Colorlines Magazine articles from July 2008

Colorlines Magazine archives from July 2008

When we're looking for answers.(Editorial)
July 1, 2008... I NEVER WANTED TO JOIN THE ARMY. But reading about the women from our cover story by journalist Michelle Chen, I understood where they were coming from. Who doesn't want to get out of poverty and have more opportunities? You see your...

Queer humor works.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... My friends showed me Ms. Anthony's recent humor articles, and I can't thank you enough for making this queer Latina feel like her voice is out there--and in such a funny and thought-provoking way. What a refreshing and multilayered take on race...

Stopping the torch: where: San Francisco, CA.(IN FOCUS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... EACH OLYMPICS BEGINS with the lighting of the torch in Olympia, Greece, and then it travels throughout the continents to finally reach its destination-in this case, Beijing in August-and commence the Games. As an international symbol, nothing...

Silicon Valley shortchanges Latino Janitors: a union campaign goes after the high-tech companies but skips race.
July 1, 2008... FOR THE PAST THREE YEARS, California-based companies like Google, Genentech and Cisco have topped Fortune's list of "100 Best Companies to Work For." Google in particular offers its employees three square organic meals a day, a sandbox to play...

Another chapter in the foreclosure crisis: cities start fighting the targeting of Black homeowners.(NEWS)
July 1, 2008... BALTIMORE FILED the first lawsuit in federal court where a city is accusing Wells Fargo, one of the nation's largest financial institutions, of predatory lending practices in violation of the Fair Housing Act. Three days after Baltimore's...

Wanted: black online users.(NEWS)(Website overview)
July 1, 2008... WHEN TIMEWARNER-OWNED Essence magazine announced plans to refashion itself as a multimedia brand with a new website, it was the fourth in a line of similar launches this year by media companies looking for Black online users. IAC/InterActive...

The psychology of a disaster: new studies consider unseen effects and access to care.
July 1, 2008... MATERIAL DEVASTATION IS OBVIOUS. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the subsequent breaking of the levees in New Orleans left us with haunting images of destroyed neighborhoods. Indeed, three years later, the imploded homes and deserted streets...

Back of the house.(CHECK THE COLOR LINE)(employers hire latinos as runners and bussers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... WHEN IT'S ALWAYS a Latino male who busses your table and sweeps the floor and a white male who takes your order--and your tips--is it merely coincidental? The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York spent the last two years canvassing...

Cut class? Get deported.(RANTS & RAVES)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... SKIPPING SCHOOL USED TO COST you a couple hours of detention and the wrath of mom, but for Winona, Texas high schoolers Brisa and Lluvia Amante, it got them deported. In February, the 17-year-old twins skipped school and went to truancy court...

Blacks hit harder by recession.(RANTS & RAVES)
July 1, 2008... WHILE THE GOVERNMENT defends its fondness for corporate bailouts-including the staggering $3.2 billion to Bear Stearns--the rest of the country is already feeling the effects of the looming recession. According to a new study from the Economic...

Somebody's been watching too much of the wire.(RANTS & RAVES)(Margaret B. Jones)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... BEFORE SHE WAS EXPOSED as a literary fraud, Margaret B. Jones, author of Love and Consequences, won critical acclaim for her memoir about life as a half-white, half-American Indian child in foster care and Crips drug runner in South Central...

American Indians to Chertoff: get off our land.(RANTS & RAVES)
July 1, 2008... AFTER TWO YEARS of protracted legal struggles, Eloisa Tamez was ordered in April by a U.S. district judge to relinquish her Rio Grande Valley land to the Department of Homeland Security as Secretary Michael Chertoff moves on plans to extend the...

No carding for immigration or gender.(RANTS & RAVES)
July 1, 2008... SAN FRANCISCO WILL BEGIN issuing municipal identification cards to city residents in August, regardless of immigration status, making it the second city to do so--New Haven, Connecticut, began offering ID cards in July 2007. Supporters have...

Cheating employers beware.(RANTS & RAVES)
July 1, 2008... THE KANSAS STATE Supreme Court ruled last year that undocumented workers are covered by a state law that doubles the amount of money an employee can collect if their boss deliberately withholds pay. Since that ruling, the Sunflower Community...

Nothing virtual here.(RANTS & RAVES)(Virtual Money)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... IMMIGRANTS WHO SEND MONEY back home to their families are familiar with the price gouging of predatory wire transfer companies. Now there will be payback. In May, the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action, better known as...

Novel about ghetto nerd nabs Pulitzer.(RANTS & RAVES)(Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... THIS YEAR, DOMINICAN AMERICAN novelist Junot Diaz became the sixth writer of color to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in the award's 60-year history for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The book is about a fat "lovesick...

Ramon Ramirez; A farmworker organizer from Oregon talks about producing radio in indigenous languages and fighting anti-immigrant policies.(Interview)
July 1, 2008... The treeplanters and farmworkers union you helped found in 1985 -- Pineros y Camesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN)-is the first in Oregon with its own radio station, Radio Movimiento: La Voz del Pueblo (KPCN-LP 96.3 FM). How are you using radio...

Kicking kids out of foster care: a federal program to help young people falls short.(TO THE POINT)
July 1, 2008... EACH YEAR APPROXIMATELY 20,000 teenagers leave the child welfare system. They do so via emancipation, which simply means that they have reached the state's age of adulthood and are being cut off from foster care with no further aid. Most...

Home from the military: a third of female veterans are women of color. Here are three of their stories.
July 1, 2008... WHEN KRISTINA MCCAULEY LOOKS BACK on her time in boot camp, one scene sticks out: she's standing in the sun as blood flows down her wrist, hoping no one will notice her among the rows of trainees chanting and brandishing bayonets. ...

When an immigrant mom gets arrested: more women-and their children-are getting trapped by the intersection of policies governing deportations, prisons and foster care.(FEATURE)
July 1, 2008... BEHIND THE THICK GLASS THAT RUNS THE LENGTH of the Yuba County Jail's visitation corridor, Tatyana Mitrohina's eyes glisten, and then fill with tears as she recounts the last time she saw her son. "During the visit, he climbed into my arms and...

Reaching puberty early: environmental factors are putting Black girls at risk.(FEATURE)
July 1, 2008... JUST AFTER MY DAUGHTER TURNED 7, she came to me and nervously announced that she had bumps on her chest. I felt beneath her nipples, and, indeed, there were prominent, hard lumps. A friend had gone through this with her 7-year-old, so my first...

A ticket to the American dream? More Mexican immigrants are buying homes, but U.S. census figures capture only a snippet of the reality.(FEATURE)
July 1, 2008... "WE ONLY LOOKED AT THE ONE. We looked at it, and we bought it," she says. She doesn't want to talk about it. It's not that she's ashamed, and it's not that she thinks it's too personal--it's that she doesn't have the words. Maricela Aragon has...

Art between nature and urbanity.(SPOTLIGHT: RUBEN OCHOA)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... IT IS RARE FOR an artistic work to enter our everyday surroundings. But the concrete urban sprawl is precisely where Ruben Ochoa's work functions best. One of his best-known works, a collection called Freeway Wall Extractions, is of...

Rehearsing revolution: performance artist Kayhan Irani on the political power of storytelling.(PROFILE)
July 1, 2008... A COLD DAY IN HARLEM finds a woman collecting signatures for yet another idealistic endeavor. She's from the Public Coalition of Improvements and Renovations, and her petition is in support of the One Manhattan Project. "We want to reunify all...

SCI-FI heroes take on the system: in two new films, Mexican and Asian-American superheroes fight racism and eco-disaster--with technology and imagination.(REVIEW)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SCI-FI FILMS AREN'T ALL ABOUT WHITE HEROES obsessed with an all-powerful conquest to stamp out invading forces threatening the glory of Western civilization. Independent, first-time feature filmmakers Alex Rivera, a...

No party crashing here: Blacks voting Republican isn't about political independence.
July 1, 2008... HIP-HOP, once a vibrant political culture, may be irredeemably corrupted by its own success. But there is still hope for the hip-hop generation, the young Americans who grew up during the culture's more inspiring years and those who came of age...

Juha: the Grooms of god.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... (Agitprop! Records) FOLLOWING THE SUCCESSFUL RE-RELEASE of his group's 2002 classic, Polari, Colin Clay retreated to the studio and reemerged with an even more sprawling, dense and kaleidoscopic take on many of the themes explored in his...

Various artists.(Krip Hop Mixtape, vol. 2: Look Past What You See)(Sound recording review)
July 1, 2008... Artist and activist Leroy Moore has built an international reputation as a passionate, articulate voice on the intersections of disability, race and sexuality and has extended this motivation to supporting the work of others through a dizzying...

The K Chronicles; Is America ready for a Canadian president?(OFF COLOR)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... TEXAS DISTRICT ATTORNEY MIKE TRENT has finally come under fire for a 2003 e-mail in which he referred to the Black people on a jury as "Canadians." No, he wasn't talking about Black people from that country. According to an online database of...