Search Episodes (No Place Like Home)

Owen - "No Place Like Home (Live)": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/20/12
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Owen - "No Place Like Home (Live)": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/20/12
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David Ramirez - "Fires": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/16/12
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David Ramirez - "Fires": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/16/12
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David Ramirez - "Fires": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/13/12
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David Ramirez - "Fires": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist

Added 01/13/12
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Occupy Wall Street Media Team Evicted From Rented Studio, 6 Ar...

Added 01/05/12
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Occupy Wall Street Media Team Evicted From Rented Studio, 6 Arrested

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:35 01/05/12
If you had any remaining doubt that we're now living in a police state here in the U.S., what happened early this morning at the Occupy Wall Street Livestream office should make it painfully clear. Ever since September 17th, 2011 and Zuccotti Park, Global Revolution Media has been a large supplier of the media coverage has been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement both here in the U.S. and internationally, providing followers of the movement with raw video footage and keeping their viewers informed. Monitoring livestreams coming across the internet, the media team picks the best ones for rebroadcast. This small team of dedicated media broadcasters serving the Occupy movement makes finding information quick and easy, making following a plethora of events and breaking occupy news possible for followers. The Global Revolution media team operated out of a leased studio office at 13 Thames Street in Brooklyn, but continuing to do so is in doubt at this time, and the future of the operation in jeopardy. Via Liberating Flames : > Earlier this morning, Global Revolution Studios was ordered to vacate from their building by the NYPD in conjunction with the building department. It took three separate departments visiting 13 Thames to finally come up with a reason to remove the Global Revolution team with a posted notice despite having all applicable paperwork for the department of buildings in order. The reason given to me by the Global Revolution team is “A made up sprinkler condition.” Supporting this allegation of falsified conditions is that the very same building passed the same inspection standards back in 2011 in the month of November with no comments or concerns as to the buildings integrity or its sprinkler system. It’s also odd how the first floor and cellar is imminently perilous to human life, and the floors directly above are perfectly fine. Even the person living illegally in the basement is perfectly fine where he is, meaning it’s specifically the area that Global Rev occupies and nothing else. One could accurately allege that this was a direct attack against one of the major voices of the movement and considering Global Revolutions direct affiliation with the Occupy movement; has made it an obvious target for this attack on free speech. The overreaching plan of these actions has been to suppress the ability of Occupy to communicate and to share the movements’ collective stories as they unfurl. By being a nexus of streams and information, authorities are attempting to do a top-down decapitation of the movements’ media coverage by once again isolating the information to the general public. Six key members of the team were arrested at the Thames Street location, "charged with Trespass, Obstructing Governmental Administration and Resisting Arrest. They are likely to remain in jail overnight," according to Global Revolution's TV blog . “We can do all of this from laptops”—Vlad Teichberg, GlobalRevolution.TV, after the #OccupyWallStreet and international live news protest channel was evicted from its NYC base . Thames Street isn't the first home occupied by Global Revolution, and doubtful it would be it's last. In the beginning, activist Vlad Teichberg of Global Revolutiona worked in a small, dark, second-floor room in a clapped-out building on Lafayette at Bleecker. (His neighbors include the War Resisters League, the Socialist Party USA, and the Libertarian Book Club.) This is the original home office of globalrevolution.tv, which channels vérité video from occupations around the world through hosting sites such as Livestream.com . Via NYMag : > Teichberg is a 39-year-old Russian immigrant with stooped shoulders and a mop of brown hair who grew up in Rego Park and is so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer. But what makes him so interesting is that you could just as easily imagine him making a cameo in The Big Short. A math prodigy who was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist before matriculating at Princeton, he left college (temporarily) after his sophomore year and went to work for Bankers Trust, the first in a string of Wall Street gigs at firms including Deutsche Bank, Swiss Reinsurance Corp., and HSBC. And what did he do in those places? He created, modeled, and traded derivatives, including some of the first synthetic CDOs. As he told the London Times, he was “one of the people [who] built that bomb that blew up the whole economy.” Teichberg’s time in the Wall Street armament factory gave him a close-up view of everything wrong with the place: the culture of greed, the insane levels of risk, the corruption of the credit-rating agencies. “By 2001, it was obvious to me it was going to blow up,” he says, “and I wanted to be nowhere near it.” But he didn’t leave. Instead, hopping from job to job, he tried to put brakes on the process, devising new ways to value risk more accurately, only to be rebuffed by his bosses. At the same time he starting taking the money he was making on Wall Street and funding ways to undermine it. More via SuperChief : > A resident has confirmed 5 arrested, one of whom is Vlad Teichberg operator of the livestream. He also claims that police damaged camera equipment upon entering the building Tuesday afternoon. ... Residents are reporting to Superchief that they suspect the order to vacate is a targeted attack – likely towards a Global Rev organizer Vlad Teichberg, and his 4-month pregnant wife. They report that they were able to remove an 800 pound server containing their video archives and their important documents last night. Police did not specifically issue an order to vacate last night. Rather, they are enforcing a year-old order to vacate – which may or may not be selectively enforced now based on the Occupy presence in the space. Those arrested were first taken to Central Booking on Centre Street, and are now at the 90th Precinct in Brooklyn at at Union St and Montrose Avenue. Will update as more information becomes available... Update 1 : Video footage of the police arrests show that no one from Global Revolution was "resisting arrest" as claimed. Arrests begin around 4 minutes into the video, and continue until the end when with no reason given NYPD arrest 2 people who were down the street observing on the sidewalk, view here . Update 2: See the post here .

Occupy Wall Street Media Team Evicted From Rented Studio, 6 Ar...

Added 01/05/12
1 Views

Occupy Wall Street Media Team Evicted From Rented Studio, 6 Arrested

[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:35 01/05/12
If you had any remaining doubt that we're now living in a police state here in the U.S., what happened early this morning at the Occupy Wall Street Livestream office should make it painfully clear. Ever since September 17th, 2011 and Zuccotti Park, Global Revolution Media has been a large supplier of the media coverage has been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement both here in the U.S. and internationally, providing followers of the movement with raw video footage and keeping their viewers informed. Monitoring livestreams coming across the internet, the media team picks the best ones for rebroadcast. This small team of dedicated media broadcasters serving the Occupy movement makes finding information quick and easy, making following a plethora of events and breaking occupy news possible for followers. The Global Revolution media team operated out of a leased studio office at 13 Thames Street in Brooklyn, but continuing to do so is in doubt at this time, and the future of the operation in jeopardy. Via Liberating Flames : > Earlier this morning, Global Revolution Studios was ordered to vacate from their building by the NYPD in conjunction with the building department. It took three separate departments visiting 13 Thames to finally come up with a reason to remove the Global Revolution team with a posted notice despite having all applicable paperwork for the department of buildings in order. The reason given to me by the Global Revolution team is “A made up sprinkler condition.” Supporting this allegation of falsified conditions is that the very same building passed the same inspection standards back in 2011 in the month of November with no comments or concerns as to the buildings integrity or its sprinkler system. It’s also odd how the first floor and cellar is imminently perilous to human life, and the floors directly above are perfectly fine. Even the person living illegally in the basement is perfectly fine where he is, meaning it’s specifically the area that Global Rev occupies and nothing else. One could accurately allege that this was a direct attack against one of the major voices of the movement and considering Global Revolutions direct affiliation with the Occupy movement; has made it an obvious target for this attack on free speech. The overreaching plan of these actions has been to suppress the ability of Occupy to communicate and to share the movements’ collective stories as they unfurl. By being a nexus of streams and information, authorities are attempting to do a top-down decapitation of the movements’ media coverage by once again isolating the information to the general public. Six key members of the team were arrested at the Thames Street location, "charged with Trespass, Obstructing Governmental Administration and Resisting Arrest. They are likely to remain in jail overnight," according to Global Revolution's TV blog . “We can do all of this from laptops”—Vlad Teichberg, GlobalRevolution.TV, after the #OccupyWallStreet and international live news protest channel was evicted from its NYC base . Thames Street isn't the first home occupied by Global Revolution, and doubtful it would be it's last. In the beginning, activist Vlad Teichberg of Global Revolutiona worked in a small, dark, second-floor room in a clapped-out building on Lafayette at Bleecker. (His neighbors include the War Resisters League, the Socialist Party USA, and the Libertarian Book Club.) This is the original home office of globalrevolution.tv, which channels vérité video from occupations around the world through hosting sites such as Livestream.com . Via NYMag : > Teichberg is a 39-year-old Russian immigrant with stooped shoulders and a mop of brown hair who grew up in Rego Park and is so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer. But what makes him so interesting is that you could just as easily imagine him making a cameo in The Big Short. A math prodigy who was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist before matriculating at Princeton, he left college (temporarily) after his sophomore year and went to work for Bankers Trust, the first in a string of Wall Street gigs at firms including Deutsche Bank, Swiss Reinsurance Corp., and HSBC. And what did he do in those places? He created, modeled, and traded derivatives, including some of the first synthetic CDOs. As he told the London Times, he was “one of the people [who] built that bomb that blew up the whole economy.” Teichberg’s time in the Wall Street armament factory gave him a close-up view of everything wrong with the place: the culture of greed, the insane levels of risk, the corruption of the credit-rating agencies. “By 2001, it was obvious to me it was going to blow up,” he says, “and I wanted to be nowhere near it.” But he didn’t leave. Instead, hopping from job to job, he tried to put brakes on the process, devising new ways to value risk more accurately, only to be rebuffed by his bosses. At the same time he starting taking the money he was making on Wall Street and funding ways to undermine it. More via SuperChief : > A resident has confirmed 5 arrested, one of whom is Vlad Teichberg operator of the livestream. He also claims that police damaged camera equipment upon entering the building Tuesday afternoon. ... Residents are reporting to Superchief that they suspect the order to vacate is a targeted attack – likely towards a Global Rev organizer Vlad Teichberg, and his 4-month pregnant wife. They report that they were able to remove an 800 pound server containing their video archives and their important documents last night. Police did not specifically issue an order to vacate last night. Rather, they are enforcing a year-old order to vacate – which may or may not be selectively enforced now based on the Occupy presence in the space. Those arrested were first taken to Central Booking on Centre Street, and are now at the 90th Precinct in Brooklyn at at Union St and Montrose Avenue. Will update as more information becomes available... Update 1 : Video footage of the police arrests show that no one from Global Revolution was "resisting arrest" as claimed. Arrests begin around 4 minutes into the video, and continue until the end when with no reason given NYPD arrest 2 people who were down the street observing on the sidewalk, view here . Update 2: See the post here .

Havel the Dissident: A Legacy Worth Claiming

Added 12/19/11
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Havel the Dissident: A Legacy Worth Claiming

[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 20:00:00 12/19/11
Former President Havel addresses a European cultural congress on the economics of culture On a warm evening in 1991, a colleague and I found an out-of-the-way café in the old part of Prague. Two men with blank expressions stood outside. The interior was dim and close, with room for only eight or nine tables. The place was almost empty. Just a sleepy waitress, a bartender polishing glasses, and a single patron who sat alone drinking wine and chain-smoking cigarettes. The President of Czechoslovakia wasn't reviewing official papers. He was reading a book, a startlingly un-Presidential act to our American eyes. My companion, a neoconservative State Department official, already admired him for defying and defeating a Communist state. He'd impressed me by bringing a writer's sensibility and an affinity for true underground culture to his role as head of state. Václav Havel even tried to appoint Frank Zappa as his Minister of Culture. "We're not rock musicians," Zappa told a reporter back in the sixties. "We're electronic social workers." The State Department wouldn't let Zappa assume the post, but Havel had made his point to the Czech public by offering this apparatchik's position to the composer of songs like "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?" ("Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind .") We never spoke to Havel that night. It didn't seem polite to offer anything more than the curt nod of acknowledgement any café patron gives another at that hour. But Havel spoke to us, to all of us. And on the occasion of his death, the real lessons of his life's work are in danger of being lost. Today we're told that the Occupy movement is too idealistic, too naïve. Naïve? Try Havel's words if you want naïve: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred." Think of that as the Velvet Revolution's "one demand." Portrait of the President as a Young Freak As millions of people know, the underground playwright Havel first made his political mark in Charter 77. That group was formed to defend the Plastic People of the Universe, a banned and imprisoned rock band working in the Zappa mold of musical dissonance and cultural dissidence. The Occupy movement is not on the cultural fringe, despite what its detractors say. But Havel's movement began as a Yippie-like creature of the underworld. Charter 77 rarely had more than a thousand members. It was a strange blend of political idealism and the hippie subculture where people proudly labeled themselves "freaks" to the conventional world. Despite its later alignment with economically conservative forces, it was more Allen Ginsburg than Alan Greenspan. And it was created to defend the Plastic People of the Universe, whose grating music makes Occupy's drum circles seem like a children's choir serenading the bored residents of a home for aging veterans. Words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité - what wonderful words! And how terrifying their meaning can be! Freedom in the shirt unbuttoned before execution. Equality in the constant speed of the guillotine's fall on different necks. Fraternity in some dubious paradise ... Havel addressed the liberal democratic West on words in the 1970s, noting that the suppression of speech can give language enormous power: > I ... live in a country where a writers' congress speech is capable of shaking the system ... a manifesto served as one of the pretexts for the invasion of our country one night by five foreign armies ... a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions. When a system has become inflexible and is in danger of collapsing, what it fears most is words. Think about that the next time you see a phalanx of cops tear down a tent city on television. Havel had been burned by language, too: > The same word can at one moment radiate great hope, at another it can emit lethal rays ... true at one moment and false the next, at one moment illuminating, at another, deceptive. On one occasion it can open up glorious horizons, on another, it can lay down the tracks to an entire archipelago of concentration camps. And as we approach an election year that will be filled with the rhetoric of freedom, this observation still resonates: > The same word can at one time be the cornerstone of peace, while at another time machine-gun fire resounds in its every syllable. Control In 1975 Havel had the presumption to write directly to Czechoslovakian head of state Gustáv Husák with a few suggestions. There's more than a passing resemblance between the fear-driven Communist society Havel condemned in that letter and the financial anxiety many Americans endure today: > The technique of existential pressure is ... universal. There is no one in our country who is not, in a broad sense, existentially vulnerable. Everyone has something to lose and so everyone has reason to be afraid. The range of things one can lose is broad, extending from the manifold privileges of the ruling caste... down to the mere possibility of living in that limited degree of legal certainty available to other citizens. Today, one out of two Americans lives in financial insecurity. Even many upper-middle-class citizens live from month to month, just one layoff notice away from medical bankruptcy or home foreclosure. "Everyone has something to lose," observed Havel. Havel's description of his 20th Century Communist society echoes our own: > The more completely one abandons any hope of general reform, any interest in suprapersonal goals and values, or any chance of exercising influence in an 'outward' direction, the more one's energy is diverted in the direction of least resistance, that is, 'inwards.'" People today are preoccupied far more with themselves ... They fill their homes with all kinds of appliances and pretty things, they try to improve their accommodations, they try to make life pleasant for themselves, building cottages, looking after their cars, taking more interest in food and clothing and domestic comfort ...They turn their main attention to the material aspects of their private lives. Havel concluded that "Despair leads to apathy, apathy to conformity, and conformity to routine (political) performance - which is then quoted as evidence of 'mass political involvement.'" Ambition Havel understood the psychology of greed and power, too. From his letter to Husák: > If it is fear which lies behind people's defensive attempts to preserve what they have, it becomes increasingly apparent that the chief impulses for their aggressive efforts to win what they do not yet possess are selfishness and careerism. It is not surprising that so many public and influential positions are occupied more than ever before by notorious careerists, opportunists, charlatans, and men of dubious record. From Prague to Washington, from Moscow to lower Manhattan, the opportunities change. But human nature never does: > Seldom in recent times has a social system offered scope so openly and so brazenly to people willing to support anything as long as it brings them some advantage; to unprincipled and spineless men, prepared to do anything in their craving for power and personal gain; to born lackeys, ready for any humiliation and willing at all times to sacrifice their neighbors' and their own honor for a chance to ingratiate themselves with those in power. Technocracy It's a historical irony that those who claim they'll govern with the most efficiency usually wind up governing with the least effectiveness. Today corporate-funded politicians from both parties argue that the country should be led by "technocrats' who'll govern without messy "ideologies." That's a false premise Havel knew well. He called it the "process by which power becomes anonymous and depersonalized, reduced to a mere technology of rule and manipulation." Washington's technocratic "bipartisans" dream of a world where, in Havel's words, the "professional ruler is (seen as) the 'innocent' tool of an 'innocent' anonymous power ... legitimized by science, cybernetics, ideology, law, abstraction, and objectivity - that is, by everything except personal responsibility to human beings as persons and neighbors." Havel's Prague is our Beltway: > States grow ever more machinelike; people are transformed into statistical choruses of voters, producers, consumers, patients, tourists, or soldiers, (where) in politics good and evil, categories of the natural world and therefore obsolete remnants of the past, lose all absolute meaning (and where) the sole method of politics is quantifiable success. Havel condemned a system of state-orchestrated political theater, and the self-perpetuating failures of imagination which mistook the indifferent and pro forma participation of its citizens for genuine democracy. And he saw its universal nature: > (It) has a thousand masks, variants, and expressions. Essentially, though, it is the same universal trend ... the essential trait of all modern civilization, growing directly from its spiritual structure, rooted in it by a thousand tangled tendrils and inseparable even in thought from its technological nature, its mass characteristics, and its consumer orientation. "The contemporary concept of 'normal' behavior is," Havel wrote, "deeply pessimistic." Responsibility "I favor 'antipolitical politics,'" said Havel, "politics not as the technology of power and manipulation, of cybernetic rule over humans or as the art of the utilitarian, but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives, of protecting them and serving them." > I favor politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow humans. None of us--as an individual--can save the world as a whole, but . . . each of us must behave as though it were in his power to do so. Decades later he said this to the leaders of Western countries: > Today, more than ever before in the history of mankind, everything is interrelated ... Because of this, the future of the United States or the European Union is being decided in suffering Sarajevo or Mostar, in the plundered Brazilian rain forests, in the wretched poverty of Bangladesh or Somalia. Havel had glaring faults. American neocons offered him small favors during his final rise to power. He reciprocated, consciously or unconsciously, by aiding their destructive military ventures and adopting their foolish economic policies. He succumbed to the politics of personality, both his own and those of the leaders who courted him. But it would be a shame if that's all the world remembered. Havel seemed unhappy in the role of leader. It's possible than he lost sight of his deepest insights, his truest gifts. It was the outsider Havel, the dreamer of the impossible, the surrealist and absurdist, we should remember. That's the Havel who can and should inspire dissidents everywhere. "Is the human word truly powerful enough to change the world and influence history?" he once asked. With his life and his words, Václav Havel gave us his answer. He showed us the power in each individual and the responsibility that accompanies that power. At his best, and above all else, Havel was a dissident outsider who realized his power and used it. Now it's our turn.

AFL-CIO Launches 'Share Your Story' To Document Unemployment C...

Added 12/07/11
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AFL-CIO Launches 'Share Your Story' To Document Unemployment Crisis

[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:23 12/07/11
The AFL-CIO launched a new website on Tuesday designed to capture the stories of the unemployed in their own words. The website, Share Your Story allows site visitors to upload their stories and pictures to the site, providing a human face to the issue of unemployment, which politicians talk a lot about, but don't seem nearly as interested in doing something about. Many of the stories on the site are like those of Pat from San Jose: > I was a Communications worker for just under 20 years. After I was "surplused" in 1995 I went to work at a non-union job in the same industry which later became Worldcom followed by positions in two other companies. After the dot com bust in 2001, finding a full time job was hopeless. Apparently the rules had changed and I did not have the education to continue doing the work I had done for 25 years. The past 10 1/2 years have held sporadic, temporary and part time positions, most in retail which paid very little and I have now been unemployed for about a year. This track record, along with the fact that I am now 61 years old doesn't offer much for a resume. My thought is to apply for Social Security (a real oxymoron) if the powers that be will allow it. My retirement fund has all but vanished in the wake of what has happened. I don't know what plan the 1% has for us--maybe they expect that we will simply vanish the way our money did on Wall Street. Janet from Texas questions the whole system: > I have two masters degree and am all but dissertation for a doctrate in social work. I worked, consistently for the first 30 years of my adulthood and am now unemployed. I am living with friends because I cannot get unemployment. I cannot get unemployment because I quit my last job. I quit my last job because they were not paying me. I am suffering, in chronic pain, because I have no health care coverage. I am substitute teaching to try to cover my expenses so if a permanent job comes through, I will still have a car to get there. My question to you, as I stand in front of a classroom of young people: I am supposed to tell them to get a high school degree and go on to college because...............why? She is far from alone in being a hard-working person who played by the rules and was still left out in the cold by the system. Even more heartbreaking are stories like that of Marge from Illinois: > I am writing to say what a profound negative impact joblessness has on a family. My son in law is in the building trades industry. Due to lack of activity he has been laid off for the last two years almost as much as he has worked. This has placed much stress on their young family and marriage. In fact the stress has gotten to the point where my son in law is back to drinking heavily which has led to their separation. I might add that they have two young sons. One is six weeks old. So I have a very strong opinion that we need to do what it takes to extend unemployment benefits. What will families do if they have absolutely NO income? And more than that we need to get the economy back on track. What is wrong with Congress that they are more concerned about seeing someone fail or getting their way than to look out for the good of the people who elected them? I am still hopeful that those members of Congress who have real values will stand firm and do what's right! AFL-CIO's release urges everyone to participate: > You need to check out this website, right now. It’s a powerful reminder of the real faces behind America’s sobering unemployment statistics. It has real pictures and stories from job-hunters and impacted people from all walks of life—from your state and from every state. I hope you’ll take a minute to look at these powerful stories, share them and add your own. If Congress fails to act by Dec. 31, extended unemployment insurance will expire for millions. We never forget these are real people who face the prospect of going hungry and getting thrown out of their homes soon after the holidays if Congress fails to act. Many of us have been there before—or have friends and family who have. Even though obstructionists in Congress are willing to ignore our joblessness crisis, we refuse to let these stories get brushed under the rug. Click here to see and share the stories and faces behind America’s joblessness crisis. Then, share our website on Facebook and Twitter and forward this message to all your friends. These stories and pictures won’t just live on a website. We’ll share them with the media, hand-deliver them to Congress during our massive day of action on Dec. 8 and promote them widely on the Internet. If callous members of Congress think they can sit back and allow unemployment aid to expire while they play political games, they’re wrong. With your help we’re going to force them to see this crisis head-on—with real faces of real people who are jobless and struggling in this brutal economy. See these stories, share them and add your voice. In Solidarity, Manny Herrmann Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO P.S. It’s not just people who are unemployed right now who have stories to tell. Millions of others do, too. Maybe you’ve been jobless in the past and relied on unemployment benefits to get through. Or you’ve seen firsthand how much unemployment hurts your community and America—and how much unemployment aid helps. Or maybe you can write a brief statement of support for the jobless or urge Congress to act—even in just one to two sentences. Together, we’re creating a visual display of the impact of unemployment that will be too powerful to ignore. See and share stories and statements in your state and across America. Then, add your own.

What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

Added 12/06/11
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What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:01 12/06/11
Amy Goodman reports on "Occupy Our Homes" for Democracy Now This week 60 Minutes gave viewers a good look at some of the widespread criminality that created the Wall Street mortgage boom and led to our ongoing financial crisis. They also saw some of the overwhelming evidence of illegal activity on the part of big banks, and were reminded that none of those banks' executives have been prosecuted. As ugly as the situation is, there is some logic behind the government's actions - and its inactions. They're acting on a tragically incorrect (but internally coherent) set of assumptions that can be summed up in one sentence. It goes something like this: "To preserve the health of the American economy, banks must be allowed to keep preying on their consumers." That's it. That's the logic. But there are two exciting "Occupy" developments this week that could change the equation - "Take Back the Capitol" in the District of Columbia, and Tuesday's "Occupy Our Homes" events around the country. Think of them as complementary actions: One is taking place at the site of our greatest government power. The other is bringing the action to homes where people have been victimized by bankers. People may not realize it, but there's power in those homes, too. The Logic of Injustice Despite their destructive behavior, the people who bailed bankers out and are giving them a free pass for their crimes aren't necessarily evil or corrupt. Well, okay, people like this guy are. But others have merely been so infected by misguided economic thinking that they really believe that the only way to save the economy is to keep shafting consumers and pampering mega-bankers. The thinking goes something like this: Our largest banks are too big to fail, and since we lack the will or the motivation to break them up or regulate them we must protect them at all costs. We've propped them up with TARP, quantitative easing, and $7.7 trillion in secret Federal Reserve loans, but they're still shaky as hell. If we prosecute any of their executives, their stock prices will fall and they'll collapse again. And they'll take the entire economic system with them. That leads to some grotesque miscarriages of justice. Nobody at Wells Fargo has been indicted for money laundering, for example, despite the fact that the bank has paid millions to settle charges of laundering cash for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered more than 35,000 people. As an experienced bank investigator working for the Senate observed, "There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure." The Bailout Nobody Knows And banks don't just need protection from their own criminality. They also need protection from their own lousy management. Their balance sheets are filled with toxic risks from their long run of incompetence, negligence, and greed. That's where you and I come in. Some powerful folks are afraid the banks will fail if they're forced to write off the bad loans on their books, or to stop profiting from loans sold deceptively or irresponsibly. TARP may be over, but there's another massive bank rescue going on. Who's funding it? We are. Every time we pay a usurious interest fee on a credit card, we're propping up the banks. Every time we make another month's payment on an underwater mortgage, we're propping them up too. Every time we pay an overpriced consumer loan of any kind, we're making another payment into the consumer-funded bailout that's keeping the big banks afloat. It would be great if politicians in Washington stopped using American consumers to subsidize banks that shouldn't even exist. But they haven't. That's where "Occupy Our Homes" comes in. Occupy Our Homes Tuesday, December 6, has been declared a National Day of Action to Occupy Our Homes . Its goal is to focus attention on the corrupt banking practices that led to the mortgage boom and today's ongoing economic misery for most of the 99 percent. It's also a day for helping people in our communities who have been victimized by predatory lending, criminal bank forgery, unfair or illegal foreclosure practices, and other bank abuses that victimize the public. Occupy Minnesota has already occupied an illegally-foreclosed home, and plans to do the same thing with another home tomorrow. Here in Los Angeles, where an inspiring victory has already taken place, OccupyLA will help two brave families re-occupy their illegally foreclosed homes . One of those homes belongs to a three-earner family that includes a gainfully employed woman with cerebral palsy named Ana Wison. Ana's household clearly seems capable of making its mortgage payments, but her bank's foreclosing anyway. And in one of ironies that have become all too common, the bank in quesion is none other than that Mexican drug cartel money-laundering outfit, Wells Fargo. The Occupy movement hopes to focus the public's attention on people like Ana Wison. In the words of the Dylan song : "Things should start to get interesting right around now." Demonizing the Victim Resisting illegal foreclosures is a good first step. It brings attention to Wall Street's criminality, venality, and plain old inhumanity toward the people they call their"customers" - but treat like serfs. It does something else important: It counteracts the brainwashing, driven by Wall Street and dutifully echoed by the media, which has demonized the victims of bank misbehavior. (We were trying to fight that brainwashing back in 2008, without much luck.) The Occupy movement has already won several battles in that war. If the public's attention can now be focused on people like Ana Wison, that can be a powerful blow against the Wall Street/corporate media "they deserve it" hype. What about the millions of people who have suffered because of the banks' predatory mortgage lending but aren't behind in payments or in the foreclosure process? We need to re-open the debate about the fairness of forcing any underwater homeowners to pay underwater principal on homes that their banks knew, or should have known, were going to decrease in value. After all, the same conglomeration of banks and corporate media that demonize homeowners as "greedy" and "irresponsible" spent most of the last twenty years convincing people that real estate was a sure-fire investment. Banks made an extraordinary amount of money off the bubble they created. The total mortgage amount outstanding in this country went from $6.2 trillion in 2002 to $11.9 trillion in 2009, a meteoric rise. And while banks feed off the Federal Reserve's unusually low rates, they've renegotiating very few home loans. Consumers also owe nearly three quarter of a trillion dollars in credit card debt, much of it being paid at unconscionable rates of 12 percent to 29 percent - while their banks enjoy rates from 0 percent to 3 percent, thanks to the government institutions created by those same consumers. Occupy Our Homes. Occupy Our Credit Cards. Occupy Our Payday Lending ... What will happen if consumers stopped blaming themselves? What if they demanded that the banks take responsibility for their irresponsible and/or predatory lending? What if they refused to stop this country's perverse economic role reversal, where customers have become the ATMs while banks keep making the withdrawals? If 10% of America's homeowners declared a mortgage strike it would rock the banking world. If everybody paying exorbitant credit card interest declared a moratorium on payments all at once, Wall Street would change forever. Think about it: "Occupy ALL Our Homes." "Occupy Our Credit Cards ... Our Payday Loans ... Our Buy-and-Drive Loans ..." I'm not saying these are necessarily the right tactics, although they very well may be. But what's most important is that we understand that consumers have far more power than we usually realize - provided we act together. Many of Washington's leaders will cringe at the thought, of course. "That could hurt our biggest banks," they say. It would be tempting to reply, You say that like it's a bad thing. Here's a better response: Then start planning to break them up in an orderly fashion. We're done living a life of indentured servitude just so we can subsidize their greed. Those are the discussions that we should be having. If powerful people on Wall Street and in Washington aren't worried about Occupy Our Homes , they're not paying attention. But with any luck, they soon will. ______________________ (If you've been a victim of mortgage abuse you can tell your story here . If you want to find an Occupy Our Homes event near you, you can look for one here .)

How to Thrift Store Shop for clothing:

Added 12/02/11
11 Views

How to Thrift Store Shop for clothing:

[LESS INFO] 11 VIEWS | ADDED 02:35:59 12/02/11
FACT: Thrifting can be overwhelming: > What store do I chose? Once inside, where do I start? When should I go? Do I need cash? Because those thoughts can flood your brain, its understandable why many of you just don’t do it all. BUT if you don’t do it all, then you are missing out on a really invigorating shopping experience. I like to think of it as treasure hunting. Every time I go to a thrift store I walk away with an amazing, unexpected find, at a remarkably bargain of a price. Best of all…it’s recycling! > I started thrifting because I love fashion, but could never afford (without going into debt) to buy trendy and designer clothing. I learned from an old friend who was a fashion stylist and another friend who used to work at a thrift store how to navigate them successfully. Step#1: Before you even go into a thrift store you need to establish why you are going. (At least if you are a newbie.) This will prevent the feeling of being overwhelmed and frustrated. The best way to do that is to list what you need. If I don’t have something in particular that I am looking for, like a brown cardigan or sequins dress, then my strategy is to hit up certain things that I know that I will always need, like flowy work blouses. > Here’s my personal l ist of things that I always check when shopping at a thrift store: Leather Sequins Jewelry Dresses Blouses But I do recommend that you skip out on buying lingerie, bathing suits…you know items that get really personal. Step#2 Research thrift stores in your area. Each one offers something different. I categorize the in three ways: pure thrift, general thrift, and boutique thrift. Pure Thrift: usually bigger, warehouse stores. Sorted only by sections like women’s blouse and men’s blazers. And also sorted by colors. Some even just have big piles of clothes that you have to dig through. They are generally not sorted by brands or quality, so this is where you really can treasure hunt and really find “gold.” This type of thrift store is my preference. I find top brand names, clothing with tags on it, etc. Because they are minimally sorted, the prices are usually the cheapest. But you have to thoroughly check for quality, flaws, weird stains, etc. In the Southeast, Value Village is the best example. Also, oodwill Warehouse’s (not to be confused with standard Goodwill Stores) Other thrift stores are sorted a little more. I call these general thrift stores. You are familiar with their names mostly because of the charity they serve. These places have less selection and the prices can be about 100 percent higher and are conting ent on the brand name. Meaning, a dress that cost $4 at Value Village can cost anywhere between $5 and $10 depending on the brand name. Examples of these thrift stores are Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Next we have boutique thrift stores. Usually, these places also offer consignment items. (*Stay tuned for post on how to shop and sell at consignment stores.) Wanna know how the owners of these stores stock their shelves? They basically shop Pure Thrift Stores (see above). These stores don’t take donations unless they are top label brand names in mint condition, and most of the time, if it’s in that’s the case, they will either flat out buy it or co nsign it for you. So for all of their work, you can expect, cha-ching, higher prices for second-hand clothing. In your area, you can google “boutique or designer thrift store”. Consignment usually comes up next to the stores, but I just explained why above. Step#3 Once you determine which store type (see Step#2), research the nuances about that store. Does it have sale days? Does it open early? Is there a day that they get fresh shipment and stock the shelves? Do they have dressing rooms? Doing these extra steps will help you save more money and have an efficient shopping trip. More tips before you enter: * If you can, go early. Some thrift stores open as early at 7:30 am. * If possible, choose a sale day or a restocking day. * Dress comfortable…so you can easily try on clothes. *Even if there are no dressing rooms, if you wear comfortable clothes you can easily throw on items in the isle, run to the mirror to see if works for you. * E xpect to spend a couple of hours shopping, at least. Prepare for that. * Do you shop with friend? *I personally do better alone. I need to concentrate. If with friend, make sure they know the time that it will take. Also, what’s their purpose: to help dig or be second eye. Make sure you know because it’s not a typical shopping trip. Now, you’re ready to go inside. Step#4 Once inside: 1. Get cart if you can. 2. Pick a section…for newbies, I say look for just try two. For example, long skirts and blazers. 3. Then go through that section piece by piece. Touch them all! As you get better, you’ll go faster, and take on more sections. Remember you’re digging for treasures, and the best treasures are usually hidden. So dig, dig, dig! 4. Try on and make sure you like the looks you’ve selected. If you’re going vintage, are the sleeves from the ‘80’s? Do you like the look after all when it’s on your body? Is the number size that you know fits you too small after all? Is it ill-fitting? Can it be tailored? Trying on clothes is essential, especially in a thrift store . Again, if you don’t like it when you get home, you know that you won’t wear it and it will just eventually be donated back. Now, let me dispel a myth. “It’s a thrift store, so I shouldn’t have high expectations on quality and condition.” Absolutely not! Why would anyone ever want to put on trash? You don’t have to settle for that. I only buy things that are perfect for what I need at thrift stores. If it’s not, I put it back. You don’t have to resolve for less than wonderful: bad stains, tears, smells, etc. Now, if it is something you really love, like a great leather coat and you think that you can work with the imperfection, then buy it. You have to weigh the blemish to see if it is fixable, cleanable or mendable…or if it is something that you can live with. If it is something that you can fix, how easy is that challenge? Do you want to send it to a tailor? Well then how much will that cost you? Weigh the costs, if it’s not worth it, then leave it alone! Walk away. You won’t wear it and will end up donating it back. > My example: I am pretty handy with sewing simple projects, but I happened upon a sequins dress made in the ‘80’s. I almost passed on it, but a friend that was with me said…”You better not.” Now that I think about it, I should’ve bought all the sequins I saw that day…and there was a lot. I got the dress for $5. I spent $50 to shorten the hem. It was worth it, because sequins is impossible for the novice to work with, and I didn’t want to ruin the dress. The dress was my New Years Eve dress and it was amazing! With that… Thirft stores are great places you can take fashion risks , with minimal costs and potential loss. You can pull an inspiration outfit online or just happen upon something funky. Buy it and work with it at home. If it doesn’t work out…oh well…it only cost you a few bucks, right? Now it’s time to donate it back. My thing is that I love to repurpose outfits. Many of my shopping trips have been just to pick up things to repurpose. I may like the texture (leather), or the pattern of a dress (but plan to turn it into a blouse), I may find a dress but it’s too long, so I’ll shorten the hem; the same with sleeves. *Stay tuned for upcoming posts and videos on how to repurpose things. For families... Probably the best secret is taking advantage of thrift stores. Little kids, especially babies, get very little wear out of their c lothing. So scour the thrift stores for everything from packaged onesies to baby formal wear. You can find designer jeans and many things with tags still on. Now that you have your big bag of goods. Next…what to when you get home…. *Check my thrift store challenge video on my show Charlotte Today.

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

Added 11/29/11
3 Views

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 20:00:43 11/29/11
Remember when President Bush forgot to thank God in his 2008 Thanksgiving address? Neither do the conservatives now apoplectic that Barack Obama's 2011 remarks contained no reference to the Almighty. Nevertheless, the usual suspects on the right are frothing at the mouth over the perceived slight from the man many still pretend is a secret Muslim . As Americans were still eating their turkey on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times served as the dutiful stenographer for the Twitter vitriol: > But Thursday morning, Republicans and others tweeted their discontent with the reported omission of God from Obama's address. > Comments included "So sad!" and "God help us!" Republicans Abroad retweeted the Fox News headline: "Obama Leaves God Out of Thanksgiving Address." > "To give thanks for luck is to deny God much less omit!" tweeted "PastorJeffBrown," whose Twitter account lists him as a rural Oklahoma husband, father and Baptist pastor. Apparently, Obama's passing references to "blessings" and "faith" were not sufficient in his expression of gratitude to American service men and women, among others: > As Americans, each of us has our own list of things and people to be thankful for. But there are some blessings we all share. > We're especially grateful for the men and women who defend our country overseas. To all the service members eating Thanksgiving dinner far from your families: the American people are thinking of you today. And when you come home, we intend to make sure that we serve you as well as you're serving America. > We're also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay. This sense of mutual responsibility - the idea that I am my brother's keeper; that I am my sister's keeper - has always been a part of what makes our country special. And it's one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured. Of course, if this language sounds familiar, it should. With one mention of the "a land where they could worship the Almighty without persecution," George W. Bush said pretty much the same thing for Thanksgiving, 2008: > During this holiday season, we give thanks for those who defend our freedom. America's men and women in uniform deserve our highest respect -- and so do the families who love and support them. Lately, I have been asked what I will miss about the presidency. And my answer is that I will miss being the Commander-in-Chief of these brave warriors. In this special time of year, when many of them are serving in distant lands, they are in the thoughts and prayers of all Americans. > During this holiday season, we give thanks for the kindness of citizens throughout our Nation. It is a testament to the goodness of our people that on Thanksgiving, millions of Americans reach out to those who have little. The true spirit of the holidays can be seen in the generous volunteers who bring comfort to the poor and the sick and the elderly. These men and women are selfless members of our Nation's armies of compassion -- and they make our country a better place, one heart and one soul at a time. Following Bush's departure, God returned to a place of prominence in Barack Obama's 2009 and 2010 Thanksgiving addresses . Two years ago, President Obama encouraged " all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather" to, among other things: > [R]ecall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed "by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God," and President Abraham Lincoln, who established our annual Thanksgiving Day to help mend a fractured Nation in the midst of civil war. A year ago, President Obama again offered thanks to Him: > Today, like millions of other families across America, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and I will sit down to share a Thanksgiving filled with family and friends - and a few helpings of food and football, too. And just as folks have done in every Thanksgiving since the first, we'll spend some time taking stock of what we're thankful for: the God-given bounty of America, and the blessings of one another. But never missing an opportunity to portray Obama as "the other," Fox News rang the alarm , declaring, "Obama Leaves God Out of Thanksgiving Address." His calls for community and unity, and to "give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny," was more than the conservative caricaturists could handle from the supposed "militant atheist" in the White House.

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

Added 11/29/11
0 Views

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 20:00:43 11/29/11
Remember when President Bush forgot to thank God in his 2008 Thanksgiving address? Neither do the conservatives now apoplectic that Barack Obama's 2011 remarks contained no reference to the Almighty. Nevertheless, the usual suspects on the right are frothing at the mouth over the perceived slight from the man many still pretend is a secret Muslim . As Americans were still eating their turkey on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times served as the dutiful stenographer for the Twitter vitriol: > But Thursday morning, Republicans and others tweeted their discontent with the reported omission of God from Obama's address. > Comments included "So sad!" and "God help us!" Republicans Abroad retweeted the Fox News headline: "Obama Leaves God Out of Thanksgiving Address." > "To give thanks for luck is to deny God much less omit!" tweeted "PastorJeffBrown," whose Twitter account lists him as a rural Oklahoma husband, father and Baptist pastor. Apparently, Obama's passing references to "blessings" and "faith" were not sufficient in his expression of gratitude to American service men and women, among others: > As Americans, each of us has our own list of things and people to be thankful for. But there are some blessings we all share. > We're especially grateful for the men and women who defend our country overseas. To all the service members eating Thanksgiving dinner far from your families: the American people are thinking of you today. And when you come home, we intend to make sure that we serve you as well as you're serving America. > We're also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay. This sense of mutual responsibility - the idea that I am my brother's keeper; that I am my sister's keeper - has always been a part of what makes our country special. And it's one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured. Of course, if this language sounds familiar, it should. With one mention of the "a land where they could worship the Almighty without persecution," George W. Bush said pretty much the same thing for Thanksgiving, 2008: > During this holiday season, we give thanks for those who defend our freedom. America's men and women in uniform deserve our highest respect -- and so do the families who love and support them. Lately, I have been asked what I will miss about the presidency. And my answer is that I will miss being the Commander-in-Chief of these brave warriors. In this special time of year, when many of them are serving in distant lands, they are in the thoughts and prayers of all Americans. > During this holiday season, we give thanks for the kindness of citizens throughout our Nation. It is a testament to the goodness of our people that on Thanksgiving, millions of Americans reach out to those who have little. The true spirit of the holidays can be seen in the generous volunteers who bring comfort to the poor and the sick and the elderly. These men and women are selfless members of our Nation's armies of compassion -- and they make our country a better place, one heart and one soul at a time. Following Bush's departure, God returned to a place of prominence in Barack Obama's 2009 and 2010 Thanksgiving addresses . Two years ago, President Obama encouraged " all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather" to, among other things: > [R]ecall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed "by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God," and President Abraham Lincoln, who established our annual Thanksgiving Day to help mend a fractured Nation in the midst of civil war. A year ago, President Obama again offered thanks to Him: > Today, like millions of other families across America, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and I will sit down to share a Thanksgiving filled with family and friends - and a few helpings of food and football, too. And just as folks have done in every Thanksgiving since the first, we'll spend some time taking stock of what we're thankful for: the God-given bounty of America, and the blessings of one another. But never missing an opportunity to portray Obama as "the other," Fox News rang the alarm , declaring, "Obama Leaves God Out of Thanksgiving Address." His calls for community and unity, and to "give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny," was more than the conservative caricaturists could handle from the supposed "militant atheist" in the White House.

Immigration Dilemma.

Added 11/22/11
0 Views

Immigration Dilemma.

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 04:23:18 11/22/11
This nation, we often forget when it comes to people of color, is a nation of immigrants. None of us is native to this land – except Native Americans (from whom all the land was stolen or cheated away). It remains symptomatic of our obsession with skin color and cultural “otherhood” that we forget that our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents arrived here after uprooting themselves from places where they were either not welcome or no longer viable citizens – because of their religion, their crimes, their finances, their lack of opportunity, their victimhood – seeking a new start, some way to survive, feed their families, recreate community. Too often, the second- or third- or fourth-generation immigrant starts identifying as the owner of his her place and not the occupant of space that once belonged to someone else. They begin to see “the other” – either those brought here against their will or appearing voluntarily to start anew and do the work we once did and no longer will do – the dirty work. That’s the work that creates millionaires of others of us, and just a few of us at that. Do we ask why, then, the government we elect and pay for treats our immigrant brothers and sisters like criminals? Why are the very people who pick our produce, who roof our houses, who serve our domestic and commercial needs and wants harassed and discriminated against – and shoved out of the United States, despite our unwillingness to perform such tasks ourselves anymore? We have laws on the books that creates citizens of anyone born in the USA, as the children of so many immigrants are. And, yet again, we are prepared to send these children back home with their deported parents? This is a nation of laws, yet also a nation of laws that make no sense and enforcement mechanisms that ignore justice and stretch the rules to de-nude our commercial and industrial entities of their capacity to continue operating. There’s a serious duplicity operating here – hypocrisy of policy and politics so clearly based in our obsession with color and culture that it defeats its own purpose for being because our longstanding racism and white supremacy. Like the INS before it, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency often operates on a plane above the law or as a government unto itself. In whose best interests are the raids and jailings and deportations carried out by the federal government? What are we doing to the families of undocumented worker who keep this country’s economy afloat with their hard work and subpar wages? What about their children? What about their education? Their health care? What about the taxes they pay, the mortgages they’ve been allowed to take out on modest living quarters? And yet, we’re told that Minnesota does one of the better jobs of working together to solve many of these problems, and it shows in the stories coming out of towns and cities where factories and farms have created whole new communities of new residents – some undocumented, some not, but living and working together to keep those communities thriving. Worthington is one. Madelia’s another. But Uncle Sam’s vigilant guard is ever on the prowl. All questions needing answers. A few of them will come this week as TruthToTell’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI query two of the state’s most active advocates in this field. Some might even say strange bedfellows who are nevertheless members of a broad coalition of interested legal agencies, nonprofits, unions and business groups who support major immigration reform. On-air guests: JOHN KELLER – Executive Director, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota BILL BLAZAR – Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Business Development, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. LAURA DANIELSON – Attorney/Chair, Immigration Law Department, Fredrikson & Byron, PA; Law Instructor, University of MN Law School; Co-Author, Green Card Stories

Immigration Dilemma.

Added 11/22/11
0 Views

Immigration Dilemma.

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 04:22:47 11/22/11
This nation, we often forget when it comes to people of color, is a nation of immigrants. None of us is native to this land – except Native Americans (from whom all the land was stolen or cheated away). It remains symptomatic of our obsession with skin color and cultural “otherhood” that we forget that our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents arrived here after uprooting themselves from places where they were either not welcome or no longer viable citizens – because of their religion, their crimes, their finances, their lack of opportunity, their victimhood – seeking a new start, some way to survive, feed their families, recreate community. Too often, the second- or third- or fourth-generation immigrant starts identifying as the owner of his her place and not the occupant of space that once belonged to someone else. They begin to see “the other” – either those brought here against their will or appearing voluntarily to start anew and do the work we once did and no longer will do – the dirty work. That’s the work that creates millionaires of others of us, and just a few of us at that. Do we ask why, then, the government we elect and pay for treats our immigrant brothers and sisters like criminals? Why are the very people who pick our produce, who roof our houses, who serve our domestic and commercial needs and wants harassed and discriminated against – and shoved out of the United States, despite our unwillingness to perform such tasks ourselves anymore? We have laws on the books that creates citizens of anyone born in the USA, as the children of so many immigrants are. And, yet again, we are prepared to send these children back home with their deported parents? This is a nation of laws, yet also a nation of laws that make no sense and enforcement mechanisms that ignore justice and stretch the rules to de-nude our commercial and industrial entities of their capacity to continue operating. There’s a serious duplicity operating here – hypocrisy of policy and politics so clearly based in our obsession with color and culture that it defeats its own purpose for being because our longstanding racism and white supremacy. Like the INS before it, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency often operates on a plane above the law or as a government unto itself. In whose best interests are the raids and jailings and deportations carried out by the federal government? What are we doing to the families of undocumented worker who keep this country’s economy afloat with their hard work and subpar wages? What about their children? What about their education? Their health care? What about the taxes they pay, the mortgages they’ve been allowed to take out on modest living quarters? And yet, we’re told that Minnesota does one of the better jobs of working together to solve many of these problems, and it shows in the stories coming out of towns and cities where factories and farms have created whole new communities of new residents – some undocumented, some not, but living and working together to keep those communities thriving. Worthington is one. Madelia’s another. But Uncle Sam’s vigilant guard is ever on the prowl. All questions needing answers. A few of them will come this week as TruthToTell’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI query two of the state’s most active advocates in this field. Some might even say strange bedfellows who are nevertheless members of a broad coalition of interested legal agencies, nonprofits, unions and business groups who support major immigration reform. On-air guests: JOHN KELLER – Executive Director, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota BILL BLAZAR – Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Business Development, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. LAURA DANIELSON – Attorney/Chair, Immigration Law Department, Fredrikson & Byron, PA; Law Instructor, University of MN Law School; Co-Author, Green Card Stories

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How to Thrift Store Shop for clothing:

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

Right-Wing Furious Over Obama's 'Godless' Thanksgiving Address

Immigration Dilemma.

Immigration Dilemma.