Archive for the ‘economy’ Category
#Occupy Wall Street & the Language of Resistance
7:20 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|economy|Justice|language|New York City|Police Violence|Politics · 29 Comments
3 Oct 2011
As the #OccupyWallStreet protest enters it’s third week, I was finally able to head down to Zuccotti Park aka Liberty Plaza to get a first hand sense of what was happening.
I will admit to feeling somewhat ambivalent about the #OccupyWallStreet actions. Not because I don’t believe that Wall Street is fucked up – I temped at a big investment bank for a number of years and witnessed first hand the manipulation of other people’s money and other people’s governments. My lack of full support is not because I don’t think the economy is jacked up – no one needs to tell me how hard it is for people to pay bills, keep roofs over their heads and feed themselves. These are issues I struggle with daily – as do most of my neighbors. My guarded enthusiasm comes from a concern with the messaging – which is critical in any action that claims to be resisting existing power structures. So I went to witness and to feel the messaging, not just by reading words on signs but by seeing who are the participants and who are they representing.
Monday Morning Movie Preview : The Harvest/la Cosecha
7:15 am By Maegan La Mala · children|economy|Family|Immigration|Labor|Music|youth · 7 Comments
18 Jul 2011No doubt this morning, the buzz is how much money the final episode in the Harry Potter film franchise made this past weekend. I would like to draw your attention to less magical matters. Thinking specifically of a comment that longtime reader Sabina made last week saying how all of us in the U.S. benefit from immigrant labor made me think of this upcoming film.
The Harvest/La Cosecha – Theatrical Trailer from Shine Global on Vimeo.
The Harvest/La Cosecha tells the story of the children who feed America.
Coming to NY July 29th
Coming to LA August 5th
Coming to TV on Epix Oct 5th
www.theharvestfilm.com
The film, Executive Produced by Eve Longoria and released though a non-profit (of which I know little about), Shine Global Inc., certainly deals with an important issue. How it tells the story of the young farm laborers will be important too. Already in the marketing of the film we see language used to make these children “American” as in of the U.S., not of the “Americas”. This is supposed to clearly elicit more sympathy than say if the film was about “non-Americans”. I worry about this divide.
The film also apparently is being used as a way to promote policy – pushing not from the DREAM Act, or AGJobs or CIR but rather equal protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prevents children under a certain age from working and applies conditions for youth labor. On the official website of the film there is even a place for people to contact their local congressperson and senators.
I am certainly interested in seeing the film to do a full review. Screening information is here.
What do you all think?
The Future of NYC Looks Latino but Puerto Ricans Aren’t Faring Well
11:47 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Education|Immigration|New York City|youth · 16 Comments
4 Nov 2010According to a report (PDF) by the Community Service Society of NY (full disclosure, I once worked for CSS), the future of NYC is Latino. Hispanics are the second-largest racial/ethnic group in New York City. With 2,290,007 individuals, they make up 27.6 percent of the entire city population, second behind whites, who are the largest racial group at 35.6 percent. Most of the young Latinos in the Big Apple speak English well or very well. however for some of those Latinos, the future looks bleak.
* A greater percentage of Latino youth live in poor and near-poor households than any other racial group. Fifty-six percent of Latino young people live in households with incomes less than 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).
Interestingly enough, according to the report, it is not the immigrant Latinos that are struggling the most. It is Puerto Rican young people.
Roughly 17 percent of young Puerto Rican men were not in school, employed or looking for work, compared with 9 percent of Dominicans and 8 percent of Mexicans. Of those Latinos born in the United States, only 55 percent of Puerto Rican youth were enrolled in school, compared with 68 percent of Dominicans and 67 percent of Mexicans. Regardless of birthplace, about 33 percent of Puerto Rican families lived below the poverty line, compared with 29 percent of Dominicans and 27 percent of Mexicans
Mala’s Media Minuto : Brazil
6:16 am By Maegan La Mala · Brazil|economy|Media|Sports · 4 Comments
24 Jun 2010
I’m just a futbol fan, no expert pero there sure are a ton of people looking at Brazil as one of the potential winners of the World Cup. In Brazil, as in much of Latin America, soccer is a a religion not just a sport pero leave it to the latest Newsweek to turn Brazil’s love of the sport into an economic concern.
From pg. 10 : [In Brazil] Banks close for the games. If the national team makes the playoff round, many schools suspend classes (Kindergarten included). And good luck finding an open church on game day. Even the warring drug traffickers on Rio’s hillsides will likely call a truce when the ball is rolling…That kind of passion has a cost…Brazil would forgo $1.2 billion [if just half the workforce in contending nations knocks off on game days].
No word on the positive community of futbol fans watching the games. Everything has to be monetized and have a value placed on it (as if the futbol industry in and of itself weren’t lucrative enough). This perspective is no accident, Brazil and Chile both have been centered in South America as examples of democratic and dconomic success following years of military dictatorships. This doesn’t erase the reality of the widening gap between rich and poor in either place.
And I am especially thinking of Brazil now that floods in the Northeast have killed at least 41 and disappeared at least 1,000. About 100,000 have been left homeless.
For Numbers USA and the Tea Party Divide and Conquer Politics is Their Immigration Strategy
11:13 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · economy|Immigration|Politics · 10 Comments
9 Mar 2010In response to the March 21st pro-reform March for America being called by the Reform Immigration FOR America coalition, Numbers USA, The John Tanton network organization that prides itself on having a mission to reduce all immigration, and the growing Tea Party movement, is organizing four days of counter action. Their action is named “S.T.O.P Amnesty in Four Days”. S.T.O.P stands for “Speak-out Teach-in, Organize and Protect U.S. Workers” and each day will focus on a different organizing strategy.
I had the opportunity to listen into one of their organizing calls last night, and while their strategy was nothing surprising, the hate speech, directed at Latinos, revealed the true depths of their racism and hate and their willingness to use divide and conquer politics to move forward.
One particular participant on the call wanted to raise the issue of women, specifically how Mexican women were the new “welfare queens” with their “anchor babies”, taking an old stereotype waged against African-American women in the age of Reagan and revamping it to use against Latina women. This caller was not dismissed but rather praised for his message and told to use the word “dependents” instead of “babies” or “children” because that word was emotional for “them”, meaning Latinos and other immigrants. “We have children, they have dependents”, another caller guided.
Latino Unemployment
3:00 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · economy · 2 Comments
5 Feb 2010Remember what I said about Obama missing an opportunity when he failed to link immigration reform to the economy? According to unemployment numbers that I spotted gracias to the National Institute for Latino Policy, despite some pundits saying that the economy is slowly rebounding, Latino unemployment in the U.S. remains disproportionately high.
It’s being reported that last month overall unemployment dropped to 9.7 percent from 10 percent, not a whole lot really but the tiny drop looks more significant compared to the rise in Latino unemployment.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Latino households in January was an estimated 12.6 percent, compared to 8.7 percent for non-Latino Whites.
Immigrants : The Economic Heartbeat of NYC
8:33 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · economy|Immigration|New York City · Comments Off
15 Jan 2010The reports of immigrants providing the economic backbone in the U.S. keep on coming in. The latest, released earlier this week by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, states that in New York City immigrants represent 43 percent of workforce and $215 billion in economic activity.
Neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Flushing, Washington Heights, Coney
Island, Elmhurst and Corona are examples of vitality spurred by successful
immigrants, according to the report. Immigrants have been a major factor
in New York City’s most recent period of economic growth, and the report
notes that between 2000 and 2008 the number of immigrant workers increased
by 68 percent, wages paid to immigrant workers rose by 39 percent, and
immigrant contribution to the gross city product increased by 61 percent.The DiNapoli report also found: Between 1970 and 2008, the City’s immigrant population more than doubled, to 3 million. In 2008, immigrants were 36.4 percent of the City population, but 43
percent of the workforce.
The median household income of New York City’s foreign born population
nearly doubled to $45,000 in 2007 from $23,900 in 1990, a growth rate that
outpaced inflation.
The number of immigrants owning homes in New York City doubled between
1991 and 2008, and foreign born residents accounted for 60 percent of all
homeowners in 2008.
Foreign born workers made up 46 percent of the City’s physicians and
surgeons, 55 percent of its registered nurses, and 87 percent of the
City’s taxi drivers and chauffeurs.
New Report Says Immigration Reform Would Bolster Economy
9:49 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Immigration · 6 Comments
8 Jan 2010It’s not bad enough that immigrants won’t assimilate, they also suck the economy dry, right? Well comprehensive immigration reform could change all that according to a report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center.
“Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” which shows that legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform as well as
making future flows more flexible would grow the economy by $1.5 trillion over 10
years.
The forecast is based on a number of scenarios that could add to the U.S. gross domestic product in the long term, and in the short term, generate additional tax revenue.
And how much would it cost to deport the undocumented estimated to be in the United States? $2.6 trillion over ten years.
The U.S. can afford that right?
You can read the entire report here (PDF file).
Homelessness Up Among Day Laborers in NYC
11:57 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Immigration|Labor · 6 Comments
5 Jan 2010According to an article in the NYT (who still thinks it’s ok to use “illegal” as an adjective), homelessness is up among day laborer in Queens.
Mr. Ruano, 38, who had drawn his living from 69th Street and Broadway for six years, has been on the streets since. He and other hard-luck day laborers have slept wherever they can: in the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in unfinished buildings abandoned by bankrupt developers and under bridges along the freight railroad tracks that slice through western Queens, where dirty mattresses and work boots lay on the rocky ground one recent morning.
“The only reason we don’t go hungry is because there are people who offer us food,” Mr. Ruano said on a snowy Saturday as he clutched a cup of soup from a group of Pentecostals feeding day laborers at a park on Woodside Avenue.
With their isolation and day-to-day existence, the laborers are perhaps the most invisible and hardest-to-reach victims of the recession, advocates and city officials say.
The invisible comment got to me. I have lived in an immigrant neighborhood for a number of years and there is nothing invisible about this trend. There is a small plaza three blocks from casa mala where laborers who aren’t working hang out and more and more I have seen more people there, and yes sleeping.
It’s amazing to me really how visible day laborers are when they are allegedly peeing and drinking on “white streets” but in POC/immigrant neighborhoods, their not having a home is suddenly invisible.
New Report Says that Urban Immigrants Pay Their Fair Share
10:31 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Cities|economy|Immigration|Labor · 1 Comment
30 Nov 2009
One of the biggest excuses given for why the undocumented are so bad is that “they” are bad for the economy. They take resources in disproportionate amounts compared to their population. A report released tells a much different story for the 25 largest urban areas in the United States.
In the 25 largest metropolitan areas combined – comprising more than half of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, and two thirds of all immigrants – foreign-born workers are responsible for 20 percent of economic output and make up 20 percent of the population. The same basic relationship holds true, with slight variation, for each of the 25 areas, from metro Pittsburgh, where immigrants represent 3 percent of population and 4 percent of GDP, to metro Miami, where immigrants make up 37 percent of the population and 38 percent of GDP. The report for the first time estimates immigrant share of Gross Domestic Product in metro areas, based on wage and salary earnings plus proprietors’ income.
Hola!
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