New America Media - Multi-ethnic

Young Doctors Flock to New Specialty-- End-of-Life Care

2012-02-10T10:30:00Z

PALO ALTO, Calif.--As Daniel Shaine approaches the end of his battle with terminal cancer, he is no longer surprised to find a troop of young doctors, some with pregnant bellies or sparkling engagement rings, at his side at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration (VA) hospital.

"Sometimes I muse to myself, I'm old enough to be this person's father," said Shaine, 67. "I try to push that away."

Increasingly, patients at the end of their lives are talking about end-of-life decisions and do-not-resuscitate orders with doctors on the brink of giving birth. These freshly minted physicians are among a new wave of specialists in the growing field of palliative medicine.

Specialty Created in 2008

Since medical boards only started recognizing the treatment of pain and end-of-life care as an official subspecialty four years ago, and new rules effectively bar older physicians from getting certified, the cohort of doctors spearheading palliative-care departments across the country are increasingly in their early- to mid-30s.

The stark generational differences are showing up at hospitals across the country.

"We acknowledge that we are young, and we only have the wisdom that comes with our thirty-something years," said Kavitha Ramchandran, 34, an attending physician in the Hospice and Palliative Medicine unit at Stanford Hospital. "I think there's a steep learning curve in this."

Palliative care doctors manage pain, gauging symptoms and prescribing pain medicines that don't conflict with the patient's other medications. But even more so, they spend a lot of time talking with patients and their families about the dying process, discussing end-of-life decisions and coordinating care with other doctors.

Early research shows the generation gap can interfere with delivering the best care, according to Joanne Lynn, principal investigator of the SUPPORT study, the largest study on end-of-life care. Her research showed that elderly patients were unlikely to disclose important medical information to young doctors, especially sensitive conditions like incontinence or depression.

"We found that patients did not tell interviewers about certain things until the interviewers were older -- that is, past 60," she said. "So, young doctors are going to have to make a special effort to get this sort of information."

Overcoming Barriers

Stanford University's fellowship program in hospice and palliative medicine trains medical students and recent graduates how to overcome generational barriers, but confusion among patients still pops up, said V.J. Periyakoil, the program director.

She recalls one young doctor, a woman many months pregnant with her first child, who spent 45 minutes talking with an older man at the veterans' hospital. Just a couple hours later, the patient demanded to know when a doctor was going to come check on him.

"He didn't realize that she was a doctor," Periyakoil said.

Doctors have been informally practicing palliative medicine for decades, managing patients' pain and symptoms alongside curative treatments for disease, and starting difficult conversations about end-of-life when treatments no longer work. Internists and oncologists learned these skills on the job or taught themselves.

Now there's a defined path for training the new -- and first official -- generation of palliative care doctors.

About 12 percent of the doctors certified in hospice and palliative care in 2010 are now 36 or younger, according to the latest data available from the American Board of Medical Specialties. That percentage doubled in two years and is expected to dramatically grow under new rules that prevent older doctors from being grandfathered into the specialty. Starting this year, doctors must complete a one-year training fellowship in palliative medicine, a position that offers a meager salary that few older mid-career doctors will opt for.

Stanford's fellowship program is one of about 70 similar programs formed in recent years, and among the first launched.

As much as they gain medical skills and knowledge, trainees say they learn how to handle themselves with patients, either by assuming the role of a grandchild or just being humble.

"Sometimes it is scary to know you are much younger than your patient," said Domingo Maynes, 30, a resident with the program. "But by putting myself in their shoes and talking to the family, I can start to wrap my hands around the intangibles."

A Sympathetic Ear

For some patients, a doctor's youth doesn't matter.

"I'm not interested in what their age is," said Warren Harding Atkins, 93, who gets treated for severe back pain at the Palo Alto VA. "I want them to find solutions to my problems."

Atkins tells stories of working in the merchant marine during the 1940s, once delivering a baby on board his ship in the middle of the sea with no medical help. While he bemoans his grandchildren's generation for not appreciating what they have or learning from history, he is happy with the young doctors looking after him.

"They listen to me, and that's all I need," he said.

If anything, the young doctors say their generation is particularly well suited to this kind of care, especially at these early stages of the field when hospitals across the country are opening brand new hospice and palliative care departments.

"This is a generation that grew up hearing about startups and innovation," said Stephanie Harman, 35, who helped launch the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at Stanford. "The idea of the specialty of palliative care being a new field, with a lot of opportunity to innovate, and work in a team structure, that's something this generation is much more primed to do and excited about.

April Dembosky wrote this article as part of her MetLife Foundation Journalists on Aging Fellowship in partnership with New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.

Report Finds Millions of Families Three Months From Poverty

2012-02-06T08:35:00Z

Photo: Miguel Abreu, 10, prepares an inflatable mattress to sleep on in the living room of his aunt's apartment. (Photo by Mike Kane/Equal Voice News)

MIAMI--When it’s time for bed, 10-year-old Miguel Abreu retrieves a deflated air mattress wedged between a bookcase and the wall in his aunt’s tiny apartment in Florida City, south of Miami. He quietly unfolds it in the middle of the dining/living room and hooks up an electric pump.

While the pump is inflating the bed, he gets sheets and pillows out of a stack of plastic bins in the dining room where his family keeps their possessions. He hands his parents pillows and bedding so they can prepare beds in two recliners while he makes up the air mattress he will share with his sister Jennifer, age 13. His younger sister, Maribel, 6, will share a bed with her aunt.

Like thousands of children nationwide, who have no guarantee of where they will sleep on any given night, the Abreu children are homeless.

1.6 Million Homeless Children

According to America’s Youngest Outcasts, a report by the National Center on Family Homelessness, 1.6 million children in the United States were homeless at some point in 2010, the most recent statistics available.

During the recession, from 2007 to 2010, child homelessness spiked 38 percent nationwide.
According to the 2011 Council on Homelessness report, Florida’s public school districts identified over 49,000 Florida school-age children as homeless during the 2009-2010 school year.

In Miami-Dade County alone, school officials identified and assisted nearly 4,000 homeless children last year.

This school year, officials have already helped 4,920 in only the first four months. More than 2,300 of those students were living in shelters, with another 2,400 doubled up in apartments with friends or relatives. A handful lived in cars and parks.

Miami-Dade County has a policy of never letting a child sleep on the streets and pays for shelter space for families, and for hotel rooms when the shelters are full. Last year, Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust paid the hotel bill of three or four families a month, according to Trust Chairman Ron Book. This year, there are often as many as 60 families in hotel rooms.

Book blames the ongoing grind of the sluggish economy, but also sees other factors for the sudden and dramatic rise in the number of local families needing assistance. Federal “rapid re-housing” funds designed to quickly put families back in homes dried up early in 2011.

In addition, Florida’s foreclosure crisis has unfolded differently from other areas of the country. That’s because, in Florida, it can take up to two years to foreclose on a homeowner in default.

“It takes time to evict people. It takes time to foreclose. Our foreclosure process has dragged on longer than in other parts of the country. So many people stayed in the status quo for a while,” Book said. “That’s now catching up with us.”

Many Roads to Homelessness

Every family’s road to homelessness is different. For many, the simple lack of jobs is at the heart of it. A family that was getting by, with parents able to find work during boom times, can be easily pushed to or over the edge of poverty when unemployment spikes and then remains stubbornly high for months on end.

The Abreus moved to South Florida at the beginning of the school year. Yasmir, 41, and his wife Marleny, 44, both worked as housekeepers in Las Vegas casinos when a friend urged them to leave their jobs and come with him to Miami to start a business.

Their friend promised better jobs, a better apartment, even a house. For a while, the family stayed at a modest hotel in Miami Beach. Everything seemed to be going well.

The kids started school and made new friends quickly. They adjusted well and made good grades. The two younger children even earned student-of-the-month awards in October.

But it all came crashing down. The friend disappeared, according to the Abreus, taking money he had borrowed from Yasmir’s brother-in-law, who is now facing foreclosure.

Yasmir stopped paying the loan on his van first, saving the money for the hotel. The van was repossessed. When the Abreus ran out of money for the hotel, they stayed briefly in Marleny’s father’s van. They pulled the kids out of one school and moved them to another school farther south, where Yasmir hoped he could find work.

“We weren’t millionaires, but we lived like normal people. To go from that to this in three months, it’s hard,” Marleny said, brushing back tears. “We had jobs. We had health insurance. Every year, they got a lot of stuff under the tree because we were working.”

According to a report released this week by the Corporation for Economic Development in Washington D.C., 43 percent of families would fall below the poverty line within three months if they lost their jobs or became ill and couldn’t work.

In Florida, 48 percent of families don’t have savings to last three months.

Shelter Was “Like a Jail”

After a few nights in the van, Yasmir and Marleny asked school officials for help. Through its Homeless Trust, Miami-Dade officials were able to get the Abreus a tiny motel room.

“It was filthy, but it was better than the street,” Yasmir recalled.

And it was better than what was to come. As soon as space in a shelter opened up, the Abreus were told to leave the hotel. But they didn’t last one night in the shelter.

“She just cried and cried. She was so scared,” Marleny said of young Maribel. “It was like a jail.”
Near hysterics, Marleny called her sister, Mayra, who lives on a disability pension and isn’t allowed to have anyone other than her teenage son live with her in her rent-subsidized apartment.

“But I can’t leave them like that,” Mayra said. “We’re family.”

Yasmir and Marleny worry about how their situation is affecting the kids. They try to enforce a family routine, with 8 p.m. bedtimes on school nights for the children, even if that means the adults must go to bed too.

“You know, a child who doesn’t sleep well doesn’t study well,” Marleny explained. She added, “But this is hard for them.”

Studies have found that homelessness can have deep and lasting effects on children.

One-third of children who experience homelessness repeat a grade in school, eight times the rate for children who have never been homeless, according to the America’s Youngest Outcasts report.

The study also noted that children who experience homelessness have higher rates of physical disabilities than impoverished children in stable living situations and nearly double the level of emotional or behavioral problems.

Bleak Outlook

The outlook for families like the Abreus is bleak. Nationally, the average length of unemployment was 40 weeks in December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Each day, Yasmir walks to the local unemployment office to apply for work. So far, he’s gotten only one call back--from Pizza Hut, which needed drivers. But he doesn’t have a car anymore. Miami-Dade’s unemployment rate is improving, but at 10.2 percent in December, it still outpaced the rest of the country.

Each night, as the children get ready for bed, Yasmir worries where he will take his family if Mayra’s landlord finds out about them.

“I don’t see how I’m going to get out of this,” he said. “As soon as they find out we’re here, we’re back to the street.”

2012 Copyright Equal Voice News

Ethnic Experts Say Strengthen, Don't Cut, Social Security

2012-02-06T08:25:00Z

Politicians need to strengthen Social Security’s protections, especially for lower-income women, youth and ethnic elders and stop focusing on reducing Social Security already modest benefits to make up for projected shortfalls for the program decades from now, according to members of the Commission to Modernize Social Security during a national webinar held last week.

The commission, a group of national experts from groups representing Black, Asian, Latino and Native America communities, held the online panel in conjunction with the release of an updated edition of its 2011 report, Plan for a New Future: The Impact of Social Security Reform on People of Color.

“The point of Social Security is that people who work hard and contribute their labor and their lives while building the economy shouldn’t die in poverty for reasons outside their control,” stated Meizhu Lui, of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, which co-organized the study with the think-tank Global Policy Solutions.

“People have lost both wealth and jobs during the recession,” Lui noted, and now is not the time to reduced Social Security’s protections, such as by raising the full retirement age, said Lui, director emeritus of Insight’s Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative.

Safety Net and the Presidential Campaign

The commission’s focus on vulnerable groups most dependent on Social Security came last week just as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that he was not concerned with the very poor because they have a safety net, which, were he elected, he would repair if needed.

Media response to that and other Romney gaffes was sharp, such as the blog by Columbia Journalism Review blogger Trudy Lieberman. Her piece describes how Romney’s stated policies belie his pledge to Florida seniors to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Also last week, Politico blogger Glenn Thrush suggested that the Obama campaign may appeal to older Latino voters with ads vigorously supporting Social Security. Polls show that Hispanics of each political party strongly support the program, and both Romney and Newt Gingrich have pledged to support a budget-cutting plan floated by conservative coalition last year likely to result in cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The Plan for a New Future report shows that Asians and Latinos turning 65 today live to 85 on average, live three-to-four years longer than other demographic groups. In addition, Hispanic elders are particularly prone to chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, and disability, so proposed reductions both by Democratic and GOP leaders in the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) would especially impact them.

Furthermore, says the report, because African Americans and Native Americans have lower life expectancies than other groups, Social Security’s early retirement option, allowing workers to retire at age 62—which some political figures have proposed raising, is especially important to them.
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SIDEBAR:
HOW ETHNIC ELDERS ARE STRUGGLING

The report, Plan for a New Future: The Impact of Social Security Reform on People of Color, reveals man ways in which ethnic elders and their families head toward late life with fewer resources than white seniors—who are also struggling to make ends meet in their Golden Years. Among the study’s findings are that:

*Wealth for Latino households dropped by 66 percent from 2005-2009, and by more than half for African American and Asian families in the U.S., compared to an average 16 percent loss for white households.

*Almost half of black beneficiaries and nearly six in 10 people categorized as “Other” racial and ethnic groups by the Social Security Administration rely on the program for its survivor and disability benefits for people under age 65. For example, nearly 21 percent of children receiving the program’s disability benefits are African American, although they are only 15 percent of all American children. Meanwhile, one-quarter of whites depend on Social Security for its disability and survivors protections.

*Ethnic elders are less likely than whites to have a pension, “mostly due to continued occupational segregation by race and gender,” says the report. Although half of white workers had employer-sponsored pension plans from 2003-2009, only four in 10 Asian and black workers and one quarter of Hispanics had such pensions.

*Far fewer ethnic individuals receive any family inheritance. Only one in 20 African Americans benefit from an inheritance, key for many to establish long-term savings, for instance, compared with one in four whites.

*Ethnic Social Security recipients need the program for at least 90 percent of their income, significantly more than whites. In 2008, about half of older Latinos (52.8 percent), African Americans (47.2 percent) and Asians (44.2 percent) relied on the program for almost all of their income, compared to a still high 32.5 percent of whites.

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Wilhelmina Leigh a senior research associate  at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, stressed during last week’s Web panel that blacks and Latinos today have little or no savings to supplement the already low level of Social Security retirement benefits, only about $1,200 per month for the average beneficiary. Over 70 percent of African American and Hispanic elders have only $25,000 or less in savings, she said.

Leigh challenged the “ill-conceived schemes” of politicians of both parties to reduce Social Security benefits in the wake of the recession, when some many Americans “lost their shirts.” due to the subprime debacle and economic crash.

Raising the full retirement age by two years, she explained, would be a 13 percent across the board cut in benefits. And proposals to tighten the annual cost of living allowance (COLA) may seem slight to many but would lower average Social Security benefits by $1,000 a year by the time someone reached age 85.

Hard Times for Native American Elders

Although Social Security was originally designed as one leg of a “three-legged stool” for retirement support, along with private pensions and personal savings, Native Americans are left with “a one-legged stool,” said Dave Baldridge, executive director  of the International Association for Indigenous Aging.

Baldridge, a member of the commission on Social Security, noted that a disproportionate number of Native American workers who can get work end up in very low-paying and often “dangerous jobs.” Few families can save for retirement, he said.

Last year, Baldridge met with over 450 Indian elders at most of New Mexico’s 19 sovereign pueblos in New Mexico about the role Social Security plays for them.

“One elder stood up and said, ‘When I was young we had large households like our parents before us. Now too many of us are living alone, and we don’t have enough caregivers when we get sick.”

Baldridge said that elder and many others noted they are taking what Social Security they can as soon as possible at lower monthly rates for early retirement because they have no other source of income.
He continued, “Their children have increasingly left for the cities to work, so these elders are more reliant on Social Security just to get by than ever.”

Baldridge, former executive director of the National Indian Council on Aging and a consultant to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, persuaded the All Indian Pueblo Council to pass a resolution in December calling on Congress not to reduce the program’s COLA increase to adjust for inflation.

Going further, the Pueblo council’s resolution called on Congress to provide low-income beneficiaries an even higher inflation allowance, because things such as rising health care costs even more than the general population affect impoverished people. The council resolution urges Congress both not to raise the full retirement age, and also to “return it to 65.” (The age for full benefits is now 66 and will increase to 67 by 2022.)

Baldridge, who stressed that the Pueblo council and similar groups guardedly stay clear of political issues, said they felt in this case that preserving Social Security’s protections was nonpartisan. He plans to present a similar resolution later this year to the National Congress of American Indians for approval.

Recommendations for Strengthening the Program

During the Social Security webinar, Roy Aragon, of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said that rather than reduce Social Security’s benefits, Congress should heed the commission’s recommendations to modernize the program by strengthening it for vulnerable groups.

For example, Aragon said, Planning for a New Future calls for increasing benefits for people once they reach age 85, when elders not only have little but often see what other support they have diminish.

Also, he said, women should receive five years’ credit for child or elder care, or half of the 40 quarters of work Social Security now requires to receive benefits.

What’s more, those who become widowed should receive larger benefits based on what both spouses earned, not the paltry 50 percent now allowed. That small amount is especially difficult for older women of color, who usually earn much less than their husbands and are frequently left with too little to make ends meet. The commission, Aragon said, is recommending that widowed people be eligibly for 75 percent of the benefit the spouses received when both were alive.

Those and other recommendations by the commission are not only vital changes to make the program fairer, but they affordable, said participating experts on the webinar panel.

Aragon declared that in spite of continual claims by politicians and mainstream media reports that cuts are needed in Social Security to protect it for the future, “By no stretch of the imagination is Social Security going broke.”

The program now has a surplus of $2.6 trillion, which will increase to $4.3 trillion by 2023. The Social Security trustees show that the program can pay 100 percent of promised benefits until 2036. If Congress fails to do anything to patch up the projected long-term shortfall in the program, it will still be able to pay three-quarters of those benefits.

One of many ways he and others noted to improve the program’s solvency for the next 75 years would be to raise the annual limit on how much income the government can tax. Currently, even millionaires are only subject to the payroll tax up to $110,200 in earnings. Lifting that cap would go a long way to solving the problem, he said.

“It’s a myth that Social Security is going broke,” Aragon stated.

Urban Youth Ask: Are We Married to Facebook for Life?

2012-02-04T09:00:00Z

Ed. Note: Young people in the San Francisco Bay Area write about how they see their future with the regional Internet giant Facebook.

Molly Raynor, 27, Richmond

I am a 27-year-old transplant from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I run a creative arts program in Richmond, California, live with my best friend in Oakland and have a wonderful group of friends. I like to think that I have reached a point where I am super comfortable with myself and secure in who I am.

Despite all of this I find that I am obsessed with checking my Facebook. It’s like a sick addiction, this need to stay updated on everyone's lives, including people I barely know or care about. I get too excited when I see the little red pop up signaling new notifications and sadly depressed when I don't.

I often think about deleting my account, since I get sucked in for way too much time that I could be using for more productive things, but I can never bring myself to do it. I mean, what would the world come to if I didn't know what so-and-so was listening to on Spotify or what this person just ate for dinner?

Our generation is so "connected" by technology, yet so disconnected from each other and our former, more meaningful modes of communication. While I could go on all day about how stupid Facebook is, I am still a complete sucker for it.

Edgado-Cervano Soto, 22, Richmond

As an aspiring journalist, Facebook is my friend.

At my fingertips, I have a personal directory through which I can promote certain news articles, points of view and happenings, or ask for leads and recommendations for my own reports, and remain connected to dispersed communities.

I have used Facebook to fulfill my own belief that information is power, posting anything from Youtube videos of a San Antonio Chicana rock band to links supporting the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights on my status updates. Facebook affords me a platform to promote my social justice views and see what other politics my circle of friends have swimming in their heads.

Alongside the politics, I post the personal. On some days I treat Facebook like a diary, typing nostalgic and very “emo” status updates when my world seems bleak, all for the public to see. When I enter these kinds of posts, I am reminded of Walt Whitman’s poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” and I too am like the spider shooting strings of gossamer web into a digital world in need of human contact. I post remnants of the past, photographs of moments with my sisters, friends, grandparents and family -- as if by digitizing them I am vowing to never forget them.

With Facebook, I have a documented life. I am often shocked when I see my photographs, archived chronologically in my online account, describing my life back to me. Facebook reminds me of the friends I no longer have, the places I left, the many identities of me I have shed and left behind in cyber-space.

But Facebook and I shouldn’t be friends. We’re complete opposites.

In the physical world, I am silent. I tend not to make my politics clear through my exterior self, and I don’t always share my feelings with the people closest to me. And yet, I choose to participate in an online community that requires a loss of inhibition. It’s a contradiction, the way I function as a cyber-person and the form I live in the flesh. In sending my random thoughts out over the network, in the moments when I reflect on my personality and my desire to be connected, I see that the reason why I choose the Facebook way is because I lack an honesty and self-satisfaction in the physical.

I’d like to think I am using Facebook as my own training ground, where I practice being loud and present, until I can express the political and personal through my very real body and voice.

Sean Shavers, 20, Oakland

In September of 2010 I got involved with Facebook, which I thought was a cool site to meet women and chat with friends. But after using the site for a while, I realized it was actually just a gateway for other people to nose around in your personal business.

People I never used to communicate with were suddenly eager to chat and discuss issues regarding my personal life. Even the church folks got involved, chatting with me online and pretending to be genuinely concerned about my life, when we don't even speak at church.

After about a month, I deleted my Facebook account entirely and went back to my old life. I used the site for what it was worth but in my opinion, it wasn't worth much.
Maybe because it was my first time using any type of social media network. I never had a Myspace page, never used a chat room or even had a personal email before.

Regardless, I don't see Facebook leaving anytime soon, just because everyone I know uses it. From kids to teens to seniors, it’s all the same… There are just too many people involved, not to mention addicted, to Facebook.

Victor Petersen, 23, San Francisco

When I first created my Facebook profile over two years ago, I was sent dozens of friend requests and questions about how I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. Here I was in my private room, feeling as if I had just walked into a reunion attended by almost everyone I’d ever known. As much as I felt uncomfortable, I felt connected and found myself logging in daily, excited to discover who was sending me a friend request, message, or notification.

In 2011 I was isolated in the Central Valley, finishing up general education requirements to transfer into SF State. Being hundreds of miles away from all of my friends and family motivated me to log in to Facebook in the morning, noon and night. I remember chatting on Facebook one night with a friend, enjoying a glass of wine, while reminiscing about our past together.

Since I’ve moved back to San Francisco, however, I barely log in to my Facebook account. I haven’t posted anything in months and when I do log in, I check my messages then log out. Facebook was my connection to the world when I was isolated from friends and family. Now that I am back in The City, I can meet up with people and connect with people in person.

I believe Facebook is here to stay for a while, as is social networking in general, because many people may feel isolated and invisible without a Facebook profile. Be that as it may, I plan to use my Facebook profile as a tool to be useful and beneficial for the world surrounding me.

Taisa Grant, 25, Richmond

I’m a young black woman in her mid-20’s who enjoys writing, photography, music… I truly seek to live in a world that is better for all, so this desire is expressed in all that I do.

Facebook is something that I enjoy using. It allows me to share who I am with friends that aren’t presently in my life and it allows me to reconnect with people from my past whom I wish to be in contact with. Also, being young and single, it’s a nice place to stay in contact and learn more about potential love interests.

Still, I wouldn't say I'm married to Facebook -- if something better comes along I'd have no problem leaving it. For now, it is a place where I express my feelings and concerns through poetry or what I like to call “capturing thought” statements. I’m able to get feedback from people and this does give me a feeling of not being alone.

Study: California Women “Falling Behind”—and Held Back by Budget Cuts

2012-02-03T17:00:00Z

SAN FRANCISCO--Women are recovering from the recession at a slower rate than men according to a new report by the California Budget Project (CBP) published in partnership with the Women’s Foundation of California.

The report, titled, “Falling Behind: The Impact of the Great Recession and the Budget Crisis on California’s Women and Their Families, " was released on Feb. 1.

In a telephone briefing with the media on Thursday, Jean Ross, CBP's executive director commented, “The Great Recession hit single mothers particularly hard and contributed to a sharp increase in poverty among female-headed families with children.”

Ross added, “Older women faced a rise in poverty, as well. The recession eroded women’s retirement savings, causing them to remain in the workforce to rebuild their savings.”

Slow to Share in Economic Recovery

As the economy gradually recovers in California, Ross noted, women have been slow to share in areas such as job growth.

“California’s job market is slowly recovering, but recent data suggest that women have not shared equally in the state’s modest employment gains,” said Ross during the briefing.

Ross emphasized in an interview with New America Media, “Single moms have not fared well in this struggling recovery. When people say you need to get a job faster and work more hours, that just doesn’t reflect what’s available in this labor market. Workweeks are shrinking and jobs are scarce.”

Judy Patrick, the president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California, commented during the briefing, “We have to have a public system for when the economy isn’t working well enough to support these populations.”

However, Governor Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 budget proposal outlined cuts to public programs that have alarmed advocates for children, elders, minorities and others vulnerable groups. Ross said women would also be among those most negatively impacted.

Reductions facing CalWorks, which assists economically struggling families, and childcare programs were among the budget cuts that concerned Ross the most.

Ross observed that the state has made cuts to CalWorks multiple times since 2008, reductions totaling $3.3 billion. Those include funding rollbacks for services meant to help parents find and keep jobs.

“These cuts mean that low-income families will have a harder time keeping a roof over their heads and making ends meet,” said Ross during the briefing. “Everybody understands that childcare is critical to a single parent’s ability to remain in the workforce, to be productive at the job, to know his or her children are well taken care of.”

Cuts Pull Rug From Under Families With Children

In an interview, Ross explained that federal and state welfare reform laws implemented in the mid-1990's limited the time people could receive benefits and required them to find work eventually.

But those laws also recognized that the jobs typically available for people on cash assistance programs usually don’t pay enough to support a family or enable them to afford childcare. So the state promised those parents a safe place for their children to go while they were at work

“When you cut those programs, you’re pulling the rug out from under families, who assumed that their part of the bargain was to get a job and in exchange they wouldn’t have to worry about where their kids were,” said Ross.

According to the “Falling Behind” report, cuts made in the 2011-12 budget are expected to eliminate care programs for over 35,000 children. Proposed cuts for 2012-13 would eliminate 62,000 more spaces in state-supported childcare programs.

Cuts to healthcare programs, such as Medi-Cal, will also disproportionately affect women, who make up two-thirds of those on the state’s Medicaid program.

Ross was particularly concerned with the impact of Medi-Cal cuts on women because more than half of the women in the program are in their peak reproductive years, and many others are seniors with very low income.

College Cuts Hit Women Hardest

During the media briefing, Ross noted that budget cuts to higher education have also affected women disproportionately.

“Higher education is critical to providing pathways to opportunity. In the past three decades, the hourly earnings of women with a B.A. or more have increased by 37 percent. Those women with just a high school degree have risen by 2 percent,” said Ross.

She pointed out that increasing student fees and declining course offerings haave caused the number of California high school graduates attending a college or university to decline, most significantly at community colleges.

The report found that from the 2007 to 2010 fiscal years, enrollment in community colleges dropped by approximately 130,000 students, and women accounted for 82 percent of that reduction. The most substantial drops were among young women, ages 19 or younger, and older women, 35 or older.

Asked who has been hardest hit by the recession, Ross responded, “Single mothers with children--in terms of everything, increased poverty, poor employment prospects.”

She also stressed that because ethnic women of color are more likely to go to community colleges and tend have low incomes, the education reductions especially affect them. For example, Ross said, half of the population served by CalWorks is Latino.

Patrick, of the Woman’s Foundation of California, also expressed her concern about older women because of steep reductions in the In-Home Supportive Services program and other services for seniors and people with disabilities.

When discussing possible solutions to avoid these cuts and improve the prospects for women, Ross affirmed the need for more revenue.

“We’ve encouraged lawmakers to look at ineffective tax breaks. There always are ways to do things differently,” she said.

Ross also mentioned the need to make choices based on what is happening in the economy at large and emphasized not placing unrealistic expectations on families.

“Budgets are always about values and choices, and these clearly are tough choices,” she declared. “The easy cuts have all been done.”

School Nurses Become Medical Safety Net

2012-02-03T08:35:00Z

NEWMAN, Calif.--When Bernice Arnett accepted a school nurse position with the Newman-Crows Landing Unified School District seven years ago, people suggested the job would entail little more than applying Band-Aids to boo-boos.

But as the sole medical provider for seven schools in the west Stanislaus County district--where about 70 percent of the 2,841 students are Latino and about 75 percent of students receive free or reduced-price meals--Arnett's job has been far from simple.

"It is a kaleidoscope," Arnett said one Tuesday afternoon in January, between providing ice packs to two boys injured on the basketball court and helping a girl with type 1 diabetes maintain her blood sugar.

"We can plan, but we just never know what the day is going to throw our way," Arnett added.

Today’s Nurses Spread Thin

Years ago, school nurses were stationed at a single school and were mainly responsible for monitoring student immunizations, screening students for scoliosis and vision and hearing problems, and providing students with first aid and medications.

Today's school nurses do that--and more.

Due to previous budget cuts, nurses in San Joaquín Valley school districts are spread thin. They oversee more schools and treat more students with severe health problems, at a time when struggling families have less ability to access medical care.

Now, school nurses--who earn significantly less than registered nurses at hospitals--visit multiple schools in one week--or even in one day. Beyond the typical headaches and bellyaches, they are also responding to an increase in students with chronic diseases that require regular care, such as diabetes, asthma, allergies and seizures.

In California’s Central Valley--a rural region marked by crippling poverty, unemployment levels above the state average and high levels of the medically uninsured--school nurses are also facing greater challenges in linking families with medical care.

Sometimes, nurses provide bus tokens--out of their own pockets--to ensure families reach doctors' offices. Other times, nurses will simply transport families themselves.

Too often, school nurses have become families' medical safety net.

"Things that should be easy to take care of have gotten much more complicated, and that is because families are losing their access to health insurance," said Aurora Licudine, who chairs the school nurses association for Modesto City Schools.

Often Students’ Only Health Provider

"Sometimes, we are the only health care providers that these students and their families see," Licudine observed.

 Although she had received an insulin injection after lunch, a young girl with type 1 diabetes--who sported a pink backpack and pink sneaker--returned in the afternoon to Arnett's office at Newman's Hurd Barrington Elementary School with complaints of shakiness.

The girl pricked her finger and then tested her blood sugar: Her monitor read 78, indicating her blood sugar was too low.

Arnett handed the girl an string cheese, a sugar-free cookie and apple juice, all of which would help raise her blood sugar.

About 15 minutes later, the girl tested her blood sugar again. It had returned to healthy levels, and the girl skipped back to class.

California schools do not keep a database of student health conditions, but Katy Waugh, president of the California School Nurses Organization, said diabetes--as well as asthma, allergies, seizures and obesity--are some of the biggest health challenges students currently face.

Nurses agree there are more students with these conditions than in years past.

"It just seems there are more in general--there are more kids that have more severe health problems," said nurse Linda Trujillo Cayabyab, who oversees licensed vocational nurses at 13 sites within Modesto City Schools.

But school nurses are unsure whether this is because students are less healthy now, or because more students with chronic conditions now attend school with their peers.

More with Chronic Illness

"We feel there are more students [with chronic illness,] but I don't know if it is because they didn't come to school in the past," said Patti Cassinerio, director of health services for Stanislaus County Office of Education. Her office employs 11 full-time equivalent school nurses to serve about 16,000 students in 15 schools.

"We just know that we need to make the accommodations" for students, she said.

Caring for students with health conditions also means working closely with families -- sometimes overcoming language barriers and cultural differences -- to ensure students are healthy, safe, and succeeding in school.

"When you see a child, you are not just seeing a child, you are seeing a whole family," said nurse Sandy Dutch, who works in seven schools in the Tulare County Office of Education, where 64 percent of district students are Latino, and 67 percent of kids receive free or reduced-price meals.

"You don't just take care of that child, you help the parent take care of that child, and you help the parent find resources," Dutch said.

That was evident early on a Tuesday morning in January, as Cayabyab analyzed the care plan for a student with seizures.

One to three times a day, the student closes his eyes, falls asleep and slumps in his chair, a licensed vocational nurse, stationed at a Modesto area elementary school, told Cayabyab. The seizures typically don't last more than three minutes, she said.

"We need to find out when mom wants us to call 911," Cayabyab said.

After speaking with the child's mother by phone, Cayabyab updated the child's care plan: The licensed vocational nurse would call 911 only if the student's seizure lasted longer than four or five minutes.

When young students complain of being tired or fall asleep in class, Arnett, the nurse at the Newman-Crows Landing Unified, occasionally provides them with a glass of milk, graham crackers and a pillow to cuddle with in her office.

The snack and rest, she said, often serve as a short-term solution to a deeper problem at home. Sometimes, children are not sleeping well due to living in an overcrowded home, domestic violence or the stress of living amidst a dysfunctional family.

But as she is providing students with some immediate comfort and care, Arnett is also collaborating with school officials, counselors and area nonprofit organizations to ensure the students and their families don't fall through the cracks.

Poverty Aggravates Existing Problems

Across the Valley, school nurses are attempting to keep students healthy, while battling the barriers posed by poverty, stress and limited access to medical care.

In some homes, poverty can aggravate existing health conditions. For example, in some families, a lack of transportation makes it difficult for children with poor vision to get the glasses they need.

"Because of limited economic resources, some of our families are burning wood in their homes to provide heat, and that makes many of these kids who have asthma have a flare up," said Licudine, of Modesto City Schools, which employs more than 16 full-time-equivalent school nurses to serve about 30,000 students across 34 schools.

Sometimes, poverty and stress create other health challenges. When parents lose their jobs and health insurance, and there is not enough food on the table, students manifest that stress-- maybe as stomach aches, headaches or general complaints, such as, "I'm not feeling well," Licudine said.

These conditions also makes it more difficult for families to access medical care.

"There are less resources in the home, because of a variety of reasons, and it is harder to get them into care, and harder to get the things they need," said Dutch, of the Tulare County Office of Education. Tulare employs five full-time and two part-time school nurses, who serve about 14,600 students across 35 rural school districts.

The increase in serious health issues, coupled with the tough economy, requires school nurses--more than ever--to act as community liaisons, connecting families with Medi-Cal or low-cost insurance, doctors and dentists and free backpacks and clothing.

As school nurses, "our common goal is to remove the barrier that is keeping these kids from being successful," Arnett said.

Call to End Budget Cuts for Nurses

These compounding challenges underscore the important role school nurses play in the lives of San Joaquín Valley students. For Licudine, of Modesto City Schools, they also emphasize why nurses should be protected from further budget cuts.

"I think that in general, school nurse shortages will only make the problem bigger," she said. "School absences will cause students to be less academically successful, and that limits the economic future of students, and limits their access to health insurance."

"By removing the health barriers that will make children academically successful, [nurses] can directly impact their academic future and their earning potential," she said.

Cassinerio, of the Stanislaus County Office of Education, summed up school nurses' responsibilities to students and their families.

School nurses, she said, "are really advocates for students, so they can succeed in school, and work in the community," she said. Nurses "have to work closely with their families and the community and all the health care providers in the community."

"Liaison,” said Cassinerio , “it is a small word, but it is a big job."

Send e-mail to: rplevin@vidaenelvalle.com

Op-ed: Waiver for NCLB the Right Choice for California

2012-01-26T10:00:00Z

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Around this time every year, millions of parents in California are working through the school enrollment process. Unfortunately, while many don’t have a choice regarding what school their child will attend, those who do often find their options bewildering.

My wife and I are both educators (her currently, me formerly). We know the education system well, and what qualities to look for in a school. Still, even we were confused when we moved from San Diego to Oakland and began looking at local public schools.

After months of research and hours spent talking about the pros and cons of schools, we filled out our “options” form with our top three school choices. In some ways, this final step was a leap of faith. The school we picked had low scores but we liked the Spanish immersion program and believed that the principal and teachers could turn it around.

Our experience is not uncommon, as conversations with numerous other parents showed us. As parents, we know that the schools we select will have lifetime implications for our children’s success. But as we make these choices, we lack high-quality information on school performance.

The first problem is the school rating system. Every school in California has two separate ratings.

California has a state system called the API (Academic Performance Index) that ranks schools on a point system up to 1000. However, schools are also ranked by the federal rating system based on AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). A school can be highly ranked in the state system and do poorly in the federal system. Neither system provides a full picture of how well a school is performing.

For instance, California’s API system doesn’t tell parents how groups of students – such as English Learners, students with disabilities, Latinos or African-Americans – are doing. The federal model provides this information but fails to give the school any credit for the academic progress of students who haven’t achieved grade level standards.

Under the state system, nothing happens to even the very worst schools. Under the federal system, schools that are making considerable progress can be labeled failing and suffer sanctions. Neither system really tells parents whether the majority of students in the school are on track for graduation and college-readiness.

Recently, the Obama Administration gave state leaders the opportunity to apply for a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law, which mandates that states apply assessments in basic skills to all students in certain grades if they are to receive federal funding. Such a waiver would allow California the opportunity to develop and use a single school rating system that provides complete and transparent information on school performance for parents and community members.

Eleven states around the country took the option and applied in the first round. Thirty other states have signaled their willingness to apply in the second round in February. California remains undecided, with leaders in Sacramento throwing up an array of excuses as to why we should not join that list.

At a recent State Board of Education meeting, supporters of the waiver asked leaders to quickly come to a decision. Among those gathered were superintendents from the Central Valley’s Sanger Unified School District, Long Beach Unified School District, and Morgan Hill Unified School District in the Bay Area. Advocacy groups including Children Now and Education Trust-West were also at the meeting.

The arguments put forward ranged from building a better accountability system to allowing districts to focus on the highest-need and lowest performing schools, targeting them with the attention, resources and reforms they need to improve. Such steps would help ease the widespread confusion prevalent among parents by providing more concise and accurate information and could also help resolve the widening achievement gap.

Additionally, a waiver from NCLB would offer increased flexibility with federal dollars so state and local leaders can target those dollars at vital areas such as improving teaching and leading, implementing our new state standards, and increasing academic rigor so all of our students graduate college and career ready.

Sadly, no decision was forthcoming form the State Board during the hearing. Instead, leaders stated that they will postpone making a final decision on whether or not to apply for a waiver until March.

In the meantime, it is critical that parents and community groups let state board members know that it is time for California to submit a waiver application. We can’t afford to lose this opportunity to build a transparent, high-quality system for rating schools and districts, one that provides crucial information on how well our schools are doing in preparing all children for college and career.

As parents, we deserve to have all the information we need to make the right educational choices for our children’s future.

Arun Ramanathan is executive director of The Education Trust—West, a statewide education advocacy organization. He has served as a district administrator, research director, teacher, paraprofessional and VISTA volunteer in California, New England and Appalachia. He has a doctorate in educational administration and policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His wife is a teacher and they have two children in a Spanish immersion elementary school in Oakland Unified.

As Eldercare Grows, So Do Labor Battles

2012-01-26T08:20:00Z

Photo: Eldercare worker and union member Margaret Boyce speaks at rally in Trenton, N.J.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Rolanda Wade works as restorative aide and certified nursing assistant. To her patients, she is everything.

“A lot of them can’t get dressed by themselves. They can’t wash themselves,” said Wade, who has been on the job 17 years. “Some of them can’t even feed themselves. We have to brush their teeth, do their hair, pick out their clothes for the day.”

The pay is low and injuries are common, but nursing care is a rare bright spot in the gloomy economic landscape, adding jobs at a steady clip. As the field has grown, so, too, have efforts to unionize.

Those unionization campaigns are being fought on a shifting battleground, from massive chains to private homes. With boomers moving into retirement, the tensions aren’t likely to abate any time soon.

Workforce Shifts With Care Industry

An aging population is increasing its demand for home health and nursing care. Relatively low training requirements mean the job is accessible to a broad range of workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says the ranks of home health aides—about 1 million today--will increase by more than 50 percent in seven years.

By 2018, there will be more direct-care workers, as they are known, than teachers or public-safety workers, BLS data show. But mean wages for these careers still hover near the poverty line, and incidences of injury among these workers are second only to police officers, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Bill Cruice, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, a labor union representing 6,000 nurses and health professionals, said he has seen many changes in the industry.

Nursing homes have historically been owned and operated mostly by companies focused on health or elder care. But during the last 20 years, ownership has shifted to big investors, who are snapping up and consolidating homes. Private equity firms have gotten involved in the industry as well, with the Carlyle Group acquiring the nation’s largest nursing home chain, HCR ManorCare, in 2007.

The shift has raised red flags. In 2007, Congress held hearings on how changes in the industry are affecting care and accountability.

The image of the small, family-owned nursing home is an antiquated one, Cruice said. Private investment firms purchased close to 1,900 homes from 1998 to 2008, according to a 2010 Government Accountability Office report. Only 10 private investment firms accounted for 89 percent of these acquisitions.

Labor costs, the single greatest expense for nursing home owners, Cruice said, will likely be the source of increased conflicts with owners because of what he calls a “disconnect between decision makers and workers.”

Efforts to unionize health and eldercare workers are underway nationwide. Even at nonprofit long-term care providers, health care workers are swimming against the de-unionization tide. Although overall union membership has been cut in half since 1979, to 12 percent, unionized health workers, who earned 14 percent more than nonunion workers, have increased since 2001.

Employees at the nonprofit, church-affiliated Broomall Presbyterian Village in Broomall, Pa., are hoping to join the ranks of union-represented workers. They voted nearly two years ago to join Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Pennsylvania. They are still working without a contract, after months of negotiations. Employees said the sticking issues involve the company’s demand that employees contribute more to pension and health care without guaranteed raises.

Broomall is the only facility pursuing a union contract out of 28 facilities owned by Presby’s Inspired Life, according to Dan Magee of Presby’s. He said, “Our goal is to pursue a fair and equitable contract,” but he declined to discuss details.

Since the union vote, Regina Robinson, who has worked at Presby’s for 18 years, has not received a raise, and she’s seen her department whittled from four workers to one.

Another bone of contention is that nationwide a quarter of direct-care workers lack health insurance coverage.

“Your copay is expensive; the specialist is expensive,” said Robinson, who makes $14 an hour. “You’re paying a lot of money out of your pocket, plus what you pay here a month.”

Even for nurses with a contract, the grueling work doesn’t necessarily translate to high salaries. Wade and her co-workers at Delaire Nursing Home in Linden, N.J., a for-profit home, are represented by 1199SEIU, the largest health-care union in the United States.

Wade makes a little more than $16 an hour, she said, and supports herself and her college-age daughter. But she is still living paycheck to paycheck, she said, and recent contract negotiations have been the most difficult she has seen.

One proposal included an end to health benefits for Delaire workers. “If we don’t have health insurance, it’s going to come between me paying for health insurance or me feeding my family. That’s just the bottom line,” she said.

Home as a Battleground

As the boomers age, the battleground in the eldercare fight is shifting from facilities to the home. A recent AARP study revealed that nine in 10 boomers would prefer to stay at homes indefinitely.

Home health care workers often have lower wages and fewer protections than their institutional counterparts. They’re excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ensures minimum wage and pay for overtime. The Obama Administration recently proposed extending these protections to home care and domestic workers for the first time.

In announcing the proposal, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis cited the staggering demand for home aides and said the field needs greater job security to attract qualified professionals.

The 2008 Institute of Medicine study, Retolling for an Aging America, recommended a minimum of 120 hours of training to prepare workers for the increase in the aging population.

Federal training requirements for direct-care workers have not been updated in 20 years. While 31 states and the District of Columbia have adopted stronger standards for training, home health training lags behind that of their institutional counterparts — although the two positions often involve the same work.

“If you’re a nursing aide, you’re not going to quit a $14- or $15-an-hour job to go work for a home-care agency where you’re going to earn less than 10 bucks. It doesn’t make any sense,” said Dorie Seavey, policy director of the Paraprofessional Health Institute (PHI National), which advocates for direct-care workers.

PHI National research determined that pay is so low that half of such workers receive some form of public assistance in addition to their pay. A survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found nearly 40 percent of certified nurse assistants at nursing homes and 30 percent of home health aides reported forgoing employer-provided health insurance because they were unable to afford the copyaments and deductibles. Many rely on Medicaid or other government health programs.

Poor pay also contributes to a high turnover rate--66 percent in 2008 in nursing facilities, according to the American Health Care Association, the trade group of for-profit nursing facilities.

A little more than half of the direct-care workforce is full-time and is disproportionately made up of people of color. Almost half (46 percent) were African-Americans or Latino in 2010, and nine in 10 were women.

“Men don’t have that many incentives to go into those jobs because you can still earn more as a landscape worker or as a laborer,” said Ariane Hegewisch, of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Hard Work With a Purpose

Margaret Boyce has two full-time jobs. She works from 3 to 11 p.m., at one home in long-term care, dealing with permanent residents, and follows that with restorative care from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. at another. She makes a little more than $12 an hour at each home.

“You have to account for everything — every little scratch, every single thing that goes wrong with that patient. . . . If they don’t eat, if you don’t record anything, your license is at stake,” said Boyce. “It’s like you have 16 kids.”

Boyce once dislocated her shoulder while lifting a patient and couldn’t work for a month. “Sometimes in this job you really want to turn around and go home,” she said.

Despite frustration with pay and benefits, 80 percent of the workers in a government survey also reported job satisfaction, with most citing the good feeling they have from caring for others.

Wade noted, “The elderly took care of this country for years, and they’re so easily forgotten. I feel honored that I can help someone who built a country for me to live in.”

This article is adapted from a feature by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a project of the American University School of communications in Washington, D.C.

Liberty Ship Café Cooks Up Savory Small-Business Model

2012-01-24T08:15:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif.--It is 8 o’clock on a Thursday night, and inside a commercial kitchen at Veterans Hall members of the Liberty Ship Café, a new workers’ cooperative in Richmond, Calif., complete their last tasks after five hours of cooking.

The mouth-watering fare they will serve the next day at Richmond’s Farmer’s Market includes dishes with organic ingredients fused with the tang of Latin America.

Near a counter, Beatriz Ortiz pours luscious butternut squash into a large bowl. The bright orange puree plumps and folds onto itself as Ortiz softly pounds on a blender with her palm.

Across the kitchen, lit by white incandescent light, Julio Chavez scrubs the tools of the night: knives, spatulas, pots, pans, extra-large spoons. Stored and refrigerated are the prizes of the evening: marinated tempeh (soy cake) and pollo (chicken) for savory sandwiches; dough for the empanadas (hand-held pies), their fillings sweet with pineapple; goat cheese and fruit; and herbed chicken--all to be sold at Richmond’s Civic Center Farmer’s Market the next day.

Before leaving for home, Ortiz and Chavez discuss plans for Friday morning with Jose, a new member, and cooperative facilitator Lexi Hudson of the California Center for Cooperative Development in Davis.

The team of four decides to meet at 6:30 a.m. at Veterans Hall to fill the empanadas, and prepare the pollo and tempeh sandwiches. “And coffee!” chimes in Ortiz. It will be most important to keep the chefs awake during the early morning.

The Mayor’s Active Role

Liberty Ship Café, named for the historic Liberty Ships built in Richmond for World War II, has been long in the making. In 2010, Richmond’s Literacy for Every Adult Project (LEAP) presented a public workshop titled: “How to Start Your Own Workers’ Cooperative.” Ortiz and Chavez attended and later participated in succeeding meetings.

They were among a handful of participants who actually started their own cooperatives, organizations owned and operated by members, who share in the profits or benefits.

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin took an active role in spurring interest in worker cooperatives. After visiting Mondragon, Spain, and learning from Mondragon Corp, a cooperative hub employing close to 84,000 people, McLaughlin hired Terry Baird of Arizmendi Bakery in 2011. Baird is currently consulting the city of Richmond on how it can utilize the Spanish model of worker cooperatives to decrease the city’s unemployment and reenergize its economy.

Liberty Ship Café, in particular, was incubated by the California Center for Cooperative Development. Like Richmond Spokes, a nonprofit bicycle shop that is also a workers’ cooperative, the cafe aims to be self-sufficient and operate a gourmet mobile food truck within the next six months.

“The ultimate goal is to have a restaurant” with workers owning part of their business, said Hudson of the co-op development center.

The process of preparing a co-op has been long, risky and demanding. Since 2010, café members have participated in a range of meetings, from the development of a business model, to receiving tips from La Cocina in San Francisco, and creating a lunch menu that appeals to the average customer. However, the pressure to draw a stable income led almost all of the original 15 interested individuals to drop out of Liberty Ship Café. Beatriz Ortiz and Julio Chavez are the only two original members left.

Chavez said it’s difficult to start a co-op from “the ground-up.” “Estamos empezando de abajo,” he said. “We’re starting from the bottom.”

A former journalist from Guatemala, Chavez has been a construction worker in Richmond, but now he declines offers of construction jobs because he prefers to work towards “something of one’s own.”

Ortiz echoes that desire, though she sympathizes with those who left the group. “Everybody has different necessities and it dictates their decisions. We had single mothers in our group, who needed the stable jobs, so they had to leave. Being part of a cooperative is a sacrifice,” Ortiz said.

Customers Line Up

The orders are in and Chavez is preparing a sweet-marinated chicken sandwich beneath the café’s golden canopy, which protects the market’s vendors from the afternoon rain.

Liberty Ship Café’s presence at the Farmers Market has attracted new customers, who line up, purchasing pineapple empanadas, red-leaf lettuce salads, and the tofu-like tempeh sandwiches. One customer said she decided to visit the market to try the organic and Latin-American fusion food prepared by the cafe.

Arlo Anderson, a nearby kettle popcorn vendor, traded a large popcorn order for a chicken sandwich. “It was great,” Anderson declared, adding, “it had a good sweet sauce.”

Ortiz hopes Liberty Ship Café can serve as an example for working families in Richmond of what nutritious and great tasting food can be. “Too many of our kids eat fast food. We need to learn how to eat well and healthy again.”

Chavez believes Liberty Ship Café can help inform families not conscious of healthy alternatives. “The tempeh,” he said, “is something I had known of and never tried.”

All the foods cooked at Liberty Ship Café, Chavez said, mix flavors from the favorite foods of co-op members with organic ingredients from local businesses in Richmond. “Today’s bread is from the Panaderia Guatemala on 23rd Street,” he said.

The café’s four co-op members switch turns preparing foods and taking orders, sharing and collaborating as the each undergo a steep learning curve. “Nothing is concrete,” said Hudson, when it comes to running a co-op.

“We have a saying: Step up, step back,” she explained. “For things to be equitable people need to have their voices heard to the extent they want them to be, so there is a lot of talking and getting to know each other.”

Liberty Ship Café’s evolution is transforming its members into savvy business owners. “Being here, learning how to cook and run a business is like a good school, Se aprende cada dia,” Chavez said. “You learn everyday.”

The Liberty Ship Café is open on Fridays at the Civic Center Farmers Marker at 25th Street and Barrett Avenue, rain or shine. Richmond Pulse, a youth-led journalism project of New America Media, is supported by grants from The California Endowment and the Richmond Community Foundation.

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99% to NYT’s David Brooks: Get Real, Not Simple

2012-01-15T11:10:00Z

In his New York Times Jan. 9 column, “Where Are the Liberals?” conservative commentator David Brooks rightly chides the venality of Democrats, as well as Republicans, for “perpetually soiling the name of government for the sake of short-term gain.”

He correctly indicts supposedly liberal Washington Democrats for being missing in action to counter “Wall Street excess and the unpopular and sometimes embarrassing” machinations of the Republican Party. President Obama, he urges, should campaign like Martin Luther, perhaps virtually nailing the truth to the door of Congress.

In his presumptively even-handed tone, Brooks declares that is corrupted by “renters,” special interests who have mired America’s leaders in conflicts of interest. Washington needs to be “cleansed and purified. Make the tax code simple. Make job training simple. Make Medicare simple . . . Simplify the legal thickets that undermine responsibility.”

And who are the renters? Along with Wall Street—you know, the 1 percent most of us think of as the owners, not the renter--Brooks pillories (guess who?) old people.

Paraphrasing a recent Washington Post op-ed by conservative elder pundit George F. Will, Brooks writes that “in 2009, the net worth of households headed by senior citizens was 47 times the net worth of households led by people under 35. Yet seniors use their voting power to protect programs that redistribute even more money from the young to the old and affluent.”

Wealth and Diverse Boomers

Of course, one accumulates wealth over a lifetime, so it’s not surprising that the over-50 demographic holds a lot more of it than their children. But, especially in this recession, what part of that 47 times multiple doesn’t belong to the top 1 percent? Do Wills and Brooks consider the ethnically diverse 78 million aging boomers, many of whom would be affected by proposed Medicare cuts, such as by raising the Medicare eligibility age?

The 2011 report, “Plan for a New Future: The Impact of Social Security Reform on People of Color,” from the Commission to Modernize Social Security, shows that among pre-retirees ages 50-64, “Large racial gaps remain with single white men and women owning twice as much as single nonwhite men and women.”

This racial wealth gap, says the report, limits the inheritance that Brooks’ profligate seniors can pass on to the next generation. According to the study, “While 1 in 4 white Americans will receive an inheritance, only 1 in 20 African Americans will; and they will receive only 8 cents to the white inheritor’s dollar.”

How are older workers and still-older retirees faring, given all of their alleged political power? Last fall’s report, “Retirement on the Edge: Women, Men, and Economic Insecurity After the Great Recession” found that among those 45-59, half or men and two-thirds of women worried they won’t be able to afford health care. Also, four in 10 respondents afraid they could not afford a nursing home, and large majorities concerned they won’t have enough money to live on in their old age, especially if Social Security is cut or eliminated.

Those ages 60-plus in the survey were only moderately less worried. For instance, over half of women of that age said they fear not having enough money to live on. And Hispanic adults in the survey were particularly troubled, with 6 in 10 Latino women doubting they will be able to afford health care in retirement. And 7 in 10 believe they won’t have sufficient funds to live on.

Half of Seniors Struggling to Get By

Has Brooks seen work by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research showing that older adults need twice the federal poverty line to make ends meet? That’s because the federal measure was never updated to include things like the costs of housing or health care. The UCLA center determined that 47 percent of California seniors are struggling to get by.

Also, last week the SCAN Foundation sent out a PDF summarizing “Ten Things You Should Know About Aging with Dignity and Independence."

This graphic says, for example, “70 percent of us who reach the age of 65 will need some form of care or services in our lives, for an average of three years,” but “43 percent of Americans over the age of 55 have less than $25,000 saved for retirement.”

Does Brooks know that Medicare does not cover these long-term care costs? If he read his newspaper’s “New Old Age” blog, he might have seen the recent “Mad As Hell,” piece about the growing frustration of American women stuck with the lioness’ share of eldercare demands—and with little support or long-term care coverage.

In his past columns Brooks has consistently called for bipartisan compromise including cuts to Medicare. Last November, for instance, Brooks praised Mitt Romney as the only “serious” GOP candidate. He lauded Romney’s proposal for Medicare to give seniors vouchers to buy insurance—the plan pushed by ultra conservative Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., but with the option of taking traditional Medicare.

Brooks has embraced government vouchers to support private insurance, but he also opposed having a government-run public option as part of health care reform. Moreover, he dismisses the idea of controlling overall health care costs, as if every part of the disastrous U.S. health care system—including Medicare—won’t continue to hemorrhage money and poor health outcomes without healing the system’s underlying disease.

Young and Old Hit by Recession

Larry Polivka, who heads the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University, said in an e-mail interview that although the economic gap between the generations has grown over the last 30 years, especially during the Great Recession, this gap resulted from economic losses among those under 35.

“In fact, the 65-plus population has absorbed economic losses as well, but not as great as those suffered by younger people,” Polivka explained. Excluding home equity—a major source of senior wealth--the median net worth of Americans 65-plus falls to $25,209, and only $2,033 for the younger group – about a 12 times difference, far from 47 times, but not much for any age group in the 99 percent.

Poliva concluded, “In short, the older population is not thriving at the expense of younger people. They are also facing serious economic challenges that are made even more pressing by the fact that they have fewer years and opportunities to recover from losses suffered not just during the Great Recession but also since the beginning of the great wage stagnation over 35 years ago, when male workers were actually making more than they do today.

David Brooks says he wants to “simplify Medicare.” Simplify how? I agree—to the extent that the compromised Washington Democrats Brooks accurately describes, should get bold and simplify Medicare by enacting Medicare for All.

Advocates Launch Campaign to Get Anti-Trafficking Bill on State Ballot

2012-01-12T11:00:00Z

Photo caption: Daphne Phung, founder of California Against Slavery, helped draft the CASE Act to increase penalties against human traffickers.

SAN FRANCISCO – Leah Albright-Byrd, a native San Franciscan who ran away from home at age 14 to escape a violent father, said she didn’t know she “was running into the arms of a trafficker.”

“The trafficker told me, ‘You’re having sex anyway, you might as well get paid for it,’” said Albright-Byrd, who was trafficked in the Mission District, Las Vegas and online from the age of 14 to 18. “I was told, ‘Once a ho, always a ho,’ that that was my destiny.”

Now a college graduate and doctoral candidate who next month will celebrate her tenth year of freedom, Albright-Byrd says she is proud to call herself a survivor.

She spoke Wednesday at Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Francisco, to kick off a campaign to get a new measure on the November ballot that would increase penalties against human traffickers in California. The campaign, launched on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, requires 800,000 signatures to make it into the state ballot.

The California Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) Act would increase prison terms and fines for human traffickers (up to $1.5 million, which would go to fund victim services), remove barriers to prosecute child sex traffickers, require convicted sex traffickers to register as sex offenders and disclose their Internet accounts, mandate training for law enforcement officers, and prohibit the use of the sexual history of trafficked victims in court.

If it passes, the law would be the toughest anti-human trafficking state law in the country.

Human trafficking -- the criminal enterprise that profits from enslaving people for sexual servitude or forced labor -- is tied with illegal arms as the second largest criminal industry in the world today, after drug trafficking, and it is the fastest growing, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

California is a hotspot for the sex trafficking of minors: An FBI report names three California cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego – among the 13 high-intensity child prostitution areas in the nation.

But its state anti-trafficking laws are not as strong as they should be, advocates say.

A recent national study gave California an “F” grade for its weak legislation against child sex trafficking. California’s human trafficking law criminalizes sex trafficking of minors, but requires proof of force, fraud, or coercion of the minor.

This is something that the CASE Act would change: It would remove the need to prove force to prosecute sex trafficking of a minor.

Daphne Phung, founder and executive director of California Against Slavery, who helped draft the act, said California’s weak legislation is an affront to victims of trafficking. “Not only are we not protecting the victims; we are victimizing them through our judicial system,” she observed.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, who helped launch the San Mateo County Zero Tolerance initiative on human trafficking, said we often think of trafficking as a problem in other countries.

“The dirty little secret,” she said, “is that there is a thriving business of pimps and gangs and mafias of every imaginable group that are in the business of trafficking young girls and young boys.”

Speier supported the 2010 campaign to remove the adult services section from Craigslist, but she recognized that efforts to “do away with adult services… didn’t do away with the problem because it migrated to other sites.”

The CASE Act would take Megan’s Law one step further, requiring sex traffickers to register as sex offenders, including through their electronic identifiers such as email addresses and IM handles.

“We needed to make the Internet a safer place,” explained Chris Kelly, former chief privacy officer for Facebook and founder of Safer California Foundation, which is funding the initiative.

The act would also mandate training for law enforcement officers, something that Brian Marvel, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, said is desperately needed. As a police officer, Marvel worked a part of San Diego where the strip is, and came into contact with various women, he said, “not realizing that some of them could have been victims of human trafficking.”

“Without this key training,” he said, “it’s difficult for law enforcement to identify [trafficking victims].”

In September 2005, California enacted its ﬁrst anti-trafﬁcking law (AB 22) to make human trafﬁcking a felony in the state and provide assistance to victims. The law also established the California Alliance to Combat Trafﬁcking and Slavery Task Force to review California’s response to human trafﬁcking.

In its 2007 report, Human Trafﬁcking in California, the task force found that there was a shortage in resources to provide adequate services to victims of trafficking; and that because of inconsistencies between federal and California trafficking laws, it was easier to prosecute traffickers under federal law. Under California law, trafficking also carries a lighter prison sentence (four to eight years for trafficking of a minor, and three to five years for trafficking of an adult) than offenses like kidnapping and rape – another reason not to prosecute traffickers under the state law.

For Albright-Byrd, the CASE Act is an attempt to address some of the shortcomings in California’s law, “so girls like me have the services and support they need,” she said.

Meanwhile, Albright-Byrd has founded her own organization to provide support groups for adult survivors of trafficking. The organization is called Bridget’s Dream, named after a friend she influenced to get into prostitution.

“Bridget Gray was a girl that I turned out,” said Albright-Byrd. “Eight years later, on her 22nd birthday, her life was taken by a john. He strangled her to death, dragged her naked body out into the hallway and left her there like she was trash. She was my friend,” she said. “I fight for all the girls like Bridget.”

LA Voters' Political Voice Hangs on Redistricting Commission

2012-01-09T08:15:00Z

LOS ANGELES--Few people on the streets of Los Angeles are aware of a local process underway that could determine whether or not they have a voice at Los Angeles City Hall.

Commissioners Investing in Civic Engagement

LOS ANGELES—New America Media spoke with members of the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Committee about why they are volunteering their time in raising awareness about the redistricting process. Since December 5, the commission's 21 members have been holding separate public meetings in each of the city’s 15 districts and will hold their final meeting Tuesday, January 10. Commissioners will also tour the entire city of Los Angeles to experience each district, produce extensive draft maps, and hold 6 more public hearings before drawing a final map by March 1.

Antonio Vargas, Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) , Chair of Los Angeles Redistricting Commission

I want a city that works. I want a city where people who live here believe that they have a full voice in the future of their neighborhoods.

Helen Kim, Assistant Vice President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association

I have been very involved in the Korean community in particular for over 15 years and I believe some of the frustrations that I’ve seen particularly after the 1992 riots and rebuilding of Korea Town, people have come finally around to realizing it is in part because of a lack of accountability and representation on the city council.

Robert Ahn, Attorney specializing in Real Estate Law

I can’t think of a more important issue at the community level than this redistricting process. This is a once in a decade process. The result of this redistricting is going to determine who represents your various communities and the surrounding communities as well.

David Roberts, Associate Director, University of Southern California’s Local Government Relations Office

I think part of it is engagement and that government can be good. There is a lot of cynicism out there… you can see it with the Occupy Movement. Folks think that deals are done to benefit a small few, and hopefully through our engagement process, we’re going to be very transparent, very public. My anticipation is that the public input we get at these hearings is actually what we use to build these maps and hopefully we encourage and our work translates to public confidence in the process.

The 21-member Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission, formed only once every 10 years, held a press briefing last week to boost public response to its efforts in redrawing the map of LA’s 15 City Council districts to reflect population changes since 2000.

Empowerment

“We are talking about empowerment and political representation,” said Redistricting Commissioner Helen B. Kim, a respected attorney, who is also the commission’s controller.

In Los Angeles, for example, the 2010 Census reveals that about half of the 15 districts have a Hispanic majority. Yet only four City Council members are of Latino heritage.

What’s more, with the current district mapping not one City Council member is from the Asian or Pacific Islander community, even though the 2010 Census shows that API residents make up 15 percent of the city’s population.

Not only must the newly drawn districts include about a quarter-million Los Angeles residents, to fit the interests of the city’s 3,792,671 residents, according to the 2010 Census, the final district maps will determine how well the City of Los Angeles serves key aspects of the quality of life in each section.

City Council representation determines such essential aspects affecting daily living as economic development, public safety, schools, transportation, senior services, small businesses, real estate property values—and attention to each area’s racial or ethnic makeup, such as by providing information in appropriate languages.

Kim, a leader of LA’s Korean American community, explained, “One of the most affected areas during the 1992 riots was Korea town and the area was being represented by four different council members.”

She continued, “ How can you assign responsibility when you have four people pointing fingers at each other? When a community is divided, like Koreatown is into four districts, they feel that their vote is being diluted.”

Local Issues, Not Race Issues

Although commissioners made it clear that race cannot be a factor in how they eventually draw the maps, Kim said communities, such as Little Tokyo, Chinatown and Koreatown, need to get involved in this process “to consolidate themselves as a political force with the capacity to elect a representative that will represent their interest in local issues, not race issues.” Koreatown, for example, currently lacks parks, affecting the quality of life for those who live and work there.

She emphasized that although the commissioners are well aware, for instance, that not only Chinese residents live in Chinatown or Japanese people in Little Tokyo, the public needs to respond to the commission’s outreach to ensure they're represented.

For example, Kim observed, “There is a growing Vietnamese population in Chinatown.”

The city established the independent, multicultural commission in 1999, to ensure citizens involvement in the political process, similar to the once-a-decade redistricting process used to determine state and federal election districts.

Commission Chair Arturo Vargas, emphasized, “We want to ensure that protected population groups such as Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans are not denied the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice by the way lines are drawn.”

He explained that the redistricting commission is completing its initial 15 district hearings this Tuesday and will then have preliminary maps drawn for public feedback at six additional hearings from Jan. 29 to Feb. 11. So far, he said, about 100 people have participated in each hearing.

The commission is staffing each meeting with interpreters and is providing written materials in Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, and Armenian. People unable to attend the meetings can also call or write with their responses or send them via the Internet.

Understanding How Lines Affect Lives

The commission will present its final report and maps to the Los Angeles City Council by March 1. The city has until July 1 to adopt a final and permanent map for the next 10 years.

Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, added that the commission must comply with the United States Constitution by guaranteeing that each district is of equal population and complies with the federal Voting Rights Act.

Also, Vargas said, prior to remapping the districts, “The commission is going to get on three buses to tour the city and look at areas that are most under contention in terms of how the lines are draw. This is all so that the commission really understands how lines affect the lives of people,” he stressed.

Axing Access for Community College Students

2012-01-08T09:00:00Z

In the coming week, the Student Success Task Force will decide on a set of policies intended to streamline academic pathways for students enrolled in California’s community colleges, discouraging those who meander and giving incentives for those who achieve stated goals. What it actually means for our 2.6 million community college students should give the rest of the state pause.

Ongoing budget cuts have forced our institutions to do more with less. While efforts to provide more academic guidance seem sincere, I’m not convinced that these top-down reforms won’t devolve into rubber-stamping and denial of access for those who need it most.

As an academic counselor I have worked with students ages 17 to 60, from tortoises to hares on the college track. Our community colleges should not be streamlined into one-size-fits all.

The task force, launched in January of 2011 by the state Board of Governors to boost completion rates, wants to tie funding and college access to performance. Reminds me of Monopoly; if you’re living on Boardwalk, it’s easy to get ahead, but if you’re a single mom struggling to get a college degree, like several of my students, it will be harder to pass Go and collect $200.

The new policies, put forward last November, penalize students who fall behind or deviate from their education plans, by doling out enrollment priorities and fee waivers to those who can stick to their goals. Who among us has a perfect track record with our New Year Resolutions?

Last month I met with two older students at City College of San Francisco whose medical problems set them back in school. One woman had been attending almost continuously since 1989, taking a course at a time, all the while juggling work and family responsibilities until back surgery forced her to miss a critical semester. Another student lost her job after her accident, and was unable to attend for three semesters. Both these women face great hurdles since they reentered City College after the graduation requirements had increased.

The policies of the task force will add further obstacles, blocking their ability to receive Board of Governor (BOG) fee waivers and demoting their enrollment priorities.

Those who take years to achieve their goals shouldn’t just be labeled scornfully as students for life. I have met with hundreds of students who work full time in childcare centers, retail stores, and low-wage jobs just to make ends meet. Many of them manage to take courses at night through grit and determination. Some have their own kids to care for.

And, sometimes, bad luck happens. These folks need our support as much as the sprinters who finish in two years.

The task force wants to cut state funding from what it deems frivolous courses. Sure, community colleges train 70 percent of our state’s nurses, while more than a quarter of UC grads and greater than half of Cal State students start out at the JC. But community colleges have a broader mandate, and courses like computer training and PE have benefits that aren’t always apparent.

Also, if the State Chancellor’s office begins deciding the courses that receive funding based on demand, it is possible that emerging programs, such as hybrid vehicle or green building technologies, may not be given a chance to succeed. The top-down approach may not work for our 112 community colleges throughout the state as it might for the CSU and UC systems.

It’s encouraging that the task force has already dropped some of the more drastic recommendations, i.e. taking funding away from noncredit courses in ESL and citizenship, and requiring students to pay full cost for courses not listed in education plans.

I’m fine with doing more education planning with our students, and giving some teeth to these course plans. But the task force also favors technical tools like those used by Netflix to “nudge students toward better choices.”

Getting an education isn’t the same as lining up your favorite movies. Let’s give our students – who also work to care for our kids and fight our fires – real access to college and a second chance for those in need.

California Governor’s Budget Could Hit Most Vulnerable With Deepest Cuts

2012-01-07T08:15:00Z

SAN FRANCISCO--Advocates for both ethnic communities and children reacted with alarm to the state budget that Gov. Jerry Brown proposed on Thursday.

The proposal aims to reduce the budget deficit from the $26.2 billion budget hole of one year ago to $9.2 billion through budget cuts and revenue generators amounting to $10.3 billion.

However, the cuts come mostly at the expense of low-income ethnic communities and children in particular.

Cuts Would Impact Access to Care

Chad Silva, policy director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, commented, “The programs that impact the lowest income folks are getting cut and are going to hurt them in very significant ways because they impact access to care.”

People from ethnic and racial groups make up about 60 percent of those benefiting from the state’s Healthy Family program and 70 percent of people on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. Regions, such as Los Angeles and the Central Valley, which have high percentages of Latino populations enrolled in those programs, would be hit particularly hard by the reductions if they are passed by the State Legislature.

The governor’s proposal recommends a $1.1 billion cut to the CalWORKS program, which would affect nearly 600,000 low-income families and over 1 million children living in poverty, including many in deep poverty, below 50 percent of the federal poverty line.

The governor proposes reducing eligibility for employment services, such as training opportunities and employment assistance, from 48 months to 24 months.

For children whose parents would no longer be eligible for aid under the reduced and restructured CalWORKS program, Brown recommends creating a new Child Maintenance program staring with the new fiscal year in October 2012. However, although income and resource eligibility criteria for the new program would be the same as it has been under CalWORKS, the average monthly grant for child-only cases would decrease from $463 to $392.

Additionally, programmatic changes the governor is calling for in Medi-Cal are troubling, say advocates for children and families, because their consequences remain unclear.

Brown proposes to transfer 875,000 Healthy Families beneficiaries to Medi-Cal and also to reduce the rates the state pays managed care providers by about 25 percent, beginning in October. Patient advocates worry that the sharply lower payments will lead to fewer providers willing to take on Healthy Families recipients.

Changes Called “Alarming”

Mike Odeh, the health policy associate for Children Now, stated, “It’s alarming because it’s a big change in a short period of time. Our concern is to make sure kids don’t lose coverage in the transition.”

Advocates also question whether Medi-Cal can handle the extra children due to the significant cuts to that program last year.

The governor’s proposal declares further that it will reform the payment model for federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics in order to trim $28 million in state health spending in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

However, Brown’s plan contained few specifics on how the state could achieve those savings. “The devil’s in the details, it could be a good thing or a bad thing, we’re not really sure. Considering they’re taking money out of the system, that seems like it will have an impact on access,” said Odeh.

Equally concerning to advocates are the proposed budget cuts to education.

If Brown’s tax initiative passes in November, K-12 schools and community colleges will be provided with nearly $4.8 million more than they received this fiscal year; however, without the passage of his plan, schools will face further deep cuts.

Within his proposal, Brown eliminates the requirement that schools provide transitional kindergarten instruction. Effectively barring 125,000 kindergarten students from California’s public school system, this change would mark the largest removal of students from public school classrooms in national history.

Silva of Latino Coalition for a Healthy California commented that those who would feel the biggest effect from the cuts need to understand the linkage between health outcomes and educational opportunity. “Further cuts to education are only going to affect the upward mobility and prospective health outcomes for communities of color,” he asserted.

Odeh of Children Now somberly concluded, “There are a lot of unknowns right now, and it’s not looking very pretty.”

Uncertainties Hover Over California DREAM Act

2012-01-06T08:30:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif.---Despite the announcement of Gov. Jerry Brown signing into law the California DREAM Act last October, students applying for colleges at Richmond High School’s College and Career Center showed a muted response towards legislation that may benefit undocumented students in the next two years.

The California DREAM Act-- so-titled from the acronym, Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors--actually consists of two State Assembly Bills. AB 130, which went into effect on Jan. 1, allows colleges to make private scholarships available to undocumented students. AB 131 will, starting Jan. 1, 2013, make state funding, such as CalGrants, accessible to undocumented students.

But some high school counselors are hesitating to promote the act’s benefits enthusiastically because of major problems with the law.

No Celebration of DREAM

The Richmond High College and Career Center office shows no signs celebrating passage of the California DREAM Act – one of several passed by states around the country. Posted wall-to-wall are only the usual pristine posters of smiling college graduates, and bright letters yelling out places like Cal, Chico State and Stanford--as if AB 130 and 131 were never enacted.

Students at the center sat in front of slow desktop computers drafting personal statements, navigating college application sites, typing into empty fields and asking questions, such as whether they should declare a major, or what it means when the application asks, “Do you claim California residency?”

“It was all on Facebook,” said program director Angelica Arriaga of the unseen celebration. “If you go onto Facebook, you will see that lots of kids, undocumented and documented were excited,” said Arriaga. But Arriaga has avoided the hype over access to financial aid guaranteed by the California DREAM Act.

Although passage of the California DREAM Act has led students to apply for California State Universities (CSU’s) and University of California campuses, instead of community colleges, Arriaga said she will not emphasize the act and its access to public funds as a security net for undocumented students.

Initially, Arriaga said, many undocumented students thought that beginning next year under AB 131, they’d be able to sign up for federal student aid and get help right away. But the state still needs to answer many questions about the program, its funding and implementation.

Arriaga manages College Is Real (CIR), a college preparation program counseling up to 100 Richmond High students, a quarter of them currently seniors. Close to 90 percent of CIR students are first-generation, low-income and Latino.

Of the 26 seniors Arriaga counsels through CIR, less than 10 are undocumented and have applied to college. Maria, 17, is one of them. The news of the CA DREAM Act being approved came as a surprise to the student, who declined to provide her full name for this article. Nonetheless, the chance to apply for state financial aid comforts her, and perhaps, may be a lifeline.

Maria “The Brain”

Maria, a senior, has a 4.1 grade point average and is ranked near the top of her class. She is enrolled in four advanced placement courses, including physics and calculus, is a member of the Junior Statesmen of America, and has participated in Stanford University’s highly selective Summer Math and Science Honor’s Academy.

During after-school hours at the center, Maria is often called over by her peers to explain difficult science and math concepts. Deemed “The Brain” by other students, Maria aspires to be a doctor.

Despite her string of accomplishments, though, Maria’s life outside of school has unraveled. She does not live with her family. Following a visit from immigration officers to their home, Maria’s mother and younger brother moved outside of Richmond. The incident prompted Maria’s mother to assume the name and identity records of a deceased relative.

Meanwhile, Maria’s father is a migrant worker in Alabama and Georgia. The anti-immigration laws passed in both states, caused him to consider returning to California, but he ultimately stayed put, Maria said. The exodus of undocumented laborers from those states left farms in need of workers, work that Maria’s father has accepted.

Every week, Maria’s father sends her money. Although she is living with her parents’ friends and their children, she said it is difficult to go on without family support. Besides missing her family, Maria finds that issues, such as not having her own space, feeling unwanted sometimes and having insufficient money, can get her down.

Maria knows her father’s earnings are not enough to pay even a fraction of college fees. Having the support of the California DREAM Act and access to public funds, Maria said, is empowering. She added that knowing of this option has relieved the pressure on her.

Little Funding

But funding for the California DREAM Act currently falls far short of Maria’s hopes for assistance. Jose Arreola, outreach manager for Educators for Fair Consideration, (E4FC), an immigrant-students advocacy group, stated, “We are not looking at a lot of money.”

Arreola explained that the California Department of Finance estimates close to 2,500 undocumented students will be eligible for $14 million in CalGrant Funds--merely one percent of the $14 billion in financial aid allotted to California students.

“The caveat,” he continued, “is that undocumented students will only get access to the aid that is left over after all citizens and permanent legal residents receive theirs.”

At Richmond High, Angelica Arriaga said this financial reality adds to her hesitancy to promote the act’s benefits. “It’s so limited in terms of the funds that are available to students. They are now competing against each other for that one percent,” she said.

Furthermore, AB 130 does not require universities to offer private scholarships funded by private sponsors and foundations to undocumented students. It only allows them to do so, if they wish.

In addition, Arreola said students and their advocates need to realize that the California DREAM Act does not offer a complete solution. Once they attend college and graduate, he said, they will re-encounter the challenges of being undocumented.

“At the end of the day, it really is federal immigration reform, like the DREAM Act, that we are going to need,” Arreola stressed.

(The U.S. DREAM Act was reintroduced in Congress last May after it was passed by the House but narrowly stopped short in the Senate. More recently, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won the Iowa GOP caucus earlier this week after vowing to veto the DREAM Act if it were to pass under his presidency. The Obama administration slammed that promise this week, and Latino leaders in both parties criticized Romney's pledge.

(Back in the Golden State, an effort to repeal the California DREAM Act failed Thursday, when a petition needed to get the referendum on the November ballot fell short of the needed 500,000 signatures.)

Meanwhile, at the Richmond High College and Career Center, Arriaga continues to help student apply for private scholarships, private universities and the more affordable California State University system, until the state works out details of the California DREAM Act.

Unfazed

Maria is not fazed by the uncertainty of the California DREAM Act. She has chosen to focus on strengthening her applications to private universities, in hopes of receiving a full ride. She will also apply to many scholarships to fund her studies.

But for now, Maria is concentrating on her academics and waiting for the day she can tear open the envelopes containing her college acceptance letters.

“I want to see the yes’s and the letters,” Maria said. “After that, hopefully it will be a smooth ride, and I will find the ways to pay for college.”

Richmond Pulse, a youth-led journalism project of New America Media, is supported by grants from The California Endowment and the Richmond Community Foundation.