Click to see more photos. Jest wiecej zdjec!
Read more!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Kahneeta
I spent two serene days on the Indian reservation of Warm Springs. So much space -- the expanse of red-greyish sand and stones, with wild horses and roaming cows... (You can enlarge each photo - kazde zdjecie mozna powiekszyc klikajac na nie).
Click to see more photos. Jest wiecej zdjec!
Read more!
Click to see more photos. Jest wiecej zdjec!
Read more!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Anouk van Dijk choreographs
Wednesday night I went to see a dance performance by a choreographer from the Netherlands. It was intense and pretty interesting. The audience was seated in a very tight, small square, about ten people to a row, with barely space in the middle to dance. It made some people uncomfortable, to be put in such close quarters. The dance examined the relationship between performer and audience, often time it seemed the audience was the performer and the performer was watching us! Mid-way through the piece, the chairs were removed, and the dancers mingled with the (confused) crowd. I loved it. Here's an excerpt:
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Remade in America
The New York Times is running a series of articles about immigration, with some really fantastic graphics.
Today, a very interesting story on how the latest influx of immigrants is affecting schools and how immigrant children are being taught. Well worth the reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/us/15immig.html
To see the entire series when they add more articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/immigration
And make sure to look at this graphic, it is AMAZING:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
It shows how different ethnic groups settled across America over our last few centuries.
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Today, a very interesting story on how the latest influx of immigrants is affecting schools and how immigrant children are being taught. Well worth the reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/us/15immig.html
To see the entire series when they add more articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/immigration
And make sure to look at this graphic, it is AMAZING:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
It shows how different ethnic groups settled across America over our last few centuries.
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero
A very scary prospect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12papers.html?_r=1&hp
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12papers.html?_r=1&hp
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
an angry immigration debate
Here is my latest article from The Oregonian, on the topic of immigration reform. What's new is that businesses are now pushing for this reform -- a year or two ago, they would keep mum when asked about undocumented workers. What's not new is how much anger the debate generates. As of this morning, the article posted at the Oregonian site generated more than 100 comments. Most pretty angry. Worth a reading in themselves - for a pulse of what some folks are thinking.
Oregon groups unite on immigration reform
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/oregon_groups_unite_on_immigra.html
Though immigration has dwindled as an issue in Washington, D.C., overshadowed by the economic crisis, local groups in Oregon and other states are pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, hoping to jump-start the conversation.
Despite historic differences, three unlikely bedfellows -- businesses, unions and faith leaders -- are teaming up to lobby legislators, raise awareness and add economic arguments to an often emotional debate.
"It's very symbolic that we've decided to go in the same direction on the issue of immigration," said Jeff Stone of the Coalition for a Working Oregon, a group of 20 Oregon employer associations. "It doesn't mean that businesses have gone to the left, or unions to the right. Both sides still have their opinions, but we're setting them aside."
The three groups are asking lawmakers to halt all immigration-related legislation on the state level and declare support for swift federal action. Along with their counterparts in other states, they are pushing Congress for a September vote on immigration, and they want local legislators to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting President Barack Obama's reform agenda.
That agenda includes securing borders, creating a system to regulate the flow of workers, and allowing undocumented immigrants in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line to become citizens.
The three groups come to reform with different perspectives. Employers want access to a reliable, legal work force. Union leaders want workers to have legal status, so that they don't have to hide in the shadows and are not taken advantage of. And faith leaders want to show how the immigration system affects individuals and their families.
"We came together to talk sense, to explain that there are consequences to enforcement-only actions, and to change the debate to a more reasonable, humane, realistic conversation, instead of vilifying a whole ethnic group," Stone said. "Ultimately, we're going to have to live together as a community."
Francisco Lopez, coordinator of the immigrant-rights group CAUSA, said the groups wanted a more "holistic" approach to immigration reform.
"Our goal is to find common ground," he said.
Business speaks up
So far, the groups say their common goal is to keep people in the country working and living legally while their immigration status is resolved. An estimated 150,000 such immigrants live in Oregon, according to a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study.
Businesses are the newest player in the battle for reform. Until recently, most employers kept quiet when the subject of employing illegal workers came up. But the federal "no-match" rule, which would require businesses to fire undocumented workers, galvanized them.
The Coalition for a Working Oregon says employers can't afford to lose the workers -- there aren't enough native Oregonians to do the jobs -- and they need a better mechanism to get a legal work force.
"We realized we'll lose our workers and we're always playing defense," said Stone, co-chairman of the coalition. "Clearly, we either needed to articulate our voice and help shape policy, or have policy shape us."
The coalition, which represents more than 300,000 workers in nurseries, construction, dairy farms and other top industries, has held a series of immigration debates in chambers of commerce around the state, lobbying state lawmakers, and building a base of supporters to blanket legislators with calls when the time is right.
The unions want unauthorized immigrant workers legalized so leaders can better advocate for employee rights in the workplace. The unions include PCUN, or Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, with more than 5,000 registered members, and the Service Employees International Union, which represents 45,000 workers in Oregon.
"We want to make sure workers have a voice on the job, and it's very difficult for workers to have a voice when some are forced to work in the shadows," said Arthur Towers, political director for SEIU Local 503.
PCUN and CAUSA are holding leadership training and house meetings to mobilize supporters, especially Latinos who are U.S. citizens. They are also lobbying state lawmakers and planning a march to bring several thousand Oregonians to Salem on May 1.
"We need to show that we have the capacity to mobilize," Lopez said. "We need to make noise locally so it's reflected on the national level."
And faith leaders in dozens of congregations across the state are putting a human face on the debate by holding presentations on immigration and planning legislative action to push for reform, including writing letters, phoning, holding rallies and visiting legislators.
"We're going back to our basic faith values around justice, human dignity and the inherent value of all people," said Sarah Loose, coordinator of Oregon New Sanctuary Movement, which unites more than 20 congregations that support immigrants' rights, no matter their legal status.
"It's about seeing people as more than labor, as our fellow brothers and sisters who have the same needs as people everywhere," she said.
The opposition
Opponents of legal and illegal immigration advocate a different kind of overhaul. Enforcement and a severe reduction of current immigration levels should be its pillars, said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. In the meantime, the state should help fix the system.
A handful of Republican lawmakers in Salem have introduced a dozen immigration-related bills, ranging from requiring proof of legal presence to be hired by the state to requiring employers to verify employees' legal status through the federal E-Verify database.
"Yes, the immigration system needs to be fixed, but I don't see that happening anytime soon," said Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer. "And I don't picture some of these issues being addressed by Congress."
But the political reality in Salem doesn't favor Thatcher's bills. At a recent meeting at the Capitol, Debbie Koreski, legislative director for House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, told reform proponents that most of the bills would not even get a hearing. Republicans don't have the votes because of the Democratic supermajority in both house. And legislators are still raw, Koreski said, from last year's discussion about stricter driver's license requirements -- blocking undocumented immigrants from getting a license -- and are not eager to take up the debate.
The economy has also eclipsed the conversation. Though the crisis and the plight of unemployed Americans may slow reform, proponents agree, it won't stop it. Because for the most part, Stone said, laid-off American workers don't want the jobs that immigrants held.
"Americans don't choose to do those kinds of jobs anymore," he said. "It's hard work, with your hands. Try working 10 hours in the rain all day digging trees."
If the economy grows worse, small movement across job sectors may be seen, he said, but this argument also distracts from solving the overall issue.
"Once the economy rebounds, we'll be stuck with the same problem," said Bill Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Oregon Restaurant Association. In fact, he said, the economic crisis might be the perfect time to resolve immigration. "If you want to get the economy to where it was, you have to meet the work force demand."
And enforcement alone could be counterproductive to economic recovery.
"You can't in the same stroke that you try to repair the economy use enforcement measures which are harming those very sectors of the economy," Stone said.
©2009 Oregon Live
Read more!
Oregon groups unite on immigration reform
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/oregon_groups_unite_on_immigra.html
Though immigration has dwindled as an issue in Washington, D.C., overshadowed by the economic crisis, local groups in Oregon and other states are pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, hoping to jump-start the conversation.
Despite historic differences, three unlikely bedfellows -- businesses, unions and faith leaders -- are teaming up to lobby legislators, raise awareness and add economic arguments to an often emotional debate.
"It's very symbolic that we've decided to go in the same direction on the issue of immigration," said Jeff Stone of the Coalition for a Working Oregon, a group of 20 Oregon employer associations. "It doesn't mean that businesses have gone to the left, or unions to the right. Both sides still have their opinions, but we're setting them aside."
The three groups are asking lawmakers to halt all immigration-related legislation on the state level and declare support for swift federal action. Along with their counterparts in other states, they are pushing Congress for a September vote on immigration, and they want local legislators to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting President Barack Obama's reform agenda.
That agenda includes securing borders, creating a system to regulate the flow of workers, and allowing undocumented immigrants in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line to become citizens.
The three groups come to reform with different perspectives. Employers want access to a reliable, legal work force. Union leaders want workers to have legal status, so that they don't have to hide in the shadows and are not taken advantage of. And faith leaders want to show how the immigration system affects individuals and their families.
"We came together to talk sense, to explain that there are consequences to enforcement-only actions, and to change the debate to a more reasonable, humane, realistic conversation, instead of vilifying a whole ethnic group," Stone said. "Ultimately, we're going to have to live together as a community."
Francisco Lopez, coordinator of the immigrant-rights group CAUSA, said the groups wanted a more "holistic" approach to immigration reform.
"Our goal is to find common ground," he said.
Business speaks up
So far, the groups say their common goal is to keep people in the country working and living legally while their immigration status is resolved. An estimated 150,000 such immigrants live in Oregon, according to a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study.
Businesses are the newest player in the battle for reform. Until recently, most employers kept quiet when the subject of employing illegal workers came up. But the federal "no-match" rule, which would require businesses to fire undocumented workers, galvanized them.
The Coalition for a Working Oregon says employers can't afford to lose the workers -- there aren't enough native Oregonians to do the jobs -- and they need a better mechanism to get a legal work force.
"We realized we'll lose our workers and we're always playing defense," said Stone, co-chairman of the coalition. "Clearly, we either needed to articulate our voice and help shape policy, or have policy shape us."
The coalition, which represents more than 300,000 workers in nurseries, construction, dairy farms and other top industries, has held a series of immigration debates in chambers of commerce around the state, lobbying state lawmakers, and building a base of supporters to blanket legislators with calls when the time is right.
The unions want unauthorized immigrant workers legalized so leaders can better advocate for employee rights in the workplace. The unions include PCUN, or Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, with more than 5,000 registered members, and the Service Employees International Union, which represents 45,000 workers in Oregon.
"We want to make sure workers have a voice on the job, and it's very difficult for workers to have a voice when some are forced to work in the shadows," said Arthur Towers, political director for SEIU Local 503.
PCUN and CAUSA are holding leadership training and house meetings to mobilize supporters, especially Latinos who are U.S. citizens. They are also lobbying state lawmakers and planning a march to bring several thousand Oregonians to Salem on May 1.
"We need to show that we have the capacity to mobilize," Lopez said. "We need to make noise locally so it's reflected on the national level."
And faith leaders in dozens of congregations across the state are putting a human face on the debate by holding presentations on immigration and planning legislative action to push for reform, including writing letters, phoning, holding rallies and visiting legislators.
"We're going back to our basic faith values around justice, human dignity and the inherent value of all people," said Sarah Loose, coordinator of Oregon New Sanctuary Movement, which unites more than 20 congregations that support immigrants' rights, no matter their legal status.
"It's about seeing people as more than labor, as our fellow brothers and sisters who have the same needs as people everywhere," she said.
The opposition
Opponents of legal and illegal immigration advocate a different kind of overhaul. Enforcement and a severe reduction of current immigration levels should be its pillars, said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. In the meantime, the state should help fix the system.
A handful of Republican lawmakers in Salem have introduced a dozen immigration-related bills, ranging from requiring proof of legal presence to be hired by the state to requiring employers to verify employees' legal status through the federal E-Verify database.
"Yes, the immigration system needs to be fixed, but I don't see that happening anytime soon," said Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer. "And I don't picture some of these issues being addressed by Congress."
But the political reality in Salem doesn't favor Thatcher's bills. At a recent meeting at the Capitol, Debbie Koreski, legislative director for House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, told reform proponents that most of the bills would not even get a hearing. Republicans don't have the votes because of the Democratic supermajority in both house. And legislators are still raw, Koreski said, from last year's discussion about stricter driver's license requirements -- blocking undocumented immigrants from getting a license -- and are not eager to take up the debate.
The economy has also eclipsed the conversation. Though the crisis and the plight of unemployed Americans may slow reform, proponents agree, it won't stop it. Because for the most part, Stone said, laid-off American workers don't want the jobs that immigrants held.
"Americans don't choose to do those kinds of jobs anymore," he said. "It's hard work, with your hands. Try working 10 hours in the rain all day digging trees."
If the economy grows worse, small movement across job sectors may be seen, he said, but this argument also distracts from solving the overall issue.
"Once the economy rebounds, we'll be stuck with the same problem," said Bill Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Oregon Restaurant Association. In fact, he said, the economic crisis might be the perfect time to resolve immigration. "If you want to get the economy to where it was, you have to meet the work force demand."
And enforcement alone could be counterproductive to economic recovery.
"You can't in the same stroke that you try to repair the economy use enforcement measures which are harming those very sectors of the economy," Stone said.
©2009 Oregon Live
Read more!
switching identities
I came across this very interesting article in last sunday's NYTimes, about Franco's regime in Spain taking children away from dissident parents and switching their identities. I'm always fascinated by identity, by how some leaders sought to manipulate it, how human identity can be switched, erased, deleted entirely and replaced by something else that's a pure creation. Manufactured people? Sounds like a story from a novel, but it actually happened. Remember communist leaders deleting others from photographs when they fell out of grace? Remember reeducation camps? It's quite amazing, what human beings can do to others, how they can seek to engineer each other.
Families Search for Truth of Spain’s ‘Lost Children’
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/europe/01franco.html?scp=4&sq=spain&st=cse
LOMBILLO DE LOS BARRIOS, Spain — The truth, if ever it emerges, will come too late for Emilia Girón. For 65 years, Ms. Girón, a hard-bitten mother of seven, ached to know what had become of her son Jesús. Born in the early 1940s during the vengeful first years of Gen. Francisco Franco’s 36-year dictatorship he was taken from her to be baptized shortly after his birth. She never saw him again. (...) click on link above to read more.
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Families Search for Truth of Spain’s ‘Lost Children’
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/europe/01franco.html?scp=4&sq=spain&st=cse
LOMBILLO DE LOS BARRIOS, Spain — The truth, if ever it emerges, will come too late for Emilia Girón. For 65 years, Ms. Girón, a hard-bitten mother of seven, ached to know what had become of her son Jesús. Born in the early 1940s during the vengeful first years of Gen. Francisco Franco’s 36-year dictatorship he was taken from her to be baptized shortly after his birth. She never saw him again. (...) click on link above to read more.
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sri Lankan cricketers attacked in Pakistan
Pakistan seems to be at the brink of chaos on many days. In addition to frequent news about extremists -- the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and local militant outfits like Laskhar -- now a cricket team gets targeted by armed gunmen who apparently (given how well prepared they seemed) were planning to take the teammates captive and kill them off. If you know how popular cricket is in Southeast Asia, you know this is serious. Many people in Pakistan, esp. cricket fans, are not happy. Newspapers in Pakistan declared it the requiem for the sport. Sri Lankans were the only ones who agreed to play there, and now no one will want to come. It's as if suddenly baseball was banned in the US.
If you want the latest on the cricket attack, go to Pakistani newspaper The Dawn at http://www.dawn.com
Also, in case you imagine Pakistan as a backwards, uncivilized land, I encourage you to read this article about the arts and culture in Lahore, from the Smithsonian Magazine. A city I dream to visit.
Letter from Lahore: Reinventing Pakistan
Welcome to Lahore, where an explosion of art and media is offering a vibrant alternative to the strictures of religious conservatives and is transforming one of America's most important and most ambivalent allies
By Mohsin Hamid
Smithsonian magazine, July 2004
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/pakistan.html
Read more!
If you want the latest on the cricket attack, go to Pakistani newspaper The Dawn at http://www.dawn.com
Also, in case you imagine Pakistan as a backwards, uncivilized land, I encourage you to read this article about the arts and culture in Lahore, from the Smithsonian Magazine. A city I dream to visit.
Letter from Lahore: Reinventing Pakistan
Welcome to Lahore, where an explosion of art and media is offering a vibrant alternative to the strictures of religious conservatives and is transforming one of America's most important and most ambivalent allies
By Mohsin Hamid
Smithsonian magazine, July 2004
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/pakistan.html
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)