Colorlines Magazine articles from September 2006

Colorlines Magazine archives from September 2006

An anniversary year.(temporary assistance for needy families)
September 1, 2006... THIS HAS BEEN A YEAR OF NUMEROUS MILESTONES. It's the 10-year anniversary of the passage of welfare reform. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the block grant that replaced welfare, has been extended for another five years, while...

Adoptive parents respond.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... We are white parents of adoptive African-American children and one of us has an African-American adoptive sister. It's hard to be critical of Lisa Lerner's "Becoming a Mother, Questioning Everything" in the July/August issue, since criticism...

Reader's corner.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... IN APRIL, ColorLines reader Ana Alecia Lyman received back issues of the magazine. The Peace Corps volunteer was at a conference in Mozambique, where she works as an HIV/AIDS and Gender Programming Specialist. She shared the magazines with...

Raids and rallies.(Mohammed Abdul Kahar)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... WHEN: Sunday, June 11, 2006, 2:30 p.m. WHERE: London A man prays before a demonstration in central London to protest a police raid in east London. During the raid on June 2, several hundred armed police officers descended on the...

Elections 2006.(NEWS)
September 1, 2006... RACES WORTH WATCHING THIS YEAR: NEW JERSEY: This could be the race that keeps Congress in Republican hold, according to the Washington Post. Cuban American Bob Menendez (D) might lose the Senate seat to Tom Kean Jr. (R) because of...

Setback to state-level protection for immigrants.(NEWS)
September 1, 2006... THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS NOT LET UP its pressure on state and local governments to go after noncitizens, with one of the biggest setbacks being felt in Maine ever since Governor John Baldacci gutted his state's groundbreaking executive order...

Attempts to disenfranchise voters of color.(NEWS)
September 1, 2006... ACROSS THE COUNTRY, STATE AND FEDERAL LEGISLATORS ARE DEBATING whether to require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and a photo ID when they vote. These measures would disproportionately disenfranchise people of...

Are new Orleans' schools beyond repair?(GULF COAST UPDATE)
September 1, 2006... POST-KATRINA, New Orleans has become a battleground in the national struggle over how to fix public school systems. As contentious debates about charter schools and teacher unions rage across the country, families and educators who want to...

Migrant workers caught in a race to the bottom.(GULF COAST UPDATE)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... SAKET SONI is an organizer for the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, a group of 15 local organizations and institutions that have been fighting for worker rights after Katrina. What campaign are you working on? We're working to build a...

Fall of the "Muslim atheist": Hirsi Ali's journey from Dutch politician to failed asylum seeker reveals much about Europe's retreat from multiculturalism.(Ayaan Hirsi Ali)
September 1, 2006... ON MAY 16, 2006, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch-Somali politician and one of Netherlands' most outspoken critics of Islam, nearly had her citizenship revoked by Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk. Fourteen years earlier, Ali had provided a false name...

White voters cross the aisle to elect white candidates.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Maybe Chris Rock was right when he said that white Americans love saying they'd vote for a Black candidate, but wouldn't really do it. Yale University economist Ebonya Washington analyzed voting data from congressional and gubernatorial races...

None of the above?(British imperialism and Africans)
September 1, 2006... On a standardized test for New York City high schools, students were asked to "state two ways British imperialism would benefit Africans" and "two ways the British improved the lives of Africans." The questions were supposed to test how well...

Someone please stop Nicholas Kristof.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... The self-promoting New York Times columnist can't stop writing offensive columns about his grand ideas for saving the desperate black and brown people who are suffering around the world. Kristof's white-man complex hit a low point when he...

Misappropriated legacy.(detention and deportation of immigrants)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... For nearly five years, immigrant rights activists in Detroit have been protesting the unjust detention and deportation of immigrants at the Office of Homeland Security there--in a building that was recently renamed in honor of civil rights...

Bored web surfers can patrol the border.(Rick Perry )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Texas Governor Rick Perry plans to mount live webcams on the border, so anyone online can watch for suspicious activity and report it directly to law enforcement agents. The governor is spending $5 million on his plan to turn any web surfer...

It's not illegal to look for work.(immigrants)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... While immigration policy is being debated at the national level, immigrant rights advocates are fighting local battles across the country. A federal judge forced the California city of Redondo Beach to stop arresting day laborers who the city...

Sharpton speaks to Black-Brown unity.(Al Sharpton )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Although many Black leaders and progressive Black activists uncomfortably kept their distance from the immigrant marches this year, the Rev. Al Sharpton issued an unambiguous call for African Americans to stand united with undocumented...

Not another disaster here.(Vietnamese community )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Largely invisible in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans is stepping up to make sure its voice is heard in the city's redevelopment process. The city announced plans to build a landfill for debris from the...

Sometimes they deliver.(racial and religious discrimination)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... In separate cases, employees of Alamo Car Rental and Federal Express won cases against their employers, who subjected them to racial and religious discrimination. Alamo fired a Somali employee a few months after 9/11 when she refused to remove...

Chinatown fights gentrification.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... With sky-high rents in San Francisco, low-income communities and communities of color have been pushed out of the city over the past decade. When the City College of San Francisco sought to buy property and displace residents of Chinatown,...

Maria Hinojosa: the veterana journalist shares experiences from 20 years of reporting on immigration and Latinos.(Interview)
September 1, 2006... You reported with CNN for many years and produced a great documentary about immigration. You've anchored the program LatinoUSA on National Public Radio for years, and now you're doing investigative reporting for PBS's NOW with David Brancaccio....

The welfare nanny diaries: in a debate that revolves around the needs of parents and children, the woman who meets those needs sometimes gets lost.(Cover story)
September 1, 2006... SANDRA HAD ONLY RECENTLY RECEIVED HER LICENSE to provide childcare, in 2001, when she first came across Khalid and his mother, Tanisha Watson, at the Jesse Owens Playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The park had become an afternoon...

Claim to dignity: as union organizing efforts take off, the lessons of community organizing could go a long way toward building a powerful movement of family childcare providers.
September 1, 2006... I'LL NEVER FORGET THE FIRST TIME I met Shirley Craig-head. In a voice made harsh by years of struggle and cigarettes, she outpreached any pastor as she addressed a room full of daycare providers. The spark of Shirley's oratory touched the...

The hemisphere comes to the heartland: ready or not, the next generation of movimientistas will redefine immigration politics.
September 1, 2006... AS SHE MARCHED across Milwaukee's historic 16th Street viaduct, Christine Neumann-Ortiz knew she was linking political traditions. "We chose the bridge because that's where African Americans marched for housing and other civil rights in the...

9/11, five years later.(Sarwat Husain )
September 1, 2006... TO MARK THE FIVE YEARS SINCE 9/11, we've chosen two stories that reflect the good and the bad of these times. One is about the federal government's ongoing targeting of Islamic social service agencies and charity foundations. The other story is...

Closeted violence: abuse between queer women of color stays under the radar.(FEATURE)
September 1, 2006... "ONE TIME I DEFENDED MYSELF AND THE NEIGHBORS HEARD--they called the police," says Kortney Ryan Ziegler, 25. The police came but arrested Ziegler. "I guess because I was not considered the more femme in the relationship, I was the aggressor,"...

At risk of losing your home? The rise in foreclosures has led to equity-stripping scams targeting Blacks and Latinos.(FEATURE)
September 1, 2006... SEDERIA LEWIS WAS FULL OF HOPE when she bought her first home in Antioch, California, in 1994. She was in her 30s, a Black woman who planned to grow old in her new house. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "My dream was to be able to help people,...

From wrongs to rights: as "internally displaced" people, what protection under international law is available for the victims of Katrina?
September 1, 2006... I HAVE A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH LOUISIANA. I have enjoyed the legendary hospitality I received when I lectured at the predominantly white Louisiana State University and the predominantly Black Southern University law schools, both in Baton...

Sri-Lankan art: out of the Gallery, onto the T-shirt.(SPOTLIGHT: CHAMINDIKA)(Chamindika Wanduragala)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... The work of visual artist Chamindika is populated by characters who create the unsettling sense that they are spilling out from another world. Some of their faces are weary; others are filled with maniacal joy. They look too serious to be...

Even hindsight isn't 20/20; Reflections on Jonestown: the Life and Death of Peoples Temple.
September 1, 2006... "JIM JONES WASN'T WHITE," asserts one of the Black members of Peoples Temple interviewed in a new film making headlines on the 2006 festival circuit. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is a gripping, and at times devastating...

Shake it 'til you make it: bellydancing celebrates its roots.
September 1, 2006... THE WORKSHOP TITLES DID IT FOR ME. I had to find out what Indian Bollywood Hip Hop, Kama Sutra Kitchen and Funky Egyptian Combos were all about. So this year, I spent Memorial Day weekend at the Bellydancers of Color Association's (BOCA)...

It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a Mexican! One woman's photography changes the definition and race of superheroes.
September 1, 2006... DULCE PINZON IS A PHOTOGRAPHER with a clear objective. She wants to challenge what is socially accepted and shift public consciousness. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Her recent series of photographs, The Real Story of the Superheroes,...

Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century.(We Who Are Dark: The Philosphical Foundations of Black Solidarity)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... ACHIEVING BLACKNESS: RACE, BLACK NATIONALISM, AND AFROCENTRISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY By Algernon Austin Belknap Press, 2005 WE WHO ARE DARK: THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BLACK SOLIDARITY By Tommie Shelby Verso,...

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... SPECTRUM: FROM RIGHT TO LEFT IN THE WORLD OF IDEAS By Perry Anderson Verso, 2006 OUR SHARED SENSE of the state's proper role and responsibilities is in a parlous state. After Katrina, the federal government looked to private...

Cowboy Troy.(hip hop culture )
September 1, 2006... COWBOY TROY Loco Motive (RAYBAW/Warner Brothers Nashville) TOBY KEITH White Trash With Money (Show Dog/Universal) IN AN AGE IN WHICH TECHNOLOGY is encouraging and enabling musical, cultural and political cominglings,...

Native Guns.
September 1, 2006... NATIVE GUNS Barrel Men (self-released) Native Guns have been making a name for themselves in the Los Angeles area and as activist speakers on college campuses nationwide with alternately scathing and sensitive meditations on the...

Mary Youngblood.(Dance with the Wind)(Sound recording review)
September 1, 2006... MARY YOUNGBLOOD Dance with the Wind (Silver Wave Records) Grammy recipient for 2003's Beneath The Raven Moon and multiple Native American Music Award winner--including flutist of the year in 1998 and 1999--Youngblood returns with a...

Written in the blood: my genealogical quest to untangle ancestry and heritage.
September 1, 2006... IN JUST OVER TWO YEARS OF DNA TESTING, I may have become the most genetically well-documented Black person to date. I have cajoled and convinced relatives to assist me in this quest by swabbing the inside of their cheeks in furtherance of...