Back on KPFK's Strategy Session

After a brief visit on March 7, I will be back on the air today with the host of KPFK's Strategy Session, Antonio Gonzalez. He is president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the largest and oldest non-partisan Latino voter participation organization in the U.S.founded in 1974. We'll be discussing my novels and their connection to immigration and the Latino identity. You can listen on the air in Los Angeles or online from anywhere at the link below. Hope you can join us!

Monday, March 21, 2011

4:30pm Pacific Time - 7:30pm Eastern Time

Listen Live

Online at http://www.kpfk.org/listen-live.html

On the air in Los Angeles on KPFK 90.7 FM

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Criticizes U.S. treatment of immigration detainees

From the New York Times 

Immigrant Detentions Draw International Fire

By KIRK SEMPLE

A cell that held a family in Texas in 2007.

Immigration enforcement in the United States is plagued by unjust treatment of detainees, including inadequate access to lawyers and insufficient medical care, and by the excessive use of prison-style detention, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States said Thursday.

The group, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued those findings in a report that also took aim at a federal program that allows county and state law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. The report said the government had failed to ensure that local police were not singling out people by race or detaining illegal immigrants on the pretext of investigating crimes.

The commission recommended that the federal government cancel the program, known as 287(g).

While many of the findings reiterated criticisms that have been made before by immigrant advocates and others, the report appeared to be the first comprehensive review of American immigration enforcement in recent years by an international body of the organization’s stature.

The commission, based in Washington, has no enforcement powers, but it has considerable moral authority and a record of cooperation by member countries, including the United States.

The 155-page report was based on hearings and research that began in 2008, including visits in July 2009 by a team of investigators to six American detention centers in Arizona and Texas.

Since much of the research was completed, however, the Obama administration has begun a major overhaul of the detention system. A month after the commission’s visits, immigration officials announced a sweeping plan to establish more centralized authority over the system and to renovate centers designed for penal detention to make them more appropriate for detainees facing deportation, particularly those accused of administrative violations.

The administration said it would also close centers that were rarely used or failed to meet its standards, and would consolidate the nation’s patchwork of detention centers to meet increasing demand in specific areas, especially near big cities. It also said it would explore alternatives to detention.

Felipe González, president of the commission, acknowledged those plans but said the commission would withhold judgment on the efficacy of the reforms. “According to the information that we have so far, it’s not clear that it’s been implemented or will satisfy the international standards” of human rights, he said in an interview. 

The commission will continue monitoring immigration enforcement to ensure that its grievances were addressed, Mr. González added.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees enforcement, said Thursday that the department would review the report, and made no further comment.

Earlier, however, the Obama administration was given a draft. In their response, according to the report, administration officials pointed out that they had conducted their own comprehensive review of immigration enforcement and made “important changes.”

Still, the commission said it was “deeply troubled by the continual and widespread use of detention in immigration cases,” the report said.

“The Inter-American Commission is convinced that in many if not the majority of cases, detention is a disproportionate measure and the alternatives to detention programs would be a more balanced means of serving the State’s legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with immigration laws,” the report said.

Mr. González also expressed skepticism that the administration would provide less penal settings for immigrants held on administrative, rather than criminal, charges. “It’s not clear to us whether the new system will really mean that the facility will provide migrants in detention with a system that is fully respectful of human rights,” he said.

Mr. González said his commission was inspired to investigate the system after receiving numerous requests from human rights advocates and civil society organizations. The group, he added, is now planning to investigate other immigration detention systems in the hemisphere.

Egypt and Latinos in America…Is an Uprising Coming Here?

This feature article from online news publication Hispanically Speaking News found parallels between the turmoil in Egypt and my novels AMERICA LIBRE and HOUSE DIVIDED.

Egypt and Latinos in America…Is an Uprising Coming Here?

March 17, 2011 | by HS News Staff

Unrest leads to protest, and protest can lead to change.  This has not been any more apparent than the events that took place in Egypt.  Middle-East experts are now watching the countries of Yemen and Libya to see how they take shape, but can the revolution spread to the United States?

Raul Ramos y Sanchez has written American Libre and its sequel House Divided, which illustrates a situation in which Hispanics in the United States could have such an uprising.

Sanchez says people seem to bypass events that happen around the world, unless something extreme is done.  Twenty - four hour news cycles combined with the internet providing instant information has not only desensitized Americans, but has caused them to all but ignore injustice.

“Mubarak has been a dictator for 30 years.  Once you have riots and see bleeding on the streets, then people start saying whet’s going on.  That’s what’s going on in American Libre and House Divided,” said Sanchez.  “[State governments] are now trying to pass a law changing the 14th amendment”

At least two U.S. senators have experimented with the idea of denying automatic citizenship to U.S. - born children of illegal immigrants.

GOP Senators, David Vitter of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky have introduced a measure to change the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that children born in the United States cannot become citizens unless one parent is already a citizen, legal immigrant or active member of the armed forces.

State legislators in Arizona and other states are preparing to challenge the rights to U.S. citizenship, hoping their state-by-state effort will eventually end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Currently, a child born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen regardless of whether or not their parents are U.S. citizens.

Rep. Knox (R-Montana) has proposed a bill that states a child must have at least one parent who “owes no allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.”

Knox said, “The 14th amendment was never intended to guarantee citizenship to those born here of parents who are not themselves citizens. It was never intended to create a symbolic anchor that allows parents and other family members who are not citizens themselves to pass into the country and access to our many well-intended social services.”

Opponents of the bill say the state has no right to interpret the U.S. Constitution, they also state Knox’s bill denies Montana citizenship to people who have dual citizenship.

Lawmakers in 40 states, aside from Arizona, are pursuing this bill “to correct the monumental misapplication of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” according to State Legislators for Legal Immigration.
-Ron Gould, a spokesman for SLLI says - “These folks are essentially gaming the system to put themselves ahead of the line,”

The proposed bill to end birthright citizenship suggests that the government creates a specialty birth certificate for babies whose parents can’t prove their citizenship.

Sanchez - who lives id Dayton - also argues the contrary that states such as Arizona say undocumented people cost the state billions of dollars.

“They say every day; each American household is paying 100 dollars to support an undocumented person. Then they say we will take all remittances by people sending money out of the country, but those who are undocumented will be afraid to apply”

The Cuban born Sanchez noted while lawmakers are continuing to sponsor anti-Latino legislation, it causes mistrust amongst Latino communities and their representatives, much like what has happened already in Cairo. Egypt.
“Its building: the day may come when there will be a Mubarak moment,” Sanchez said…  “They will be in Los Angelos; they will be in Miami etc.”
Though Sanchez’s novels foresee a future of division, he is optimistic.

“I hope that my novel, American Libre and House Divided) will illustrate that before it happens,” said Sanchez.  ”[Politicians} know that the areas of the country that are growing are also areas with high Latino populations.”

Reports have suggested the Internet was an important tool used by protesters in Egypt.  Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook were used to organize times, dates, and rallying cries of protest.  Cell phones were used to send text messages, video, and pictures around the world to illustrate what was actually happening in Egypt, despite the messages sent out through state television stations.

However, for an intermediate amount of time during the protest in Cairo, the internet and cell phones were shut down in the attempt to prevent information from leaving the country.

Along with technological censorship, foreign reporters from around the world were not granted access to several locations and had to report from their hotel rooms. State reporters were given ultimatums, either report what the Egyptian government says, or lose their jobs, according to news reports.

“It used to be the first thing they did was shut down the radio and newspapers,” said Sanchez who is an advertising executive by trade.

Two-thirds of Hispanics went online in 2010; primary through cell phones according to a Pew Hispanic Research study, released in Feb. 2011

The interior ministry of Egypt was reported saying dissidents “sent messages to citizens to gather in a number of mosques in the provinces during Friday prayers.”

The protesters by in large were not poor, they were not malnourished, the protestors were middle class and educated, they afforded cell phones and quality homes.  Their anger was not fueled by poverty, it was fueled by tyranny, it was fueled by the lack of representation of the people.

Arizona's latest round of legislative xenophobia

This article by University of Arizona professor Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez outlines the latest onslaught of xenophobic laws proposed by the Arizona legislature.


Arizona Refuses to Take Backseat to History

The state's rogue legislators have stepped forward to once again capture the 19th century spotlight

By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez   |   Published on LatinoLA: March 9, 2011

Sometimes columns just seem to write themselves. The world is aflame, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East, and as a result, extremist Arizona legislators seems to be getting a complex… nobody seems to be paying as much attention to them compared to just several weeks ago.  Even Wisconsin has managed to upstage the rogue Arizona legislators. Utah too. As such, the Arizona rogue legislators have stepped forward to once again capture the 19th century spotlight.

Arizona put itself on the map in 2010 for passing several bills that appear to send out the message that brown people are not welcome. The bill, SB 1070, the one that compels local police to seek out the legal status of suspects based on the nebulous concept of "reasonable suspicion," is as close to official ethnic cleansing as one can get. Because the "migra" or immigration services have long had that power, on the streets "reasonable suspicion" translates to brown skin and the use of the Spanish language.

The HB 2281 bill is an attempt to deny the teaching of Ethnic Studies in Arizona. Its first target is Tucson's highly successful Mexican American Studies K-12 program. The attack on this program amounts to cultural genocide, though many people bristle at that description. Yet, how else to describe an attempt to forcefully assimilate any population?

But all that is so 2010.

2011 in Arizona began with not simply declaring Mexican American Studies illegal – with an April 18 deadline to dismantle the program – but with a flurry of bills that make both of these bills seem Mexican-friendly.

The following will give you an example of the environment we are living – this, in the midst of a huge nationwide state-by-state budget crisis in which Mexicans always become convenient scapegoats.

Several of the bills, include:

SB 1611. This so-called omnibus immigration bill is the equivalent of a free-for all. It is a collection of all the most extreme anti-immigrant ideas under one bill. Among its many features, it prohibits students from enrolling in K-12 without proof of U.S.-birth certificates or naturalization documents. This bill goes contrary to the Plyler v. Doe 1982 Supreme Court decision. It does the same for community colleges. It also permits the state housing authority to evict all residents of a public housing unit if one of the occupants is undocumented. "Driving while undocumented" would hereafter be a crime and the driver would lose the vehicle they are driving. It also forces companies to use the voluntary E-Verify system or lose their business license.

SB 1308 and SB 1309. These bills call for the nullification of birthright citizenship, reinterpreting the 14th amendment as no longer operative in Arizona. These bills would result in the creation of two types of birth certificates; one for citizens and one for those whose citizenship of the parents cannot be proven.

Truthfully, these two bills seem to be the holy grail of the 2011 bills. The rest appear to be subterfuge. The state legislators know that even when passed, they would be automatically challenged in court. But that's the objective; if they were to succeed – via a Supreme Court decision – it would accomplish the objective of creating a larger deportable population. This is not an Arizona plan either, but the plan by many dozens of extremist legislators from throughout the United States to overturn the 14th Amendment, an amendment they claim only should have applied to the descendants of slaves.

SB 1097: This bill forces students to identify the legal status of their parents and also punishes school personnel if they don't facilitate this identification process.

SB 1490: Requires food service workers to provide proof of citizenship.

SB 1406: Authorizes the creation of a wall using private funding and inmate labor.

SB1405: Requires hospitals to check for legal documentation before accepting patients.

SCR 1006: This would proclaim, contrary to all available data, the border as lawless and crime-ridden. It would call for further militarization of the border.

SB 1117/HB 2537: This would authorize Senate President Russell Pearce and House Speaker Kirk Adams, the unlimited power to use state funds to defend SB 1070.

Aside from creating an extremist slush fund, perhaps anticipating lawsuits or other court action, legislators have also proposed two even more mind-boggling laws:

SB 1443: This legislation creates a joint 12-member legislative commission to examine which federal laws are applicable to Arizona. The commission would determine which federal laws are unconstitutional.

SCR 1010: This would exempt Arizona from international laws, most of which concern themselves with the protection of peoples' inherent, inalienable and universal human rights.

Again, this is just a small sampling of this year's bills thus far, in part compiled by Derechos Humanos, an Arizona-based human rights organization. Until the political equation is altered, we can expect a flurry of more bills that will continue to be challenged in court, while stimulating calls to once again boycott this state – seemingly the last bastion of Manifest Destiny.

Now for the bad news out of Utah… 3 more bills:

HB 497: Think Arizona and SB 1070. Same draconian racial profiling measures. For it to be implemented, it would have to survive a court challenge.

HB 116: Utah's very own Bracero Program. Would require a federal waiver. Without one, states currently cannot create their guest worker program.

HB 466: Permits Utah to enter into agreement with Mexican state of Nuevo Leon to facilitate federal migrant worker program.

These three are up for the governor's signature (or veto) next week.

The rest of the country seems to have slowed up, perhaps simply waiting for Arizona to take the lead (to exhaust its finances on defending these draconian bills in the courtroom).

The good news in all this is that Precious Knowledge, a film that documents the inspiring story of the threatened MAS-TUSD program will have its U.S. nationwide premier on March 24.

Rodriguez is a professor at the University of ArizonaFind this story online at www.latinola.com/story.php?story=9347

On the Radio Today

I will be on the radio today on KPFK in Los Angeles with the host of Strategy Session, Antonio Gonzalez.* We'll be discussing my novels and how they relate to the heated immigration debate and the often misunderstood Latino identity. Strategy Session is a widely respected, in-depth program on politics and policy. Hope you can join us.

KPFK Strategy Session

Weekly show on politics and policy

hosted by Antonio Gonzalez*

Monday, March 7, 2011

4:30pm Pacific Time - 7:30pm Eastern Time

Listen Live

Online at http://www.kpfk.org/listen-live.html

On the air in Los Angeles on KPFK 90.7 FM

*Antonio Gonzalez is President of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the largest and oldest non-partisan Latino voter participation organization in the U.S.founded in 1974.

CNN en Español interview with subtitles

Here is the English-subtitled interview on CNN en Español with anchor Juan Carlos Lopez that aired February 23, 2011 on DirectoUSA's "Latino en America" segment.



TRANSCRIPT
CNN en Español - DirectoUSA
Aired February 23, 2011

JCL:
Speaking about the experiences of many Hispanics in the nation today, we have an interesting story about an author … a marketing expert, a man who knows the United States and the Latino community and also hosts a website that documents the immigrant experience in the United States. Joining me from Los Angeles is Raul Ramos y Sanchez, the author of a trilogy of books.

Raul, let’s talk about your books. The first is America Libre. The second, which I have in my hands, is House Divided. This book paints a fascinating panorama about Hispanics and their future in the United States. Where did the idea for this trilogy arise?

RRS:
The trilogy began when I was working on a public television film that, unfortunately, I was not able to find the funding to produce. But I had a lot of research that I had gathered from professors and so I looked for another way to communicate this research. So I began with a novel. That novel took a direction completely different than the film. And that was the foundation of the books. From the beginning, I imagined it as a trilogy because I felt it was a story that would take generations to evolve.

JCL:
When one reads House Divided, your most recent book, the protagonist is Mano Suarez, a decorated military veteran who is part of the Hispanics in the United States interned inside U.S. cities and not permitted to leave because they want to create their own nation.

RRS:
Yes, the story centers on Manolo Suarez and his family. The time is the near-future, a time when many social trends we are seeing now have gotten much worse. During the course of the story, Mano changes from a decorated veteran of the U.S. Army to the point where, by the end of the first book, America Libre, Manolo has been transformed from a loyal third-generation citizen who barely speaks Spanish to a rebel with the goal of creating a Latino nation within the borders of the United States. How that type of transformation could happen is the social theme that is the foundation of the books.

JCL:
You host an Internet forum called MyImmigrationStory.com. How have your books been received and how is the debate within that forum at a time when immigration continues as a topic of discussion where many immigrants feel their support is not accurately represented.

RRS:
It’s horrible. The site gives one the opportunity to hear from immigrants in their own voices. These are people who are suffering under this immigration system that in reality does not work — it does not allow people who want to come here and who want to work, to contribute to society. Moreover, in many corners of the country these immigrants are treated like criminals and demons, which is actually quite the opposite of reality.

At the same time, I feel the image portrayed in many parts of the media is that Latino and immigrant have become the same word. For that reason, my books, America Libre and House Divided, show how that hatred directed toward undocumented immigrants could become a force for the radicalization of all Latinos. And that’s part of the story. The books imagine a future where what’s going on in the country now evolves into something similar to what’s happened with the Basques in Spain, the Balkans, the Chechens in Russia—in other words, an ethnic conflict. Because we have a situation brewing in this country that could become very similar and I want to give a warning so that it does not happen. And also show how it’s possible we could get from here to there.

JCL:
What is the next step? How does the trilogy end? And when I was reading the book, I saw this as a film. Will we see this in a movie theater?

RRS:
Well, we’re in the process to see if we can make a deal that will make that possible. The third book is called Pancho Land. That’s the name the soldiers facing the Latino rebels give them. Because all soldiers give their enemies nicknames, like Charlie in Viet Nam or Krauts for the Germans, the soldiers call the Latino insurgents Panchos. By the third book, the Panchos hold their own territory which remains in dispute. I don’t want to say more about the book. But I will say that, at the end, we find a peaceful resolution and an outcome that I hope most people would see as positive.

JCL:
Thank you, Raul. Author Raul Ramos y Sanchez joins us from Los Angeles

National TV Interview on CNN en Español Today

Nationally broadcast TV interview today

Wednesday February 23rd

6pm Eastern Time - 3pm Pacific Time

Hope you can catch my Spanish-language TV interview about HOUSE DIVIDED with anchor Juan Carlos Lopez on:

CNN en Español's DirectoUSA

It runs in a segment called "Latino en America" in the second half hour.

Where to watch:

DirecTV Channel 419

Dish Network Channel 859

Anchor Juan Carlos Lopez

An American’s Letter to Egypt

Today, I'd like to post an essay by friend Randy Rogers, songwriter, newspaper columnist, and small-town boy living in Minden, Louisiana. 

An American’s Letter to Egypt

by Randy Rogers

I hope I speak for most Americans when I say how very proud we are of you, Egypt.  Many of us watched on TV as your men, women, and children poured into the streets and, without firing a shot, fought and won your freedom from tyranny. 

We don’t have your pyramids and our culture is not as old as yours.  It was just a couple hundred years ago that we kicked out our tyrant.  It’s not been easy since then.  We’ve fought wars, home and abroad, and are still fighting them to protect ourselves and the beliefs that we hold to be self evident. 

So now that you’ve found freedom, Egypt, what do you plan to do with it?  How do you plan to protect it?  Some in your neck of the world don’t appreciate the freedoms we extend to women.  How do you plan to handle that? 

You’ll soon begin the process of writing a constitution.  When it came time to write our constitution, our founding fathers didn’t want to just give lip service to freedom.  They put it in writing. 

The preamble to our constitution begins with “We the people.”  That’s because we believe that we granted ourselves freedom first and, as long as they behave themselves, only loaned it to the government.  It was never the other way around. 

Human nature being what it is, we put in place a system of checks and balances to make sure that absolute power doesn’t corrupt absolutely.  Many an elected official has been voted out of office because, somewhere along the line, they decided to put “me” ahead of we, the people. 

Freedom cannot just be the absence of tyranny; it must exist in a climate of tolerance.  America is a nation founded on tolerance.   Believing in the notion that ours is a government of laws, and not of men, is what sustains us.

As guaranteed in the first amendment to our constitution, here are our five freedoms:

Speech – our people have the right to speak freely without government interference.

Press – our press has the right to publish news, information and opinions without government interference. 

Religion – our people have the right to practice, or not practice, any faith without government interference.

Petition – our people have the right to petition their government in favor or against any policy they see fit.

Assembly – our people have the right to peaceably gather in public, join, and associate with groups and organizations without interference from the government.

Great Britain’s Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, once said about America that you can sum up the worth of a country by seeing how many people want to get in rather than out.  For all our shortcomings, every day, people come to our country seeking a better life for their families. 

At the base of our Statue of Liberty it reads:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  She is our beacon of freedom. 

Egypt, now that you breathe free, what will serve as your beacon?  Will you lift your torch to all regardless of race, gender, creed, or color?   Will you be a nation of exclusion or tolerance? 

Congratulations, Egypt.  You now have the freedom to be either.

A Tribute for Susana Chavez

A Tribute & Memorial 

in honor of Susana Chavez

Ciudad Juarez Artist

and Activist

Saturday, February 12

7pm to 9pm

Eastside Cafe

5469 Huntington Dr. N.

Los Angeles, CA 90032

Featuring

Gloria Alvarez, endy,

Ofelia Esparza,

Consuelo Flores,

Adolfo Guzman Lopez,

& more

Followed by open mic

Please join artists and activists across the world in a solidarity protest against the injustices in Ciudad Juarez. Los Angeles poets speak out and mourn the loss of Susana Chavez, poet and Juarez activist who was tortured and murdered January 2011 in Chihuahua City, Mexico. She was the poet whose words "Ni Una Mas" are the banner activists have carried the past 17 years while seeking justice for women who have been brutalized in Ciudad Juarez. Read more here. 

Read Susanna's blog.

For info: victoriadelgadillo@yahoo.com 

Radio Interview - Pocho Hour Of Power on KPFK in Los Angeles

Nationally-syndicated cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, one of the hosts on the Pocho Hour of Power on KPFK in Los Angeles, has invited me to discuss my second novel HOUSE DIVIDED and its cautionary tale of an ethnic conflict spawned by repressive laws and right wing violence. You can listen on the air at 90.7 FM or online at the link below from anywhere. 

Friday, February 11

4PM Pacific Time - 7PM Eastern Time


LISTEN LIVE IN LOS ANGELES at 90.7 FM


LISTEN LIVE ONLINE FROM ANYWHERE

Click here

Hope you can join us!

Raul Ramos y Sanchez