2009 December 07 | VivirLatino

Archive for December 7th, 2009

The Obama Administration’s Latest Comprehensive Immigration Reform Move: Treating Migrants as “Terrorists”

11:23 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration · 3 Comments

7 Dec 2009

Our communities are told that the immigration “issue” will be dealt with after health care reform. But what we are seeing is that while there may not be a bill in play, there are moves being made by the Obama administration and the latest is to treat immigration the same way the U.S. has treated Iraq and Afghanistan.

Predator drones, the unmanned aircraft used by the U.S. military in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, will soon be employed to track illegal immigrants on the Mexico-California border.

The drone, which will be unveiled later today, will be operated out of the Antelope Valley by the military contractor General Atomics. The drones will fly above the border region with advancing electronic tracking equipment looking for illegal immigrants crossing into California

Honduran elections exposed

2:22 pm By la Macha · honduras · 4 Comments

7 Dec 2009

The following is a fairly good breakdown of what is going on in Honduras at the moment and what the implications of the upheaval have been on the recent election results.

Honduran coup regime’s claims about 60% turnout at free and fair elections is revealed as fraud. Also implicated in the video are the wide array of media outlets and governments that have unquestioningly accepted the electoral data of a regime that overthrew the last elected president.

Produced by Jesse Freeston, on location in Honduras.

video found via facebook

Reclaiming Safety Across the U.S.

2:03 pm By la Macha · Events|GLBT|Violence|Women|youth · Comments Off

7 Dec 2009

*Reclaim Safety with ALP and CUAV on December 8^th !*

/LGBTSTGNC People from the Bay to Brooklyn Create Community Solutions to Violence/

*We are mourning the tragic deaths of 15-year-old African American
Jaysen Mattison in Baltimore and 19-year-old Puerto Rican Jorge Steven López Mercado in Puerto Rico, and the countless others we have lost to hate violence.* Our sorrow and outrage go out to their families and communities: we know Jaysen and Jorge were taken from you too soon. We recognize that there is a war against low-income, immigrant, and LGBTSTGNC (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two- Spirit, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming) People of Color, and that our people are meeting early deaths at the hands of hatred, abuse, neglect, and oppression.

*Unfortunately, the recent passing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the nation’s first ever federal LGBTSTGNC-inclusive hate crimes bill, will not stop the violence we face.* The bill:

*Provides no funding or resources to actually prevent
violence*, but instead gives $5 million to expand the powers of local
police and the FBI to investigate and prosecute incidences of hate violence.

*Strengthens a criminal “justice” system* that funnels
more and more poor people and people of color into prisons and away from our families.

*Supports the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan* as part
of the larger Defense Authorization Act, which allocated $130 billion to military efforts instead of to education, jobs, housing, and healthcare.

*Reaffirms the idea that safety comes through more police and more people in prison*, instead of by addressing the real
needs of survivors of violence, people who have been violent, and the communities affected.

*We believe that we can create our own safety.* We desire and demand solutions that challenge the real causes of violence: homophobia, transphobia, and economic injustice. As we demand the basic necessities that we need to survive—jobs, housing, healthcare, and education—we know that we must create real ways for communities to respond to and prevent violence without relying on violent institutions. *We refuse to have
our pain used to support violence of any kind.*

*JOIN US ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8^TH FOR A DAY OF RECLAIMING SAFETY.

*LGBTSTGNC communities from the Bay to Brooklyn will be strategizing and discussing community based solutions to violence. If you are in the Bay Area or the NYC area, attend the events listed below. If you are not, we encourage you to plan a conversation or some other type of event and let
us know how it went.

*Together, we can turn the tides of violence! * Read more…

Hate Crimes in Context

12:52 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice|race · 3 Comments

7 Dec 2009

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Marcelo Lucero, Angie Zapata, Jorge Steven Mercado, Brisenia Flores, Jose Sucuzhañay, Luis Ramirez. These are just a handful of names of some hate crimes that got some coverage over the last year. Pero what makes a hate crime a hate crime? Who decides and what “standards” have to met? Will a national hate crimes bill, with harsher sentencing guidelines solve the root causes? How do we as radicals or even as “progressives” rationalize a desire to enforce longer sentences in prison, especially when a member of one of our communities is killed by another member of our communities (because we fit into multiple communities built around concepts of gender identity, race, ability, nationality, class, sexual identity, etc)?

According to the FBI’s recently released statistics on hate crimes in the United States, 64% of the hate crimes based on perceived ethnicity or national origin targeted Latinos. This is out of 7,783 hate crime incidents involving 9,168 offenses reported by 13,690 law enforcement agencies in 2008. Here are some more stats since people seem to like stats.

Single-bias incidents

Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:

* 51.3 percent were racially motivated.
* 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
* 16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
* 11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
* 1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.

Offenses by bias motivation within incidents

There were 9,160 single-bias hate crime offenses reported in the above incidents. Of these:

* 51.4 percent stemmed from racial bias.
* 17.7 percent were motivated by sexual-orientation bias.
* 17.5 percent resulted from religious bias.
* 12.5 percent were motivated by ethnicity/national origin bias.
* 0.9 percent resulted from biases against disabilities.

VivirLatino

Archive for December 7th, 2009

The Obama Administration’s Latest Comprehensive Immigration Reform Move: Treating Migrants as “Terrorists”

Honduran elections exposed

Reclaiming Safety Across the U.S.

Hate Crimes in Context

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