Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
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Rinku Sen Appears on ‘Nightline’ to Talk Families Separated By Deportations
05 days ago
Nightline’s “Stolen Babies? Controversy in Missouri” segment that aired Wednesday.
On Wednesday night Colorlines.com’s publisher Rinku Sen appeared on ABC’s “Nightline” to provide context on a story about a young child who was put up for adoption because his biological mother is undocumented. Sen cited our “Shattered Families” investigation, which found an estimated 5,000 U.S citizen lingering in children in foster care due to the detainment or deportation of their parents.
In 2008, Circuit Court Judge David C. Dally decided Encarnacion Romero of Guatemala had abandoned her child when she was caught in an immigration raid and had little to offer to her son.
“Illegally smuggling herself into the country is not a lifestyle that can provide any stability for the child,” Judge Dally said.
“We’re creating a collateral consequence in which thousands of children
are ripped away from their families with no real process for being
reunited,” Sen said on “Nightline.”
An estimated 15,000 children will face the threat of permanent separation from their families in the next five years, Colorlines.com investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler found, in a story we published in November.
President Obama acknowledge the findings in a subsequent briefing with reporters and said it was a real problem.
Parts of Sen’s interview also aired on World News Tonight.
If you were moved by this story here’s three things you can do:
SHARE – Share this story on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else you can. You can hit the social sharing buttons at the top of this article.
LEARN MORE – Visit the “Shattered Families” page on our publisher’s website to download the full report and other resources that are also available in Spanish too.
DONATE – And lastly, please consider supporting more Colorlines.com investigations like “Shattered Families” by making a donation today.
‘Precious’ Director Lee Daniels Gets Into Race Argument on Set of New Movie [Video]
06 days ago
Director Lee Daniels is currently working on “The Paper Boy” starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman. TMZ has obtained footage of Lee getting in to some sort of verbal disagreement with producer Avi Lerner in which they both accuse each other of being racist.
Whatever the argument is about it looks like Daniels maintains his composure while Lerner points at him with a wagging finger, yelling at him and demanding an apology.
Representatives for both Daniels and Lerner tell TMZ both parties laughed it off.
Mel Gibson’s ‘Get The Gringo’ (aka My Summer in a Mexican Jail) Gets a Trailer [Video]
06 days ago
The bad news: Mel Gibson stars in a new movie about him escaping to Mexico with a car full of money.
The good news: It’s going straight to video. (Video on demand, that is. DVD sales will follow.)
The movie, formerly titled “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” is about a career criminal who crashes his car into the border wall while trying to escape the U.S. Border Patrol, according to Reuters. Gibson’s character survives the crash, but ends up in a “tough Mexican prison” where a 10-year-old boy shows him the ropes.
South Korean Pop Group Girl’s Generation Make U.S. Television Debut [Video]
06 days ago
Girls’ Generation, the nine-member South Korean pop girl group, made their U.S. network television debut last night on David Letterman. Industry insiders say the record labels behind the pop group are eying the U.S. market.
The Korea Times’ Noh Hyun-gi says S.M. Entertainment, the company that formed Girls’ Generation, has been encouraged by the group’s success in Japan and are now “eying the American Market.”
Girl’s Generation also made an appearance on “Live with Kelly” Wednesday morning which went less smoothly when guest co-host Howie Mandel told one of the members her English was very good.
“Oh, I was born in America,” she replied.
Gingrich’s Rick Tyler Says Democrats "Abort Black Babies" [Video]
06 days ago
Rick Tyler, Newt Gingrich’s former communications director who now runs his Sheldon Adelson-funded SuperPac, was a guest on “The Rachel Maddow Show” yesterday and claimed Democrats “abort black babies” and that African Americans children need the movie “Red Tails” because they don’t have any positive role models in their lives.
Gingrich has for decades been the GOP standard bearer in using racial caricatures to demonize poor people. Colorlines.com’s Seth Freed Wessler wrote a piece entitled “Gingrich Surges With Old, Familiar Ploy: Racist Attacks on Poor People” that looks at the history.
Get Ready for Big Freedia To Shake the U.S. with New Orleans Bounce [Video]
01 week ago
On Wednesday night Big Freedia brought bounce to national television with a performance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live late-night talk show. Freedia performed two recent songs, “Excuse” (above) and “Na Who Mad” (below). You can watch the full episode on JimmyKimmelLive.com.
At a performance in Los Angeles Thursday night, Big Freedia said her phone has not stopped ringing since her television debut.
And to read more about Freedia read the NY Times 2010 profile on her.
Joe Biden Mocks Indian Accents During Outsourcing Speech
01 week ago
During a speech in New Hampshire on Thursday, vice president Joe Biden slipped into an “Indian” accent when talking about “hundreds of thousands” of call center jobs going overseas.
At the 00:11 second mark you see Biden catch himself and stop the accent.
The New York Times ‘India Ink’ blog provides a bit more context:
The accent was so badly done that some commentators immediately speculated that it was supposed to be Russian – but still it brought to mind Mr. Biden’s 2006 Indian-American gaffe,
when he was caught on microphone saying: “In Delaware, the largest
growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot
go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian
accent. I’m not joking.”
Biden is no stranger to sticking his foot in his mouth. In 2007, an LA Times columnist said Biden had “uncontrollable verbosity” and called him a gaffe machine.
How San Francisco Organizers Rewrote the Rules to Save Minimum Wage [Video]
01 week ago
On Jan. 1, 2012, San Francisco’s minimum wage became the first in the nation to pass the $10 mark. The lowest-wage workers will now earn $10.24 an hour, up from the previous rate of $9.92 last year. The city’s minimum wage is tied to and adjusted for inflation, or specifically the Consumer Price Index for the San Francisco Bay Area. For most of the country the minimum wage is not at all tied to inflation, and therefore has lost value in real terms.
But San Francisco’s is different because of a law enacted as a result of Proposition L, a city ballot measure fought for and won by a coalition of organized labor and a diverse network of community-based progressive organizations back in 2003. The alliance was particularly rooted in communities of color and pushed by low-wage workers not typically represented by traditional unions.
After the passage of Proposition L, the new minimum wage started at $8.50 in 2004, and has risen incrementally since to its present value. However, this is still far below a living wage, especially in San Francisco, a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Additionally, a range of issues such as a housing shortage, little access to healthcare, and wage theft among others make it increasingly difficult for the city’s low-wage workers.
In response to these challenges, the coalition of community organizations that united to bring about the minimum wage increase has continued to work together over the past several years to tackle the range of the issues affecting their memberships. Uniting under the banner of the Progressive Workers Alliance, groups from across the city representing historically-marginalized communities very consciously have chose to organize using a multiracial model, uniting a broad base of affected workers.
The Progressive Workers Alliance itself is a lesson the individual organizations have learned from the minimum wage fight of 2003. In coalition the groups have realized their impact is larger, and their power has increased. They are using this to better advocate for their memberships’ economic interests, and affect change on a grander scale.
To help tell this story, Colorlines.com spoke with Jaron Browne and Donaji Lona from People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER); Shaw San Liu from the Chinese Progressive Association; Renee Saucedo from SF Day Laborer Program and Women’s Collective; and Ken Jacobs from the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Here’s the Video of Obama Singing Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ Last Night
02 weeks ago
President Obama has officially turned the being charming to get re-elected button on.
While speaking Thursday night at a fundraiser held at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Obama sang a bit of Al Green’s classic hit “Let’s Stay Together.” Watch the video above.
P.S.: Pre-2009, when Obama was still a US Senator, he belted out a Diane Warwick tune too.
Weight Watchers Goes After Black Males: Charles Barkley Star of New Campaign
02 weeks ago
Weight Watcher’s reported a 30% spike in revenue for the first quarter compared to the prior-year period when they first began their “It’s a New Day” campaign starring Jennifer Hudson last year. Now they’ve launched a new campaign that goes after men with former basketball player Charles Barkley endorsing the weight loss program.