Will healthcare reform be fair to immigrants?

Women's Media Center contributor, Sharmeen Gangat, worries that immigrants, currently faced with great disparities in health coverage between themselves and the native born, will fall by the wayside once "reform" is enacted. Especially at peril are prenatal and postpartum care for women and family planning.
Read the whole article

Pew's Profile of Puerto Ricans

Now that the US, thanks to the nomination of Nuyorican, Sonia Sotomayor, to the Supreme Court, knows that Puerto Rico is a territory of the US and that Puerto Ricans are born citizens just like the Mayflower descendants, the Pew Hispanic Center has compiled a survey of our second largest Latino group.
Click to read

What’s Behind the Rise of Women’s Philanthropy?

Women's giving has exceeded overall philanthropy by more tha 10%

The Women's Media Center has offered up yet another article of inspiration and information for women. Women's philanthropy supports primarily programs that help women and women's organizations worldwide, putting it at the "intersection between the women's movement and philanthropy." Its author, Deborah Richardson, has been active in programming and services for children and African-American arts and is currently chief program officer for the Women's Funding Network.

Click to read

Media Justice for Sotomayor

Since the announcement of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, some in the media have engaged in sexist and racist attacks against her. Attacks have been overt and blatant. Some have been the repetition of extreme far right commentary, often packaged as “news” and endlessly discussed in mainstream media outlets.

The Women’s Media Center is releasing its new video, “Media Justice for Sotomayor.” It documents some of these racist and sexist comments already delivered on high profile television programs, radio, print and online outlets.
Click here for video

Hispanic American Village Jobs Center Restored

Following IMDiversity's recent migration to a new jobs database and job tools format at http://jobsearch.imdiversity.com, the editors have begun to restore a number of previously popular jobs quicksearch features including our jobs by location and jobs by occupation quicksearches, our $100K-Plus Featured Jobs section, Bilingual Jobs quicksearch, and the Hispanic American Village Jobs Center.

As before, the section spotlights select job opportunities tagged by our staff and by employers as being of special interest to our Village readers and Latino jobseekers. However, the new database format also brings some changes in the custom search and quicksearch format, and we will be rebuilding the section throughout the summer.

Just one one new improvement to our job tools is that jobseekers can now quickly and easily schedule a Saved Search from any search results page to send them a job alert email whenever any new jobs match their custom criteria. Jobseekers can "subscribe" to a Saved Search agent without opening a full job tools account, but they will enjoy improved tools for managing multiple alerts and posting employer-searchable resume by creating a quick Job Tools account first

We've also added a much expanded network job search, greatly extending the range and variety of the job postings searchable from one site.

Stop back for updates about the new jobs center in coming weeks.

Journalist Webinar Briefing: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

The Media Consortium, the Insight Center

MC Contact: Tracy Van Slyke
tracy@themediaconsortium.com

America's most glaring economic injustice is the racial wealth gap: families of color have only 15 cents of wealth to the white family's dollar. The racial wealth gap has been caused by government policies from the expropriation of Indian lands and slavery, to many aspects of the New Deal like the GI bill and Social Security, to current policies like the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and unregulated housing and financial markets. The Oakland-based Insight Center's Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative has over 120 experts of color across the country who are resources to journalists and elected officials on federal, state and local economic stories and policies.

On Tuesday, June 16, this call will feature story ideas and investigative journalism proposals from:

Michael E. Roberts, President, First Nations Development Institute, on Closing the Racial Wealth Gap in Indian country

Avis A. Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D., Director, National Council of Negro Women, Research, Public Policy, and Information Center, on her new report Assessing the Double Burden: Examining Racial and Gender Disparities in Mortgage Lending, co-released with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition

Janis Bowdler, Senior Housing Policy Analyst, National Council of La Raza on the housing crisis and Latinos

Short presentations will be followed by Q&A.

To access ECON, the Experts of Color Network, visit www.expertsofcolor.org. For narratives on the racial wealth gap and proposals to close it, visit www.racialweathgap.org. For more information on The Media Consortium, visit www.themediaconsortium.org.

WHAT: Journalist Webinar Briefing: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap
WHEN: 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST, Tuesday, June 16 (40 minutes)
WHO: Insight Center Closing The Racial Wealth Gap Initiative and The Media Consortium

To RSVP: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/854239593.
Please RSVP by Monday, June 15 at 3 EST.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE:

About The Media Consortium
The Media Consortium, a network of the country’s leading, independent media outlets has formed to amplify our voices; increase our collective clout; leverage our current audience and reach out to new ones; transform our sector’s position in a rapidly changing media and political environment; and redefine ourselves and progressivism for a new century.

About NAM
New America Media is the country's first and largest national collaboration and advocate for more than 2500 ethnic news organizations. Over 51 million ethnic adults connect to each other, to home countries and to America through 3000+ ethnic media, the fastest growing sector of American journalism. Founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996, NAM is headquartered in California with offices in New York and Washington D.C. NAM also partners with journalism schools to grow local associations of ethnic media around the nation.

Visit NAM's homepage for news and updates on our programs here.

Pew on the demographics of Latino kids

Hispanics now make up 22% of all children under the age of 18 in the United States, with only 11% foreign born and 56% the offspring of one or more foreign-born parent. And the Census Bureau suggests that by 2025, 3 children of 10 will be Latino.
Read the report.

Don't let your Spanish slip

You'll be more able to pick up yet a third, or fourth, or fifth, and so on, language. Plus, you'll find it easier to increase your vocabulary and understandings of your native tongue. So reports a study of Spanish and Mandarin Chinese speaking bilinguals. Good piece in Science Daily.

New project by immigrants for immigrants on health

New Routes to Community Health is using immigrant-made media to improve immigrants lives. Immigrant organizations and media makers have formed partnerships in 8 US cities to improve the health of immigrants by making media to address specific health concerns. You can view the project and its blog at http://NewRoutes.org. Three of the projects include, The Domestic Worker Safety & Dignity Project, Abriendo las Caja and Salud: Healing through the Arts.
Check out New Routes' blog, too.

Latinas movin' up, slowly but surely

Our partner, New America Media, reports, thanks to HispanicBusiness, that there's been steady progress for Latina advancement since 2002, showing a rise from 20 to 23 of those with management or professional posts. Once again, though, we are reminded that, oftentimes, success equates with making concessions to the dominant culture like joining the "happy hour" afterwork crowd. Also noteworthy, and a cultural clue, is the report that Latinas are requesting assertiveness training. You know, the squeaky wheel gets oiled, or, El que no llora no mama.
Read it, and let us know what you think.

Lovely piece on Latino identity by Hector Tobar

Hector Tobar offers a sensitive overview of the Latino community's growth over the years in California, and, by extension, the country. Tobar, while guatemalteco, is forever labeled "Mexican," a misnomer that echoes the old anti-black stereotype, "they all look alike." Tobar shares some of the most unfortunate, even hateful, responses he's gotten from his LA Times readers, but he is not vindictive. He is merely trying to understand. It was an ultimately uplifting way for me to start my morning.
Readers Share thoughts on Immigration

Ohio event: Aspiring Physicians and Research Scientists Conference

CLEVELAND CLINIC TO HOST THE SECOND ANNUAL ASPIRING PHYSICIANS AND RESEARCH SCIENTISTS CONFERENCE

Conference Focuses on African American and Hispanic College Students Interested in Science and Medicine

WHO: Cleveland Clinic is honored to host the second annual Aspiring Physicians and Research Scientists Conference for African American and Hispanic/Latino(a) junior and senior math, science and pre-med majors. These 22 students are from historically black colleges and universities as well as Hispanic-serving institutions and Ohio colleges and universities.

WHAT: This two-day conference will focus on medical and scientific innovation. Several Cleveland Clinic physician and research scientists will welcome and address the students who will, in turn, have the opportunity to present their research to these experts. Scholarships will be given to the (three?) students who win the poster research presentations.

WHEN: March 5-6.

WHERE: Cleveland Clinic HealthSpace Auditorium, 8911 Euclid Avenue

WHY: Cleveland Clinic is dedicated to attracting and teaching medical experts from all over the world. This event will be a learning experience as well as a networking opportunity for these students. Media is invited to attend the conference, interview the physicians and students. For more information and a schedule of events call Natalie Guzzo at 216.444.5703

About the Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland Clinic, located in Cleveland, Ohio, is a not-for-profit multispecialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based upon the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. U.S. News & World Report consistently names Cleveland Clinic as one of the nation’s best hospitals in its annual “America’s Best Hospitals” survey. Approximately 1,800 full-time salaried physicians and researchers at Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Florida represent more than 100 medical specialties and subspecialties. In 2007, there were 3.5 million outpatient visits to Cleveland Clinic and 50,455 hospital admissions. Patients came for treatment from every state and from more than 80 countries. Cleveland Clinic’s Web site address is http://www.clevelandclinic.org/.

Scholarship Deadline March 1: Chemistry Majors

African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and American Indian students who are high school seniors, or college freshmen, sophomores or juniors are among those who can now apply for a scholarship from the American Chemical Society Scholars Program. Applications will be accepted through March 1, 2009, for the 2009-2010 school year.

Students must plan to major in or already be majoring in chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering or a chemically-related science, and they must plan to pursue a career in the chemical sciences. Scholarships range from $1,000 to $5,000, depending on college level and economic need.

For full description, see the complete release published on our sister-site, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online: ACS Scholars Program Accepting Applications for Minority Students Studying Chemistry.

Bilingual? You'e got a leg up in surviving the recession

Here's an article from Hispanic Business suggesting that there's work, and good pay, if you can ply your bilingualism. Court interpreters, paralegals, nurses, social workers, etc. It's not a bonanza, they say, but there's hope.
Find it here.

Notes from Antigua, Guatemala

I’m in Guatemala for a week, visiting a friend, staying mostly in Antigua, a jewel of colonial grace and comfort. Antigua is arguably the most prosperous of Guatemala’s cities. It is top-heavy with ladinos (Guatemalans—and other Central Americans--of Spanish or mixed European and Amerindian descent) and foreigners, come either to study Spanish or to stay as pensioners or workers in the many NGOs trying to make life bearable for the country’s overflow of orphans, war-wounded, battered women, and more.
Indigenous Maya weave through the town, come down from the nearby hilltowns, most of them women in multi-hued traditional dress. The cloth for their magnificent ancestral traje--a woven cotton poncho-like huipil, sometimes elaborated with embroidery, worn over a corte, or long woven panel that gets wrapped in layers around the waist and secured under a yards-long cloth sash—is becoming harder to come by as the weaving is so labor intensive. Much of the tela found now is computer woven in Indonesia and recognizably inferior. They used to sell trajes on the streets and in the parques, but now most of their wares are smaller woven tourist items and trinkets.
Other indigenous women walk the streets or settle onto the narrow sidewalk, selling tamales or dulces to native Guatemalans from checkered cloth lined baskets.
Antigua is an anomaly, its Western face and well-being contrasting unsettlingly with the grime the pollution and grinding poverty of neighboring Guatemala City and the insularity and, again, extreme poverty of the highlands.
I’d recently posted an AP story about the growing indigenous presence in the U.S. Mexican, Guatemalan, Ecuadorian and other Latin American indigenous have been arriving to work the fields in increased numbers. For the first time, we have to recognize folks from “Latin” America who have never learned Spanish nor adopted European ways of dress, food, and social structure. Some withstood the pressure to embrace Christianity, or have done so only half-heartedly.
These new indigenous arrivals may look like our accepted image of a Latino and bear a Hispanic surname (many do not), but their ethos is not Latin. Moreover they may have almost nothing in common with Native Americans, already having a hard time with inclusionism—is an Alaska Native or a Native Hawaiian an American Indian?—yet they are being tossed in together with all of North America’s First Peoples. Some day these new indigenous will compete with Hopi and Oglala and other “card carrying” indigenous groups for the benefits (or the crumbs) they’d fought so long to win.
When I sit in the parque central or go to the market, especially when I go out of town, I can’t help but wonder how difficult the decision must be to face the perils of coming north, and I imagine, despite their clear marginalization in their own land (a civil war that was essentially one of genocide endured from 1960 to 1996), how much more poignant and scary it becomes once they exchange their traje for farmworkers’ overalls and aprons.

Pew Center study finds immigration has slipped as Hispanic priority

With the economy is such a mess and Latinos losing jobs at a faster pace than non-Hispanic whites, concerns about immigration and reform have taken a back seat for Latinos to the more burning issues of sustaining one's self and family.
Pew Hispanic has done an informative study.
Find it here.

Is there anyone out there who still doesn't want to talk to Cuba?

Rumors are rife once again that Chairman Fidel will soon no longer be with us. They are more credible now as he never regained his health after surgery about two years ago. So, now, more than ever, the opportunity should be seized to open a dialog, end the boycott, and begin communicate and cooperate on shared issues and interests. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh present a concise history plus analysis. And plea.
In the LA Times

Hilda Solis: Liking her even more!

From the LA Times on Solis' inbred solidarity with unionism founded in her working class roots, of which she is unabashedly proud.

Job Hunting? A career change may be in order

With unemployment figures skyrocketing and businesses biting the dust, the picture painted is of a long-term crisis and much hardship if not anxiety for many of us. The promise of at least a partial recovery with the incoming administration notwithstanding, there are even today bright patches in the darkened sky.

A closely watched media reveals that optimism, as reports emerge on careers and industries where jobs are largely available or even go begging. Securing them will likely require a change of career, maybe even some training, but there is no question that, yes indeed, there are growth industries today.

We've posted on our career page a helpful article published last week in the Wall Street Journal. And I recommend that you find WNYC's Brian Lehrer show of the 23rd, Dec., or the podcast (Where the Jobs Are).

One of Brian's guests, Dennis Demp, author of Health Care Job Explosion, reports informatively and optimistically on those specific industries that can't help but grow. Health care, insurance and working for the feds (especially in the areas of IT, public health, the census) are examples that he expands on. Demp also gives us the useful website: Federaljobs.net.

Check it out. Happy hunting! And may 2009 be brighter for us all.

PRLDEF petitions that the US fails to protect Latinos

17th December, 2008

Greetings!

Today, LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, charging the United States with failing to protect its Latino residents. The petition alleges human rights violations against the United States, through a procedure rarely used against this country.

Please read on for more information about our petition. If you are a member of a civil rights group or Latino organization, we ask that you consider joining us as co-petitioners or by submitting evidence to the IACHR in support of the petition. Read the rest of the story below then check our website at www.latinojustice.org.