New America Media

Reports of Violence Against Afghan Women are Sign of Change

2012-05-16T09:00:00Z

The extensive media coverage of Afghan women over the past few years has brought devastating stories: Gulnaz, the woman who was raped, impregnated and imprisoned for it; Sahar Gul, the young bride tortured by her husband and in-laws for refusing to become a prostitute; and the famous case of Bibi Aisha, whose husband cut off her nose.

A recent Human Rights Watch report shows that 400 Afghan women today are serving time in prison for moral crimes such as running away from a forced marriage or, as in the case of Gulnaz, becoming pregnant due to rape.

These reports, although horrifying, are a sign of mobilization; an indication that Afghan women may finally get some justice.

On May 5, three of the men who tortured 15 year-old Sahar Gul were given 10-year prison sentences. The convictions were a watershed for Afghan women who endure violence on a daily basis, violence that had thus far gone ignored by Afghan courts. Another indication that women are on the political radar came when the United States promised to prioritize women's rights as troop withdrawal from Afghanistan nears.

But it's not the Afghan or American politicians who are helping Afghan women.

The silver lining in these awful stories is that a quiet underground women’s movement is in motion. Even in rural areas, women are increasingly aware that they have rights and that if they come forward, someone might help. Those who do, like Sahar Gul and Bibi Aisha, are pioneers whose actions encourage other abused women to come forward. They’ve also forced the hand of the Afghan government to confront and prosecute the perpetrators of violence against women – although the recent court sentences don’t constitute institutional reform.

The latest politically motivated attacks against Afghan women occurred April 17, when a bomb injured seven people in a maternity hospital in Khost province, and 150 girls fell critically ill in a separate incident after drinking deliberately contaminated water at a school in Takhar, according to Afghan news reports.

Afghanistan is a society emasculated by 30 years of war. With one million war widows, a 40 percent unemployment rate and 400,000 people disabled from mines, it should come as no surprise that violence against women is high. When men in any society are stripped of their physical or economic capacities, they often turn against their women. Violence is not endemic to Afghan culture.

Yet the torture, acid attacks, stonings and assassinations of women also happened prior to the U.S.-Taliban war -- they just went unreported. Today, the presence of foreign press and an Afghan media sector that has boomed during the last 10 years is informing the world of human rights abuses. Afghan talk shows and other TV and radio programs are tackling the issue of violence against women, and raising awareness within Afghanistan’s fledgling civil society. One television show features women, their faces hidden, sharing their stories of abuse.

The gender debate in Afghanistan is a complicated one, and Afghan women are resisting on multiple fronts, whether it be fighting for the right to a higher education or the right to work. Young Women for Change, a new organization spearheaded by a 20-year-old Afghan woman, fights sexual harassment on city streets. In the villages, women are fighting for safety, basic healthcare, and an end to marriage arrangements where they are bartered in exchange for property. I met a 12-year-old opium bride in a village, who was sold into marriage by her drug-smuggling father to pay off his opium debt. She wanted to escape her marriage to a man 34 years older than her, and she asked me for help. All I could do was write her story. Her willingness to share was her act of defiance, her protest in the face of injustice.

International aid efforts, especially those coming from Western nations, walk a fine line between helping Afghan women and being deemed illegitimate by the very people they seek to serve. Aid groups must provide spaces for Afghan women to fight their own battles, but they cannot fight for them. Pushing Western feminist agendas, such as unveiling or divorce, only causes a backlash that can entrap and endanger women even more. Most Afghan women see themselves as part of the family unit, their individual rights coming second to their family’s well being. In extreme cases, like those documented by Human Rights Watch, women should be provided the resources to escape.

Currently, there are 14 safe houses available to women in Afghanistan, but that is not enough. More shelters, internationally monitored, must be opened. The international community must push the Afghan government to implement Afghan human rights laws already in place. If Islamic law overrides civil law, then Afghan lawyers and judges must be introduced to alternative readings of the Koran and jurisprudence that actually protects women. Sharia law is also open to interpretation by Islamic experts, although Afghan clerics and the Afghan Supreme Court currently implement a misogynistic reading of these laws.

Statistics over the last 10 years paint a picture of Afghan women that can be viewed as a glass half full, or half empty. Afghanistan may be one of the most dangerous places in the world due to ongoing war, but there are also three million girls going to school, a number unprecedented in the country’s history. Average life expectancy has risen from 45 to 62 years, and more women have access to healthcare than ever before.

The foreign media needs to consider the historical context and complexity of the violence against Afghan women. These women are no longer voiceless victims, and Gulnaz, Sahar Gul and Bibi Aisha are a testament to a blooming women’s movement.

Fariba Nawa is an Afghan-American journalist and author of Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman's Journey through Afghanistan.

Men - Key to Preventing Cervical Cancer Among Latinas

2012-05-16T07:05:00Z

Editor's Note: Cervical cancer is the second-most common form of cancer among women worldwide. In Los Angeles, according to the LA County Health Department, Latinas have the highest rates of cervical cancer. Maria Luisa Arredondo, editor of Latino California and a 2011 CMAF/Cervical Cancer Reporting Fellow, reports that men could be the key to prevention and treatment.

Her husband always pressured her to go the doctor. But she kept postponing her check-ups, maybe because she was afraid of getting bad news.

Finally, to placate her husband, Reyes Cabrera agreed to go to a clinic. And the nightmare she had feared came true. Last January she got a notice in the mail with the diagnosis that she had severe breast cancer and that there is also evidence that she had cervical cancer developing in her ovaries.

"This has been very hard for me. In March I had to have a mastectomy and then I had to have months of radiation and chemotherapy. There have been days when I thought I couldn’t take any more," says Reyes in a weak voice.

Reyes, who is originally from Michoacan but has lived for close to 20 years near San Jose, Calif., adds that her ordeal has not yet come to an end.

"Soon I will do more tests to determine the cause of the cancer because there is no history of the disease in my family. The doctors have said it is very possible that it might have started with me and, if appropriate, I will have my uterus and ovaries removed," she says in a distressed voice.

The only thing that’s given her strength is her family, says Reyes, who is 38 and a mother of four. "My husband has been very good to me; he has been my great support. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten the test. From the beginning he told me he wouldn’t leave me alone and he hasn’t. My children, who are 19, 16, 9 and 3 years old, have also helped me a lot to keep going," the young woman says.

According to Dr. Diana Ramos, assistant professor at the University of Southern California (USC), the support of family – especially husbands – is key not only to women’s recovery but also to prevention.

“When couples go to the doctor together, and men realize the importance of Pap tests to prevent cervical cancer, they generally support their wives to get these tests and it’s easier for women to take care of themselves,” she says.

Ramos says that in her experience, very few men in the Latino community are still resisitent to women getting Pap tests as a result of cultural prejudices.

“In general, it’s women who make the decision to go to the doctor to get tested. I’ve seen very few cases of men who stop them from doing this. It’s more likely that sometimes there’s resistance on the part of women because they don’t have health insurance and they think the test is really expensive,” Dr. Ramos said.

But the cost of a Pap test isn’t as much as they think. In some community clinics, it can be as low as $5 if the person doesn’t have suffiencient funds. There are also programs like “Every Woman Counts” that offer the test for free.

Alejandra Casillas, a medical internist at University of California, Los Angeles’ Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, points out that many women don’t go to the doctor as much as they should because of a cultural belief that their family comes first.

According to Casillas, Latinas are the least likely group to get Pap tests. A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that 10 percent of Latinas don’t get Pap tests at all and 30 percent let more than three years go by without getting a Pap test. As a result, the women most likely to die of cervical cancer in California are Latinas between 50 and 79.

“That’s why it’s important,” Casillas adds, “to raise awareness among men about the need to encourage and support their wives to get Pap tests.”

Although men usually support their wives when they are diagnosed with cancer, there are unfortunately some cases when they abandon them, says Claudia Colindres, who supports cancer patients and their families through the nonprofit organization Latinas Contra Cancer (Latinas Against Cancer) in San Jose.

Rosario N., who preferred not to give her full name and works as a hotel cleaner in Irvine, says her husband left her five years ago, after her uturus was removed because she had cancer.

“He left me because I couldn’t give him kids. I found out he married a younger woman and they already have two kids. It hurt me a lot what he did to me, but at the same time I think he wasn’t a good man because he never supported me in anything,” said the worker, who is originally from Guatemala.

Zoraida Cruz experienced a similar situation. Her husband of more than 24 years abandoned her when she found out she had cancer. “He told me it was my problem and he went back to Nicaragua, where we’re both from. I spent a lot of very sad, dark nights feeling utterly alone. The only people who helped me were my friends, because I don’t have family here,” says Zoraida, who lost her job as a result of the disease and now lives in Northern California.

In addition to her friends, Zoraida, who is 57 and studied biology in her native Nicaragua, says she has been able to move forward thanks to the help of Claudia Colindres and reading some metaphysics books that have increased her self-esteem.

“I consider myself a very strong woman and I know I’m going to make it through this. The most important thing I’ve learned is that we women need to love ourselves.”

More information:
To see if you qualify for a free cervical cancer test through this program, call 1-800-511-2300 Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m to 5 p.m.

The CMAF/Cervical Cancer Reporting Fellowship is sponsored by the California Medical Association Foundation (CMAF), a charitable arm of the California Medical Association, to bridge physicians to their communities to address community health. The journalism fellowship program, administered by New America Media, is designed to raise awareness and provide public health information on cervical cancer to the at-risk Latina population in Los Angeles.

Maria Luisa Arredondo is editor of Latino California.

Cervical cancer facts from www.thecmafoundation.org and www.cdc.gov.

Youth Organizers in South Texas Embracing Past, Shaping Future

2012-05-16T03:15:00Z

Teenagers in South Texas’s Rio Grande Valley can dance to anything – even two songs at the same time.

Last week, Silicon Valley De Bug paid a visit to La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), a community-organizing powerhouse created in 1989 by César Chávez. LUPE’s building is adorned with United Farm Worker flags and Diego Rivera-esque murals, evoking generations of struggle in this border town of San Juan, Texas.

Grandmothers are making homemade tostadas in the corner of the warehouse-sized space, and a team of elders is diligently folding membership newsletters in the back. Clearly, there is work to be done, but all eyes are on the 14 teenage girls who giggle and groove in the middle of the room to a Lil Wayne rap, backed by a cumbia beat that is bouncing off the walls. Everyone, regardless of whether they have heard of Lil Wayne or not, is smiling.

We’re here from the Bay Area to do a social media training for youth at LUPE and other Rio Grande Valley organizations, and as part of an activity to get them moving and talking, we’ve asked the teens what type of music they dance to. Some name the traditional Mexican music they listen to at home; some say the rap music they download onto their iPods. So, rather than choose, they simply do what comes natural to them – they play both at the same time, and it sounds just right.

This instinct, to blend and create, rather than choose one or the other, is a way of being in the Rio Grande Valley. These youth live in a community built on the edge of two national boundaries and two cultures. And, most important, they carry two responsibilities: to honor the past and to invent the future. For them, life is not an “either-or”; it’s an “and.”

That’s why the evolution of youth organizing for communities across the country may – unexpectedly – be located here, in the southernmost tip of Texas, where young people don’t choose between the organizing traditions of their parents and carving out their own struggle – they do both.

Organizing: It’s All in the Family

Many of the teens have been coming to LUPE since they were children, brought along by their parents to community strategy meetings. The resident DJ for the workshop, Samantha – a sharp, glowing teen – came with her abuela, Doña Mari, who is making lunch for the group. Natalie, an observant, quick-witted high-schooler, is the daughter of Genaro, a longtime UFW organizer, who at the previous night’s membership meeting shared stories of how black and Latino workers came together to win union contracts in the South.

Organizing – families coming together to demand what they deserve – is the environment in which these young people grew up, just as their parents did.

“Start dreaming now – that is how the movement has carried on,” Juanita Valdez-Cox, the executive director of LUPE, says over a plate of homemade mole. “I tell the youth that nothing is impossible; it is only a matter of time.” Valdez-Cox became part of the movement years ago the same way Samantha and Natalie did – her parents joined. Her mother joined the UFW when César Chávez was seeding farmworker campaigns in the fields of the Rio Grande Valley. Chávez established LUPE as a nonprofit for low-income families in the region to advocate for themselves. Valdez-Cox’s 91-year-old mother still attends LUPE’s monthly membership meetings.

Youth Issues Are Community’s Issues

That teenagers would join their parents’ and grandparents’ fights for equity may come out of the reality of their communities. Living in colonias – unincorporated communities, often without basic public infrastructure and utilities – organizing is, arguably, the one thing they can rely on. It’s how their families got paved roads, a sewage system, dignity. As such, generational distinctions are a luxury communities here may not have or be interested in. When LUPE communities recently had success advocating for the building of a much-needed park in an underserved colonia, the victory was not just for the youth, but for the families, just as the advocacy effort to realize that win relied on all of the families’ organizing resources: youthful energy and elder wisdom.

But young people here also know they face issues that are particular to their lives. When asked about what issues they face as young people in the Valley, they quickly rifle off issues around their broken school system, the proliferation of drugs, the lack of hope they see in some of their peers who are struggling to get by.

When asked about causes, they frame the issues in the context of the political landscape of their colonia, the politics of the border. And when asked for solutions, they draw upon the traditions of their parents: power from the ground up, organizing – and amplify it with the skill sets particular to their generation. They talk about murals by young graffiti artists that would both beautify the colonias and convey a message of empowerment. They talk about making a video series so that young people in colonias across the Valley could hear one another.

Hashtagging the Movement

Our social media workshop culminates in a Twitter chat asking Rio Grande Valley youth what they would say to the rest of the country. Most of the youth have Twitter accounts, and so some of them help older participants get up to speed. A few “adult staff” from partner organizations have also come to the workshop, and the youth take particular care that they participate.

Coming from the Bay Area, where we’ve spent the last 15 years creating “youth organizations” to carve out and protect space for young people, this impulse to include older generations is striking and illustrates how the Rio Grande Valley youth are showing us the next phase of our work. We hadn’t realized that building a protective wall for young people to build community also meant isolating them from mutually beneficial intergenerational relationships; we didn’t see that a community doesn’t have to choose between tradition and innovation.

On May 20, LUPE – youth and elders – will be participating in the Equal Voice Online National Convention, a convening of organizations around the country that work on elevating the voices of low-income families – from big cities to small border towns, and everywhere in between.

The event, sponsored by Marguerite Casey Foundation, is the first to create a national family platform facilitated through the power of technology. The event, in some ways, is a magnification of what happens here at LUPE every day: to transcend the demarcations that distinguish us – geography, race, age, issue – and to find power in our commonality – the needs and hopes of families.

LUPE youth, like Samantha and Natalie, will likely be twittering their thumbs off on May 20, making sure their issues are heard on the streaming chat, responding to youth they may never meet in person in places like Chicago and Los Angeles, and locating where their Rio Grande Valley issues fit in the national platform. But they won’t be doing so only as “youth” representatives -- they will be giving voice to their entire community, including the issues of the older generation as well. Since the lens to look through for the convening is family, they don’t have to choose between their issues and those of their parents. Even if they did, they would probably just choose both.

Raj Jayadev is the director of Silicon Valley De Bug, a community organizing and media outlet in San Jose, CA, founded by New America Media.

Ammiano Introduces Revised TRUST Act

2012-05-15T21:00:00Z

California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, formally introduced a revised version of AB 1081, the TRUST Act, to reform California's participation in the controversial Secure Communities program. Under Secure Communities, police are required to share fingerprint data of anyone they arrest with federal immigration authorities.

As of March 31, more than 70,330 people were deported from California under the program. Nearly seven in 10 of those deported did not fall into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE's) most serious category.

Passed in the California Assembly (47-26) in 2011, the TRUST Act originally sought to modify California's agreement with the federal government over S-Comm. Last year ICE announced it was shredding all such agreements, and that all states were required to continue to send fingerprints.

Ammiano's new version of the TRUST Act sets a clear standard for local governments not to submit to ICE’s requests to detain people for deportation unless the individual has a serious or violent felony conviction; and guards against profiling and wrongful detention of citizens and crime victims and witnesses. It is expected to be heard in the Senate Public Safety committee in June.

FBI Considering Hate Crime Charge in Trayvon Martin Death

2012-05-15T18:25:10Z

George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watchman from Florida charged in the killing of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, could face federal hate crime charges, Orlando’s WFTV reports.

FBI investigators are actively questioning witnesses in the retreat at the Twin Lakes neighborhood, seeking evidence for a possible federal hate crime charge.

If Zimmerman is convicted of the second-degree murder charge, he could face life in prison, but a hate crime charge could mean he would face the death penalty, WFTV reports.

WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said, “What the government would have to prove is that Mr. Zimmerman acted out of hatred toward African Americans. That’s why he came into contact with him. That’s why he shot and killed him.”

Battling the Stigma of HIV in the API Community

2012-05-15T11:55:04Z

SAN FRANCISCO -- Seventeen years ago, Henry Ocampo did not think he would make it past his 25th birthday. A fresh graduate from the University of California, Davis, the young Filipino American was the pride and joy of his family.

None of them knew his status.

As an HIV prevention worker, Ocampo knew the risks. Although his then-partner was HIV-positive, they’d played it safe, getting tested routinely. He wasn’t worried.

“Your test came back positive,” Ocampo, who was 23 at the time, remembered hearing after one such test. “You have HIV.” He heard little else of what was said during that meeting almost 20 years ago.

Ocampo shared his experience in the form of a digital story at a forum hosted by the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center. Under the title “Taking Root: Our Stories, Our Community,” the May 3 event aimed at increasing awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention and combating lingering stigmas around the disease among members of the Asian and Pacific Islander community through personal stories, poetry and dance.

May 19 commemorates National API HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

The event drew some 70 individuals, including San Francisco Health Commissioner Cecilia Chung and members of the Asian American Recovery Services (AARS), Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF), Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA), the Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC), and One Love Oceania (OLO).

The Stigma of AIDS

Like most college graduates, Ocampo had big dreams, including going to graduate school, buying a house and traveling the world. After his diagnosis in 1995 -- one year before the introduction of the Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), which allowed patients to more effectively manage their illnesses – none of that seemed to matter.

“How could I tell my parents?” Ocampo, who is the youngest of four siblings, said that was the one question that gnawed at him most, alongside concerns about the shame his illness would bring to the larger family.

Although APIs account for a third of San Francisco’s population, in 2010 they only received 11.8 percent of all HIV tests given in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The figure is far below that for Hispanics and African Americans. The percentage of new HIV infections annually among APIs, however, has been higher than any other racial and ethnic group in the city since 2001. Today there are over 800 APIs living in San Francisco with HIV/AIDS. Nationally, more than 60 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders have never been tested for HIV, according to a survey done by the National Center for Health Statistics.

“We’re all living with HIV whether we have the virus or not,” said San Francisco Health Commissioner Cecilia Chung. “We can choose to perpetuate shame with our silence and judgment or we can choose to save lives with our love and compassion.”

Ocampo told the audience that soon after he was diagnosed, “one of the most difficult things” was figuring out how to live with this disease. “There was,” he said, “a lot of internalized stigma and shame.” Much of that stemmed from concerns about the family, and how his status would reflect on them.

Stephanie Goss is communications manager with the API Wellness Center in San Francisco. She said that sense of shame is what keeps a number of API community members from getting tested, which in turn leads care providers to assume, wrongly, that HIV testing among Asians and Pacific Islanders is less of a priority.

“Health care agencies need to be culturally competent so they can understand the cultural issues that clients may be facing,” said Goss.

Started in 1987, the API Wellness Center serves some 3000 clients through its HIV Primary Care Clinic, which offers a wide variety of free services including medications, blood tests, immunizations, case management, support groups and training programs. Priority is given to those without insurance – including undocumented immigrants -- or those with insurance that does not fully cover the care needed.

On his 25th birthday Ocampo decided to go parachuting. If the parachute failed, he said, at least he would not have died from HIV. Each day afterward was like icing on the cake. “Now I’m seeing strands of gray hair,” Ocampo said.

It took him more than a year to disclose his HIV status to his family. When he finally told his parents, they cried at first, he said. Then they pulled themselves together, before asking the question individuals like Ocampo dream of hearing. “What can we do to support you?”

Graduating College Student Speaks: I've Made a Huge Mistake

2012-05-15T08:25:00Z

SAN FRANCISCO--As the temperatures begin to rise and summer descends on the city, another class is set to walk across the stage and into graduation. But what really waits for us after we cross that stage and remove the cap and gown? According to the Associate Press (AP), not employment.

Late last month, the AP reported that one out of every two recent college graduates is unemployed or jobless. As someone who is getting ready to graduate, that is a pretty grim statistic. Maybe it’s the economic climate, or the nature of our journalism department, but sadly, I’m not surprised.

College was supposed to be the golden ticket to a successful job and middle class life. From an early age we were groomed to believe that if we stuck it out all four, five or even six years of higher education, we too could have the perfect picket-fenced house and the easy 9-to-5 suburban existence showcased on those old Beaver Cleaver re-runs on Nickelodian.

I remember telling family and friends that I would get a real position--in an office, with my name on a desk--after I graduated college. Instead, I’m looking at a menial job in a coffee shop--with my name on a pin. Now, as I sit back and reflect on my early 20s, I’m wondering where it all went wrong. How did I get to a place of debt and joblessness?

It started with a choice. Before journalism school even entered my mind, I wanted to be a mortician.

Don’t think I was some crazy goth kid who watched too many horror movies. Getting a degree in funeral studies appealed to the most sensible parts of me. Think about it, the job only requires an associate’s degree, and as long as people die, I would have had a set career.

Another perk is that the funeral industry is a job sector experiencing growth. That’s right, even in this economy, the job is expecting an 18 percent growth rate. Although I could have had all this, the career, the job, the growth rate, I followed my heart instead of my head. I chose to go into journalism and screw my credit rating from now until, well, eternity.

You might be asking, what’s so bad about journalism? After all, isn’t it one of the most esteemed careers one could go into? Even though that may have been the case 40 years ago, that is simply not the way things work today.

Nowadays, students work for free through unpaid internships--really a nice way of saying exploited labor. According to the Daily Beast, which I might add, put journalism at number eight on a list of the 13 most useless majors, the news world is experiencing a negative six percent level of employment.

Hear that? Negative six.

As if to add insult to injury, the New York Times has reported that the average debt for a student in the class of 2011 is $27,000. Add that to the fact that banks advertise all over campus only making the accessibility of credit that much easier for college students.

In essence, I gave up the best years of my young life and ruined my good credit score due to my insurmountable debt in order to be set free. This sounds more like a divorce than a graduation. And if that’s the case, why not shoot for the moon and make it a double ceremony? Either way I have a 50/50 chance at something.

Really, if one were to sit back and consider everything, it makes sense that half of all undergrads are facing unemployment. As a product of public schools, I’ve been told since I was a child that a college degree was my gateway to a successful life. Now that everyone and their mother have a bachelor’s degree in something, I've come to the conclusion that a bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma—and with it come high-school-diploma jobs.

College degrees are no longer special; they no longer hold the clout they once did. Until something in our tight and over-educated economy gives in, I gleefully look forward to my old career of asking people if they would like room for cream.

All things considered, if I could look back and do it over again, I would have taken my chance with the stiffs.

Liz Ireland is graduating from San Francisco State University where she studied journalism.

Image from shutterstock.

Miami Media Roundtable on School Reform

2012-05-15T00:31:27Z

At Miami Dade College, which also served as the host for the concluding symposium, Lenore Rodicio, Executive Director of MDC3 Student Success and Completion Initiatives, captured part of the disconnect between the expectations of parents in the NAM poll and their children’s capacity to perform academically upon graduating high school.

She said more than 70 percent of students coming to Miami Dade for their first year of study are “testing as deficient in one or more academic areas and the greatest number of them is in mathematics.” However, she said the recognition of the need for reform has brought elected officials together with business and community leaders to find ways to address education in ways that will enable graduates to be better prepared for the jobs available.

Several panelists, however, stressed that collaboration alone, though useful, will be insufficient in addressing the myriad number of issues that impact education. For panelist Lucie Tondreau, a parent who represented the Haitian community, the failure to pass the DREAM Act results in the inability of many teens from her community to have the legal means to pursue higher education. “Those minds are being wasted,” she said.

The Miami dialogue highlighted several issues on display at the other symposia, including the need for more adequate and better directed funding for education as well as the call for media to hold education administrators more accountable to the public. McNelly Torres, Co-Founder & Associate Director of Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, agreed with those objectives but said that media’s unique role in explaining the need for education reform could only be achieved by media accurately reporting on what’s going on in the schools, talking to students and to parents as well. “You need,” she said, addressing media members directly, “to be out there on the battlefield.”

To read more about the poll and the roundtables, please click here.

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Questions Surround 49 Bodies Found on U.S.-Mexico Border

2012-05-14T22:59:12Z

On Sunday, Mexican police found 49 mutilated bodies, believed by some to be migrants, on a road that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with the United States border.

The corpses had their hands, heads, and feet chopped off, making them difficult to identify. An investigator who spoke to Milenio newspaper on Monday speculated the victims could be undocumented immigrants from Central America on their way to the United States.

“Because of the large quantity of corpses, our first hypothesis is that it could be the bodies of illegal immigrants traveling on a bus; there could have been a problem between a drug cartel and a coyote over fees,” an unnamed source told Milenio. For security reasons, he did not provide his name.

Drug cartels have increasingly used the public display of corpses as warning to other cartels or criminal organizations. This month alone dozens of dead bodies were found in Nuevo Laredo and Guadalajara, but the 49 found this weekend were more than in both other cities combined.

Police came across a black “Z” spray painted near a road sign where the bodies were found Sunday. The symbol has led authorities to believe Los Zetas were behind the massacre. The drug gang, which is also reportedly involved in human trafficking, was linked to the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants in 2010. The bodies were found near the town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state.

According to an Ecuadorean migrant who survived the San Fernando massacre — pretending to be dead after he was shot in the neck — migrants were killed because they could not pay ‘liberation’ fees, and refused to work for the cartel. The bodies were hidden in a ranch and were found by police after an armed confrontation with human traffickers at the site.

In the latest incident, murderers made no effort to hide the victims’ bodies. Instead, they dumped the bodies in plain view near a road that connects Monterrey to the border city of Reynosa.

“They (the cartels) want us all to feel like possible victims,” political analyst Lorenzo Meyer said on the radio show, MVS Noticias.

To Meyer this incident is part of a broader effort by cartels to show control over territories in Mexico, and demonstrate their force. With presidential elections coming up July 1, Meyer believes cartels also are trying to show force in order to intimidate Mexico’s next presidential administration.

“What they want is for society not to get in their way, they want it to not support campaigns aimed at eradicating organized crime,” Meyer said.

According to another theory about the recent massacre, the victims could have been members of the Gulf Cartel or the Sinaloa Federation, organizations fighting Los Zetas over control of drug routes in northeast Mexico. In Guadalajara and the state of Jalisco, allies of the Sinaloa Federation are fighting the Zetas for control of drug plazas and trafficking routes.

Last week, police found the decapitated bodies of 18 people in two vans parked on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

This story originally appeared on Univision News.

(Main photo: screencapture/AlJazeera.com)

Brewer Signs Bill that Risks Women’s Access to Health Care

2012-05-14T22:55:29Z

PHOENIX – Last week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law HB 2625, a bill that limits women’s access to contraception and health care. Under the law, women seeking reimbursement for birth control from their health insurance provider must prove that they are not using the medication as contraception if they work for a religiously affiliated employer that has opted out of providing insurance coverage for contraception.

Brown’s Budget Cuts at Issue During World Court of Women

2012-05-14T19:46:36Z

OAKLAND, Calif. – Latanya Wolf, a slim 64 year-old, didn’t tiptoe around the issue of cuts to services for women and families during a protest rally in Oakland last week.

“I am living on $160 a month,” Wolf asserted during the rally, held Friday. “But for the food bank, I would be starving. I am living the budget cuts, my family is living the budget cuts. My 2-year-old niece died of hunger.”

In recent years, California’s budget woes have been decimating school and health care programs, and other public safety nets. The cuts have affected children, adults and seniors.

“What is happening is not a Democratic or Republican issue,” Wolf declared. “It is a human rights issue.”

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday announced more painful cuts to cope with a gaping $16 billion budget deficit – nearly double the $9.2 billion originally projected -- the state is going to be facing.

“We will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in a video posted Saturday on YouTube.

Even as it is, one-third of Oakland’s children are currently living in poverty, noted Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, one of the speakers at the rally in the central quad of Laney College. The rally was held in conjunction with the World Court of Women on Poverty, the first of its kind event in the United States.

Qaun noted that last year alone, nearly 21,000 more children in Oakland joined the ranks of the poor. “A lot of adults in Oakland are in critical condition,” she said.

The four-day World Court event -- held from May 10 through 13 -- drew an estimated 150 women. Participants hailed from as far as India and Mexico, each taking turns standing before a jury of concerned advocates, academics, poets, musicians, and housewives. Testimonies revolved around how speakers’ families have been impacted by poverty.

“The devastation of poverty has hit us,” observed Ethel Long-Scott, executive director of the Oakland-based non-profit, Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP), a part of the network that organized the event. And, she noted, “There is a lot of pain in our city. We need to change that.”

Aside from hearing testimony from women, the event also featured roundtable discussions on how women can fight poverty-related violence and seek the justice they are often denied in regular courts.

“We want to identify solutions, building on some of the things that have come out of the ‘Occupy Oakland’ movement,” noted Shamako Noble, co-founder and national coordinator of the Hip-Hop Congress. Noble is among a growing number of men who, in recent years, have joined forces with those fighting for women’s rights through the world courts.

Since the first World Court of Women was held in 1992 in Lahore, Pakistan, under the banner Asia Court on Violence Against Women, some 40 such courts have been held worldwide to give women a voice and space to talk about issues that adversely impact their lives, said Tunisia-based Corrine Kumar. Founder of the courts, Kumar participated in the Oakland event, and spends several months each year in her native India, advocating for women’s rights.

A couple of decades ago, the human rights movement “never factored” violence against women in its conversations, giving her the impetus to launch the World Courts of Women project, she said.

“I started the work with $500 and a dream,” she said.

Each court focuses on a topic specific to its region. In 2008, for instance, the court held in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, focused on dowry, which even though banned by the Indian government in 1961, still continues to thrive, leaving women vulnerable to abuse, sometimes even murder. Kumar said there has not been a single conviction of a dowry-related death.

Through our court, “we wanted to bring it to the center of public consciousness,” Kumar said, noting proudly: “There is no legal sanction for these courts of women; we give them sanction.”

Advocates unanimously agreed that Brown’s proposed tax plan was an important first step to turn the lives of families in California around.

Under it, the state would temporarily raise its sales tax by a quarter cent and increase the income tax on people who make $250,000 or more.

The additional revenue would help maintain current funding levels for public schools and colleges and pay for programs that benefit low-income families and seniors.

Boona Cheema, executive director of Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, stood among a sea of protestors holding signs that said “Wall Street Can Wait, Students Can’t” and “Wall Street Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out.” She noted that as far as she was concerned, “every day is Mother’s Day.

“We are waiting for the day when we will be the 51 percent,” she said, referring to the occupy movements that are protesting control of the nation’s wealth by an affluent 1 percent of the population.

“We are disproportionately poor, disproportionately abused,” Long-Scott said at the rally. “We need a new social contract for the 21st century.”

NAACP Takes Up the Clean-Energy Fight

2012-05-14T17:53:56Z

Amid the sea of statistics I scan each day, one jumped out recently: According to a study, African-American children are four to six times more likely than white children to die from asthma (pdf). That chronic disease, along with other illnesses, is linked to toxins pumped out by coal-fired power plants, and approximately 68 percent of African American families live within 30 miles of a coal-fired plant. Given the disproportionate impact that these illnesses have on black families, addressing these challenges is a civil rights imperative.

The NAACP has decided to shape the emerging clean economy by engaging in it. Starting this year, a full 100 percent of the energy that the NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters consumes will come from Green-E Certified Wind Power. We joined a purchasing group consisting of more than 100 other local community nonprofits and faith institutions facilitated through a nonprofit called Groundswell and the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation.

By strengthening our economic power in the electricity market, we locked in lower rates on clean energy. Our headquarters will switch to clean energy while saving $7,000 on its annual energy bill -- an 18 percent reduction. Furthermore, our members will be able to enjoy the same savings.

Creative approaches like this one are crucial to accelerating the nation's shift away from energy sources that contaminate the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. We are on our way to debunking a powerful myth that clean energy comes with higher energy costs. It’s an idea that prevents many families from insisting on clean power.

Read the full report here.

Seoul Rejects US Push For Tactical Nuclear Deployment

2012-05-14T17:46:13Z

Seoul is rejecting a push by U.S. lawmakers to redeploy U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea.

“We have not discussed the matter,” a senior defense official said Monday on condition of anonymity. “South Korea is a country making efforts for non-proliferation and as such it would not be appropriate to do so.”

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade added that neither South Korea nor the U.S. administration of Barack Obama have changed their stances on the issue and that Seoul was “watching” how the debate would unfold in Washington.

Read the full report here.

The debate heated up last week when the Republican-dominated House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill calling for the reintroduction. That was echoed here by conservative heavyweight Chung Mong-joon, who is bidding to become the ruling Saenuri Party’s presidential nominee.

The U.S. lawmakers cited the failure of China, the North’s main ally, to convince Pyongyang to stand down as a reason for the redeployment, as well as Beijing’s “selling (of) nuclear components to North Korea.” A missile launch vehicle suspected to be of Chinese origin was spotted at a military parade in Pyongyang last month.

But the calls have been met with skepticism as some believe the move would do little to bolster the allies’ capabilities and may increase risks during conflict.

S. Korean President Visits Myanmar

2012-05-14T17:36:54Z

The leaders of South Korea and Myanmar agreed to strengthen bilateral ties Monday, amid signs that the Southeast Asian country seeks democratic and economic reform.

During a summit with President Thein Sein, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak noted positive progress made in bilateral relations over the past months and that a new era between the two nations was unfolding.

Lee and Sein agreed to expand cooperation in energy, resources and trade with Seoul sharing its experience and expertise in achieving economic growth with the long-isolated country.

President Lee arrived in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, for the summit with his counterpart after winding up a trip to Beijing for trilateral talks with China and Japan.

Lee is the first South Korean leader to visit the southeastern country since a bombing in Rangoon took the lives of 17 South Korean officials, including several Cabinet ministers on Oct. 9, 1983.

Read the full report here.

'NY Daily News' Closes Its Spanish-Language Weekly, 'Hora Hispana'

2012-05-14T17:00:00Z

The New York Daily News has shut down its weekly Spanish-language publication, Hora Hispana, just a little over a year after relaunching it.

Maite Junco, who oversaw Hora Hispana and edited the paper's monthly "Viva" section (as well as running the Latino vertical of nydailynews.com) has been let go, as have Hora Hispana editor Rodolfo Quebleen and sales rep Jose Santiago.

The News will continue to publish "Viva," a spokesman for the paper confirmed, but it is unclear who will produce it from now on.

Hora Hispana "was discontinued because there wasn't enough advertising to support it," said the spokesman. "But the Daily News remains committed to covering issues that are important to the Hispanic community."

These changes are the latest in what appears to be a slow but steady house-cleaning under editor-in-chief Colin Myler, the ex-News Corp. lieutenant who's now in his fifth month on the job, after the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. killed the last paper he edited, News of the World.

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