Ally News: Deconstructing Senate Immigration Compromise

Four good things to know about the current immigration compromise bill that passed in the US Senate. House Reps have already come out to say that already said that this bill is too liberal to pass there, demanding more militarization (of the border) and less legalization (of people, god damn it!)

***Under the Hagel-Martinez legalization plan, undocumented immigrants with less than two years in the US (about a million people) would be immediately subject to deportation. Those with two to five years would also have to leave the country, and could apply to reenter through some currently unknown process. The ability of border stations to handle the applications of the 3 to 4 million people involved is extremely doubtful, given the current years-long backlog in normal visa applications.


***S 2611, like HR 4437 passed by the House in December, would ramp up the enforcement of employer sanctions. This provision of current law makes it a crime for undocumented people to hold a job, and is used frequently by employers to retaliate against workers who try to enforce labor standards or join unions. The Social Security Administration would become immigration police, forcing all workers to carry a new national ID card, and would require employers to fire anyone whose documents they question. The current Basic Pilot program, which moves in this direction, has shown the SSA database to be rife with errors.

***The Senate bill expands current guest worker programs and establishes new ones, allowing employers to recruit workers outside the country on temporary visas. These new contract workers would be vulnerable to employer pressure, since their visa status would be dependent on their employment.AFL-CIO rep Ana Avendano points out, "this turns jobs which are now held by permanent employees with rights and benefits into jobs filled by temporary, contract employees. It basically takes the jobs of millions of people out of the protections of the New Deal, won by workers decades ago." The labor federation points out that if currently undocumented workers and new immigrants were given permanent residence status instead of temporary visas, they would be able to exercise their rights as workers and community residents.

***S 2611 "vastly increases detention and deportation, and further militarizeses the border," according to the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Halliburton Corporation has already been given a US contract for construction of immigrant detention facilities near the border with Mexico, and proposals have been made for reopening closed military bases to house deportees and detainees. The bill, which makes document fraud an aggravated felony and grounds for deportation, would result in the criminalization of the millions of immigrant workers who have had to provide false Social Security cards to employers in order to get hired.

Taken from:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052606Z.shtml

Feel free to...

I went to a sunny outdoor festival today. I ran into a couple of mutual friends, sitting down with someone I didn't know. She was an overweight white woman in her early 20s. At first, I felt myself see her size and discount her. I actually felt myself do it. I thought about her size while we spoke. I thought, "she's really outgoing and confident for a fat woman" and "she must be really sweaty." Then I cringed for viewing her weight as the most important thing about her, which shaped every thought I had during our conversation. Her body size was the lens I viewed her and judged her through.

**

My mom regularly makes comments about people's weight and about mine. "You've got good genes" = You're skinny and don't have to try. She said one of my 12 year old girl cousin is happier now because she's thin and my other cousin is unhappy because of all the weight she's gained. Other family members are constantly on a new diet or talking about how much they've lost. "I know you don't notice, but I've lost fifteen pounds since we last saw each other".

My family would be horrified if I stepped out of my skinny box and gained a few pounds. I would be, too.


***
US Weekly this week

Toxic. Skin and Eye Irritant.

My mom said "how can you stand it? Cleaning up other people's shit!?"



It isn't the work that bothers me. It isn't being hunched over toilets with shit and blood and piss all over them. I usually drift off somewhere else in my head and the cleaning just happens. I sweep, wipe down toliets, dust the tops of stalls, and skim the newspapers that are left hanging in the men's stalls (none in the women's!!). I do a lot of watching my reflection.

What bothers me about being a janitor is the feeling of being an object designed purely for work. If I can't stand the temperature of the building, if I have to leave early to pick up my kids, or if I don't want to use a certain product, I am 100% replaceable. The managers, used by the corporate higher-ups, do the dirty work of keeping people in line. They get paid a couple bucks more, can't join the union and are pitted against everyone else. When the company gets called out for their dirty work, it will be the low level managers who'll be fired.

In my rich kid, college world, jobs are supposed to represent a piece of who I am. I should find passion in my job. It should drive me succeed. But at my building, I don't think anyone's feeling real passionate or inspired. And I doubt many of my co-workers would include this job in a description of what makes them who they are.

Can't you see that I'm a unique and special person!!

This janitor gig is driving me mad. One of the cleaning products I'm using burns my skin, through the gloves. The builiding is hot as hell, since they turn the air off when the 9to5ers leave. But most of all, my supervisor, the woman who trained me, is on my back all the time, constantly reminding me of how I messed something up.

At the last building, my manager was a white, transgender woman who was soft spoken and not very demanding. I have to think that part of the reason I don't like my new supervisor is because I don't like an older, black woman, whose spent her life as a janitor telling me what to do. I think I'm better than her! Shit, she's probably had plenty of white women telling her what to do her whole life.

Yesterday as I was reviewing the ways I could tell her off, I started thinking about toughening up. I'm so used to being in positions where I have power and agency. I need to toughen the fuck up. The other jobs I've held have been two different facilitator positions, where I had lots of power and no direct supervision. Also, in high school, I worked scooping ice cream at a store run by a white, Jewish woman whose kids I knew.

I'm so used to being treated like an individual with my own set of needs, that I don't even have the coping mechanisms to deal with being in an oppressive environment. This is an environment where expressing any difference can get you fired, where you get written up because you ran out of time, and where they show anti-union videos in training.

I need to:
1. Stop taking what she says personally.
2. Remember most people feel this level of powerlessness regularly.
3. Disconnect from negative feelings directed at her. Even if she is mean and does have it out for me, she isn't the problem.

Info about Cleanpower, the horrible anti-union company that I work for.
http://www.workerjustice.org/justice_for_janitors.htm

white power through anti-abortion message

keep 'em coming...




Check out this clip and transcript from a Fox News program last week, where the news anchor, John Gibson tells white people to have more babies, because in 25 years "the majority of the population is Hispanic".

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120006

Interesting, because I have frequently noted that a lot of anti-abortion in this country rhetoric seems to be rooted in white supremacy. I heard Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortion doctor turned anti-choice lecturer, speak earlier this year. He talked a lot about how he and his wife were "unable" to adopt

Here is part of Levatino's shpiel from a anti-choice site:
"I kept doing abortions, I didn't stop. But it was tough. We started desperately looking for a baby to adopt, and I was throwing them in the garbage at the rate of nine and ten a week. It even occurred to me then: I wish one of these people would just let me have their child. But it doesn't work that way. So the conflict was there."

But there are lots of babies up for adoption, but they happen to be black or Latino. Levatino, like Gibson wants white women to keep having babies!

I'm not racist. I have lots of black friends that I rarely call and hardly ever see

Okay, I'm going to admit what people of color (PoC) accuse white "anti-racists" and self-proclaimed activists of all the time. And we always deny. We always deny it and I'm going to admit it.

Today I was jealous of a white friend, because I realized she has more meaningful relationships with POC than I have. I'm jealous because part of me believes that the more PoC I have in my life, the more "down for the cause" people will believe I am.

I want to be friends with people of color because I believe it will give me credibility. Just like the white male "activist" who sleeps with lots of women of color. Just like the white kids that name drop the president of the Black Student Union or an event that MEChA threw with their white "activist" friends. The white "activist" who listen to lots of hip-hop and changes their style of speech when people of color come around.

On one hand, it's true that white activists who have long-term and meaningful relationships with POC are more trusted by other people of color and can be good examples for us other whiteys in our quests to unlearn this racism.

However, I recognize that I haven't put in a lot of genuine effort with most of the PoC in my life. I've avoided it because strong friendships with people across race, class, and culture lines are a lot of work and I haven't wanted to do it. Most of my close friends are white and in a similar class range. They share similar cultural history and interests and these friendships usually feel easy. I've wanted to avoid discomfort or disconnect, so I usually just run into my PoC friends, chat for a few minutes and move on. I tell myself that's what both of us would prefer.

A black friend of mine who I rarely hang out with, told me recently that I'm one of the only white people she trusts. I've known her for three years and we met in a heated racist situation, in which I sided with her and not the white people in the group. What if she knew about this part of me? But, then I realize she's probably known it all along.

"On Working With White People"
http://thefreeslave.blogspot.com/2006/05/on-working-with-white-people.html

"We hope you think we're as awesome as the Black community does!!"
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

undisciplined white girl

started work as a part-time janitor for a month, until i start another job. i worked for the same company last summer too, but in a different building. this building is huge and i have to work a lot harder. at the last building i was wasting time til i was done, but i think this is going to be different.

this black woman trained me and another black woman whose my age. when i mopped the floor too quickly the woman training us called me a "lightweight" and said she would have to watch me, which she then told our supervisor. then her and the other trainee started talking about discipline, how they had been raised with parents who would hit them or "get the switch" when they wouldn't do a chore right or for various reasons. then they asked me about my "discipline" and were disappointed but not surprised to find out my mom never hit me. then they talked about different things, mostly related to working their fucking asses off and being poor. again, i couldn't say anything. i'm not going to lie and pretend like i've experienced half of the bullshit of poverty that they have.

at this builidng, unlike my last one, there is a monthly inspection. if the builiding looks good, everyone gets a little bonus, so there is more pressure to get your work done and done well here. i know it's my class and college education that makes me lazy at a job like cleaning bathrooms and feel like i don't have to work hard.

racism: all in the family

so my family was up for college graduation and my grandmother made a comment about there not being many black people at graduation or in my college city, in general. then my uncle says something like "well if the temperature was a little higher here, then there would be black people." i said "what does that mean" and he said something about black people liking warm weather, totally not acknowledging that there are probably millions of black people in the midwest! come the fuck on! so that was yesterday. then he brought it up again today, after my grandmother said she thought my city seemed safe because there weren't black people here. it was a chance to talk to my grandmother about the liberal image my city has, how it only applies to whites, and how latinos and blacks are pretty much segretated to one area of town. but my uncle and his "jokes". i said, "why do you keep saying that!" and he said he knew it wasn't true. but eh, it was so frustrating.

my grandma is old and southern and probably racist as hell, although i haven't seen very much of it, because we don't see each other that often. but at least she's up front about it and doesn't shield it in jokes. You can talk to her directly about what she says, but my uncle and his liberal attitude and his racist "jokes" are what really get me.

Great collection of recent articles about race, racism, and liberation
http://colours.mahost.org/article.html

class at college graduation

i just graduated from college. a bunch of people from my family came up. it was really wonderful to have them here. they're loving and affectionate people. we went out to this really expensive restaurant. i've never been to a place that nice (or maybe i have and haven't noticed). the vast majority of the people at the restaurant were like me. i recognized about half of the people there from my private dorms. rich jewish kids live in the private dorms. i'm a rich jewish kid from the private dorms. then i got these big old checks from my family. it was another reminder of how class gets passed down from generation to generation. they didn't give me a fortune, but they gave me enough money to build on, to start my financially independent life a little bit further than a lot of people. my rich kid guilt feels bad about hauling in so much cash that i don't deserve more than anyone else. im donating a chunk of it to an organization that my friend works with. i feel good about redistributing some of it to a people of color led organization with no strings attached for how they use it.

it's still hard for me to acknowledge how much wealth i come from. my family aren't pretentious, but most of them do have the symbols of class privilege. nice houses and cars. new technological gaggets and college degrees. in some ways i feel so lucky, because shit, i don't have to worry and in other ways i feel so guilty about it. i'm not past feeling fucking guilty about it.

disability

just found out that a woman I know who is forty will be having a baby. after having a conversation with a friend who told me that the chances of having a baby with downs syndrome goes up every year after 35, i was thinking about that. my mom was 37 when she had me. when a mutual friend told me about the pregnancy, the first thing i said was "i hope the baby doesn't have downs syndrome."

i've been thinking about what i said since and i'm still confused. anyone who had downs syndrome would be totally hurt by that statement and i know on a surface level that its fucked up, but i still feel that way. i would never say, "i hope i don't have a black/lesbian/girl child," but i would say that about a disabled child.

i obviously have a lot of personal work to do about disability. i know that people with mental and physical disabilities serve just as much a role in society as i do, but its hard for me to see. i'm so used to feeling sorry for people with disabilities or more likely, sorry for the parents and family of people with disabilities that i haven't bothered to or needed to see them as fully human and alive.

the only time i've ever thought about disability as an empowering thing was when i took a class with a woman who had a physical disability. she did a presentation about viewing disabled people as serving and important and different role in society than able-bodied people and how we all need to learn to be okay with that. she said people didn't even acknowledge her or thought she couldn't do anything because of her disability. her presentation was really striking to me and eye-opening (is that ableist language??).

Website focused on disability history, community and liberation
http://www.disabledandproud.com/

trans pronouns

Last night a friend was talking about their friend who switches between he and she when describing the same person in the same story or sentence. So "He went to the car and got her sweater." I felt frustrated, because I was confused. I said "is that what transpeople really want?"

After saying it, I quickly realized transgendered people are never going to agree on what they as a group want. It's hard for me to connect with all of the different pronouns that different people use. It seems like there are so many and it's all so confusing. I know thats the point--that gender is confusing and it doesn't matter if I connect with them, but I find myself writing off people's desire to be called hir or z or switch between he and she, etc, etc.

Transgender Basics
http://www.uua.org/obgltc/resource/tg102.html