Coalition Urges Congress Not to Confirm Sharon Browne to Legal Services Corporation Board

UPDATE2: New posts on Huffington Post and Think Progress.

UPDATE: Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle covers the opposition to Browne in a Feb. 3, 2010, article and join us for a Feb. 11 briefing by Alliance for Justice on the Browne nomination.

A coalition of more than seventy civil rights, women’s rights, consumer, fair housing and legal organizations – including the Equal Justice Society – this week sent a letter to Congress urging the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (“HELP”) Committee to reject the nomination of Sharon Browne to the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”).

“Sharon Browne’s nomination is highly troubling because she has spent her entire career advocating against the very constituencies the Legal Services Corporation serves, said Nan Aron, Alliance for Justice.   “After extensively reviewing her record, I have seen nothing to indicate that she is committed to supporting women, people of color, or the poor – the very people LSC was created to support.”

When creating the LSC, Congress established that members of the legal services board should be committed to the development of legal assistance for the poor and supportive of the principal that this population have access to adequate and effective legal services.

Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society indicated, “At a time when inadequate funding means that legal services turns away nearly half of those who seek its help, LSC needs leadership from those dedicated to its core mission:  serving society’s neediest.”

“Sharon Browne’s nomination defies the basic criteria that Congress established in identifying LSC board members,” continued Paterson.  “She would not contribute to making the LSC board representative of those who provide, use, and support legal services.  She is not committed to keeping politics out of the LSC’s work.  And, her track record reveals a long history of political efforts against the LSC’s basic mission of providing equal justice for the poor.”

“AFJ and the more than 70 organizations who have signed onto this letter urge Congress and the HELP committee to reject Browne’s nomination and ask that another nominee – with a personal and professional commitment to providing equal justice for the poor – be identified,” concluded Nan Aron.

Take Action: National Geographic Show Fosters Hatred and Violence Towards Immigrants

Formerly neutral world news organization National Geographic, with corporate cosponsor CSX, launched a new cable television show entitled “Border Wars”, detailing daily border agent battles with drug smugglers, human traffickers, and undocumented immigrants.

The promotions for this new show, as well as the show itself, have managed to recklessly imply that the U.S. and Mexico are at war, that the U.S.-Mexico border is a terrorism hot spot, that undocumented immigrants are the terrorists attempting to infiltrate this country, and that U.S. border agents are our soldiers ensuring national security and justice.

These implications are false and dangerous.

What “Border Wars” will not show you are fleeing immigrants being shot, immigrant children being separated from their families, and immigrants being forced to return to lives that include poverty, violence, and despair. That is the reality of the U.S.- Mexico border.

The astounding insensitivity of “Border Wars” is compounded by the show’s website which allows browsers to simulate being a border agent “on the line”, promoting violence toward immigrants and vigilante justice.

This show fosters prejudice, hatred, and violence toward all immigrants, regardless of legal status, that lead to hate crimes like the deaths of Luis Ramirez in Pennsylvania and Raul and Brisenia Flores in Arizona. “Border Wars” should not be allowed to influence its 2.9 million viewers in this manner.

If you would like to contact National Geographic about “Border Wars” to express your disappointment and outrage, you may do so here:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/contact

Or post on the show forum.

LDF: ‘King’s Legacy Serve as a Call to Arms on Crisis in Haiti’

Got this today from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund:

Today provides a moment for reflection on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – born 81 years ago on this day. It is also a moment of intense anguish for the survivors and those continuing to suffer in the wake of the tragic earthquake in Haiti.

Throughout his life, Dr. King was committed to achieving equality, addressing discrimination and resolving poverty. These were goals that he set out to achieve both domestically and abroad. In a December 11, 1964 Nobel Lecture speech, Dr. King observed that:

Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation; no individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these. In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor, because both rich and poor are tied together in a single garment of destiny-for life is interrelated and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.

Given the searing experience of Hurricane Katrina, it’s hauntingly disturbing to now witness the intensifying humanitarian crisis unfolding in Haiti. We have a responsibility and a duty to do all that we can to alleviate the suffering unfolding in this weak and vulnerable nation. Before the earthquake, Haiti remained one of the least-developed countries in the Americas with a literacy rate of just 53 percent and nearly 80 percent of the population living in poverty. These numbers are likely to worsen given the total collapse of the country’s infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and government buildings. A long road of rebuilding and recovery lies ahead.

The speed with which we mobilized an aid package to help bailout corporations in the midst of our national economic crisis should shape and inform the relief we now provide to Haiti. Our neighbors in Haiti, just 600 miles from the shore of southern Florida desperately need immediate relief and meaningful intervention. Our own recent experience from Hurricane Katrina should serve as a call to arms and propel us to deploy every resource necessary to bring immediate relief and aid to those suffering in Haiti. Dr. King would have certainly compelled as much.

For more information on how you can provide assistance: The Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) has links to various lists of organizations that are responding to the earthquake or Global Giving has specific disaster-recovery projects listed that can be supported.

Informational Forums on California Citizens Redistricting Commission

On Jan. 25 in San Francisco and Jan. 26 in Sacramento, learn how you can apply to serve on the commission and ensure the commission reflects the diversity of our state at forums sponsored by MALDEF, EJS, CaCCR, APALC and NAACP California.

In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 11, creating California’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission. The 14-member commission is responsible for drawing the state Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization districts. The legislative lines drawn by the commission will determine political representation in California for the next decade.

Online applications are due on February 12, 2010. Please join us to discuss the role of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and how to apply to serve on it. For more information, visit http://WeDrawTheLines.ca.gov or http://RedistrictingCA.org.

Here’s details of the forums in San Francisco and Sacramento:

SAN FRANCISCO
Monday, January 25, 2010
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Bingham McCutchen LLP
3 Embarcadero Center Promenade, 28th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=253282782559

Panelists include:
Thomas A. Saenz, President & General Counsel, MALDEF
Janis Hirohama, President, League of Women Voters of California
Nancy Ramirez, Western Regional Counsel, MALDEF
Sharon Reilly, Chief Legal Counsel, California Bureau of State Audits
Eva Paterson, President, Equal Justice Society (Moderator)

SACRAMENTO
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Auditorium
1500 Capitol Mall
Sacramento, CA 95814
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=409474785243

Panelists include:
Thomas A. Saenz, President & General Counsel, MALDEF
Elaine Howle, California State Auditor
Nancy Ramirez, Western Regional Counsel, MALDEF
Trudy Schafer, Senior Program Director, League of Women Voters of CA
Samuel E. Walton, Redistricting Consultant, California NAACP (Moderator)

For more information, please contact Nancy Ramirez at 213-629-2512 x121 or at nramirez@maldef.org.

Space is limited. Please confirm your attendance for these events to Martin Muñoz at 213-629-2512 x143 or at mmunoz@maldef.org by Friday, January 22, 2010.

Latinos Missing from NY Times Recollection of 2009 Passings

Our friend and ally Tom Saenz, President and General Counsel of MALDEF, has brought to our attention the issue addressed in the article that follows. After seeing the new Star Trek movie, he pointed out that there are apparently no Latinos in the future. There were no Latino characters on the starship Enterprise. The following article makes that point again.

“Dead Latinos” by José R. Sánchez (January 2, 2010)

When does one dead Hollywood actor trump another? When does one fierce dead organizer against social injustices trump another? In fact, when does a dead chimp responsible for a hideous attack catapult himself above the life of a dead Mexican anthropologist with over 150 books and articles filled with archaeological and cultural studies about Mayan civilization? For The New York Times the answer seems to be whenever the second option is a Latino.

Travis the chimp was one of the few fortunate deceased to get star billing in the New York Times 2009 annual issue devoted to the passing of important people. Travis, you may remember, was the Connecticut chimpanzee, raised by a woman in Stamford, who was killed after he mauled the face off of his caretaker’s friend. This annual Times compilation included twenty-three essays on this year’s deceased. Like in past years, not one single Latino made it onto this lamentable list of the departed, famous and not-so-famous.

Many Latinos died this year, arguably many of them having led interesting and notable lives. But they apparently were not interesting enough for The New York Times. This newspaper highlighted the death of Karl Malden but not Ricardo Montalbán. The latter was the debonair path-breaking Mexican movie and television star, best known for his roles in the Star Trek series and movie and his commercials for promoting the “soft, Corinthian leather” in Chrysler Motors car seats.

The Times also wrote about the death of Crystal Lee Sutton, a fierce labor organizer in the South. But it ignored the death of Esther Chavez, a Mexican accountant who was one of the first to discover a pattern of murders in the 1990s against Mexican women working in U.S.-owned factories in border cities. Chavez helped to draw public attention and government prosecution against men who kidnapped young Mexican women off the streets, and raped and killed them with impunity. Her advocacy led the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to rule that Mexico had violated the human rights of women.

The Times also wrote about Robert Rines, an MIT scientist who spent most of his life pursuing evidence to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. It ignored Dennis deLeon, a former New York City human rights commissioner, who created the premiere Latino advocacy group against AIDS. A Mexican American, deLeon created the Latino Commission on AIDS in 1994 and made it into a very effective tool against the spread of AIDS in the Latino community.

Why should we care that the Times ignored so many of Latinos in death? Some say this slight is one more example of the invisibility Latinos experience in life in the U.S. Death, apparently, does not redeem the living. Some Latinos, like Montalbán and deLeon, did get obituaries in the Times’ daily paper at the time of their death.

These annual compilations are done for many, often valid, editorial reasons. Some of the people the Times chose to celebrate led unusual lives, enough to have books or movies done about them. The Times also specifically selected each author to write these obit articles. Some were Times writers while others came from outside the paper. Who they chose to write about sprung from their individual “passions, quirks and curiosities” as writers and editors. The Times, in that sense, did not attempt to provide a comprehensive listing. All of this, however, simply underscores an even more troubling reality for Latinos. It’s one thing to be invisible, to not be seen; it is quite another to be in plain sight and yet not spark much interest or curiosity from others.

Public recognition of the dead provides a rough indication of the difference that person made in life, how much they were able to change the way others thought, behaved, or felt. Rines, the scientist who spent a large part of his life chasing the Loch Ness monster never found her, at least not conclusively. He inspired others by his quixotic efforts, however. He pushed the limits of how much we know and how much faith is warranted in the myth of her existence.

Omitting Latinos from this kind of recognition carries a message — that Latino lives do not really matter and did not have an impact. Is this a legitimate conclusion? The Times also omitted any recognition of Canadians, Jamaicans, Muslims and many others. But they did include two African Americans, Naomi Sims the model, and Reverend Ike, the irrepressible minister who built a church based on greed and hope. They also included a Trinidadian, the chili restaurant owner Ben Ali. Are these choices the product of simple editorial decisions, the play of curiosity, or pure whimsy? Are these news sources simply responding to audiences who have little interest in Latinos?

Latinos, obviously, did make a difference in this world before they passed on. We don’t need the Times to tell us so. But do we need the Times to tell others? How much do other Americans know about Latinos, the “fastest growing minority group” in the country? The Times treatment of Latino deaths is symptomatic of a wider neglect of Latinos in the media. Most mainstream newspapers and magazines also systematically ignored Latino accomplishments in their end-of-year appraisals.

The Chicago Tribune’s list of notable deaths in 2009 contained two Latinos out of 104. This included Mercedes Sosa, the Grammy Award winning Argentinean singer, and Alex Arguello, the Nicaraguan boxer. If we wanted to be generous, we could give them a third in Gidget, the Taco Bell dog featured in their commercials. The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, listed about 120 notable deaths, only 3 of which were Latinos. This included Arguello, Montalbán and Ismael Valenzuela, the Mexican horse jockey. One last example is the Baltimore Sun. It listed only Montalbán, Rafael Antonio Caldera, the two-time Venezuelan president, as well as the baseball manager Preston Gomez, among the 134 notable deaths in 2009.

The wide reach of this neglect is probably driven by the current media structure. Most newspapers in the U.S. are part of a handful of media monopolies that share the same sources of information or rely on syndicated sources like the Associated Press. In this vein, the AP listed only Montalbán among the 91 notable deaths it chose to feature in 2009. Five or six media conglomerates control the majority of newspapers in the United States. Editorial decisions, thus, tend to accumulate and spread with this kind of centralization. Most of the end-of-year reviews of the deceased were simply replicated by each newspaper in the chain. Recent research confirms this disturbing reality.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Hispanic Center reported recently that in one six-month sample period only “2.9% of the news content studied contained substantial references to Hispanics.” Most of that coverage was focused on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, the media attention focused on Latinos only in the context of discussing issues like immigration and the recession. Clearly, a population that is now almost 16 percent of the population deserves more widespread and direct media attention focused on Latino lives and accomplishments.

The complaint here is not just about recognition and publicity. It is, to a great extent, also about power. Nothing happens simply because any one group or person has taken action. The world does not function so linearly. The success of health care reform or the results of the 2008 elections have many contributors. A group that is either not seen or that draws little interest will find its contributions minimized or dismissed. But this is about power in an even more important way.

I believe that any success at influencing or changing how others think, behave or feel depends directly on our ability to offer something that others value. Those who attribute power to objects like money or weapons can’t easily explain why these things sometimes fail to deliver power. The rich don’t always get what they want and, historically, much poorer-equipped opponents have often defeated the largest and best-equipped armies. Vietnam for the U.S. and Afghanistan for the U.S.S.R. are the best examples of the latter. The “War against Terrorism” may, eventually, prove to be another.

Power is a transaction, an exchange between parties in which each side has input. This is true no matter the situation. A mugger can get me to turn over my valuables only because my health and life mean so much more to me than my watch and money. The key here is that the threat of assault gets victims to move only because I, like the vast majority of us, fear getting hurt or killed. When that is not the case, when I am reckless or suicidal, for instance, the mugger’s threat often falls flat. The mugger’s attempt to extract valuables from me then gets stalled, jeopardized, and, possibly, defeated. I may get killed but the mugger will have failed to influence my behavior.

I cannot teach my students or change the way they think unless they want knowledge or grades or something else from me. I cannot influence how an elected official decides policy issues unless I can provide the votes, money or information they need. The ability to influence becomes extremely difficult, however, if the others around me do not see me or have no interest in me when they do. The exclusion of Latinos from the list of notable deaths reflects a community whose life remains lived apart from the main cultural, economic, and political currents of this society.

Latinos lag behind other groups in voting rates, average age, high school graduation, college attendance, employment rates, corporate and professional employment, income, housing conditions, two parent families, and residential integration. These conditions not only produce deprivations and obstacles to individual mobility. They also produce a community that still lives, despite all the progress, largely apart from the rest of society. This life apart results in very limited opportunities for Latinos to develop power with and influence other sectors U.S. society.

The neglect of Latinos in death is, thus, a reflection not just of how much Latinos are neglected in life but also of how few opportunities they have for power while alive. The Times is, thus, justified to omit any Latinos from its annual “How They Lived” magazine compilation. After all, it would be hypocritical to pay attention in death to a group that they and society have mostly ignored, overlooked, dismissed, and brushed off in life.

José Ramon Sánchez is Associate Professor of Politics and Chair of Urban Studies at Long Island University – Brooklyn; he is also Chair of the Board of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Inc. He is the author of “Boricua Power: A Political History of Puerto Ricans in the U.S.” (2007) and co-author of “The Iraq Papers” (2010). He can be reached at jose.sanchez@liu.edu.