ACLU of Texas Reacts to Lethal Shooting of Unarmed Pickup Passengers

HOUSTON – ACLU of Texas Executive Director Terri Burke today called upon state officials to fully investigate the fatal shooting of unarmed persons in a moving vehicle on an open road by a Department of Public Safety (DPS) sharpshooter from overhead in a pursuit helicopter.

“If initial reports are accurate,” said Burke, “the DPS has starting executing persons who they merely suspect of the civil offense of unlawful entry into the United States.” Initial news reports indicate that a DPS sharpshooter in a helicopter responded to calls for assistance by a game warden in high speed pursuit of a motor vehicle suspected of transporting undocumented immigrants. News reports said at least two persons died in the Thursday incident which occurred near the small town of La Joya near the Texas-Mexico border in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

“We are eager to hear the facts in this case. What we know so far raises disturbing questions,” said Burke. “Why is a state game warden involved in enforcement of federal immigration law? Why is a game warden in dangerous high speed pursuit of people who were suspected of nothing more than a civil offense? And where’s the ‘public safety’ when a trooper in a helicopter opens fire on unarmed persons in a vehicle on a public road?”

Dolores Huerta, Spreading a Legacy of Love

LUPE leaders with Dolores Huerta (center) on Tuesday in McAllen. Click photo for more pictures from the event.

This week, members of the Union visited with UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta during two events planned by the Hermes Music Foundation to honor the farmworker leader’s “legacy of love.”

The Dolores Huerta Foundation and the Hermes Music Foundation have worked together to contribute to the empowerment of local communities through music, including distributing instruments to farmworker youth and promoting the CD, “Claro Que Se Puede,” which features artists like Carlos Santana, Ramon Ayala and Willie Nelson.

Dolores Huerta and Hermes Music founder Alberto Kreimerman see their work as complementing each other. Kreimerman says that Dolores Huerta and her foundation spread love and acceptance through community organizing and political awareness. And Huerta sees Kreimerman’s work spreading music as an important part of the empowerment of the communities her foundation serves.

At a press conference Tuesday, as a testament to the labor leader’s dedication to others, Huerta shared her own spotlight by recognizing the contribution of LUPE director Juanita Valdez-Cox and other LUPE members and former UFW leaders for their contribution to improvements in Texas. Under the direction of Rebecca Flores, Juanita worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers in South Texas. Her and farmworker leaders throughout the state organized for and won clean water and toilets for agricultural workers and workers’ compensation for on-the-job injuries, among other farmworker victories. Now, as director of LUPE, Juanita leads the organization’s efforts to improve living conditions for Hidalgo County’s over 150,000 colonia residents.

Huerta said that her foundation is doing work very similar to our own work with colonia residents. She said that in California there are also neighborhoods without paved roads, streetlights and proper drainage. All funds raised by her foundation go to employing organizers from low-income working class communities and training them using a grassroots organizing model. Natural leaders are developed by their participation in community projects, which they prioritize by analyzing their neighborhood and community needs.
To learn more and support the Dolores Huerta Foundation, visit their website at http://www.doloreshuerta.org/

Memorial service for immigrants who died Tuesday night in Palmview

LUPE and the Equal Voice Immigration Working Group invite you to a memorial service prayer set for tomorrow, Friday, April 13, at 10am at the site where nine immigrants died Tuesday night when the van they were in turned over during a Border Patrol pursuit.

Of the incident, the Houston Chronicle reports:

Nineteen people were crammed in the minivan that flipped as it fled from officials near Palmview in the Rio Grande Valley, the second deadly crash involving suspected smuggling this week.

On Monday, one person was killed and 17 were hospitalized in a similar rollover west of La Joya.

Even one death in the pursuit of a better life is unacceptable–nine is unbearable. If you are in the upper Valley area, please join us for a memorial service tomorrow morning at the site of the incident. The prayer will begin at 10am at the corner of Minnesota and Frontage Road in Palmview, TX.

Cumbre de Colonias will direct LUPE’s work in the coming years

LUPE members from colonias throughout the Valley are raising their voice together in LUPE’s 2012 Cumbre de Colonias. Colonia residents will meet to prioritize the issues that LUPE will tackle in the next two years.

The member convention will take place this Saturday, February 25 at 9am, at LUPE’s San Juan office, located on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Business 83. In house meetings, classes and trainings throughout January and February, LUPE members met to prioritize their top issues, formulating resolutions that, once passed, will direct the work of the organization for coming years.

At Saturday’s convention, members will pass resolutions on issues ranging from streetlights in colonias, to support for ESL and citizenship classes. The issues of LUPE members are many and the resources of our organization are limited. The resolutions will allow us to prioritize the issues that we take on as an organization. The resolutions will reaffirm the organization’s commitment in certain areas and redirect our work in others.

The Rio Grande Valley has over 1,500 colonias, with close to 200,000 residents. Colonia residents are some of the most vulnerable members of our society. They face poverty, unsafe working conditions, poor housing, and are the targets of predatory development. They have a strong voice in creating solutions to their problems, and organizing with La Union del Pueblo Entero, colonia residents learn to use their voice for positive change.

In the last year, colonia residents have brought about major victories for their communities. After an 8 year campaign calling on county officials to bring public light to their colonias, LUPE members won a commitment for streetlights in 9 Hidalgo County colonias. Seven of these colonias received installation of lights this month.

Working with the Equal Voice Network, LUPE members won $186 million in federal disaster relief funding to benefit low income and colonia residents whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Dolly. Of this, $64 million is to be used on regional drainage projects.

The direction and participation of colonia residents has been paramount for the success of these campaigns. Saturday’s Cumbre de Colonias will point us in the direction of the victories sure to come in the next few years.

LUPE creative writing

Chapbook of creative writing projects produced by LUPE members, UTPA students and LUPE staff. Click on image to open the chapbook in PDF format.

Here are a couple of pieces produced by the creative writing class, in which LUPE members participated in our Alton office this fall semester. The pieces were combined into a chapbook titled “Testimonios de Nuestra Frontera.” The chapbook can be read in its entirety here.

Analizo y pienso en por que…

Si los hombres tienen corazón para ayudar al prójimo
Si los hombres se quitan el sombrero ante una mujer
Si los hombres nos abren la puerta del automóvil
Si los hombres nos regalan flores
Porque no quieren entender la igualdad de derechos de la mujer?
En lo personal, me gustaría que en mis país, ciudad, y comunidad fuéramos un solo equipo, una sola iglesia, para que juntos pudiéramos introducir una materia en todo nivel educativo en donde se les ensene a los niños el valor de igualdad.
***
I think and wonder why…

If men have the heart to help others,
If men remove their hat before a woman,
If men open the car door for a lady,
If men give us flowers,
Why don’t they want to understand
Women have equal rights?
Personally I would like to see that in my Country, City, and Community, we are a single team, a single church, so that together we can introduce a subject matter at all levels of education where children are taught the value of equality.

Matilde Díaz

I am Adali

I am from Central American and destiny and life decided it this way. At times, certain people have not looked at me well, but this is how God decided it, I can’t do anything about that. For those who don’t know it, when a Central American enters Mexico, he is an illegal and there begins his hard life. When I entered Mexico, I was happy, but at the same time I was scared. I knew that during the trip my life would get totally hard. The further I went, my thoughts were changing and inside of me, I wished I would die or return to Honduras. I wanted to arrive in the U.S. when I took the first train; I thought I was going to die. I got on Monday; traveled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The little bit of food I had, finished on Tuesday. I went Wednesday and Thursday without eating or drinking anything. When I got off the train, I couldn’t walk. I think that if I had stayed on the train one more day, I would have died. But, I didn’t know that I still needed 11 more trains. The whole trip takes 12 trains. When I arrived here, my life changed in different ways. With pain in my heart, I had to leave my family behind, but when I got here, their life changed too. Because, now, I can give them help in the best possible way. Things have gone well for me here. I have a good job, I live well, I don’t have much, but I don’t lack the essentials. I am learning English and I know I will do it. I have a great teacher!! It is something that being here, I can achieve. For me, this is a real and beautiful experience, just to have the opportunity to be here. I have many dreams and I know I will achieve them.

Adali Rodriguez

Read the chapbook “Testimonios de Nuestra Frontera” as a PDF file here.

Drop in migrants to the U.S. shows the major role of economics in immigration

The Department of Homeland Security last week released tallies showing arrests of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border have dropped to levels not seen since the early 1970s. The statistics are a commonly used way of gauging undocumented immigration to the U.S.

While this past year has seen the passage of Arizona SB1070 copycat legislation in a handful of states, as well as a brutal deportation policy by the Obama administration resulting in over 1 million since he took office, we are also seeing the deepening effects of the economic crisis on the U.S. workforce.

While the economic indicators say that we are hovering above the cusp of a recession, the reality for U.S. workers is far worse than the indicators reveal.

The unemployment rate, which has dipped slightly in recent months, hides the increasing number of workers who have given up search for work. The unemployment rate does not include anyone who has not looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. More and more U.S. unemployed workers are giving up the search for a job, meaning their unemployment is not reflected in the official figures.

At the same time, job growth has not matched the corresponding growth in the population. The two figures combined create a grim picture for those hoping to land a job. As the Globe and Mail reports, “The work force participation rate, which peaked at 67.3 per cent in March, 2000 and 66.4 per cent in January, 2007, fell another 0.2 points in November to 64 per cent. The ranks of the long-term jobless also increased to 43 per cent of those officially unemployed.”

Further, both hourly earnings and real wages are down, meaning that, despite the employment figures, what U.S. families are taking in is decreasing. As Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, opined on PBS.org, “to some extent Americans have been substituting lower wages for lost jobs – either by accepting lower wages at their current place of employment, or getting the boot and settling for lower wages elsewhere. A job is better than no job, of course, but a job with a lower wage isn’t nearly as good as a job with at the same or better wage.”

With the overall stark economic picture for U.S. workers, it is no wonder that migration rates to the U.S. have dropped. If there are no jobs for them, migrants look for them elsewhere or resign themselves to unemployment, just like 2.6 million U.S. workers this year have done.

This shows that immigration to the U.S. is highly based on necessity–the necessity of Mexicans and other immigrants to find and keep work, to send money back to their families, and to continue getting by. When the U.S. economy slumps, there are less opportunities for immigrants to provide for their families, and they have to look for other ways to get by at home or by migrating to other countries.

Anti-immigrant commentators regularly refer to immigration reform bills, like the DREAM Act, as magnets that would encourage illegal immigration if enacted. They advocate for increased border enforcement as the solution. The real magnet, however, is the prospect of providing for ones family back home. When faced with the decision between stagnation, starvation and a slow death at home on one hand, and chancing death or incarceration crossing the border for the possibility of getting by and providing for your family on the other, anyone would choose the latter. But when chancing death and incarceration does not bring better economic opportunities in the U.S., as is the case during the deepening economic crisis we are facing, then staying or returning home is a better and safer choice for many.

The biggest tragedy in this situation is that US-backed policies that have been damaging the economies of countries where immigration originates are now showing their increasingly negative impacts on our own economy. When NAFTA was passed, it was boasted by governments on both sides of the border to be a major force in decreasing illegal immigration to the US. Yet, as Public Citizen records, “the number of annual immigrants from Mexico to the United States surged from 332,000 in 1993 (the year before NAFTA) to 530,000 in 2000 – a 60 percent increase.”

Now policies that promote deregulation and give more decision-making power to big corporations and away from the people, such as NAFTA and other Free Trade policies, are having increasingly negative economic impacts on the U.S. economy and all working people are suffering, whether first generation immigrant or 10th generation.

In order to really stem illegal immigration, in times of economic boom as well as bust, the root causes of immigration–unemployment, unequal development, and oppressive agrarian policy–must be addressed. And policies that hurt workers on both sides of the border must be ended.

Public News Service: Texas School Districts May Owe Oil Companies Millions

Texas billionaires have a collective worth of $92.8 billion. Yet the state budget crisis "forced" the state legislature to cut $15 billion from education and health care spending.

AUSTIN, Texas – Already hard-hit by more than $4 billion of state cuts, Texas school districts may have to pony up millions more to some of the nation’s largest oil refineries.

So far, 16 companies, including Valero Energy, have requested $135 million in property-tax rebates they say are owed to them for installing pollution-control devices covered by a state incentive program.

Tom “Smitty” Smith, spokesman for Public Citizen of Texas, says the controversy comes at a pivotal time for Gov. Rick Perry, who announced Tuesday he would slash both the federal Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency if elected president.

“At a time when the refining industry is making near-record profits, this is a real critical question for Gov. Perry. Are you going to stand up for the school kids, or are you going to stand up for corporate welfare for the biggest polluters in the state?”

Perry has said he trusts the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to evaluate the refund requests, but Smith says TCEQ’s members – all appointed by the governor – have a pro-corporate history. Unless there’s a public outcry, Smith fears, they will side with an industry which has donated heavily to past Perry campaigns.

“The tendency of the TCEQ is to bend over backwards and give these large corporate polluters everything they want at the expense, in this case, of the schoolchildren of Texas and the taxpayers of the state.”

Click here to read the whole story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories.

Spend Columbus Day learning about the history of genocide and colonization of the Americas

Today is Columbus Day, a day that the federal government deems worthy of celebrating. But for many people throughout the Americas, Columbus represented an end of their traditional way of life and the beginning of one of the largest waves of genocide known to mankind.

Columbus’ own writing on his first contact with the native people of what is know Haiti and the Dominican Republic speaks volumes to the intentions of the explorer:

“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus was employed by Spain, “who set its sights on colonization of foreign land in order to increase its dwindling economic and political power in Europe. Once the Americas were discovered as a land rich in natural resources and filled with expendable people, most of the European continent followed suit. In the proceeding 500 years, the indigenous population experienced genocide, colonization, slavery, and occupation, (though accompanied by an ever-existent spirit of resistance)” (1).

The rest, as they say, is history. But that history is a live and well today. Native people have lived under occupation for more than 500 years. Many migrants to the U.S. are indigenous people that have been traveling the continent along traditional migratory routs for hundreds of years. The oppression that they face has only increased through the expansion of U.S.-driven trade policy, including NAFTA and CAFTA.

NAFTA gave corporate America a free ticket to export middle-class US jobs and flooded the Mexican market with subsidized US grains, destroying the ability of small farmers to make a living off of corn production and along with it their centuries-old traditions closely attached to cultivation of the land. Without a means to compete with US-subsidized grains, indigenous and campesino Mexicans were forced to migrate north to find work.

But the history of indigenous people in the Americas overlaps with the oppression that non-indigenous people face here as well. Neoliberalism has played a major role in the current economic crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Americans now feeling the pressure that immigrants have felt for years. The Occupy Wall Street protests are “largely a result of the neoliberalization of the US economy and politics… As neoliberalism erodes the public sphere… every-day Americans are finding themselves without a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. This increasing frustration has driven people to the streets” (1).

If you know people who celebrate Columbus day, take a moment to share with them this excellent video that asks us to reconsider Columbus Day.

And learn more about the genocide of millions of indigenous people by reading the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s excellent book, A People’s History of the United States.

We met our goal!

We met our goal for the school supplies donation drive! Not only did we meet it — we surpassed it by 8 children. That means that we’ll be able to give out 58 sets of supplies at our monthly meeting this Friday!

This is an important victory for us. Every year, colonia children start school without the supplies they need to succeed. Many colonia families struggle to feed their children. Buying the school supplies they need to begin the school year on the right foot adds a new burden. Being able to provide 58 children with basic school supplies will help ease their parents’ burden as the new school year starts up.

But the victory is bigger than that. With this donation drive, our supporters came together to raise over $250 dollars in just three weeks. Because of this drive, we’ll be able to show low income parents and their children that they have support from not only LUPE supporters throughout the Valley, but as far away as California and Vermont, too. Supporters made donations as small as $5 and as much as $50, and each one of those donations came from the heart. And we’ll be able to show that support when we hand out donations this Friday.

Be sure to check back after this Friday’s meeting for pictures from the event!

Supporting educational opportunities – In your own words

Our school supplies donation drive is in full swing and we’re getting lots of good feedback! We’ll be handing out the supplies at our member meeting August 5th, so if you haven’t donated yet, make a $5 donation today.

After our first round of donations, we asked you why you donated. Here’s what you said:

Make a donation toward LUPE's school supplies drive and help colonia children start the year off on the right foot. Click here to donate now.

“The foundation of a free society lies with an educated population. The future opportunities for our youth are directly related to obtaining a good education. The young people going to school today are the future of our county. We can do no less than help in any way we can to support the efforts to educate our children. I support and will continue to support the efforts of La Union Del Pueblo Entero to help our children.”
- Joe Grebmeier, Chief of Police, Greenfield Police Department, $50 donation

“As someone who grew up poor, I can remember what it was like not to have all of the supplies I needed at my disposal. I can remember doing my homework on the kitchen table, in the middle of a noisy home, where English and Algebra had to compete with the television set in the living room, because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a desk, much less a home in which I’d have my own room to study. So I welcome the opportunity to give to those who have even less than I did when I was growing up. Now that I have achieved a reasonably comfortable lifestyle, I see it as my responsibility to give to those who have yet to find their way out of poverty. Especially children, and especially for educational purposes. Because no matter how prosperous individuals become, our future is at great risk if kids in colonias and underprivileged communities continue to lack the basic necessities. If you feel you’ve made it somewhere in life you can be proud of, donate to help bring others along with you.”
- Norma Herrera, Austin, TX, $15 donation

We’ll be distributing bags of supplies at our member meeting on August 5th. So far we’ve raised enough to give supplies to 20 children. We want to give supplies to all kids in attendance, but we can’t do it without your help.

Help us reach our goal of giving 50 children school supplies – Donate $5 or more today!

Have school supplies you’d like to donate? Bring them by one of our offices and we’ll give them out at our member meeting August 5!

And if you’d like to help distribute supplies at the meeting, come on by our San Juan office on Aug 5th at 6pm and help out!