Colorlines Magazine articles from January 2009

Colorlines Magazine archives from January 2009

Together, we build this dream.(EDITOR'S LETTER)(Editorial)
January 1, 2009... WE DID IT. We elected the first Black president in our country's history, and as this issue of ColorLines reaches you in January, Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. For once, Oprah's right: Hope...

The nuances of appropriation.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... While Julianne Ong Hing's rant (Sep/Oct 2008) about Rachael Ray's Dunkin Donuts advertisement getting pulled skims the racism inherent in demonizing anything Palestinian or Arab, she entirely ignores the larger deleterious effects at hand. ...

Missed a sanctuary!(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... Thank you for another great issue of Colorlines. I was surprised to see, though, that the map included in "The State of Immigrant USA" (Nov/Dec 2008) did not include Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, which definitely are sanctuary cities....

Dig deeper into environmental justice.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... I was excited to see Susan Shane's story on environmental factors that affect girls' and women's reproductive lives ("Reaching Puberty Early," July/Aug 2008). This is a topic all too often ignored by mainstream media and medical researchers,...

How I became an Obama Democrat: where: Denver, Colorado.(IN FOCUS)
January 1, 2009... I'VE BEEN A REPUBLICAN ALL MY LIFE--since Eisenhower--because it was a Democratic president that allowed me to be interned along with other Japanese families during World War II. As far as my history of political involvement, I had none. What...

Obsession with your morning news: the anti-Muslim movie gets delivered to homes and presented at military colleges.(NEWS)
January 1, 2009... AS OBAMA AND MCCAIN were squaring off in debates last fall, 28 million copies of the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West were distributed across the U.S.--primarily in swing states including Ohio, Colorado and Florida--as well...

Mental healthcare--community style: a new network highlights effective care for people of color.(NEWS)
January 1, 2009... THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE national research effort to examine the mental health of people of color found that Asian Americans, Blacks and Latinos (except for Puerto Ricans) tend to have lower rates of mental health disorders than white Americans....

World protests possible execution.(NEWS)
January 1, 2009... PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD--including Desmond Tutu and Pope Benedict XVI--have been decrying the possible execution of Troy Davis, a Black man who has spent the last 17 years on death row in Georgia. Despite new developments in his case, Davis has...

Surviving the ER.(NEWS)
January 1, 2009... IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM, your color may be a powerful predictor of your chances of coming out alive. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] That's what researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine concluded when they looked at the intersection of...

The white man's port of the future; Mississippi governor mismanages funds meant for housing recovery--again.(GULF COAST UPDATE)
January 1, 2009... LAST FALL, the Mississippi State Port Authority convened a hearing to listen to nearly 100 comments about Gov. Haley Barbour's controversial plan, ironically named "Port of the Future." The proposal would divert $600 million from rebuilding...

How multi-racial is the Washington press corps?(CHECK THE COLOR LINE)
January 1, 2009... STARTING THIS MONTH, we can look forward to daily press briefings from President Obama's administration. However, a quick scan of the latest numbers shows that the Washington press corps reporting our daily D.C. political news will be...

Texas Judge to Latina: stop having babies.(RANTS & RAVES)
January 1, 2009... In Travis County, Texas, Judge Charlie Baird ordered Felicia Salazar to not bear any more children as part of her 10-year probation in a child neglect case. Salazar, who is 20 years old and had pled guilty to not getting medical care for her...

Don't forget the Obama Bucks.(RANTS & RAVES)(Barack Obama's image on fake dollars)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... In the throes of pride over having elected our first Black president, it may be easy for some people to discount the ugly racism revealed in the run-up to Obama's win, like the antics of Diane Fedele. As president of the Chaffey Community...

Immigration Enforcement: coming to a town near you!(RANTS & RAVES)
January 1, 2009... It started last May with the Agriprocessors Inc. raid in Postville, lowa. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials there detained 398 immigrant workers in what was at the time the largest single-site operation of its kind in U.S....

Long March toward equity stalled.(RANTS & RAVES)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... A proposed bill in the U.S. Senate that would have compensated Filipino vets who served during World War II has been defeated. Filipinos were drafted for service during the war, when the Philippines was still a U.S. colony. After the war...

Ban on baggy pants ruled unconstitutional.(RANTS & RAVES)
January 1, 2009... In Riviera Beach, Florida, showing four inches of your boxers above your sagging pants could get you a $150 fine, and repeat offenders even face jail time. Seventeen-year-old Julius Hart spent a night in jail because of this law, but a Palm...

Prisons try a little tenderness.(RANTS & RAVES)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The Federal Bureau of Prisons revised its policy last October to prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in federal prisons. It has been common practice to keep women bound during transport, labor and even delivery, sometimes allowing only 18...

Sikh women sue and win.(RANTS & RAVES)(religious bias and sexual harassment)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... A store manager at the National Wholesale Liquidators chain in New York told a Sikh woman working at the store to remove her turban because she "would appear sexier without it." The woman joined eight others with similar complaints and filed a...

First Nations push out one corporation.(RANTS & RAVES)
January 1, 2009... Indigenous communities in Canada like the Haida and the Kitchenuhmayikoosib Inniuwug won a big victory against the North American newsprint and forest products giant AbitibiBowater Inc. The corporation has agreed to end logging in the territory...

Erik Camayd-Freixas: the federal court interpreter gives an insider's account of the justice system after one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history.(Q&A)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... You arrived in Postville, Iowa, Last May immediately after an immigration raid at a meatpacking plant led to the arrests of nearly 400 workers--many of them Guatemalan. How would you describe the scene? These raids are paramilitary operations....

What do we do when we win? Reflections on the election victory.(TO THE POINT)
January 1, 2009... There's freedom for all, you've heard the call... --Skull Snaps AND THE CELEBRATIONS BEGAN. From the streets of downtown Oakland to Harlem's 1-2-5, from the million gathered in Grant Park to the flash march down to the White House,...

The start of Obama's administration.(Barack Obama)
January 1, 2009... WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST REACTION WHEN YOU REALIZED WE WERE GOING TO HAVE A BLACK PRESIDENT? "I heard the news from a flight attendant on a cross-country flight back to San Francisco. The woman in front of me and I high-fived each other! I...

The innovators: activists, politicians and artists to watch in 2009.(COVER)
January 1, 2009... AS THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT is sworn into the Oval Office this month, ColorLines celebrates by turning the spotlight on activists, organizers, young politicians and artists to watch in 2009. Our innovators are answering the calls for change...

Communities foreclosed: as more Latino and Black families lose their homes, the impact spreads over neighborhoods.(FEATURE)
January 1, 2009... AS SOON AS HE TOLD HER they wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage, Ruben Loera's wife's heart clenched. She started packing away the angels and pulling down the paintings. Five months later and one step away from foreclosure, half-empty boxes...

Indian education for all; Montana leads the way as public schools begin to teach the cultures and histories of local Tribes.(FEATURE)
January 1, 2009... MARGARET PETTY'S CLASSROOM is on the first floor of the Lewis and Clark School in Missoula, Montana. Down the hall, a map covers the entire wall showing the state's seven Indian reservations, hand-drawn, with photos of members from the...

The last plantation: Black farmers are organizing to counter the racist practices of the USDA.(FEATURE)
January 1, 2009... DELORES AMASON'S FAMILY has been farming for generations. Her father, Leroy E. Harvey, was a sharecropper who bought 40 acres of farmland in Tillery, North Carolina, through a New Deal program that offered loans to help small farmers own the...

Films that celebrate community.(SPOTLIGHT: PAM HARRIS)(Land of Promise: The Story of Allensworth)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... FILMMAKER PAM HARRIS thinks it's important to cover the problems besieging the Black community, but when it came time to make her first film, "I wanted to counterbalance the pathology of Black people that's portrayed often in the media," she...

Graphic novels that heal: Artist Jaime Cortez creates visual narratives about AIDS, gun violence and immigration.(PROFILE)(Biography)
January 1, 2009... ON A SUMMER DAY in the mid-1970s, a young Jaime Cortez was working in the garlic fields of Gilroy, California, with his mother, father and older sister. An Immigration and Naturalization Service van roared onto the site, and suddenly workers...

Following the money: a new book looks at why people have to leave home.
January 1, 2009... TWO THINGS SET David Bacon's new book, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008), apart from the recent spate of books on immigration. First, it is historical and global. From the...

Farmworkers set the stage.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... "Yes, we can!" If you hear that chant, you're more likely to conjure up the image of Barack Obama than of farmworkers and the grape boycott of the 1960s and '70s. But in his new book Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle...

Interrogating pop culture.
January 1, 2009... We often brush off celebrity news as unimportant to real questions about race. However, L.A.-based writer Ernest Hardy's collection of published interviews and essays, Blood Beats: Vol. 2/The Bootleg Joints (RedBone Press), will convince you...

The minefield known as mom.(Earth Passages: Journeys Through Childhood)(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Women are obsessed with their mothers. Dear momma can be the source of annoyance, inspiration and dread. Onto them, we pin our needs, hopes and often our rage. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Labor activist and attorney Lora Jo Foo's new book...

Race Records.
January 1, 2009... N.O.H.A. Dive in Your Life (Unique Records) Based in Cologne, Germany, the multiethnic collective N.O.H.A. (Noise of Human Art) has been a staple of the European club music scene for the last 10 years. They've opened and toured...

Cash is the new Black.(OFF COLOR)
January 1, 2009... DO YOU REMEMBER that time last October when we were all bombarded with images of downward-pointing line graphs and the sounds of Jim Cramer yelling "Crash! Crash! Crash!" as the engines of capitalism came to a halt? Like many of you, I wanted...