RaceWire

About 48,000 people have petitioned against the Obama administration's plan to make sick women pay for health care by sacrificing their reproductive rights.

Though tens of millions of uninsured Americans won't see much change until the major reforms kick in around 2014, the Obama administration will in the meantime set up short-term "high-risk insurance pools," to cover people who would otherwise be blocked from the private insurance market due to "preexisting conditions." But the planned guidelines for this limited program contain a catch: no abortion coverage. So after the public comment period ends later this month, the administration will be poised to force an unprecedented abortion restriction on women who are conveniently desperate for any kind of health care.

As I've mentioned before, this quiet concession to the anti-abortion lobby isn't just unethical and unhealthy from a reproductive justice standpoint; it's also legally unnecessary. Despite existing restrictions in other federal health programs, and Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle's insistence that "no new ground has been broken," the ban would be a fresh blow to abortion access. Jennifer Arons at the Center for American Progress pointed out that the policy would undermine abortion across the board by impacting even those abortions financed by private (not taxpayer) funds.

The irony of this "reform" is that high-risk insurance pools are supposed to serve as a "bridge" for people historically excluded by the industry. This includes many women suffering from conditions like diabetes or cancer, which disproportionately impact the poor and people of color. So for marginal relief from medical apartheid, those women will just have to avoid unwanted pregnancy for the next few years, or they'll wind up sick, pregnant and in deep trouble.

While the insurance-pool rules aren't yet finalized, the ban could play into a much larger conservative strategy to capitalize on health care reform. It's no surprise that the abortion rights of the sickest and most vulnerable women are the first to be attacked, but this may just be a practice run for an all-out war on reproductive choice.

OkCupid, the popular free online dating hub, has figured out a tech-savvy way to answer the question of what people of all races really like (take that, Christian Lander!). The company's blog detailed how over half a million users were randomly selected and grouped by their self-stated race. The love gurus then looked at all the groups' profile essays and isolated the interests that made each group "statistically distinct" from the others.

Of course, the lists are predictable. In some places, the data is parsed down between genders. So, while soul food is generally popular among all Black folks, it's "really, really important to women," according to the site. And Asian men are more likely than women to mention their specific ethnic heritage.

Among white people's top interests: Tom Clancy, Nascar, and the Boston Red Sox.

And of course black folks love soul food, basketball, and bibles.

Latinos? Merengue tops the list!

 

Asians apparently love noodles, and cricket. 

 

But not as much as Indians like cricket! Because, you know, Indians aren't Asian. 

We could make fun of this all day, because frankly, it's hilarious. So far it's unclear exactly how the company plans to use the data. After all, you don't spend all that time on research and fancy graphics for nothing. Earlier this summer researchers at Facebook announced a similar effort with pretty clear intentions of using the data to drive marketing revenue. No word yet on if and how OkCupid plans to do the same thing.

But maybe I'm just being a hater. As Shani Hilton points out over at Campus Progress, the information is still a good, informative read, despite its problematic assumptions.

In the mean time, it looks like all you black and brown Star War geeks might need to go and renew your race cards.

Kevin Powell, the Jersey-born former star on MTV's Real World who's currently running for Congress in Brooklyn, recently wrote an open letter to Hip Hop America. This is Powell's second run attempt to unseat longtime Rep. Ed Towns, and the aspiring lawmaker is working hard to court young voters in next week's Democratic primary.

Powell writes:

I am hiphop. And I am also a public servant and activist for people, all people. For the past 25 years, in fact, since I was a youth.

[snip]

Not only would I be the first true hiphop head in Congress, but I also would be bringing a fresh take on leadership, blending the best of grassroots politics with Washington, D.C. maneuvering, all to that boom-bap beat.

And, as dead prez once famously said, this is actually bigger than hiphop. This is about my being a leader, a bridge-builder, and all of us weaned on hiphop music and culture understanding the power of this, the most dominant art form of the past 30 years. If not us, then who?

While the odds are stacked against Powell, his efforts to paint himself as part of a new generation of black politicians is useful. New York is already in a pitched battle over who will define black politics in the coming years, and several longtime black lawmakers are already battling against ethics charges that have led some to question whether incumbency fosters corruption.

Border Patrol agents stationed across the country and along the nation's borders are struggling to keep their abuse in check. The Los Angeles Times reports that in recent years Border Patrol officers have been hit with complaints and even occasional federal charges for abusing immigrants along patrols.

The LA Times details just some of the stomach-churning incidents:

In the last 18 months, five Border Patrol agents have been accused or convicted of sex crimes, including one agent who pleaded guilty in January to raping a woman while off duty, and another who is accused of sexually assaulting a migrant while her young children were nearby in a car.

Another agent, Gamalier Reyes Rivera, is jailed in San Diego on $10-million bail, awaiting trial on attempted murder charges in a hatchet attack that paralyzed a man.

In June, Agent Eduardo Moreno pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for assaulting a migrant in 2006 at a processing center in Nogales, Ariz.

That same month, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican in El Paso after a group of young men threw rocks at the agent, authorities said. A poor-quality cellphone video of the incident shows that the teen was a considerable distance away, on the Mexican side of the border, when he was shot.

Today, Customs and Border Patrol is the largest uniformed federal law enforcement agency in the country. But where the Border Patrol is concerned, it's not even that smaller is necessarily better; at the rate of CBP's growth the force is full of fresh, poorly trained recruits. There is little oversight and few to no checks on Border Patrol power. They are tasked with patrolling the border but are accountable to no one except the federal government, which is increasing their ranks at a fast clip. Worse, the people they police, immigrants who are often on their way to getting kicked out of the country or detainees who languish in prisons awaiting the same fate, have small voices and few rights.

According to the LA Times, the DOJ has prosecuted only eight cases of misconduct or abuse against the Border Patrol since 2004. The newspaper maintains that the dehumanization of immigrants'--Border Patrol often refer to immigrants in their custody as "bodies"--is not racially antagonistic, since most Border Patrol agents stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border are themselves Latino. And yet, policing the region seems to be taking a toll on those officers. This summer, the AP reported that Border Patrol officers are committing suicide at higher rates than other law enforcement officers.

Contrary to official Los Angeles Police Department reports, Manuel Jamines did not have a knife in his hand when police shot him in the head in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon, an eyewitness claims. LA Weekly reports that an eyewitness is set to give a press conference today to announce what she saw.

Jamines, a Guatemalan immigrant, was killed on the corner of 6th Street and Union in Los Angeles by Officer Frank Hernandez. Police said they responded to a call that a man had tried to stab a pregnant woman on the street. They said that the 37-year-old father of three was drunk and holding a knife. According to the LAPD, Hernandez shot at Jamines when he would not obey the cop's orders, which were given in both English and Spanish, and raised the knife over his head and lunged at Hernandez with a three-inch blade. Jamines' family says that he spoke neither English nor Spanish well; he spoke K'iche', a language spoken by a million indigenous Mayans from Central America.

The killing has sparked community outrage and several nights of protest. At a community meeting on Wednesday night with the LAPD and the Guatemalan Consul General, hundreds packed a Los Angeles middle school and booed LAPD Chief Charlie Beck as he defended his officers' actions. Tuesday night's protests ended with clashes between police and protesters. Hundreds gathered at the corner where Jamines was killed to voice their outrage, and then started marching to the LAPD Rampart station. The Los Angeles Times reports that protesters started trash can fires, broke bottles and threw eggs at police officers, who arrested four people.

The Associated Press reports that LAPD Officer Frank Hernandez was involved in two previous on-duty shootings.

Between the two us, we've spent a combined 59 years living, working and learning in the United States. In all that time, including the period immediately following September 11, 2001, this summer marks the worst anti-Muslim backlash we've ever seen here.

As the nine years since 9/11 have passed, Americans have forgotten an essential fact: Extremists can use any religion to justify murder, and the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists sacrifices both American values and community safety. While we welcome national leaders condemning not just Quran burning, but all the less obvious forms of Islamaphobia along the way, the daily interruption of hatred is a job for all of us.

There's no question that attacks on Muslim people have escalated. Opponents of the Cordoba House keep saying that 9/11 was the worst attack ever on American soil, therefore Ground Zero is "sacred" and nothing as profane as a mosque should be built there. The logic is profoundly twisted and most un-American. It presumes that it is impossible that American Muslims, like Mamdouh himself, who worked at Windows on the World, could have been in the World Trade Center, could have lost friends, colleagues or relatives there, could have grieved afterwards.

Attacks on mosques across the country indicate that many people don't need the hook of Ground Zero on which to hang their hatred. In one of the never ending streams of "regular" Americans interviewed on TV news about the project, one man who opposed the Cordoba House was asked where a mosque could be built. "Nowhere" was his response.

It's becoming increasingly clear that some Americans--too many--do not consider Muslims part of the country. A recent TIME/CNN poll found that 55 percent thought Muslims could not be patriots. Nearly a third of those polled thought Muslims should not be allowed to run for president or serve on the Supreme Court. Although we won't have hard numbers on hate crimes for several years, the number of anecdotes is rising steadily.

A brick nearly smashed a window at the Madera Islamic Center in central California, where signs were left behind that read, "Wake up America, the enemy is here" and, "No temple for the god of terrorism." Police arrested five teenagers after the son of a mosque's founder in Waterport, N.Y., was sideswiped by a sport utility vehicle. One teen was charged with firing a shotgun in the air near the mosque a few days earlier. Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey popularized the notion that Muslims don't deserve the same religious freedom as everyone else, in his response to a question about the "threat that's invading our country from Muslims." Ramsey wondered aloud whether Islam "is actually a religion or is it a nationality, way of life or cult." Soon after, some of Ramsey's constituents set ablaze a planned mosque site near Nashville and fired shots when parishioners tried to inspect the damage.

These anecdotes are telling, but not necessary for us to know that the haters have been emboldened by all their media spokespeople. Last week, in a Queens Dunkin' Donuts, one of us walked in on a woman who berated the Bangladeshi American staff for five minutes over the supposed wrongness of her coffee. She proceeded to call the server ugly, take a breath--clearly considering her next line for maximum impact--and declare, "You're all a bunch of terrorists."

But there was an important lesson for us all in that exchange. A mild, "There's no need for that" was enough to disrupt the woman's rant. Maybe that woman won't change her attitude, but there were a dozen adults and four children there--and they might. The scene said everything: A few loud voices are spewing hate, but unless the rest of us stand up and counter it they will set the tone for us all.

Many people have speculated this week on why we are experiencing this rise in anti-Muslim feeling, and a few have become nostalgic for George W. Bush--who spoke no less than 11 times in the fall of 2001 about Islam being a religion of peace and love and having nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Others have called for President Obama to speak up more often to protect Muslims.

But the real problem is that everyday Americans keep silent about too much of this. America is a land of individual freedom. Now more than ever we need to exercise our freedom of speech, rather than huddling in fear and fascination at the group-think that can so quickly take over our country. We don't need Bush or Obama to give us a moral compass. This isn't just about challenging the most extreme versions of Islamaphobia. It's also about responding when neighbors argue that the Cordoba House should be moved for sensitivity's sake; challenging colleagues who "ask" whether Obama is secretly Muslim; and questioning popular representations of Muslims even when you're just watching TV with family. It's hard to confront bigotry, whether it comes from your uncle or a stranger. Your blood pressure goes up and your heart races. But if we lead with love and acceptance, we will always know the right thing to say, and we will set an example for someone else.

Muslims are Americans and they belong here. When it's time to pray, they will pray, whatever the circumstances. Mamdouh and his friends used to go into the stairwells of the World Trade Center, laying down a piece of cardboard if they had no rug. They do what they have to do to live out their values. It's time that we all do the same.

So is Saturday's planned Quran-burning event happening, or isn't it? For weeks, Florida pastor Terry Jones has been making headlines by promising to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by burning Qurans at his tiny church in Gainsville. On Thursday, several news outlets reported that the event had been cancelled after Jones had secured a promise that the Park51 Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero would be moved. But Park51 leaders have unwaveringly denied making any such deal, and Jones has gone back and forth over whether his plans are back on as a result.

This morning, he told ABC's Good Morning America that as of then, he was not planning to burn the Quran tomorrow. Throughout the segment, ABC ran the misleading phrase "Ground Zero Mosque" across the screen--a telling reminder of how Jones' antics became international news in the first place.

Everyone from the Pope to Sarah Palin has tried to dissuade Jones from going forward with the plan. Most recently, President Obama called the whole thing a "stunt" that would only encourage anti-American violence; it'll also encourage more of the anti-Muslim extremism that's become a trend this summer. Jones had remained steadfast in his plans until Thursday, when he stood outside of his church with Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, and announced a new deal. Mursi, he said, had promised him that the New York Muslim center would be moved. 

Hours later, once it was clear no such deal existed, Jones angrily told the media that Mursi "clearly lied to us."

Jones continued: "We assumed what the imam said was true. Now, we're in a state of limbo and we have to rethink our position," Jones said Thursday evening, according to CNN. "We are rethinking our position. We are reconsidering, but we'd like to think what the imam said was true. We're a little back to square one. We hope this thing works out."

For his part, Mursi maintains that he had only agreed to fly out to New York with Jones and meet with the leaders overlooking plans to build the new Muslim center in lower Manhattan. 

The controversy over Park51 has been the subject of intense national debate. On Thursday, even billionaire Donald Trump entered the fray, offering to buy out a major investor in the real estate partnership that controls the site. Trump explained his motives in a letter released by his publicist:

I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse.

So far the investor, Hisham Elzanaty, has refused.
Still, the bigger question is how an obscure pastor with a tiny congregation managed to grab national headlines in the first place. Jones' church, the Dove World Outreach Center, boasts a membership of less than 50 people and is independent of any denomination, though it follows the Pentecostal tradition. He's known for posting signs that Islam is the devil's religion and claims that it's within his constitutional right to publicly set fire to one of the world's most holy texts.
Yet over the past week, some of the world's most powerful voices have had to respond to Jones's loony antics. The Pope denounced the plan, along with the U.S. general in Afghanistan, the White House and the State Department. Even Sarah Palin announced that it was a bad idea, calling the whole thing "insensitive and un-American." Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Jones to urge better sense.
It seems like under any ordinary circumstances, a plan like Jones' would easily be dismissed as deliberately inflammatory and unworthy of our attention. But, of course, these aren't ordinary circumstances. It's an election year, and the controversy over Park51 has allowed pundits and politicians to bash Muslims for weeks in an effort to draw clear ideological lines for voters. The furor has has quickly turned violent and, suddenly, a plainly fringe figure with plainly extreme ideas is leading the world around by the nose.
So instead of tackling worthy election issues, like the economy and jobs, we're left bickering over New York City's most popular real estate dispute. Jones' plan was no doubt awful, and it's led to several impassioned, powerful defenses of religious freedom. But the fact that it's even news in the first place is a sad testament to how deep our country's political swamp has become.

President Obama this morning joined the growing number of national politicos who have denounced a Florida pastor who plans to hold a Quran burning to memorialize 9/11. Kudos to Obama for putting his objection plainly. In an appearance on Good Morning America, the president called the pastor's act a "stunt" that's "completely contrary to our values" and that may well incite violence against Americans around the globe. But it's hard to imagine how far off the rails our politics have gone when the president is forced to respond to this madness.

Pastor Terry Jones's stunt has drawn condemnation from folks ranging from Sarah Palin to Gen. David Petraeus, who also noted that images of burning Qurans in the U.S. will no doubt be used to stir up violence. It's tempting to ignore Jones, who's tiny congregation hardly feels representative of the country. But at this point, it seems we can sadly not dismiss the anti-Muslim sentiments that have reemerged so forcefully this election season. An exchange between Obama and host George Stephanopoulos was telling:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wonder what this must feel like from behind your desk. You're President of the United States. You have to deal with the fallout. And he's a pastor who's got 30 followers in his church. Does it make you feel helpless or angry?

OBAMA: It, well it is frustrating. Now, on the other hand, we are a government of laws. And so, we have to abide by those laws. And my understanding is that he can be cited for public burning. But that's the extent of the laws that we have available to us. You know, part of this country's history is people doing destructive or offensive or harmful things. And yet, we still have to make sure that we're following the laws. And that's part of what I love about this country.

Destructive and harmful things as part of this country's history. He said a mouthful. Their also part of this country's present, and certainly part of this election season's tenor. Palin's objection to the Quran burning said it all. She warned the pastor about the ramifications of his act, explaining, "It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don't feed that fire." But then she compared Jones' act to the Park51 project in lower Manhattan. She's right that they are related, at least. By using the project to stir up anti-Muslim fears upon which she can profiteer and Republicans can campaign, Palin and her ilk showed Pastor Jones the way. He should thank her for his newfound fame.

Obama announced his plans to push for a major jobs stimulus this year during an impassioned Labor Day speech to union members in Milwaukee yesterday. The President called Republicans and corporations "the folks whose policies helped devastate the middle class" and then implored Congress to immediately pass a $50 billion infrastructure jobs package. But who exactly will get those jobs?

It's just one of a series of economic recovery plans the President plans to announce this week as Democrats wage an aggressive midterm elections campaign. It's an ambitious plan, and one that Republicans will likely do their best to attack as part of the administration's lawless government spending -- including what they deem the "failed" Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

If, somehow, the plan does get through Congress, it's also unclear exactly how jobs will be created and what kind of jobs they'll be.

The proposal would invest in roads, trains and airports in the next year and would be part of broader and longer-term infrastructure spending over the next six years. Obama says the plan will be paid for through offsets drawn from the elimination of oil company tax breaks and subsidies. Predictably, conservatives have already tagged the idea as more unnecessary and bankrupting stimulus program.

 As the White House struggles to get past Republican blockades of any investments in jobs or the safety net, concerns about the quality or work and the equitable targeting of job creation programs to those who need them most have taken a back seat.

But as Yvonne Liu wrote about the allocation and implementation of Recovery Act funds intended to create green jobs, "since equity is not a criterion either for who gets the money or for how recipients report their usage of the funds, we don't know whether the stimulus has benefited those hardest hit by the Great Recession: people of color and single mothers."

The same could pass with the president's proposed infrastructure funding unless racial and gender disparities are taken into account on the front end of the legislative process. If that does not happen, we may see unemployment start to fall while leaving vast racial and gender disparities strongly in place.

For the first time ever, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) awarded all three top honors to Asian-American designers Jason Wu, Richard Chai and Alexander Wang.

Founded in 1962, CFDA is a trade association whose membership includes the country's top fashion and accessory designers. Their annual awards ceremony is recognized as "the Oscars of fashion." Past CFDA honorees include household names like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs.

Klein, Lauren and Jacobs along with other industry leading American designers like Donna Karan and Michael Kors are all Jewish. Maybe the 2010 teen years will be lead by Asian-American designers?

Four out of five of the latest CFDA emerging designer awards for women's wear have been Asian American.The women's wear award tends to be the most watched honor because its winner is anointed the next 'It' designer.

There have been several hypotheses floating around to explain the recent phenomenon. The Wall Street Journal accredited the model minority myth and even cited the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which ended policies that put quotas on the numbers of Asian immigrants allowed into the country. Last February, in "Gaysians Take Over New York Fashion Week," ColorLines writer Alex Jung noted that the ability to acquire social and economic capital is clearly a deciding factor. This past weekend NY Times fashion writer Eric Wilson came up with the latest theory:

Throughout the 20th century, generations of Jewish immigrants had created a thriving garment district in New York, first as laborers, then as factory owners, manufacturers, retailers and, eventually, as designers. Many of today's Asian-American designers say they experienced a similar evolution from the factory to the catwalk, since some of their parents and grandparents were once involved in the production of clothes.

Fashion Week begins today and we'll undoubtedly hear even more theories in the coming weeks about why we're seeing more designers of Asian descent. Regardless of what's behind the emergence of these young Asian-American designers, it didn't come easy. Let's hope the runways this week start reflecting this new diversity.

Congress will return from vacation this week for a month of pre-election law making. It's the last opportunity both parties have to appeal to voters nationally before November. In all likelihood, the next several weeks will consist of a whole lot of partisan rancor and a regular flow of Republican obstructionism. As was the case before lawmakers went on break, the deficit is going to be the animating core of Washington this month. Republicans have effectively used fears over the growing federal deficit to push back spending on vital safety net and jobs programs and Democrats remain anxious about how to respond. Which is a shame, because there's a lot to get done.

Taxes

Taxes are likely to take up a lot of Beltway space over the next several weeks. On Wednesday, President Obama demanded that Congress not extend Bush era tax breaks for the richest Americans. The breaks are scheduled to sunset at the end of the year, and the White House hopes the debate over whether and how to renew them will paint a bright political line between House Republicans and Democrats. Obama's plan would end the Bush tax cuts for families with incomes greater than $250,000 or individuals with incomes above $200,000, but would leave in place the current tax structure for anyone who makes less than that amount. Bush's tax cuts were the single biggest contributor to the pre-recession deficit.

House Minority Leader John Boehner does not agree, despite the numbers. He is arguing that the deficit ought to be addressed not with taxes but by cutting spending, which inevitably will hurt those already leveled by the recession. Boehner says he'd accept as a compromise a two-year extension of the tax cuts on the richest segment of the country rather than a permanent extension. But the White House wants the cuts gone for good.

Obama's proposal is coupled with additional tax breaks for small businesses, which the White House no doubt hopes to use as a way to paint Boehner and the Republicans as concerned only about the wealthy. 

Jobs

Obama also tied his plan to the investment in infrastructure. In a speech on Labor Day, he called on Congress to immediately pass a $50 billion infrastructure jobs package. The plan calls for massive investment in roads, airports and trains and would create jobs as soon as next year.

Congress would be wise to listen, as jobs are plainly priority number one for both the Democrats' political future and the nation's economic one. With unemployment holding steady at 9.6 percent nationally, and higher in many communities, refusing to create jobs is just bad politics. 

But as I noted earlier this week, for the package to have meaningful impact, it will need to target those hit hardest by the recession--people of color and single mothers. Given the administration's clear reluctance to even passingly address those disparities thus far, such a targeted package seems unlikely. In any case, Obama's plan is sure to face a brick wall from GOP deficit hawks, and at least one Democrat is already indicating he will not support the stimulative spending. 

In more jobs creation news, immediately upon return, Congress will decide whether or not to extend the Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Contingency Fund, which was created last year as part of the first stimulus package. The fund has created 240,000 jobs.

The program reimburses 80 percent of any additional money states spend on TANF because of the recession. Thirty-five states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands have all tapped into the pool. Most of the $4.2 billion dollars (of the $5 billion initially allocated) drawn from the program's coffer have been spent directly on subsidized jobs programs. It's the country's only straight job creation program and it will expire on September 30 unless Congress extends the package. But the program is sure to come under assault by deficit hawks, just like most everything else.

The Safety Net

Like, say, food stamps. Before Congress went on recess in August, it axed the food stamp program in order to offset spending on an education jobs bill. The cuts will mean that the record number of families receiving food assistance will see their benefits diminished at the end of 2013. Many House Democrats have vowed to restore the food stamp funding by looking for offsets from elsewhere.

Along with food stamps and TANF emergency funds, congressional Democrats should attempt to restore funding to the COBRA health insurance program. Stimulus funds injected into the program last year expired in May and many can no longer afford the health insurance they need. A bill to fund COBRA is in the works but it may get stuck in committee.

On Friday, President Obama will hold his first formal press conference in four months. He's likely to continue outlining his priorities for the next several weeks of legislative work. Here's hoping he and congressional Democrats will be smart enough to push back against the GOP's deficit fear mongers and move some of these job creating ideas forward. Their own jobs certainly depend upon it. 

 

Los Angeles residents gathered for a heated meeting with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Guatemalan Consul general Wednesday night in the wake of a police shooting on Sunday afternoon that ended when the LAPD shot a 37-year-old Guatemalan immigrant dead.

Families and community members packed into the John H. Leichty Middle School on Wednesday evening and booed LAPD chief Charlie Beck when he read a witness statement who said she was grateful the LAPD responded when they did because Manuel Jamines, who was drunk and wielding a knife, was threatening her and a nearby pregnant woman. Community members were uninterested in Beck's explanations; they shouted "Assassination!" and, "Pig!" at Beck while police in riot gear were surrounded the school outside.

The AP reports that LAPD Officer Frank Hernandez was involved in two previous on-duty shootings.

On Tuesday morning fourteen protesters were behind bars for clashes with police that took place over the course of the last two nights; the gathering became heated enough that police declared the protest an unlawful assembly at 9:30pm. On Monday and Tuesday night, protesters gathered on 6th and Union, where Manuel Jamines was shot by police who said that he was drunk and threatening people with a knife. Police say he did not respond to their commands, which were given in both English and Spanish. Jamines' family says that he spoke neither language well; he spoke K'iche', a language spoken by a million indigenous Mayans from Central America.

The AP reports that LAPD Officer Frank Hernandez shot Jamines twice in the head when he lunged at him with his knife. His family acknowledged that Jamines had a drinking problem but that he was not violent. Jamines died at the scene.

Tuesday's protest ended with clashes between police and protesters. Hundreds gathered at the corner where Jamines was killed to voice their outrage, and then started marching to the LAPD Rampart station. The Los Angeles Times reports that protesters started trash can fires, broke bottles and threw eggs at police officers, who arrested four people.

The LAPD has defended the shooting incident, which they say happened in less than a minute, and says the angry community response has them flummoxed. The LA Times also captured this week's outrage in a series of photos.

Floyd Mayweather Going in on Manny Pacquiao

Like most social networking sites, some people just shouldn't Ustream. Welterweight* boxing champion Floyd Mayweather went off at the mouth recently when he decided to answer fans' questions on the popular live-video website.

In full metrosexual posturing, Mayweather went on a pathetic homophobic and racist rant against would-be opponent Filipino wealterweight boxing champ Manny Pacquiao. After telling viewers that he planned to "cook the little yellow chump", Mayweather called Paquiao a "faggot" several times before vowing to beat Pacquiao and forcing the Filipino fighter to "make some sushi rolls and cook some rice."

According to Boxing Scene, Mayweather reportedly apologized for the racial taunts last Friday, but, as blogger Rod McCollum pointed out, was quiet when it came to the gay slurs. "I do want to apologize for what happened the other night," the boxer said. "I don't have a racist bone in my body ... I was just having fun. I didn't really mean it."

It's not the first time Mayweather has had a public attack of panic, and it likely won't be the last. The Paquiao-Mayweather match has been one of the most highly anticipated -- and delayed -- bouts in years. Looks like Pretty Boy Floyd might just be scared.

* A previous version of this post incorrectly referred to Mayweather as a heavyweight. 

On Tuesday evening the Southern Texas town of Tomball voted down two anti-immigrant ordinances that would have made English the official language of the town and sought to bar undocumented immigrants from renting or owning property in the town. The town's residents also fought back against what they saw as Tea Party infiltrators who were trying to close the city's day laborer center down. The site will remain open.

The city council tabled another ordinance that would have demanded the city only award contracts to companies that hire employees who are legal residents of the town. City Councilman Derek Townsend said he proposed all three because he wanted Tomball to send a message that the small town of 10,209 was going to take a stand against the federal government's inaction on immigration.

But the leaders of Tomball, Texas show that you don't necessarily have to be an immigrant rights crusader to oppose anti-immigrant ordinances. You just need to be practical. The Houston Chronicle explains the city council's reasoning:

Most council members agreed that making English the city's official language was an unnecessary move that would not enhance Tomball's image or interests. And most of the city's elected officials appeared leery of the idea seeking to limit undocumented immigrants' property rights, noting it could bring an avalanche of lawsuits challenging its constitutionality, which could cost the city millions.

"I'd sure hate to take our people down that route," said City Councilman Rick Brown. "It's lawsuit after lawsuit."

Councilman Preston Dodson agreed, saying such a move could have "huge constitutionality issues."

Tomball apparently took note of the lengthy legal battles of Hazleton, Pennsylvania and Farmers Branch, Texas, which both that passed laws to try to choke the housing rights of undocumented immigrants and launched their towns into expensive legal proceedings to defend these laws. A federal court ruled the Farmers Branch ordinance as unconstitutional earlier this year.

On Tuesday, people crowded around the Seattle street corner where an American Indian man named John T. Williams was killed last week by the police. Protesters chanted and held signs that read: "SPD: Shoot People Dead."

Officer Ian Birk, a two-year vet with the force, shot four rounds at Williams on August 30 on the corner of Boren and Howell because Williams supposedly would not obey Birk's demands to drop a 3-inch folding knife and a piece of wood he had in his hands. Friends of Williams, who was a Ditidaht member of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations from Vancouver Island in Canada, say he was deaf in one ear and weakened by years of illness, often disoriented from drinking. The fifty-year-old man was a totem carver who sold his work at the open-air Pike Place market in Seattle.

He died in between the market and 1811 Eastlake, a home for chronic drinkers that he lived at on and off. Eyewitnesses contradicted police reports, saying that Williams was neither threatening nor advancing toward Birk. A portion of the incident was caught on an in-car police camera but has not been released to the public. Last week, Seattle police conceded that they were unsure whether or not Williams was advancing toward Birk with his knife as they originally reported.

Since the shooting, Native American groups have demanded an investigation and better training for Seattle police officers that included some cultural awareness. Hundreds, including Seattle mayor Mike McGinn, joined memorial services last week.

Williams was not the only cop shooting victim in Seattle last week. By Sunday, Seattle police had killed five people in five separate incidents over the course of a week. Last Thursday, Seattle police officer Shandy Cobane, who was caught on camera in April kicking a Latino man and video camera shouting racial profanities, was cleared of hate crime charges.

Seattle PD are doing the usual post-shooting head-scratching, wondering if better training is needed for the city's police officers. Police Chief John Diaz was confirmed earlier this year in part because of the visible role he played as interim chief during the Cobane fiasco. Seattle is looking to him to bring the transparency and accountability he promised as a candidate.

Tuesday marked the inaugural performance of the White House Dance Series. Hosted by first lady Michelle Obama, with daughters Malia and Sasha in tow, the event was a tribute to legendary dancer Judith Jamison, the artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Jamison, who's 67, will step down from the company in 2011 after leading it for nearly two decades.

The event was directed by former New York City ballet star Damian Woetzel and began with an afternoon filled with workshops for dance students from across the country. 

Watch the full performance honoring Judith Jamison at the White House. 

The approaching political standoff over social security reform should be alarming to young and old alike. But older workers today are facing a more immediate crisis. Data from the Urban Institute shows that unemployment among seniors has soared during the recession, which might be devastating for an entire generation of older workers of color.

While overall joblessness in the 55+ age group rose from November 2007 to June 2010, Black and Latino unemployment was especially high, reflecting patterns in the general workforce.

Yet when the monthly data is sorted by gender, we see that at several points in 2009 and 2010, unemployment was higher for Latinas than for Black and white women. This may be a strange twist, given the fact that male unemployment has been considerably higher for Blacks compared to Latinos, and especially to whites. The exact cause isn't clear. Educational levels could be a factor; there might be an influx in job competition as older women enter the labor market following the loss of a spouse's income.

Interestingly, 2009 unemployment statistics showed older Latinas by some measures faring better than their male counterparts: According to an earlier Urban Institute analysis, "the unemployment rate for Hispanic women age 55 to 64 reached about 9 percent in 2009, 2 percentage points less than the corresponding rate for men."

In any case, years of rising unemployment for elder workers across the board underscores the need for a social safety net in their autumn years. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare reports that even modest social security benefits make a huge difference for older people of color. "Over three-fourths of Hispanic beneficiaries rely on Social Security for at least half their income, compared to two-thirds of all beneficiaries." the Committee reports.

According to the Social Security Works campaign:

• In 2003, Social Security reduced the poverty rate among Latinos aged 65 and over from 50 percent to 19.5 percent, a reduction of 31 percentage points.
• In 2003, Social Security reduced the poverty rate among African Americans aged 65 and over from 56 percent to 23.7 percent, a reduction of 32 percentage points

Remember, that was the impact of Social Security before the recession hit older workers with unemployment, eroded their savings, and exacerbated inequality. In a far less secure economy, that little bit of security after retirement could be all that many seniors have to look forward to.

The Department of Justice has launched another high-profile probe into Arizona--this time in its public schools. The civil rights question isn't segregation, per se, but discrimination against teachers whose English doesn't make the grade.

Arizona schools are becoming ground zero in the state's anti-immigrant political storm. An untold number of children saw their education jeopardized as SB 1070 terrorized parents and in some cases, forced families to consider leaving the state altogether. Then in August, Latino kids in the remote Ajo Unified School District saw their schoolhouse gate turn into a border checkpoint, as Arizona schools chief Tom Horne tried to thwart unauthorized students who had allegedly crossed over from Mexico.

And now teachers have to look over their shoulders, too. In a supposed quality-control effort for English-language-learner (ELL) programs, the Arizona Republic reports, education authorities are pressuring districts to get rid of teachers deemed not proficient enough in English.

Arizona officials have disputed the Wall Street Journal's unflattering coverage of the policy in April, insisting that they're merely trying to comply with standards under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The Justice Department inquiry focuses on whether Arizona is using "fluent English" as a pretext for discriminating against educators who aren't native speakers or simply speak with an accent. The probe relates to a wider debate about who gives and receives ELL instruction, and the state's obligation to educate immigrant children.

In the background is a tense legal battle of Miriam Flores v. State of Arizona, which centers on whether the state's ELL programs are effective and compliant with students' civil rights. The controversy escalated in 2000, with a state referendum mandating that schools implement "English-only" instruction rather than bilingual curricula.

As with many aspects of No Child Left Behind, the squishiness of the standard invites political manipulation. The "fluency" question invokes an old debate over the politics of dealing with linguistic diversity in the classroom, whether in the form of slang or an accent.

Horne's defense of the policy sounds sensible. "This is common sense," he told the Republic. "If you want to teach math, you need to know math. If you want to teach English, you need to be fluent in English."

But just outside that ELL classroom, clouds of anti-immigrant hatred are thickening in the political arena. While police prepare to escalate the crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Gov. Jan Brewer--who appeared rather linguistically challenged herself at a recent televised debate--has enacted a bill to bar schools from teaching ethnic studies, which was widely condemned as a racist attack on progressive education.

In this context, Horne does seem to know his math: each calculated strike against cultural inclusion in public schools adds to Arizona's expanding right-wing agenda.

The footprint of the United States occupation of Iraq is embedded in the country's rocky political sojourn, and the status of women marks the nation's arrested progress. After the invasion, Washington thought Iraqi women would find American-style freedom irresistible. Today, they're left holding up half the sky in the midst of a ravaged political and economic landscape.

The Associated Press reports that many Iraqi women feel increasingly alienated from civil society and face traditional pressures to find a husband in a bombed-out marriage market.

Being female, single and over 30 was already common because of Iraq's decades of conflict, including the bloody Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But their number is believed to have significantly grown since 2003. Besides the young men killed in violence, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- many of them fighting-age males -- fled the country.Also, suicide bombings, sectarian slayings, death squads and gun battles disrupted social networks for marriage. People feared leaving their homes, so young people had little chance to meet potential spouses.

Family visits, traditionally an opportunity for the men to meet future spouses have become rare during the height of the violence.

The Shiite-Sunni violence also meant that cross-sect marriages have become much less frequent.

Economic woes have also left many young men unable to afford the heavy expenses they must traditionally pay for marriage -- including buying or renting and furnishing a home.

And to think, just six years ago, Iraqi women were a beacon of democratic progress under the Bush administration's awkward brand of feminism. The State Department proudly deployed its Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative, initially with the help of the conservative anti-feminist group Independent Women's Forum. "The organization," Jim Lobe reported in 2004, "was founded in 1991 by a number of prominent right-wing Republican women to act as a counterpoint to what they called the "radical feminism" of the National Organization for Women (NOW)." (The founders included right-wing matriarch Lynne Cheney).

Granted, Iraq's women probably don't need Mrs. Cheney leading the charge for their "emancipation." But the post-drawdown instability threatens to snuff out any surviving embers of female empowerment.

Women's advocates may on the one hand lament the inequality that makes women economically dependent on marriage. But there's also justifiable frustration that women bear so much of the burden of their unraveling social fabric.

Outside of traditional matrimony, many women have been driven into a much more dire fate, according to Sebastian Swett and Cameron Webster of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project:

Currently, more than 50,000 Iraqi women in Jordan and Syria are trapped in sexual servitude and have no possibility of escape. The burgeoning sex industries in Syria and Jordan are thriving because of instability produced by the Iraq War -- laying responsibility directly at the feet of the United States....

The United States is now preparing the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq. However, the Iraqi women and girls trapped in sexual slavery will remain long after the last American soldietrar leaves unless we are willing to accept our responsibility to alleviate this problem.

While Iraq's struggles for gender justice go beyond just the U.S. presence there, will the White House at least redress some of the violence done by the occupation by helping resettle trafficking survivors as refugees? At this point, further abandonment by Washington would prove that despite the glossy public-relations schemes, the "liberation" of Iraqi women was from the start a doomed affair.

If you look closely at the arguments for harsher immigration enforcement, two paradoxical strands emerge: 1) deport them all and make them take their "anchor babies" with them, and 2) deport them all and punish them by taking away their kids. For an immigrant family, either of these divergent scenarios is unimaginable, in different ways.

We've reported before on child welfare interventions in immigrant families, but the issue has surfaced mainly through anecdotes in the media. A paper by Prof. Marcia Anne Yablon-Zug of the University of South Carolina School of Law tries to make legal sense of this pattern of child removal under immigration policy:

Increasingly, states are removing the children of undocumented immigrant parents and then terminating their parental rights. Such terminations represent a significant, but largely unnoticed, change in the law. There is no Supreme Court case or Congressional Act heralding this development. This is an unofficial change that comes directly from the child welfare agencies and family courts and their shifting conception of what justifies the termination of parental rights.

Building on the often warped criteria of child-welfare intervention, courts have applied three basic arguments in determining what is in the child's "best interest" when a parent is slated for deportation:

The first involves concerns about the parents' country of origin. Courts and agencies frequently conclude that it is not in the child's best interest to live in a foreign country, far from friends and loved ones, where economic opportunities are limited and where the child may not even speak the language. The second justification is the inverse of the first. It is based on beliefs about the desirability and superiority of life in the United States. Given these assumptions, courts hold that it is in the child's best interest to remain in the United States because life in the United States provides more opportunities; economic, educational, medical, etc., and an overall better quality of life. The third consideration used to find termination is in the child's best interest is the fact that many of these children have the opportunity to be adopted by American families. Courts and agencies routinely conclude that such adoptions are in the children's best interest and this justifies termination of parental rights.

So that leads us to cases like Encarnación Bail Romero's. When the Guatemalan mother was detained, reported the New York Times last year, her son Carlos was placed with an affluent American family, and a judge decided that the new couple were more "fit" as parents than Bail, whose "lifestyle, of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child."

One of the most traumatic consequences of U.S. immigration policy is the banishment of an American-raised child to a strange country far from her community. But an even more chilling prospect is a mother losing her baby to a family of strangers, because their citizenship qualifies them to serve as the kind of parents that she, in the eyes of the law, can never aspire to be.

(h/t ImmigrationProf)