestry. Seats were also offered to the Little Rock Nine, who faced violent mobs when they tried to enter an all-white school in 1957 after schools were supposed to be integrated.
“People have a sense of ownership,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, a civil rights veteran. Mr. Lewis’s office received 14,000 requests for tickets, though he, like other members of the House, had just 193 to distribute. “People in the rural Deep South, in Greenwood, Miss., in Selma, they feel they helped bring this about, that they should be there.”
One of Mr. Obama’s guests, Dorothy Height, 96, will have a place of honor on the platform — in her wheelchair. Ms. Height, a longtime social activist, was accepted at Barnard College in 1929 but was turned away when she arrived because the school had met its quota of two black women.
“I never thought I would live to see this,” she said of the inauguration of a black president. “This is real recognition that civil rights was not just what Dr. King dreamed. But it took a lot of people a lot of work to make this happen, and they feel part of it.”
The inaugural itself will be at the Capitol, which was built by slaves who baked the bricks, sawed the timber and laid the stone for its foundation. When Mr. Obama delivers his Inaugural Address, he will be looking out across the National Mall, which was once a slave market, beyond the White House, also built by slaves, to the Lincoln Memorial, honoring the president who freed the slaves.
The outpouring is for a man who was rarely explicit about race in nearly two years on the campaign trail. He started out quoting Dr. King by name, but as his candidacy rolled toward the nomination, the words and cadences still reflected Dr. King, but the name vanished.
Mr. Obama made implicit references to race, as when he won the Iowa caucuses. “They said this day would never come,” he said in his victory speech.
It was only when confronted with controversy over his former pastor that Mr. Obama addressed the subject directly, with a well-received speech.
Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, said that many people, not just the Obama team, wanted to mute the issue of race during the campaign.
“There was this silent understanding on the part of a lot of blacks that you couldn’t surface things in this campaign because they would redound to the enemies of Barack Obama and be used against him,” Mr. Walters said.
But now, he said, with Mr. Obama’s election, many African-Americans feel safer expressing their pride. “Some African-Americans feel we can put forward our claim on the campaign and it’s not going to hurt Barack,” he said. “The campaign is bowing to this because this is part of what made his election possible.”
Roger Wilkins, a former journalist and history professor, said that during the campaign, Mr. Obama “had the task of presenting himself to a country in which it’s clear that being black was not, at least initially, a terrific asset, and being a niche candidate, as Jackson and Sharpton were, wasn’t going to work.”
David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said of the emerging civil rights aura at the inauguration: “We have not stressed the historic nature of this, but it is hard to miss. However people voted, whatever their background, I think there is a pervasive sense of pride among Americans about another barrier broken. It’s an affirmation that we live our ideals.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who grew up under Jim Crow laws, said he had more than 11,000 requests for his 193 tickets and he gave most of them to people who had fought for civil rights.
Mr. Clyburn reserved tickets for a constituent, Lillian Martin, 73, who was determined to go despite having terminal cancer and regardless of whether she had a ticket.
Mrs. Martin died a few days ago. But her husband plans to go in her honor. In an interview shortly before she died, Mrs. Martin said her cancer was “growing by leaps and bounds but it can’t overtake me — there’s too much I’m looking forward to with the inauguration of a black president.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Read more!
Saturday, January 17, 2009
News and the wind
At last, Israel declares a cease-fire in Gaza. It's good news, though very late. More than 1,000 Palestinians dead, and 13 Israelis. This is hardly the end of this conflict, of course, but at least a small quiet in the storm for now. Go to the NY Times to read more about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?_r=1&h
Meanwhile, here in Oregon, the winds are battering east county, Portland, where I live. I walked outside, and the roar was like that of the ocean. It felt like I was being washed by the wind. Cleaned.
Obama mania is back on. We're all watching for inauguration day, for the historic moment. I am hopeful. A president that represents me as an immigrant, a president who understands the world because he has personal connections to it: a mother from Kansas, USA and a father from Kenya, a childhood in Hawaii and in Indonesia. This moment feels good, because Obama has been working hard, even though he's not president yet. I'm not ready to give him carte-blanche -- I don't know that we should give that to any politician -- but I think he has the smarts and sensitivity to do well for this country I live in. And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Meanwhile, here in Oregon, the winds are battering east county, Portland, where I live. I walked outside, and the roar was like that of the ocean. It felt like I was being washed by the wind. Cleaned.
Obama mania is back on. We're all watching for inauguration day, for the historic moment. I am hopeful. A president that represents me as an immigrant, a president who understands the world because he has personal connections to it: a mother from Kansas, USA and a father from Kenya, a childhood in Hawaii and in Indonesia. This moment feels good, because Obama has been working hard, even though he's not president yet. I'm not ready to give him carte-blanche -- I don't know that we should give that to any politician -- but I think he has the smarts and sensitivity to do well for this country I live in. And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Friday, January 9, 2009
The funniest piece of writing I have read in a while!
From the end-of-the-book LIVES section of the New York Times magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/magazine/21lives-t.html
December 21, 2008
Holiday Fin
By BENJAMIN SVETKEY
My wife, Lenka, and I don’t have anything against kids, but the responsibility of caring for another being, of holding the fate of a tiny defenseless soul in our shaky hands, always worried us. So a while back we got a fish.
We named him Puntja, which is the equivalent of Spot in Czech, my wife’s native language. The word for Flipper was too hard for me to pronounce. We brought him home in a plastic baggie, and soon enough we were cooing into his bowl and fretting over the temperature of his water. That first night, I went online and was horrified to learn that his bowl was too small. So we drove back to the pet store and purchased a 10-gallon version. We also got a high-tech filtration system guaranteed to clean and recirculate Puntja’s water every few hours, along with antibiotic tablets and various other goldfish medicines (just in case) and lots more plastic plants to decorate his big new bowl.
Lenka and I lavished an insane amount of affection on Puntja. I read that goldfish are as intelligent as dolphins, so I planted a large donut-shaped rock in his bowl and tried to teach him to swim through its hole. Lenka took pictures of him constantly, keeping a record of his growth. I pinned the shots up on my office wall, next to pictures of my family; she posted them on her MySpace page. We would sometimes catch each other hovering over Puntja’s bowl, making cute fish faces and fish noises.
The little guy really had become part of the family. When we left him behind for a long Thanksgiving weekend at Big Sur, we spent the whole vacation worrying that his time-release food pellet would malfunction and he’d starve before we got home.
Then, one day right before Christmas — Santa was going to bring Puntja a pirate’s chest that made bubbles — Lenka called me at the office, sounding stricken. “Something’s wrong with Puntja,” she said. “He’s swimming upside down.” When I got home Puntja was indeed doing a spastic backstroke. We decided to take him to the pet shop for a consultation, and we gingerly scooped him into his old, smaller bowl for the journey. With Puntja cradled in Lenka’s lap, water splashing everywhere, I carefully drove the few miles to the store.
We were nearly there, waiting at a stoplight, when we got rear-ended by a limousine, smashing us into the S.U.V. in front of us, squeezing our car like an accordion. The fish bowl hit Lenka in her face, cutting her lip, and the impact sent Puntja flying. When it was over, the car was totaled, my wife was bleeding and Puntja’s bowl was cracked and empty.
“Where’s the fish?” Lenka shrieked after we had climbed out of the wreck and regained our wits. “Where’s Puntja?” I crawled back into the car and looked for him. When I found him under the passenger seat, my heart sank. Our happy little fish was dead. I gently placed his corpse into his waterless bowl and sat down on the curb with my wife.
That’s how the E.M.S. medics discovered us when they arrived 10 minutes later — a woman with a bloody lip and a man holding a fish, trying not to cry. I sat in the back of the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, clutching Puntja’s bowl on my lap, watching as one of the medics tended to Lenka’s injury. Then the other medic turned to me.
“Let me see the fish,” he said over the siren. I told him the fish was dead, that he hadn’t moved in 20 minutes. “Let me see the fish,” he repeated.
I handed him the bowl. He poked Puntja with his finger. No response. The medic thought for a moment, then reached into a bag by his side, pulled out a bottle of Evian and filled the fishbowl with the mineral water. He poked at Puntja some more. We were all stunned by what happened next. After a few nudges, Puntja sprang to life. And not only that, he was right side up.
We all stared in disbelief as Puntja swam in French bottled water, then we broke out cheering. When we got to the E.R., Lenka needed a few stitches but was otherwise O.K. I walked away without a scratch. And Puntja came home healthier than ever. And he stayed that way for two whole weeks, until he started swimming upside down again. He passed away shortly after New Year’s. (“Internal injuries suffered during the car accident,” the pet-store clerk speculated). We gave him a burial at sea, in the Venice Canals where we live. Lenka and I held hands as we watched his small golden corpse drift slowly to the bottom.
Two years later, we’ve healed, mostly. On good nights, we can even eat sushi again. And despite his tragic end, Puntja helped us realize that we were ready for a much larger challenge, that we could indeed take that giant leap into far greater responsibility. About nine months after Puntja’s passing, we welcomed another newcomer to our household. We got a cat.
Benjamin Svetkey lives in Los Angeles. He is an editor at large at Entertainment Weekly.
Read more!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/magazine/21lives-t.html
December 21, 2008
Holiday Fin
By BENJAMIN SVETKEY
My wife, Lenka, and I don’t have anything against kids, but the responsibility of caring for another being, of holding the fate of a tiny defenseless soul in our shaky hands, always worried us. So a while back we got a fish.
We named him Puntja, which is the equivalent of Spot in Czech, my wife’s native language. The word for Flipper was too hard for me to pronounce. We brought him home in a plastic baggie, and soon enough we were cooing into his bowl and fretting over the temperature of his water. That first night, I went online and was horrified to learn that his bowl was too small. So we drove back to the pet store and purchased a 10-gallon version. We also got a high-tech filtration system guaranteed to clean and recirculate Puntja’s water every few hours, along with antibiotic tablets and various other goldfish medicines (just in case) and lots more plastic plants to decorate his big new bowl.
Lenka and I lavished an insane amount of affection on Puntja. I read that goldfish are as intelligent as dolphins, so I planted a large donut-shaped rock in his bowl and tried to teach him to swim through its hole. Lenka took pictures of him constantly, keeping a record of his growth. I pinned the shots up on my office wall, next to pictures of my family; she posted them on her MySpace page. We would sometimes catch each other hovering over Puntja’s bowl, making cute fish faces and fish noises.
The little guy really had become part of the family. When we left him behind for a long Thanksgiving weekend at Big Sur, we spent the whole vacation worrying that his time-release food pellet would malfunction and he’d starve before we got home.
Then, one day right before Christmas — Santa was going to bring Puntja a pirate’s chest that made bubbles — Lenka called me at the office, sounding stricken. “Something’s wrong with Puntja,” she said. “He’s swimming upside down.” When I got home Puntja was indeed doing a spastic backstroke. We decided to take him to the pet shop for a consultation, and we gingerly scooped him into his old, smaller bowl for the journey. With Puntja cradled in Lenka’s lap, water splashing everywhere, I carefully drove the few miles to the store.
We were nearly there, waiting at a stoplight, when we got rear-ended by a limousine, smashing us into the S.U.V. in front of us, squeezing our car like an accordion. The fish bowl hit Lenka in her face, cutting her lip, and the impact sent Puntja flying. When it was over, the car was totaled, my wife was bleeding and Puntja’s bowl was cracked and empty.
“Where’s the fish?” Lenka shrieked after we had climbed out of the wreck and regained our wits. “Where’s Puntja?” I crawled back into the car and looked for him. When I found him under the passenger seat, my heart sank. Our happy little fish was dead. I gently placed his corpse into his waterless bowl and sat down on the curb with my wife.
That’s how the E.M.S. medics discovered us when they arrived 10 minutes later — a woman with a bloody lip and a man holding a fish, trying not to cry. I sat in the back of the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, clutching Puntja’s bowl on my lap, watching as one of the medics tended to Lenka’s injury. Then the other medic turned to me.
“Let me see the fish,” he said over the siren. I told him the fish was dead, that he hadn’t moved in 20 minutes. “Let me see the fish,” he repeated.
I handed him the bowl. He poked Puntja with his finger. No response. The medic thought for a moment, then reached into a bag by his side, pulled out a bottle of Evian and filled the fishbowl with the mineral water. He poked at Puntja some more. We were all stunned by what happened next. After a few nudges, Puntja sprang to life. And not only that, he was right side up.
We all stared in disbelief as Puntja swam in French bottled water, then we broke out cheering. When we got to the E.R., Lenka needed a few stitches but was otherwise O.K. I walked away without a scratch. And Puntja came home healthier than ever. And he stayed that way for two whole weeks, until he started swimming upside down again. He passed away shortly after New Year’s. (“Internal injuries suffered during the car accident,” the pet-store clerk speculated). We gave him a burial at sea, in the Venice Canals where we live. Lenka and I held hands as we watched his small golden corpse drift slowly to the bottom.
Two years later, we’ve healed, mostly. On good nights, we can even eat sushi again. And despite his tragic end, Puntja helped us realize that we were ready for a much larger challenge, that we could indeed take that giant leap into far greater responsibility. About nine months after Puntja’s passing, we welcomed another newcomer to our household. We got a cat.
Benjamin Svetkey lives in Los Angeles. He is an editor at large at Entertainment Weekly.
Read more!
Mexico under siege
Nearly 7,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since the start of 2007, many of them innocent civilians. That's more than the U.S. fatalities in Iraq. And, since 2000, 28 journalists were killed in Mexico and other reporters have disappeared and are presumed dead -- all because they were reporting on this very drug war. Last year, por fin, Mexican president Felipe Calderon declared a war on drug crime and sent thousands of federal troops to fight the trafficking, corruption and drug cartels. But the violence continues unabated -- it even seems to get worse as cartels respond to the government's actions with more violence, as a way of reasserting their control. And it was just reported in the New York Times that the rising violence has led the US to develop plans for civilian and military law enforcement, should the bloodshed spread north. (click here to read about that)
To find out more about Mexico's war on drug-related crime, read the excellent series by Los Angeles Times journalists. It includes articles, photos, videos and graphics. Go to: http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war
This is not to scare you from taking your next vacation in Mexico (though you might want to avoid some cities). To the contrary, Mexico is such a beautiful and interesting country -- I can tell you this from experience of visiting and working in Michoacan and Mexico City (DF). But it's worth reading these stories to understand that Mexico has problems that affect us, our Latino immigrants and their families back home. Fighting the drug violence is also America's business: drug-selling is a two-way street of supply and demand. Mexican drug traffickers control most of the US drug market, but the US demand continues to bring the flow of drugs and violence up through the border. It seems to be a bad circle.
Read more!
To find out more about Mexico's war on drug-related crime, read the excellent series by Los Angeles Times journalists. It includes articles, photos, videos and graphics. Go to: http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war
This is not to scare you from taking your next vacation in Mexico (though you might want to avoid some cities). To the contrary, Mexico is such a beautiful and interesting country -- I can tell you this from experience of visiting and working in Michoacan and Mexico City (DF). But it's worth reading these stories to understand that Mexico has problems that affect us, our Latino immigrants and their families back home. Fighting the drug violence is also America's business: drug-selling is a two-way street of supply and demand. Mexican drug traffickers control most of the US drug market, but the US demand continues to bring the flow of drugs and violence up through the border. It seems to be a bad circle.
Read more!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Gaza
I have been watching the escalating violence in Gaza with anguish. It seems to make no sense. It's yet another circle of violence playing out between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Violence that will create more violence and more anger. As Israeli ground troops push farther into Gaza, it's reported today that their shells have hit a school where Palestinians were sheltering, killing many people. I don't see how this offensive will lead to any solution whatsoever. Let's remember that Hamas won power through democratic means -- its legislators were elected. While that doesn't make Hamas virtuous, it certainly gives it legitimacy. And it will probably gain even more support as the victims of Israeli attacks multiply. This conflict has a such a long, troubled history on both sides. I'm afraid pounding the Palestinians into submission and killing hundreds of civilians is not a good way to solve it.
I recommend reading this interesting news analysis from New York Times's Ethan Bronner:
Is the real target Hamas rule?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/world/middleeast/04assess.html?scp=4&sq=hamas&st=cse
EREZ CROSSING, on the Israel-Gaza border — As Israel’s tanks and troops poured into Gaza on Saturday, the next phase in its fierce attempt to end rocket attacks, a question hung over the operation: can the rockets really be stopped for any length of time while Hamas remains in power in Gaza?
And if the answer is determined to be no, then is the real aim of the operation to remove Hamas entirely, no matter the cost?
After her visit to Paris on Thursday to explain to French authorities why she thought this was not the time for a quick cease-fire, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”
Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.
“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern,” Mr. Ramon said on Channel One. “That is the most important thing.”
Neither Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak has made such a statement. Still, there is a growing and shared concern among Israeli leaders that any letup against Hamas would be problematic for Israel’s broad goals in the long term because it could bolster and validate the group, which says Israel should be destroyed.
“If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from re-occupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition,” wrote Aluf Benn, a political analyst, in the newspaper Haaretz on Friday. “No matter what you call it,” he added, “Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”
In addition, any potential truce deal would probably include an increase in commercial traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is Hamas’s central demand: to end the economic boycott and border closing it has been facing. To build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet withholding the commerce would continue to leave 1.5 million Gazans living in despair.
Implicit in Mr. Benn’s argument, however, is that the only way to stop Hamas from gaining legitimacy is for Israel to fully occupy Gaza again, more than three years after removing its soldiers and settlers. That is a prospect practically no one in Israel or abroad is advocating.
Moreover, while it may sound decisive to speak of taking Hamas out of power, almost no one familiar with Gaza and Palestinian politics considers it realistic. Hamas legislators won a democratic majority in elections four years ago, and the group has 15,000 to 20,000 men under arms. It has consolidated its rule in the past 18 months since pushing out its rivals loyal to the more Western-oriented and moderate Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, who sits in Ramallah in the West Bank.
And while there are plenty of Gazans who would prefer Fatah, they seem hardly organized or strong enough to become the new rulers, even with the help of former colleagues in exile in Ramallah who say, anyway, that they would never be willing to ride into Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank. In fact, the longer Israel pounds Gaza, the weaker Fatah is likely to become because it will be seen as collaborating.
The likelier result of a destruction of the Hamas infrastructure, then, would be chaos, anathema not only to the people of Gaza but also to those hoping for peace in southern Israel.
Yet in its campaign so far, which has killed scores of children and other bystanders, Israel has not spared the trappings of Hamas sovereignty or limited itself to military targets. It says that the mosques it has destroyed were weapons storehouses and that the Islamic University, which it has hit repeatedly, housed explosives factories. But it has also reduced many government buildings to rubble without any claim that they were military in nature.
“The government buildings are a place where financial, logistical and human resources serve to support terror,” said Capt. Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military. “Much of the government is involved in the active support and planning of terror.”
Taken together, it suggests that even if Israel intends to hold back from completely overthrowing Hamas, its choice of assault tactics could head that way anyway. And the Israelis may already be facing a kind of mission creep: after all, if enough of Hamas’s infrastructure is destroyed, the prospect of governing Gaza, a densely populated, refugee-filled area whose weak economy has been devastated by the Israeli-led boycott, will be exceedingly difficult.
In the background, too, is broad international criticism of this war on Gaza, not only because of the unspeakable suffering seen on television screens but also because of a feeling that Israel has tried such tactics in the past and never succeeded.
In particular, many point to the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel also tried to destroy rocket launchers and a hostile organization’s infrastructure, only to end up killing many civilians and leaving Hezbollah more popular and perhaps ultimately stronger than before the war.
But military planners here say that the parallel is inexact and that they, too, have learned a lesson. Gaza is smaller and flatter than southern Lebanon and, most important, does not have a sievelike border with a country like Syria where arms can be constantly resupplied. Destroying the smuggler tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai into Gaza and systematically eliminating weapons depots and launcher sites, along with their supporting infrastructures, will ultimately succeed, they contend.
It may take weeks or months, they assert, but it can work. If true, questions still remain: At what human cost? And who will be in charge when it is all over?#
Read more!
I recommend reading this interesting news analysis from New York Times's Ethan Bronner:
Is the real target Hamas rule?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/world/middleeast/04assess.html?scp=4&sq=hamas&st=cse
EREZ CROSSING, on the Israel-Gaza border — As Israel’s tanks and troops poured into Gaza on Saturday, the next phase in its fierce attempt to end rocket attacks, a question hung over the operation: can the rockets really be stopped for any length of time while Hamas remains in power in Gaza?
And if the answer is determined to be no, then is the real aim of the operation to remove Hamas entirely, no matter the cost?
After her visit to Paris on Thursday to explain to French authorities why she thought this was not the time for a quick cease-fire, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”
Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.
“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern,” Mr. Ramon said on Channel One. “That is the most important thing.”
Neither Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak has made such a statement. Still, there is a growing and shared concern among Israeli leaders that any letup against Hamas would be problematic for Israel’s broad goals in the long term because it could bolster and validate the group, which says Israel should be destroyed.
“If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from re-occupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition,” wrote Aluf Benn, a political analyst, in the newspaper Haaretz on Friday. “No matter what you call it,” he added, “Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”
In addition, any potential truce deal would probably include an increase in commercial traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is Hamas’s central demand: to end the economic boycott and border closing it has been facing. To build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet withholding the commerce would continue to leave 1.5 million Gazans living in despair.
Implicit in Mr. Benn’s argument, however, is that the only way to stop Hamas from gaining legitimacy is for Israel to fully occupy Gaza again, more than three years after removing its soldiers and settlers. That is a prospect practically no one in Israel or abroad is advocating.
Moreover, while it may sound decisive to speak of taking Hamas out of power, almost no one familiar with Gaza and Palestinian politics considers it realistic. Hamas legislators won a democratic majority in elections four years ago, and the group has 15,000 to 20,000 men under arms. It has consolidated its rule in the past 18 months since pushing out its rivals loyal to the more Western-oriented and moderate Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, who sits in Ramallah in the West Bank.
And while there are plenty of Gazans who would prefer Fatah, they seem hardly organized or strong enough to become the new rulers, even with the help of former colleagues in exile in Ramallah who say, anyway, that they would never be willing to ride into Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank. In fact, the longer Israel pounds Gaza, the weaker Fatah is likely to become because it will be seen as collaborating.
The likelier result of a destruction of the Hamas infrastructure, then, would be chaos, anathema not only to the people of Gaza but also to those hoping for peace in southern Israel.
Yet in its campaign so far, which has killed scores of children and other bystanders, Israel has not spared the trappings of Hamas sovereignty or limited itself to military targets. It says that the mosques it has destroyed were weapons storehouses and that the Islamic University, which it has hit repeatedly, housed explosives factories. But it has also reduced many government buildings to rubble without any claim that they were military in nature.
“The government buildings are a place where financial, logistical and human resources serve to support terror,” said Capt. Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military. “Much of the government is involved in the active support and planning of terror.”
Taken together, it suggests that even if Israel intends to hold back from completely overthrowing Hamas, its choice of assault tactics could head that way anyway. And the Israelis may already be facing a kind of mission creep: after all, if enough of Hamas’s infrastructure is destroyed, the prospect of governing Gaza, a densely populated, refugee-filled area whose weak economy has been devastated by the Israeli-led boycott, will be exceedingly difficult.
In the background, too, is broad international criticism of this war on Gaza, not only because of the unspeakable suffering seen on television screens but also because of a feeling that Israel has tried such tactics in the past and never succeeded.
In particular, many point to the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel also tried to destroy rocket launchers and a hostile organization’s infrastructure, only to end up killing many civilians and leaving Hezbollah more popular and perhaps ultimately stronger than before the war.
But military planners here say that the parallel is inexact and that they, too, have learned a lesson. Gaza is smaller and flatter than southern Lebanon and, most important, does not have a sievelike border with a country like Syria where arms can be constantly resupplied. Destroying the smuggler tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai into Gaza and systematically eliminating weapons depots and launcher sites, along with their supporting infrastructures, will ultimately succeed, they contend.
It may take weeks or months, they assert, but it can work. If true, questions still remain: At what human cost? And who will be in charge when it is all over?#
Read more!
Sunday, January 4, 2009
The Reader
I saw the film The Reader last night. It is based on the novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink. I really liked the book, as well as the film. Excellent acting by Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. I won't give away the plot, but The Reader deals with the morally complex question of guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust. It's a passionate story of love and atonement and shame. Here is how the book begins:
When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. I saw sky, sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the courtyard. As dusk came one evening in February, there was the sound of a blackbird singing.
The first time I ventured outside, it was to go from Blumenstrasse, where we lived on the second floor of a massive turn-of-the-century building, to Bahnhofstrasse. That's where I'd thrown up on the way home from school one day the previous October. I'd been feeling weak for days, in a way that was completely new to me. Every step was an effort. When I was faced with stairs either at home or at school, my legs would hardly carry me. I had no appetite. Even if I sat down at the table hungry, I soon felt queasy. I woke up every morning with a dry mouth and the sensation that my insides were in the wrong place and too heavy for my body. I was ashamed of being so weak. I was even more ashamed when I threw up. That was another thing that had never happened to me before. My mouth was suddenly full, I tried to swallow everything down again, and clenched my teeth with my hand in front of my mouth, but it all burst out of my mouth anyway straight through my fingers. I leaned against the wall of the building, looked down at the vomit around my feet, and retched something clear and sticky.
When rescue came, it was almost an assault. The woman seized my arm and pulled me through the dark entryway into the courtyard. Up above there were lines strung from window to window, loaded with laundry. Wood was stacked in the courtyard; in an open workshop a saw screamed and shavings flew. The woman turned on the tap, washed my hand first, and then cupped both of hers and threw water in my face. I dried myself with a handkerchief.
"Get that one!" There were two pails standing by the faucet; she grabbed one and filled it. I took the other one, filled it, and followed her through the entryway. She swung her arm, the water sluiced down across the walk and washed the vomit into the gutter. Then she took my pail and sent a second wave of water across the walk.
When she straightened up, she saw I was crying. "Hey, kid," she said, startled, "hey, kid"--and took me in her arms. I wasn't much taller than she was, I could feel her breasts against my chest. I smelled the sourness of my own breath and felt her fresh sweat as she held me, and didn't know where to look. I stopped crying.
Excerpted from The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.
Read more!
When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. I saw sky, sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the courtyard. As dusk came one evening in February, there was the sound of a blackbird singing.
The first time I ventured outside, it was to go from Blumenstrasse, where we lived on the second floor of a massive turn-of-the-century building, to Bahnhofstrasse. That's where I'd thrown up on the way home from school one day the previous October. I'd been feeling weak for days, in a way that was completely new to me. Every step was an effort. When I was faced with stairs either at home or at school, my legs would hardly carry me. I had no appetite. Even if I sat down at the table hungry, I soon felt queasy. I woke up every morning with a dry mouth and the sensation that my insides were in the wrong place and too heavy for my body. I was ashamed of being so weak. I was even more ashamed when I threw up. That was another thing that had never happened to me before. My mouth was suddenly full, I tried to swallow everything down again, and clenched my teeth with my hand in front of my mouth, but it all burst out of my mouth anyway straight through my fingers. I leaned against the wall of the building, looked down at the vomit around my feet, and retched something clear and sticky.
When rescue came, it was almost an assault. The woman seized my arm and pulled me through the dark entryway into the courtyard. Up above there were lines strung from window to window, loaded with laundry. Wood was stacked in the courtyard; in an open workshop a saw screamed and shavings flew. The woman turned on the tap, washed my hand first, and then cupped both of hers and threw water in my face. I dried myself with a handkerchief.
"Get that one!" There were two pails standing by the faucet; she grabbed one and filled it. I took the other one, filled it, and followed her through the entryway. She swung her arm, the water sluiced down across the walk and washed the vomit into the gutter. Then she took my pail and sent a second wave of water across the walk.
When she straightened up, she saw I was crying. "Hey, kid," she said, startled, "hey, kid"--and took me in her arms. I wasn't much taller than she was, I could feel her breasts against my chest. I smelled the sourness of my own breath and felt her fresh sweat as she held me, and didn't know where to look. I stopped crying.
Excerpted from The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.
Read more!
Los Viejitos, indigenous people of Mexico
Here is a story I recently wrote. It was really interesting to report it.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1230330310177900.xml&coll=7
P'urhepecha Indians in Portland hold fast to their identity
Monday, December 29, 2008
GOSIA WOZNIACKA
The Oregonian
Clack! Clack!
Sandals with wooden soles land on a concrete garage floor. Homeboys in hoodies, a throng of young schoolkids and middle-aged men pull the sandals onto their feet.
One of the men turns on the boombox. He grabs a canelike wooden stick with a sculpted root instead of a handle. Others follow with their sticks, squaring off in two lines.
Clack, clack, clack! More than 30 pairs of feet stomp, accelerate, in unison and with a deafening thud. Dust rises. Sweat drips off dancers' faces.
Men, women and children watch from the sides, as if still standing in the dusty plaza in Cocucho, a village high in the mountains of Michoacan in central Mexico. In this Southeast Portland garage, a second Cocucho thrives, carried by the rhythm and din of an ancient dance called Los Viejitos, the trancelike "dance of old men."
Los Viejitos is a stubborn, loud repetition in the face of possible disappearance. Cocucho, and now the Portland area, are home to the P'urhepecha Indians, an indigenous community from Mexico -- also known as Tarascans -- that retained its unique language and culture even after the Spanish conquest, only to be threatened by the forces of globalization and migration.
In Oregon, where most of Cocucho's expatriates live, three worlds grind against one another: the indigenous, the Mexican and the American. Most parents still speak P'urhepecha, but their children prefer Spanish or English.
To keep the link with the Mexican Cocucho and a sense of identity, Oregon's P'urhepecha organize in a tight web of cooperation. They also teach the Los Viejitos dance and -- just like it happens in their village in Mexico -- hold a dance competition in Portland every year on Christmas Day.
"We don't want to lose our culture," 42-year-old Herlinda Pasaye says in a muddled singsong Spanish, wrapping a blue rebozo, a hand-woven shawl, tighter around her shoulders against the draft in the garage. "The young ones are dancing; they are learning our tradition."
The dance leader shouts:
Ya muchachos! A bailar! Let's dance!
Days of empire
The Kingdom of the P'urhepecha was one of the largest and most prosperous empires in the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world until the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, according to historians. The P'urhepecha language is not part of any known language family and is not related to Spanish.
Isolated villages safeguarded the indigenous culture, so that today more than 100,000 people in Michoacan still speak P'urhepecha, Mexican census figures show. But poverty and the demands of globalization led many P'urhepecha to clear forests for farmland, causing severe deforestation and upending the community's way of life, said Carlos Molina Santos, one of the P'urhepecha leaders in Portland.
Half of the Michoacan forest vanished during the past five decades, according to a study by that state's government. And P'urhepecha men, who could no longer rely on the traditional manufacturing of wooden crates, wood furniture and crafts, started migrating north.
The path from Cocucho to the Portland area was forged in the mid-1980s, Molina Santos said. Today, more than 300 heads of families are part of a Cocucho phone list, including 200 families from the metro area, 50 from Madras and a few more from California and Washington. Others from P'urhepecha villages also have settled in the Northwest.
Oregon P'urhepechas' tight social-cooperation network harks back to their village, where all men and women participated in unpaid community labor. In Oregon, they regularly activate their phone tree and gather to decide how much money to collect for a renovation project in Cocucho, to help those who stayed behind. And when a village member passes away, they all pay to send the body to be buried in Mexico.
"Whatever happens, we are there for each other," Carlos Molina said. "The idea is that we all cooperate and don't let anyone fall behind."
The efficient social network also re-creates a sense of home. Molina Santos and Pasaye, his wife, invited a Los Viejitos dance troupe called Los Tareris -- Tareris means "those who sow" in P'urhepecha -- to practice in the couple's garage. The dance provides distraction from the daily grind of American life, Molina Santos said, and "it reminds me of Cocucho."
Crossing cultures
In order to win the Los Viejitos competition, "dancers must be united and organized, like our community," said Pedro Blas Molina, leader of Los Tareris. Feet clad in wooden soles must clack in unison.
The dance Los Viejitos was once a pre-Hispanic religious ceremony, according to David Rojas, a retired anthropologist who taught dance history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The dancers would honor and communicate with Huehueteotl, the Old God, Rojas said, revering the wisdom of old age. But after the "spiritual conquest" of Mexico by Spain, the dance became a Christian celebration.
"We were a nation that used to worship our gods by dancing and singing to them," Rojas said. "It was very hard to stop the P'urhepecha from doing that. So today they are replicating the old ceremonies."
During competitions, dancers still don old men masks, embroidered pants, the wooden-sole sandals and serape ponchos. They hunch over and lean on homemade wooden canes -- but then, joined by beautiful women dancers known as Maringuillas, they turn vigorous.
The dance's pre-Hispanic significance and name have been lost, but dancers say the performance in Portland -- as in Cocucho -- is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Another interpretation says the Viejitos mock Mexico's Spanish conquerors, and the woman dancer is La Malinche, the indigenous translator and lover of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes.
Many people join a Los Viejitos troupe because they "promise" the dance to the Virgin Mary in return for good health, a successful trip or another assurance, Blas Molina said. In Oregon, the dance is in its sixth year. Community members pay for the space rental, orchestra, food for hundreds of people and prizes. Women cook traditional corundas, a P'urhepecha specialty similar to tamales.
In the end, dancing or watching Los Viejitos is more than a distraction. It's a survival mechanism, because American and Mexican influences seep in, Molina Santos said, threatening the survival of the P'urhepecha language and identity.
Ironically, emigration offers the prospect of revival. Many of the men have learned to dance Los Viejitos only once they came to Oregon, making sure their community thrives despite its dispersal.
"We are proud to dance here," 28-years-old Miguel Ascencio Rodriguez said. "We're representing our village and keeping our culture alive." #
Photos by: Leah Nash, Steven Nehl, Stephanie Yao
Watch Los Tareris, the Viejitos dance group, rehearse for the competition:
http://videos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2008/12/purepecha_perform_the_los_viej.html
| Purepecha perform the Los Viejitos dance |
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Welcome! Witam! Bienvenidos!
Finally, I am starting a blog. A way to share my world - and the world at large - with those who know me and those who don't. As a reporter, I read, watch and listen for a living. I live for stories. I am curious about everything. So here is what I find fascinating, what I am working on, the gossip of the world big and small that I overheard. Enjoy!
And here is the rest of it.
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And here is the rest of it.
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