Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month and Masturbation Month
10:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Education| Health| Women| sex| youth · 1 Comment
4 May 2009
Bianca over at Latino Sexuality reminds us that May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month.
While I was already out of high school when I became pregnant with my first child, I was still a teen, and becoming pregnant as a teen isn’t the best thing in the world (pero it also isn’t the worst either, I want to be clear on that). It changed my life in some positive ways pero also in some negative ways and I wouldn’t recommend it.
So how do we teach the young mujeres in our comunidad to take care of themselves, while allowing them the space to feel positive about their sexuality?
Colorado Fails to Support DREAMers
8:17 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Colorado| Education| Immigration| Politics| youth · Comments Off
7 Apr 2009
Last Week I wrote about how some states were pushing DREAM Act like measures through their legislatures. One of those states was Colorado. However yesterday, the dreams of undocumented students in The Centennial State were squashed thanks to Democrats in the state senate joining with Republicans to vote against the Immigrant Tuition Equity Bill.
Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said that granting students who are illegal immigrants in-state tuition was like saying “if their parents robbed a bank, their kids could keep the money.”
Though the bill would require students who get the in-state tuition rate to sign an affidavit stating they would seek legal residency, Sen. Mike Kopp, R-Littleton, said the affidavit “is worth probably less than the paper it’s printed on.”
In hopes of attracting more Democratic votes, proponents added an amendment that said the bill would only become effective upon passage of the federal DREAM Act. That measure being considered in Congress would provide a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve in the military or attend college in the United States.
It wasn’t enough. Democratic Sens. Morgan Carroll of Aurora, Jim Isgar of Hesperus, Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, Linda Newell of Littleton and Lois Tochtrop of Thornton voted against the bill.
Carroll, after the debate, referred reporters to a statement on her website that said she could not support the bill “in a climate where the state is cutting or eliminating over $1 billion of benefits to the people and is facing a $300 million cut to higher education, which virtually ends higher education as we know it in the state of Colorado.”
Isgar and Tochtrop made similar comments about cuts to colleges, while Keller declined comment on her vote.
Newell, who was elected in November by a razor-thin margin, simply said “I listened to my constituents” when asked about her vote.
DREAM Act Reintroduced. How Can We Keep the DREAM Alive?
9:54 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Education| Immigration| youth · 14 Comments
27 Mar 2009
Yesterday the DREAM Act was reintroduced.
Congressmen Howard Berman (D-CA) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), announced the reintroduction today of the DREAM Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation will restore the States’ rights to determine residency requirements for higher education benefits – giving states the option to provide in-state tuition. The American DREAM Act seeks to facilitate access to postsecondary educational opportunities for immigrant students in the United States who currently face barriers in pursuing a college education. It also provides a path to U.S. legal residency for students, and military personnel.
Pero I have also been critical of the legislation for it’s inclusion of a military path to citizenship which encourages young people of color to join the military when already, documented or not, young people of color are targeted as the canon fodder of the U.S. military industrial complex.
Perhaps even more disturbing is how laws such as the DREAM Act promote a narrative of good vs bad immigrants, the deserving vs. the undeserving.
That said I am in a privileged position to even be able to look at it from that perspective. I am a born U.S. citizen and I need to acknowledge how that position colors how I view the DREAM Act and other such legislation.
There are ways that we can support the DREAM Act, so that por lo menos some movement is made on the immigration rights front and who knows, quizas pave the way for even greater changes in the current immigration system.
Kyle over at Citizen Orange tells us Five Ways we can support the DREAM Act and the dreams of many undocumented students.
2. FAX – America’s Voice has a page to help you fax your congressional representatives in support of the DREAM Act.
3. EMAIL – Change.org has a page to help you email your congressional representatives in support of the DREAM Act.
4. PETITION – Dreamactivist.org has the official petition in support of the DREAM Act.
5. TEXT – Text “Justice” (”Justicia” for Spanish) to 69866 to be the first to know when the DREAM Act is introduced. FIRM’s Mobile Action Network is an excellent way to stay connected and have maximum impact at just the right moment.
Via / Citizen Orange
NYC Public Schools Pay $35 million per Year for Nothing
11:38 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Bizarro| Controversia| Education| Labor| New York| New York City| radio · 3 Comments
11 Mar 2009I was dumbstruck after listening to last week’s episode of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life program this morning. The episode featured a story so Kafkaesque I first doubted its veracity and then just sat shocked. It’s simple enough to sum up in just a few words: the New York City Public School system sends teachers who “misbehave” or are suspected of having done something wrong to what amounts to detention hall for teachers. Teachers are told they will be going to a “reassignment center” and when they arrive, wait to meet with district authorities.
But there will never be a meeting. The teachers sit in rooms for hours doing nothing. Those hours turn in to weeks. Weeks into months for most. And for some into a year or more than one year. Doing nothing.
A culture emerges within this confinement. It is reported by those who have been in what is called “the rubber room” – the informal name for the facility — that the overwhelming boredom and depression felt by the teachers translates into childlike behavior, violent fights and territorial squabbles. In effect, they become a lot like children in detention.
Teachers awaiting their fate — a decision by the NYC school system on whether they will be reinstated and return to teaching or terminated — continue to earn their full salary, even though they are doing absolutely nothing in the rubber room day in and day out. The estimated cost to NYC taxpayers? Some 35 million dollars per year. Read more…
School Segregation in the U.S. Continues to Rise
23 Jan 2009
So, MLK day just passed, a historic inauguration just passed–people are shouting from the hilltops that MLK has finally seen his dream come true…and then this news came across my google reader:
According the report although large progress was made during the civil rights era, it is slipping away year by year. Since the Supreme Court reversed course in 1991 and authorized return to segregated neighborhood schools, there has been an increase in segregation every year, particularly for black and Latino students — 40% of Latinos and 39% of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools. The average black and Latino student is now in a school that has nearly 60% of students from families who are near or below the poverty line.
Residential segregation continues to play a large role and increasingly determines the racial composition in schools in the absence of measures by education authorities to create and maintain integrated schools. And more than 40 years after passage of the Fair Housing Act, there continues to be almost no serious enforcement against widespread housing discrimination which is making it difficult to maintain integration in suburbia.
Seeing as school integration was an intervention site specifically chosen by the Civil Rights community–it makes me wonder why those who are interested in declaring that MLK’s dreams have been achieved aren’t more aware of this shocking news. School integration is a goal the Civil Rights movement worked *specifically* on–the fought for it, trained for it, planned rallies around it, prepared children for it, held massive community discussions about it–it was *central* to their fight for equality and justice.
How on earth did we all decide that electing one black man as a president was *really* the dream MLK had? Are we that distanced from our own history?
Supporting the DREAM Act
12:29 pm By Maegan La Mala · Activism| Education| Immigration · 3 Comments
7 Jan 2009
I have friends who are finishing their college education pero can’t find jobs because they don’t have papers. I know students who are graduating high school but worry about college as an option because they don’t have papers. While generally I am wary of promoting that a certain class of immigrant should be “legalized” over another, because I feel it promotes the classist ideal that only “educated” immigrants should have access to a status out of the shadows, the DREAM Act is worthwhile because it is a step in helping a younger generation of immigrants move forward and don’t we all deserve the access to make ourselves better? Isn’t that what that whole “American Dream” talk is about.
Pass the DREAM Act – Support Higher Education for All Students
The problem: Many American students graduate from college and high school each year, and face a roadblock to their dreams: they can’t drive, can’t work legally, can’t further their education, and can’t pay taxes to contribute to the economy just because they were brought to this country illegally by their parents or lost legal status along the way. It is a classic case of lost potential and broken dreams, and the permanent underclass of youth it creates is detrimental to our economy. Former Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has said: “In short, although these children have built their lives here, they have no possibility of achieving and living the American dream. What a tremendous loss for them, and what a tremendous loss to our society.”
The solution: The federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), is a bipartisan legislation that would permit these students conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted that they meet ALL the following requirements:
* if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16, are below the age of 30,
* have lived here continuously for five years,
* graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED
* have good moral character with no criminal record and
* attend college or enlist in the military.
What Mala is Reading on Saturday Morning
10:44 am By Maegan La Mala · Blogs| Dominican Republic| Education| Internet| Linking Latinos| race · Comments Off
13 Dec 2008When do kids realize the difference between weekdays and weekends? Not soon enough if you ask me, which is why I’ve been up since early, reading the internets.
Some things that caught my ojo:
President-elect Obama named his choice for secretary of HUD and it’s a Ny’er, pero not Carrion
University students in the Dominican Republic are on a hunger strike over problems registering.
Did you know you could salsa for freedom tonite?
Happy Saturday!
This is What Happens When Police Are In Charge of School Safety
9:10 am By Maegan La Mala · Education| Justice| New York City| children · Comments Off
11 Dec 2008
School Safety Officers. The title implies creating a safe environment for young people to learn and engage with each other. Except that in New York City, with School Safety under the NYC Police Department, these School Safety Officers enter the public schools the same way many police officers enter our neighborhoods, with an antagonistic attitude and thinking they are walking into a jungle whose residents they need to crush. Those residents happen to be our children.
Rojan Morgan is suing Hillcrest High School after he says several school safety agents assaulted him after he brought a cell phone to school.
“They took me to a back room, inside of the school and started to beat me,” Morgan said.
“When I came to the school I was ignored and shut out and that’s how this all started,” mother Trudyann Morgan said.
Shout Out y Gracias to Northeastern’s LASO
12:35 pm By Maegan La Mala · Education| Events| VivirLatino| boston · Comments Off
5 Dec 2008
If there was any doubt in my mind about the up and coming generation of Latino leaders being unleashed into the world, those doubts were put to rest last night by the amazingly intelligent and energetic members of Northeastern University’s Latin American Student Organization (LASO).
Last night I was in Boston and was honored to speak with college Latinos about Latina identity politics. We labeled ourselves and examined labels put on us as Latinos by the mainstream media and politicians, we explored the dynamics of Latina identity in terms of the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender and we talked about how all of those are rooted in a specific history and cultural context.
I may be exhausted from my trip, where I was jostled through the Boston public transit system, pero interacting with such an amazing group of promising rising leaders left me inspired and thoughtful with how to move forward cuz we know each generation moves the struggle ahead.
Pa’lante and mil gracias to the gracious team that made it happen and to all that came out and participated last night.
Why Can’t Maria Read?
24 Oct 2008
When the U.S. is spending money on sending students to wars or to jails (new tracking), are the numbers of American Fourth Graders Reading at or Above Grade Level in 2005 surprising?
· Asian American or Pacific Islander – 40 percent
· White – 39 percent
· American Indian – 19 percent
· Latino – 15 percent
· Black – 12 percent
Hola!
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- Pedro Julio Serrano on the Murder of Lopez Mercado
- Bay Area Community Members to Hold Vigil and Release Statement about Murders in Maryland and Puerto Rico
- Transgender Day of Remembrance and Latin@s
- Dear Troll(s):
- Puerto Rican, Latino Clergy, Theology Professors, Community Members To Condemn Brutal Hate Killing of Gay Puerto Rican Man
- Vigils for Justice y en Memoria de Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
- Russell Athletic rehires fired union organizers
- When Things Go Wrong…Terribly Wrong.
- Official VivirLatino Statement on Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN
- Sexual Violence Against Women in Immigrant Detention
