Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
State of the Union
To "Win the Future," Kids and Schools Must Survive the Present
01 year ago
Education reform is about to return to the headlines, if not the floor of Congress, if President Obama’s State of the Union is any indication. Obama built his feel-good speech Tuesday night around the uncontroversial theme of “winning the future” and nestled every major policy issue within this rhetorical frame. He put particular emphasis on education as the path to that victorious future. But the education agenda the president articulated contained no surprises. It’s the same one his administration’s been selling for the past two years–and it’s the same one many of his critics have been fretting about for just as long.
Education reform watchers offered Obama reserved praise for giving education such a prominent place in his speech. “One reaction I had was exactly that he spent a lot of time on education, which I think is a good thing,” said John Rogers, associate professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. But Rogers, like a handful of other educators I spoke with after the speech, added long caveats after this initial praise.
Obama touted his administration’s undeniable wins, including student aid reform, and championed the more questionable achievements of Race to the Top, which is a $4.35 billion competitive grants program for states that adopt the president’s reform agenda. Eleven states have won millions of dollars each as a reward for opening up their states to more charter schools and agreeing to make test scores a component of teacher evaluations and salaries.
Under Race to the Top, states were rewarded for forcing public schools that were designated as failing to undergo a total restructuring or a takeover from a charter school company. The program remains controversial, especially among teachers who oppose new evaluation systems that they feel unfairly punish individual educators for a systemic problem.
Obama also called for 100,000 more science and math teachers by the end of the decade and called on Congress to take up a No Child Left Behind reauthorization in the model of Race to the Top. He didn’t suggest how those teachers would get funded, and congressional watchers consider it unlikely that the new Congress will have the stomach for a major overhaul of any program, including No Child Left Behind.
Obama called Race to the Top “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” If success is measured by impact, Obama’s correct. The program circumvented Congress entirely and got 39 states to rewrite their education laws. But if success is measured in students’ improved performance and teachers’ increased retention rates, the jury’s still out.
“I think the speech clearly shows the president understands the link between education and our country’s future,” said John Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which works toward racial equity in public education. (Colorlines’ publisher, the Applied Research Center, has done contract research for the Schott Foundation.) But, Jackson stresses, the Race to the Top initiatives Obama is pushing aren’t proven to work. ”We haven’t seen one state that has reformed its education system by removing its charter school cap, or reformed its education system by linking teacher salaries to student performance.”
A September 2010 study by Vanderbilt University found that performance pay on its own had no measurable impact on teachers’ ability to raise their students’ test scores.
Global Competition
In his speech, Obama tapped into the pain that many Americans are feeling right now as they wade through seemingly endless economic crisis, and tried to redirect that frustration toward global competitiveness. He warned that while America’s middle class has been dismantled over the course of a generation, other countries have been ascending, creeping onto the medal stands that the U.S. occupied alone for decades.
“Nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world,” Obama said. “And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies.”
But pitting the U.S. against other countries unsettled some educators.
“The line here is: ‘Yeah, they go to the sweatshops now and make stuff for us, but if they beat us they won’t be in the sweatshops making stuff anymore. They might dare to have a standard of living that’s better than us,’ ” said Rick Ayers, adjunct professor of education at the University of San Francisco and co-author of “Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom.” ”It’s all put out in a very polite, liberal veneer, but I would point out that it’s the dark, Asiatic other that is being called up.”
Ayers said that the true comparison between present-day America and Cold War America is “an extraordinary rise in income inequality that public policy could address separately, an extraordinary rise in incarceration rates that public policy could address. The presumption that education can act independently of economic inequality and incarceration is wrong.”
The United States is ninth globally in the percentage of undergraduate degree holders, Obama said. He wants the country to claw its way back to the top. As it is, more than a third of college students don’t graduate in six years, and that number is even higher for undergraduate students of color–something Obama pointed out in a speech he gave at UT Austin last year. The president seemingly knows that students of color are key to achieving his education goals.
Jackson said other countries’ educational success has been linked to the educational equity that the U.S. has not yet found. “All of the countries that are outcompeting us don’t deal with fringe structural issues,” he argued. “They provide all students access to early education. They hold teachers in high regard, and not in a punitive frame, and they have a much more equitable distribution of their resources.”
Jackson pointed out that there are over a million homeless children in the U.S., for instance.
“Yes, we want to ‘win the future,’ but for many the concern now is surviving the present,” Rogers echoed, adding that 22 percent of American children below the age of six are living below the poverty line. “How do young people who are growing up in families that are really facing difficult economic circumstances survive the present without a whole host of social supports that are being eroded or eliminated outright?”
There was a time not so long ago when Obama was willing to examine the structural factors that influence a kid’s education, Rogers said. “None of that was in the speech [Tuesday] night,” he complained. ”Instead, all we get is that parents need to shut off the TV.”
Obama’s lone reference to the role that parents and communities play in the nation’s education effort was to declare, ”Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done.”
That’s the narrow, individualized perspective that makes teachers and parents feel so besieged. Obama tried to soothe teachers–”Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect”–but critics say his policies don’t match that rhetoric. ”The truth is I didn’t feel the sincerity in that,” said Jim Anderson, who serves on the statewide board of the Alliance for Quality Education. “I haven’t seen the policies that shows that respect.”
Educators said that Obama’s rhetoric contradicted his policy in other parts of his education remarks as well. Obama praised America’s public school systems for providing students with more than memorization drills for standardized tests. “It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations,” Obama said, “but answer questions like ‘What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?’ “
Rogers considered it one of Obama’s strongest lines and said that it reflected the part of the president’s vision he most admires. “But that’s not the sort of question that emerges when you have the narrowed standardized tests we have now,” he warned.
“Obama’s good at co-opting the criticism,” said Ayers. “He said, ‘We’re not talking about rote memorization; we’re about learning deeply and asking questions.’ But that’s our argument,” Ayers said, referring to progressives who take issue with the Obama administration’s policies, “that the test prep stuff undermines the possibility of deep learning and learning for democracy.”
Of course, amidst everything the president was said, there were notable silences as well. Rogers said he wished Obama was more willing to address the vast racial disparities in kids’ educational opportunities. “I was struck by the fact that there was so little attention paid explicitly to the issue of race in education, or even outside of education,” Rogers said. “He didn’t highlight those equity issues.”
The upcoming year holds many uncertainties. It’s still unclear whether Republicans or Democrats have any interest in tackling No Child Left Behind, or even what another Race to the Top round would look like. In the meantime, the debate rages on over what winning the future even means, let alone how to do it.
Stuff the President DIDN’T Say in the State of the Union
01 year ago
President Obama’s speech last night was resolutely positive and forward looking. It was, after all, primarily a campaign speech for which the take-home message was “win the future” through smart investment and innovation. If that sounds more roaring ’90s than wincing ’00s, that’s because it is. But there are a number of deeply consequential choices that must be made in the coming months, all of which the president noticeably avoided in his State of the Union. Jamilah King wrote about one of them earlier today: sorting out the FCC’s power to keep the Internet open enough to fuel the sort of innovation Obama cheered. And Julianne Hing will tomorrow dig into the dirty details of Obama’s Race to the Top education reform. Another one that’s crucial to racial justice is consumer protection.
Obama has until July to name and get confirmed a permanent head to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress created at the president’s urging during the financial reform fight last winter. Elizabeth Warren, the bureau’s lead proponent in Washington, is currently getting it set up as a functioning body inside the Fed. Banks want nothing more than to block her from becoming its chief. That’s because they know she’s the best chance for the bureau to work.
Lobbyists succeeded in both keeping the new consumer watchdog housed inside the Fed and, importantly, giving existing banking regulators veto power over new rules the bureau writes. That means the only way it will actually have enough muscle to reign in predatory and deceptive banking practices–like, say, the subprime mortgages that existing regulators ignored for years–will be through a strong, informed chief who has the president’s ear. That’s Warren.
Obama’s in a tough spot on this. It’s pretty clear the Senate will not confirm Warren at this point, thanks to the banking lobby. It’s also clear that, if Obama offers a “safe” (read: bank approved) stand-in for Warren, the new bureau will immediately lose credibility, and not just in the eyes of progressive critics. There’s every reason to believe Obama wants the bureau to succeed, and that he’s got faith in Warren to head it. He could cram her through by a recess appointment, or he could pick someone similar to her but who doesn’t have her high profile. Either way, it’ll take a fight, and a deeply consequential one. The new consumer watchdog is the only meaningful check on Wall Street’s power to continue the destructive practices that got us here. If Obama caves on its chief, he truly will have led us back to 1999.
Compare Obama’s SOTU with Past Presidents’, in Tag Clouds
01 year ago
The State of the Union address has been interpreted differently since President George Washington delivered the first speech in 1790. And though the speech is required by the constitution: every president in each address has offered his own spin. Lincoln discussed the emancipation of slaves. In 1978, Jimmy Carter assured the country that “militarily, politically, economically, and in spirit” the state of our Union was sound.
In 2002 and 2003 George W. Bush used his speech to argue the moral case for war against Iraq. And yesterday, Obama focused on innovation.
If you ever wanted to see just what those varied themes looked like in real time, you’re in luck. Take a look at the “tag clouds” below to see how Tuesday’s State of the Union compares to previous speeches. The size of the text changes according to how many times the word was used in a speech. And the content speaks volumes.
President Obama, 2011:
President George W. Bush, 2002:
Jimmy Carter, 1978
John F. Kennedy, 1962
Abraham Lincoln, 1862
George Washington, 1790
Obama’s State of the Union Sets Up Deficit Debate, then Cheerleads
01 year ago
President Obama delivered his second State of the Union and fourth address to a joint Congress last night. Pundits have generally responded to his rallying tone, which was Obama’s the latest effort to revive the guy millions loved in 2008. He focused on civility and unity, framed his ideas as grand scale initiatives that rise above the old debates of left and right, and hammered home a theme of American “innovation” as the way out of today’s troubles. In the end, he said almost nothing tangible, leaving us with little more knowledge of the White House’s priorities for the next two years than we had before the speech began.
There were two big pieces of news, however: He vowed a five-year freeze in domestic discretionary spending, but demanded we end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent as well. Everything the White House says and does over the next two years will be managed to reinforce this two-step strategy on the spending-vs.-deficit reduction debate that will dominate the 2012 campaign.
The president also championed his Race to the Top education reform, which many educators and schools advocates have argued is just top-down, testing-driven, charter-fetishizing reform by another name. Our reporter Julianne Hing will dig more deeply into the administration’s education reform efforts tomorrow. For now, you can recap the speech through my live blog from last night. Take a look.
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Update @ 10:21: And we arrive at the necessary jingoism part of the night: America, fuck yeah! Hey, don’t let me rain on anybody’s patriotism parade. And I’m as proud as anybody else of ambitious individuals and entrepreneurs like Brandon Fisher. But here’s the thing, the state of our union is plainly not strong. To the contrary, we are in deep, lasting crisis born of decades’ worth of refusal to acknowledge hard realities. From economics to climate, our insistence that anything is possible, that there are no limits to our growth, have driven us to a collapse. And our refusal to acknowledge the massive inequity that has fueled that unchecked growth–no subprime lending, no housing boom; no slave labor by undocumented immigrants, no successful “innovation” from a whole lot of sectors of the economy–will always damn our fates. All the cheerleading in the world won’t change those things.
Also, not for nothing, the president said next to nothing tangible tonight. Let’s unify. Let’s innovate. Let’s spend responsibly. Go forth and be Americans. I dunno, but I look around at the struggling families I know and have covered, and seems like we need a hell of a lot more than that right now.
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Update @ 10:06: We arrive at the main event: deficit reduction. Obama is good at this conversation, actually, and he’s reminding us of that tonight. It’s easy to forget that after two years of frustration with the “principled compromise” trope. But like the green economy stuff, Obama meaningfully drove the spending-vs.-cuts debate forward back in 2008. His frame of smart spending reduction is compelling to most people, and it’s also actually correct.
Tonight, he’s proposed a five year freeze in discretionary domestic spending. That’s meaningless; the real money is spent on non-discretionary stuff like Medicare, education, Social Security and so on. But it’s an easy way to dismiss the Republican straw man of wasteful, indulgent spending. (Similarly, Obama’s quips about silly environmental regulation is an easy way to steal the GOP thunder on how absurd Washington’s spending can be.) Both set him up to make the real point: Spending cuts alone won’t do it. We can’t afford Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent. Get used to this conversation, as both parties are eager to have it over the next two years. Barring some unforeseen new foreign policy crises, the defining (and related) issues of 2012 are deficit reduction and jobs. And make no mistake, this speech inaugurates the 2012 campaign.
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Update @ 9:49: Shorter immigration reform…What he said good: Pass the DREAM Act:
One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.
What he said bad: I’ll keep deporting a record number of people and wasting billions on ineffective border militarization that’s getting more lethal every day.
Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows.
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Update @ 9:44: I’ll leave a take on Obama’s Race to the Top education reform to our reporter Julianne Hing. She’ll chime in with a full update on the program by Thursday. According to Obama, “Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” Suffice to say, it’s a bit more complicate than that.
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Update @ 9:37: Sputnick II. That’s been the buzz for days in advance, as the White House hopes to put Obama and Kennedy in the same breath again. It’s both smart politics and smart policy. Obama happily took a swipe at oil companies, and they’re an easy and appropriate villain. So he says the feds are going to redirect money from Big Oil’s tax breaks and into “innovation” investment.
There’s a lot of promise here, and Professor Obama can be an excellent messenger for it. The Bush White House became a standard bearer for anti-intellectual, anti-scientific ignorance (and for keeping Big Oil fat). Even if no policy changes, the president could do great service by leading a national conversation to restore science and intellectual rigor as a point of national pride. His vision for green jobs was certainly a compelling part of his original economic narrative, and it’s nice to see it return. And wouldn’t that green economy be nice? It’ll take real fight to get it, and don’t expect it before 2012. And the devil will be in the details: What jobs, for whom and where? Green for All has lots of good resources on this conversation.
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Update @ 9:25: Obama dove right into the real issue once dispensing with the unity trope: Where’s the jobs. He offers a poetic hark back to the good old days when “finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn’t always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you’d have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion. Maybe you’d even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company. That world has changed.”
Due respect Mr. President, but that’s some bullshit. That’s not a history that’s particularly relevant to generations of people of color, who could not in fact get those jobs. This is more than a rhetorical concern. As I wrote Monday, too many communities–in particular black ones–never recovered from the 2001 recession. That’s because our policy solutions to it did nothing to address the structural inequalities the economy was built around. And today, no amount of happy talk about becoming competitive with China will end that decade-plus recession without a structural intervention. And not for nothing, it was that unaddressed black recession that created the customers who fueled the subprime crisis that broke the world.
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Update @ 9:17p : It comes as no surprise that the president opens his address with a poetic turn on unity. For one thing the text of the speech was leaked in advance. But also because Obama’s riding a wave of popularity he’s missed in recent months after his moving speech on the Tuscon shootings. One worries, however, that the White House is learning the wrong lesson. In times of national tragedy, Americans always rally around their leaders. New York City despised Rudy Guiliani, until 9/11. So Obama had a pretty low bar for that Tuscon speech. The real polling bump to mind is the one he got at the end of the lame duck Congress. What drove that? Winning. For the first time in two years, Obama wasn’t on the defense. Instead, he was shoving bills through Congress and declaring victory. That’s the lesson. Whatever he chooses to focus on following tonight, he’ll do well to spend less time on unity and more on winning.
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President Obama delivers his second State of the Union tonight, and fourth address to a joint Congress. The first question I’ve been asked by a number of colleagues on the left is, Who cares? It’s a good question.
It’s not just a statement of frustration with Obama–though, there’s plenty of that. It’s more a fatigue with the rote exercises of electoral politics. Year after year, journalists, activists and even individual voters turn earnestly toward Washington and engage it. We build coalitions and get out the vote come election. We propose legislation when the voting’s over. We watchdog the implementation of new policies as they roll out. And in what seems lately to be an inevitable end, we arrive at frustration and disappointment when the interests of a handful of rich and powerful outweigh those of everyone else. Then an election comes and we repeat the cycle. For many, the past three years are the defining example of this hamster wheel of democracy gone awry. And the State of the Union may be among the least compelling turns of the wheel. After all, the biggest story of this evening has been some Congress members’ decision to sit next to people in the opposite party. It’s hard to imagine a more empty gesture.
But here’s the thing, the State of the Union is also, if appropriately engaged, an accountability moment for our chief executive. There are few moments when the president stands up and speaks to the entire nation, outside of campaign season. It’s his (and one day, her) chance to stand up and outline where he intends to guide the nation over the next year. Those are too often empty promises; indeed, the budget proposal the White House releases in the weeks following each State of the Union is far more consequential. But this is the only government we’ve got, and it’s our responsibility as citizens to engage it. Too many elected officials and horse-race political pundits have reduced this and other elements of our democracy to meaningless ceremony. We can’t do the same as citizens. At minimum–and that’s not a stopping point–we have to pay attention to what our elected officials say, so we can hold them accountable to it.
Is President Obama Doing Enough to Move Immigration Reform?
01 year ago
This week, President Obama is scheduled to meet with two key congressional players in the movement for immigration reform—Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)—who are working together behind the scenes to draft a bipartisan immigration bill. The President is expected to ask Sens. Graham and Schumer to produce a reform bill blueprint that “could be turned into legislative language.” While some will interpret this week’s meeting as another positive signal from the White House and others as a “last-ditch effort in an election year,” the White House affirms that the President is still committed to reforming our immigration system.
According to the L.A. Times, White House spokesperson Nick Shapiro said:
The president is looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill…The president’s commitment to fixing our broken immigration system remains unwavering.
For many advocates, the upcoming White House meeting is a welcomed signal that immigration remains a priority for the President, particularly as grassroots groups across the country vent frustrations over the continuation of Bush-era “enforcement-only” policies. Immigration advocates have been disappointed by a perceived lack of leadership on this issue on the part of the President. Advocates have also cautioned that inaction on immigration reform could cause political fallout, particularly if the growing Latino electorate decides that there has not been enough movement on immigration reform and either stays home or votes for the opposition party.
Much like stalled health care legislation, it may be easy for President Obama to blame Congress for playing politics. But even in the absence of a much needed immigration overhaul, there are things the Obama Administration could do to improve immigration policy if he were serious about fixing the system. Last week, IPC released a review of DHS under the Obama Administration which outlines a series of changes the Administration could make absent legislation.
Conventional wisdom holds that the longer it takes President Obama to pass a major piece of legislation, the more political clout he loses come mid-term election. We understand that the President is currently facing some difficult legislative hurdles with health care and the economy, but regardless, immigrant advocates, as well as Asian, Latino and immigrant voters, are going to look to hold the President accountable for his actions—or inactions—on immigration reform. Talking to Senators Schumer and Graham is a welcomed step, but now the Administration has to show some real strength by making Administrative reforms and demonstrating that it is engaging the issue in a meaningful way. Real action will go a long way toward drumming up needed support in Congress and from a constituency whose vote could make all the difference come election time.
Photo by White House.
An Opening for Republicans on Immigration Reform
02 years ago
Immigration and Latino advocates continue to take stock after last week’s State of the Union Address, which some interpreted as the final nail in immigration reform’s coffin for 2010. Predictably, Democratic leadership reasserted their ongoing commitment to immigration reform legislation the day after. Less predictably, however, Senator Schumer’s main Republican partner in the Senate, Lindsay Graham, came out the following day in support of moving forward on reform in an interview with The Atlantic:
I think the idea of border security as a confidence builder is the way to start. Most Americans are very practical and reasonable. They’re upset about broken borders and our out-of-control immigration system. They will buy into a comprehensive solution if we can prove to them, and only if we can prove to them, we don’t have twenty million more illegal immigrants, ten years, twenty years down the road.
And when it comes to the illegal alien population, if the definition of amnesty is you got to deport twelve million people, or put twelve million people in jail, then we’ll never have a comprehensive solution, because that’s just not workable, it’s not practical.
To me, amnesty would be forgiving people, like Ronald Reagan did, with no consequence, and not repairing the system. Amnesty is what we have today. What I would like to see is the illegal immigrant population come out of the shadows, be biometrically identified, be required to learn English, pay the fines for their crime, and get right with the law. If they want to be a citizen, get in the back of the line, not break into line.
And to my Republican colleagues, I can understand the politics of this is difficult. Big things are hard to do. But I believe in 2008, we lost a lot of ground with the Hispanic community because of the rhetoric and the tone we set on immigration.
Speaking of losing ground with Latinos, the National Congreso Latino met in Texas this weekend with a local newspaper, reporting:
Latino conventioneers said today President Obama virtually ignored their constituency in his state of the union address this week and that the mid-term elections could serve as a referendum on his administration.
History tells us that the Latino vote is not a dependable liberal constituency for the Democratic Party. If anyone’s political calculation assumes Democrats can hold onto Latinos without reforming immigration and addressing their other concerns, they are dead wrong. Latinos have turned out in force in past elections for Republicans candidates like George W. Bush.
Obviously, the best way forward for an immigration reform bill is a bipartisan approach—an approach advocated by the President in his unprecedented televised Q&A with Republican lawmakers at their annual retreat last week in Baltimore. The President said:
Bipartisanship—not for its own sake but to solve problems—that’s what our constituents, the American people, need from us right now. All of us then have a choice to make. We have to choose whether we’re going to be politicians first or partners for progress; whether we’re going to put success at the polls ahead of the lasting success we can achieve together for America.
Some have even calculated that after an endless and bruising healthcare reform battle, immigration reform, which has been already been debated ad-nauseum, might just be the issue that both parties can tackle to show the public that difficult things can get done in Washington.
It’s easy to blame the President, the Congress and everyone else in Washington for the delay, throw in the towel and make declarative sentences about immigration reform being dead. However, there is still a beating heart in the process with ongoing signs of life, including productive negotiations between business and labor groups on the issue of future flow, Secretary Janet Napolitano’s report on her ongoing pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform in the coming year and again, and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham’s public enthusiasm for tackling the issue.
This could actually be the best time for immigration reform, Republican’s could move away from extreme factions of tea-baggers to prove to their anti-establishment constituents back home that they can think independent of their party and solve tough problems.
The late conservative thinker, Richard Nadler, always advocated that rather than running away from the immigration issue, Republicans should step up to help shape it. Early last year he put it this way:
At some point, conservatives must reflect on how many allies, and how many issues, we are willing to sacrifice in a fey and futile attempt to get field workers, busboys, and nannies out of the country. The steady drumbeat of restrictionist defeat invites—no, requires—conservatives to revisit a concept we have glibly reviled: comprehensive immigration reform. The relevant question is no longer whether we want it, but what we want from it: what forms of border security, crime control, and employment verification. Every hour we postpone a border reform that respects the interests of employers and Hispanics, our entire agenda suffers.
Photo by criggchef.
The President’s State of the Union: Missed Opportunities on the Push for Immigration and Health Care Reform
02 years ago
An insightful post from VivirLatino blogger Maegan la Mamita Mala. Worth reading to the last word.
After President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, I needed to get out of Casa Mala. I knew what was coming, the analysis, the discussion, and the disagreements about what needed to done and what tone to use in doing it. But I needed a drink, I need to sing and dance a little as an act of mourning because in all of these discussions, which I am now engaged in, there was little mention of actual people.
While I was preparing mentally for the State of the Union address, I saw on the Spanish language news about an immigrant mujer, Alexandra Nunez, who died from massive bleeding during an abortion in a clinic walking distance from Casa Mala. A single mother, like me, made a decision about her body and life within the limits placed on her because of law and who she is.
During the State of the Union speech, Obama spoke about the problems with getting health care reform passed and spoke on immigration from a law and order perspective, following the laws and securing the borders. He failed, as so many do, in pointing out where health care reform and immigration reform intersect, in the very lost life of mami Alexandra Nunez.
Health care reform threw and continues to throw the lives of immigrant women in the gutter (forget under the bus). By cutting access to legal and safe abortions and by cutting access for immigrants, via five year waiting periods to access government run programs to preventing the undocumented from buying their own health care, women like Alexandra Nunez and women like me, are left with little choice but to exert their own choices about their bodies within storefront clinics that offer abortions in one room and breast implants in another.
Click here to read the entire article.
Lost in Translation: What the President Really Said about Immigration Reform
02 years ago
Unless you were hanging on every word in Wednesday night’s State of the Union Address, you might have missed that the President reaffirmed his commitment to fixing our broken immigration system. His commitment wasn’t as specific as many of the things he has said about immigration reform in the past. In fact, this glancing mention of immigration reform has already caused a backlash among activists—many of whom are disappointed that the message was too muted and without teeth. But upon closer inspection, you might find that President Obama’s message of bipartisanship, American values and the importance of diversity translates into moving forward on immigration reform.
True, the President could have called for immigration reform as a component of rebuilding our economy. He missed a golden opportunity to make that link. And true, he could have laid out the case for immigration reform more systematically or made it clear that the White House and DHS are both working feverishly behind the scenes to make immigration reform happen. That would have been a welcomed message. President Obama did, however, deliver a more subtle message—a message aimed at Congress.
Take a look at the framing of the immigration statement from a rhetorical perspective. It wasn’t in the “jobs” section of the bill (although it should have been), but was instead in a section about governing and getting bipartisan cooperation. The arc of President Obama’s address goes something like this: jobs, jobs, economy, jobs, health care, foreign wars and terrorism, good deeds abroad, and then the following:
We must continually renew this promise. My Administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate. This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws – so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations.
In the end, it is our ideals, our values, that built America; values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe; values that drive our citizens still. Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by; business values or labor values. They are American values.
Translation:
My agenda this year is going to keep moving forward. If Congress won’t cooperate in doing the right thing, I can do it administratively. I have revived the nearly dead civil rights division so it can prosecute cases again after 8 long years without a real commitment to civil rights. I am finally going to get rid of discriminatory policies preventing gays to serve openly in the military. While I could do this on my own, I want to work with Congress to make it happen. And I still support comprehensive immigration reform that mirrors what Janet Napolitano laid out recently—a three legged stool where “everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation”—which means a path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants who would help revive our economy and continue to provide the rich diversity that makes the country strong.
Remember, Congress, we are nation of immigrants and immigrants vote. The values of our immigrant nation are what still drives us (that is, we are all immigrants) and sooner or later we need to fix the immigration problem. This isn’t a Republican or Democratic problem (read bipartisan) and it isn’t a business or labor problem (read the coming together of these two groups to solve immigration issues is vitally important.) It’s an American problem.
Translation, of course, is an art not a science. Many people will, no doubt, not read all of these subtleties into the speech. But consider the wide range of issues the president could have mentioned. The fact that immigration reform, framed within the context of quintessential American values, made it into the speech at all is surely significant. Also of significance is the fact that for the first time, Spanish language network anchors—from CNN en Español, Univision, and Telemundo—were invited to the traditional pre-State of the Union lunch with President Obama.
For days to come, the State of the Union Address will be taken apart line by line until the next big Presidential event—the release of the budget. Hopefully the President will learn before then that he can’t solely speak in Congressional code and expect the public to be satisfied. In the meantime, congressional leaders on immigration, such as Sen. Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, continue to beat the drum for immigration reform and deliver the President’s coded message—immigration reform is still a top priority for this Administration, but we need to work together in order to move forward.
Photo by the White House.
To Mention Immigration or Not To Mention Immigration? That is the Question
02 years ago
In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama’s comments on immigration were simple, ‘we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system—to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.’ It was neither detailed nor overly passionate, but signaled that immigration reform was still a priority for his administration under a broader push for greater civil rights.
However, President Obama’s minimalist approach to the issue has set off tensions on both sides of the issue. One particularly anti-immigrant crusader characterized the President’s comments on immigration as some sort of “code,” noting that ‘he (Obama) seemed to be trying to signal to the supporters of “amnesty” and comprehensive immigration reform that he was still behind them, but in words that the voters watching on TV wouldn’t understand.’ On the other hand some pro-immigrant groups have begun writing the obituary for immigration reform after last night, feeling the President just didn’t say enough.
Perhaps the President could have said more. He could have called for immigration reform as a component of rebuilding our economy and laid out the case for reform more systematically—making clear all the work going on behind the scenes at the White House and Department of Homeland Security to make immigration reform happen. But it’s important to remember a couple of things.
First, the mere mention (or lack of one) of an issue in the State of the Union cannot be underestimated. The Washington Times writes about what a SOTU mention can mean to public policy issues:
“A State of the Union address can launch major reforms, focus the nation’s attention or spark international tensions. But for many groups looking to advance their agenda, just earning a mention by the president is the Holy Grail. “It can have a very significant impact,” said Bob Dinneen, chief executive officer of the Renewable Fuels Association. Mr. Dinneen cited President George W. Bush’s address in 2006 as a case in point. In the speech, Mr. Bush talked about the need to stop the nation’s “addiction” to foreign oil and to embrace ethanol and other renewable fuel sources. “It really teed up a discussion about energy policy and led to the passage of the energy bill in 2007 that resulted in the renewable-fuel standard in this country,” Mr. Dinneen said. “So it was an important catalyst.”
Second, early this afternoon the Senate leadership discussed the ongoing work happening on immigration reform, with no signs of retreat. Congressional Quarterly (CQ) reported on the press conference today:
Senate Democratic leaders say they intend to press ahead with an immigration overhaul bill despite waning enthusiasm for the measure among many in their caucus. “It is something we’re committed to do,” Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters on Thursday. “And we’ll do it as soon as we can.” Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, who is leading the effort to draft a bill, said, “We are making good progress.”
It’s a well-known fact that the road to reform is uphill—that success demands resilience, commitment and dogged determination with no room for drama or distraction. Anyone in the fight for immigration reform knows that reform can’t come fast enough; that lives and futures are at stake. But determining the future of immigration reform on a “word count” in the State of the Union address is bad strategy. Instead, immigration advocates should keep Presidential promises in perspective, redouble their efforts and continue to hold Congress’s feet to the fire. As the President said last night, he can’t do it alone.
Photo by Sheep purple.