Nuestra Señora's Weblog » Politics

UCLA Community Moving Forward With or Without Chancellor Block

nuestrasenora — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:36:08 +0000

UCLA Graduate, Undergraduate, Staffm and Faculty Press Conference

Daily-Bruin: Not far from where they met only two weeks ago, a group of undergraduates, graduates and union representatives congregated at 3 p.m. to hold a press conference following a long-sought-after meeting with Chancellor Gene Block.

The meeting with Block was held earlier in the day at 11 a.m. It was organized after the UC-wide walkout that occurred on the first day of school, bringing more than 400 protesters from Bruin Walk straight to the doors of Murphy. A smaller group of about 30 attended the press conference.

Miguel Lopez said that Block may or may not be attending the town hall forum, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 20, 21 or 22. He still has to confirm.

Lopez said the students, faculty and workers would continue mobilizing, “with or without Block.”

Uh Oh, The Infamous LA River Gets a Makeover

nuestrasenora — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:39:57 +0000

Schaben / Los Angeles Times

ARC Compact for Racial Justice Phone Forums

nuestrasenora — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:58:54 +0000

I want to put a plug in for the Applied Research Center’s (ARC) new inclusive policy program, the compact for racial justice phone forums. ARC is a non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization that critically analyzes the intersections of policy, the media, and race through advocacy, reports, and publishing the monthly magazine ‘Color Lines’.

The phone forums provide participants an opportunity to dialogue about omnipresent policy issues with peers and social justice advocates. Specifically, justice advocates on the Compact Forum calls will track the first 100 days of the Obama administration and shape plans to influence policy affecting racial justice. In addition to engaging featured speakers, participants will share progress on local, state and national efforts, and join a call to action on key issues. Interested individuals must RSVP by the Monday before the call.

To register for the phone forums, please click here. To learn more about ARC, visit: www.arc.org.

Recap

nuestrasenora — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:26:12 +0000

After several months of hiatus, infinite days of observation, and roaming the streets of Los Angeles, I am ready to get back. A few critical things that I want to reflect on:

1. The mayor was re-elected at a margin that questions his ability to truly carry the gubernatorial race. (Side Note: I hope Newsom does not have the same fate).

2. MRT persevered and conquered the old LAPD chief, in a win that will implicate LA County for much of the next decade (Note: Hello MLK, when will you be operating, open, and sustainable?)

3. Secretary Solis has been able to deconstruct the traditional norms of the President’s cabinet to head one of the preeminent agencies in the country, the Department of Labor. It’s about time this department has a voice from within instead of being facilitated by power structures advocating for the opposition.

4. California is in a budget deficit. Enough said.

5. The UC and CSU systems are facing large scale cutbacks that are directly interfering with their ability to represent the demographic changes of California in their student body. If things continue on this path, both institutions, but mostly the UC system will exhibit a large degree of homogeneity in terms of class and racial background. The time to make changes are now, unless we want to time travel back to Kent State and walk on the decades-old path of white privilege in access and representation.

6. Finally, the MTA in Los Angeles continues to be a source of great pride and inspiration for my thoughts and observations. The situations, faces, and events that transgress on the bus are unmatched anywhere in the city. I hope to elaborate more with fluid stories and character development. True knowledge.

-sd

The Wright Response

nuestrasenora — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:08:55 +0000

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose fiery sermons as Democrat Barack Obama’s former pastor set off a political firestorm last month, spoke publicly for the first time today. In the months prior, Rev. Wright has been heavily criticized by mainstream media and the ‘American’ public for being ‘un-American’ and somewhat discriminatory. Rev. Wright is a pastor in a Black Church, a church that continues to be the epicenter of black political thought from the post-reconstruction era to the present. The Black Church caters specifically to Black Americans, preaching religious views intertwined with the reality of the Black experience within this country.

Rev. Wright has simply been doing his job as a community leader, dispeller of truthful history, and a religious liaison to hundreds of church goers. Despite excelling at his position, Rev. Wright has been lambasted during the 2008 election mayhem for comments about the Iraq War, the current administration, and more. In his defense, Rev. Wright has stated that he feels ”crucified” by the media and that attacks on him are really slams on the black church.

“It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright, it is an attack on the black church,” he said at a National Press Club appearance. “Maybe now we can begin to take steps to move the black religious tradition from the state of invisible to the state of invaluable.”

Read the article here.
View the video here.

Fiscal Crisis in Cali

nuestrasenora — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:29:23 +0000

With an estimated 14 billion dollar state budget deficit, Californians are worried about their future. Seven in 10 residents say California is in a recession and three in four expect the state to have bad economic times during the next 12 months. This comes at the height of a housing crisis, a record high unemployment rate, and major spending cuts in social services. Moreover, nearly half of likely voters say they prefer to deal with the budget gap through a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Solid majorities say major changes are needed in the state’s budget process. However, the Governator has proposed major budget cuts to all state departments except the department of corrections and the department of business. The future of California is grim, as the youth are predominantly of color and low-income, meaning they are at the heart of the cuts to education, health services, and more. Please contact your State legislators today and voice your opinion! To find your elected official click here.

UCLA Basement’s Hidden Gem

nuestrasenora — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:44:08 +0000

A new LA Times article by Anna Gorman chronicles the academic treasures found in a UCLA basement. After finding questionnaires from a 1965 survey in a UCLA basement, two professors followed up with about 700 of the participants and their children. The news is good and bad.

In 1992, construction workers retrofitting UCLA’s undergraduate library discovered many dusty boxes hidden behind a bookshelf in the basement. The boxes contained research materials and questionnaires from a pioneering 1965 study on Mexican Americans.

Sociology professors Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles skimmed the surveys, which included names and addresses. That’s when they decided to embark on an ambitious project: re-interviewing the families and assessing the integration of Mexican Americans over time.

“We stumbled onto something,” Ortiz said. “That was the beginning.”

The professors had a simple hypothesis: that there would be improvement over generations and time, much as with other immigrant groups that settled in the U.S.

The UCLA professors re-interviewed about 700 of the original participants and about 800 of their children, in Los Angeles and San Antonio. Participants constituted about 60% of the original families.

Some of the findings were encouraging. For example, nearly all Mexican Americans spoke English proficiently by the second generation. And many Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. as children — as well as the children of immigrants — showed economic and educational progress, in part because of their belief in the American dream.

But some of the conclusions — published last month in a book titled “Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race” — were disappointing.

For example, a disproportionately high percentage of third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans did not graduate from high school or seek higher education. And income levels in these later generations were not as high as the authors expected.

“At the same time there are people clearly reaching middle class and having successful careers, there is also a high proportion who have low levels of education,” Telles said. “The low education determines just about everything else, including integration into American society.”

The authors offered several explanations for the lack of assimilation over time, including racial discrimination and continued immigration. But most important, they cited an underfunded public education system that has placed low expectations on Mexican Americans and failed to effectively educate them.

“Public education is the greatest source of Mexican American exclusion, in that low education impedes their economic prospects,” they wrote.

Joe and Theresa Nevarez, who were interviewed for the original study and again for the follow-up, both said they faced the low expectations and discrimination that the UCLA professors described.

Joe Nevarez, 96, came to the U.S. with his parents when he was a baby and later became a citizen. Theresa, 85, was born in the U.S., as was her mother. Both said they were funneled into trade programs during high school — Joe into the print shop and Theresa into beautician classes. While in school, Joe wrote about sports for the campus’ daily newspaper.

Despite expectations otherwise, both graduated from high school. But nobody suggested college to either one.

Joe became a copy boy and then a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he worked for more than 50 years. When he started, Nevarez said, he was one of “few Hispanic names in the press.” He later joined the Chicano News Media Assn.

He also served briefly in the Army Air Forces, working as a clerk and an assistant to a chaplain. In a photograph of his squadron of dozens of men, he said, “I’m the only dark face.”

The couple married in 1944 at La Placita Church near Olvera Street and moved to East Los Angeles.

“They wouldn’t sell us a house because we were Hispanic,” Theresa said, even with her husband in uniform. After agreeing to put up one-third of the price as a down payment, the couple were able to purchase a home. They paid it off in 10 years and moved to Monterey Park because the schools had a good reputation. At the time, all of their neighbors were white.

“They didn’t look too kindly at us until it got around I was a newspaperman,” he said. “Then it was all OK.”

They raised three children, who all went to college.

“I told them, ‘You have to have an education,’ ” Theresa Nevarez said. “Because of our color and our name, you have to struggle a little bit harder.”

The couple also made it a point to expose their children to museums, beaches, libraries and amusement parks. But the children, too, encountered difficulties because of their ethnicity. One of their sons was beaten up while he was in grade school and denied entrance to the local Scout troop.

One of their daughters, Margaret Nevarez, 61, is a high school counselor. Her sister works as a vice principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and her brother has retired from the Internal Revenue Service.

Margaret said she was always aware of the challenges her parents faced because they were Mexican American.

“I didn’t want that kind of circumstance for my life,” she said. “I wanted my kids to have choices.”

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, said that he had not read the UCLA study but that his own research has shown an economic mobility among Latinos, who are moving into the middle class in large numbers and penetrating every level of California’s political culture.

Significant numbers of Latinos make more than $100,000 a year and they are buying homes in neighborhoods from San Marino to Bel-Air, he said.

“Those are not nannies and housekeepers,” he said. “There are Latinos who have made economic and sociopolitical progress.”