Category: Uncategorized

The weekly meeting of the Texas Workforce Commission turned into an emergency room for unemployment benefits on Tuesday morning.

The best overview of the “sit-yi-ashun” comes out of the Waco Tribune in today’s editorial titled, “Get with It.”

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram offers good coverage in a news story by Dave Montgomery and a column by Mitchell Schnurman.

Here at TCRR we have been watching the Governor’s dogmatic attachment to supply-side economics since he presented the Laffer Report last Fall. The Laffer model has worked well as a campaign platform in ordinary times. But these are no ordinary times.

According to figures released last week by the National Employment Law Project, large numbers of jobless Texans will begin exhausting their 33 weeks of federal unemployment benefits. About 47,000 will hit the end of that lifeline in September, with the number growing to nearly 80,000 by the year-end holidays.

Texas is one of four states (all from the former Confederacy) that rejected a 20-week extension of those federal benefits, and so far most Texans agree that the state did the right thing. –gm

By Elliot Cole
Community Relations
Texas Civil Rights Project

Each year, roughly three million students graduate from US high schools. Some students enter the workforce directly, while others opt for the armed services. Many, however, choose to go college, developing their potential through academics.

However, 65,000 graduates will never have that option, including tens of thousands in Texas. They are prom queens, honor students, and athletes. They are tutors, class representatives, and valedictorians. Nonetheless, no matter their ability, they will be denied the ability to become doctors, teachers, or to pursue a law degree.

Though they have lived in the US for almost all of their lives, these students have inherited the label of undocumented immigrant, and for that will not be able to pursue upper education. Simply because they were born in another country they are treated as second-class citizens, disallowed from pursuing their respective dreams. This is counter-productive, foolish, and unwarrantable.

On March 26, 2009, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in Congress to give those dreams back. The proposed law provides a six-year conditional residency during which undocumented graduates can pursue a two-year degree, attend two years of a four-year degree, or serve two years in the military. An immigrant who completes any of those three conditions and is otherwise in good legal standing at the time will earn a well-deserved permanent residency. Immigrants would not be eligible for federal college grants, but would be able to apply for student loans and work study.

With the support of President Obama and senators and Congress members on all sides of the political landscape, the DREAM Act is as an opportunity. It’s a chance to be fair and to readjust our attitude toward students who have done nothing but strive toward becoming contributing members of society.

The students affected by the DREAM Act have not committed a crime against our country, as some will argue. They are simply the children of illegal immigrants. They know no home other than the United States. It is time we embrace them rather than act as if they did not exist. This is their community, and they will be able to contribute to our society with a college education.

In the current economic struggle, passing the DREAM Act makes even more sense. By introducing an educated group to the workforce, more taxes will be paid, more jobs created, more goods purchased, and more businesses founded. Every year we turn away thousands of students graduating from our high schools who could contribute to this economy. It’s contradictory and senseless.

Some may argue that the influx of these new students to the state colleges would somehow make state universities suffer. In truth, the state school system will benefit from the new student pool, and the bill already has support from university presidents nationwide.

The DREAM Act is an investment in our country’s collective future. With passage of the bill, dedicated graduates will not be barred from an education; they will be able to help their communities — and society as a whole — grow and flourish.

The DREAM Act has backing from all sectors of society, from religious leaders to universities. It has bipartisan backing from coast-to-coast. With the advantages it will provide our state, it should have the support of Texans as well.

* * * * *

The Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation, promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas, attempting to bring about systemic change through education and litigation.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier<br
by permission

Although I am a sourpuss and think President Obama is beholden to much the same crowd as was ex-President Bush, there are many people anticipating that things will change for the better soon. And so there is a resurgence of progressive activity going on, and that is good.

One source of optimism is that Michael Chertoff is gone as Homeland Security head. Two weeks ago, after another disturbing factory raid by ICE in Bellingham, Washington, Janet Napolitano, the new DHS chief, said publically that she had not even been informed the raid was going to happen and that she was ordering a full review of it. “I want to get to the bottom of this,” she said. It is not a clear message, but it provides a glimmer of hope that the recent workplace raids, dramatically handcuffing and imprisoning working people, might be softened in favor of restarting discussions about comprehensive immigration reform.

Interestingly, Napolitano also sent the Rio Grande Valley a signal last month. When Brownsville’s city commissioners had been pressured by Homeland Security to put up more border fencing right in the middle of an area that the city had planned for development, Napolitano stepped in, saying that she was not aware that a deadline had been given to the city and that she wanted to reconsider some of these projects. How far she will go is a mystery, but recent events have provided some hope.

Another sign of hope is that President Obama seems more favorable to labor organizing, and a press release I saw from a local uni*n group quotes Obama that labor is not “part of the problem but…part of the solution.”

Since I have not reported anything on labor recently, let me do that now.

Several weeks ago I reported attending an interesting anti-NAFTA event held by the Southwest Workers (SWU), which is based in San Antonio but also does work here in the Valley. SWU has started an organizing effort in Edinburg, trying to reach the school district’s bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other low income employees. I phone-interviewed organizer Anayanse Garza.

Braune: The SWU is trying to reach workers in Edinburg, but the district is balking. Is that correct?

Garza: Yes, we already have members, but we want more. But the ECISD (Edinburg School District) has been uncooperative. About a month ago, an assistant superintendant yelled at us, saying that if it were up to him there would be no uni*ns allowed. After we made his comments public, we had a series of meetings.

Braune: You certainly should have the right to organize.

Garza: Certainly, and we feel that the workers are being given false information and it is having an intimidating effect. Some are being told what we are doing is illegal. Some are being told it is against ECISD policy to be part of the SWU. Actually, it goes against ECISD policy to discourage us from getting members.

Braune: I know you had a rally in front of the school board last Tuesday night. What was your message there?

Garza: We were trying to inform the board about our continuing problems. We have met with a couple of board members but not with the whole board, and we have not spoken, even after about a month of this dispute, with the head of the school board. One of our SWU representatives and one of the bus drivers spoke at the public testimony session last night while the rest of us were rallying with signs outside. We told them that we want to have a meeting and that we have been trying to schedule a way to work out the problems. But so far today we have not gotten a call from them.

Braune: Your organization has experience with this sort of organizing; I take it what you immediately want is a fair opportunity to meet with the workers.

Garza: Yes, and we are surprised at the problems we are facing. The school district workers have mandated lunch and break time, and they discourage employees from leaving the campuses. So there are lunch rooms and meeting rooms where the workers congregate. We have simply asked that we can meet with them at the breaks on occasion. Part of the disinformation is that we want to interrupt the work time, which is not true. We simply want to visit during the breaks.

Another bit of disinformation is that we are demanding that we can just walk into the schools at any time. That is ridiculous. We would sign in at the desk like all other legitimate visitors. In other districts where we have members, we are able to meet with the workers in an orderly way with no problem.

We hope the ECISD School Board will hear us so that we may work together to correct these issues and help our schools, our families, and the community of Edinburg prosper as a whole.

Braune: Thanks for your work and the interview. Keep us informed how it is going.

By Nick Braune

The South Texas Civil Rights Project sent out a press release this week on a lawsuit filed against Cameron County. The suit contends that the county has retaliated against Gail Hanson, a minister and former volunteer chaplain at the county jail, after she spoke publicly about the conditions women prisoners face at the jail. The suit contends that her free speech rights have been violated.

Hanson, through her church, became an official volunteer chaplain in 2000, and had visited with and prayed with prisoners weekly up until February of 2008, but her visits were stopped after she made the public comments about the jail and criticized the sheriff.

“Preventing someone from volunteering their time to help rehabilitate prisoners because she was critical of the County is outrageous,” said Mrs. Hanson’s attorney, Scott Medlock, quoted in the press release. Medlock is Director of the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Prisoners’ Rights Program. “Mrs. Hanson should be commended for her dedication to ministering to the women held in the jail, not punished for speaking the truth about what she saw behind prison bars,” he said.

The press release explains that in February 2008, “Mrs. Hanson criticized conditions in the jail at a candidate forum in advance of the Democratic Party primary. Prisoners told her they were denied sanitary napkins, forced to sleep on the floor, given adulterated food with hair and gnats in it, and held for long periods of time without being brought to court for trial.”

The suit is not asking for money but for the simple restoration of Hanson’s access to the jail so she can continue her ministerial visits.

These complaints against the Brownsville facility are not the first. There have been many complaints over the recent years about the county jail there. The press release quotes Hanson, “I just want to make sure these women’s voices are heard. I never thought the County would prevent me from praying with them for speaking about what I saw in the jail.”

I contacted Corinna Spencer-Scheurich from the Texas Civil Rights Project for a quick comment.

Braune: I read a previous article on the Texas Jail Project website, and it sounds to me that the Cameron County Jail is improperly run and is a stressful place for women to be held, particularly stressful for the pre-trial detainees. Do you think what your client has said publicly has hit some nerve? And do you think they revoked her privilege to visit the women in the jail as a message to others to be quiet too?

Spencer-Scheurich: Clearly what Gail Hanson said hit a nerve. And, it is also clear that banning her from the jail was calculated to chill free speech on the issue of jail conditions. One of the purposes of the 1st Amendment is to protect exactly what Mrs. Hanson did — speaking out about injustice that she witnessed or heard about first hand. While there is reason to believe that things have gotten better in the jail lately, protecting Mrs. Hanson’s right to talk about the conditions is almost as important as improving the conditions themselves. Otherwise, the women in the jail would have no one to advocate for them, no one to tell their stories. What kind of society would we be if we isolated these women to the point that they suffer atrocities without us knowing?