President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'

The Hill

Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said Tuesday that the Latino advocacy organization made a tough decision to better reflect its mission last week when it dropped “La Raza” from its name.

The influential Latino civil rights organization changed its name to UnidosUS from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at its 49th annual conference.

Murguía told The Hill the decision was made after three-and-a-half years of research, interviews and surveys on the organization's image.

"We really wanted to make sure what we were hearing was reflective of most of our community," she said. 

"We knew this step would be a big one and that not everybody would be fully supportive, but it’s hard to ignore the data and the changes that have occurred in our community," Murguía added.

The NCLR name had come under criticism from groups on the right, who pointed out that "la raza" means "the race” in Spanish, a reference that was interpreted by some as having racist undertones.

The organization got its original name in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, a reference to an academic concept put forth by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos in the 1930s

Vasconcelos's original idea of "la raza" was meant to unite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples of Latin America as part of one post-colonial identity group.

But Murguía says that image no longer represents Latinos in the United States.

"We’re not the same Hispanic or Latino community we were in 1968," she said. "We are a younger community — six in ten [Latinos] are millennials or younger -- and we’re a more diverse Latino community."

Murguía said the old name "appeared to be outdated" and "to have no resonance with our community."

"More than anything, our name appeared to be a barrier to our mission," she said. 

UnidosUS is the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, with interests in political advocacy and research on issues like tax reform, healthcare, housing and immigration. 

Murguía said the organization and the Hispanic community as a whole have achieved real gains over time in many of those areas. 

"Real progress is achievable, but it takes sustained engagement and it happens not in a moment, but over time," she said.

She pointed at issues like the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance coverage to nearly four million Latinos who previously didn’t have health insurance, and the earned income tax credit as tangible wins for Hispanics.

Rapper Cam'ron On The Importance of Ownership

O.J. Simpson Parole Hearing (Full)

[NBC]

Brooklyn Congressional Reps Demand that 2 Streets Recently Named for Pro-Slavery Confederate Generals be Changed

From [HERE] Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue are on the Fort Hamilton military base near Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. The street names honor pro-slavery Confederate Army Generals. Jackson and Lee both were stationed at the base in the 1840s prior to the Civil War. They also both violated the 1789 military oath of allegiance to “support the constitution of the United States” and to serve “honestly and faithfully” against “enemies or opposers.”

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson graduated from West Point and served in the U.S Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He later took up arms against the United States during the Civil War, leading Confederate forces at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He died of complications from wounds in 1863. Not only was Jackson a traitor, he was also a slaveholder.

Robert E. Lee was also a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican-American War. He later served as superintendent of the military academy and Lincoln offered him command of the U.S. army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee refused the offer and instead became commander of the army of Northern Virginia and later the Confederate General-in-Chief, leading Southern forces at Antietam and Gettysburg. At the end of the Civil War, Lee, a traitor and a former slaveholder, opposed granting Blacks the right to vote. Recently his statue was removed from prominent display in New Orleans.

Brooklyn Congressional Representatives Yvette Clarke, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that the names of these streets be changed. In a letter to Army Secretary Robert Speer they wrote “To honor these men who believed in the ideology of white supremacy and fought to maintain the institution of slavery constitutes a grievous insult to the many thousands of people in Brooklyn who are descendants of the slaves held in bondage.” [MORE]

Federal Court: Uncivilized Texas Must Address Inhumane Prison Heat Conditions

From [HERE] and [HERE] A federal court is ordering the State of Texas to address summer heat conditions at a prison unit northwest of Houston.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has about two weeks to make a plan, ensuring vulnerable inmates are housed in units less than 88 degrees. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he plans to appeal the decision.

The preliminary injunction stems from a lawsuit filed in 2014 seeking cooler temperatures for inmates, citing a spate of deaths in the previous three years.

In 2016, the heat index at the unit surpassed 100 degrees on 13 days and hovered around the 90s degrees for 55 days, the ruling notes. No heat-related deaths have been reported at the unit, but at least 23 men have died because of heat in TDCJ facilities since 1998, Ellison wrote. Intermediary measures are necessary to avoid cruel and unusual punishment, he said.

“… the Court does not order defendants to reduce temperatures to a level that may be comfortable, but simply to a level that reduces the significant risk of harm to an acceptable one,” Ellison wrote.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to appeal the ruling, saying the state has taken significant measures to mitigate the effects of the sweltering conditions.

Inmates are allowed to wear shorts and t-shirts in housing areas during summer months, the ruling notes. They can seek relief in air-conditioned areas, including an infirmary, administration offices, visitation areas, the education department and the barbershop.

But, after a nine-day hearing in June 2017, Ellison concluded the measures are insufficient to combat the risk of serious injury or death in summer months.

In his ruling, the judge quotes Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s famous line about Siberian prisons: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

“Prisoners are human beings with spouses and children who worry about them and miss them,” Ellison continues. “Some of them will likely someday be shown to have been innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. But, even those admittedly guilty of the most heinous crimes must not be denied their constitutional rights. We diminish the Constitution for all of us to the extent we deny it to anyone.”

We discuss the ruling, and what changes lie ahead for inmates at this Texas prison unit, with Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

Per the ruling, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has 15 days to devise a plan to house some 500 “heat-sensitive” inmates housed in living quarters exceeding no more than 88 degrees at the Wallace Pack Unit, located about 70 miles northwest of Houston near Navasota.

The ruling was issued Wednesday (July 19, 2017) by US District Judge Keith Ellison. It also calls for easy access to respite areas for the remaining 1,000 inmates at the unit.

Rep Al Lawson shows strong 2017 fundraising

From [HERE] Jacksonville-area Congressmen Al Lawson has had strong fundraising in the latest campaign finance report, suggesting that he will be tough outs in primaries.

Lawson brought in over $158,000 off 118 total contributions, doing even better than Rutherford.

Lawson, still without that Jacksonville challenger, has over $148,000 on hand — a number offset by nearly $79,000 in debts and loans.

Of the over $158,000 Lawson brought in, over $116,000 came from political committees, with insurance and sugar interests well represented, as well as businesses ranging from CSX to McGuireWoods. Rutherford, for his part, brought in over $113,000 in individual contributions.

Oversight Board Finds NYPD Officers Still Violating Citizens' Right To Film Police

Tech Dirt

The New York Civilian Complaint Review Board has just released a report [PDF] indicating NYPD officers are slow learners when it comes to recognizing citizens' right to record police officers. It's not that these officers have never been told. They have. The NYPD's "Finest Order" was handed down in 2014, telling officers citizens had a First Amendment right to film police. It's a response to a 2012 order by the Washington DC PD and a First Amendment lawsuit filed that year. It followed this up with internal policy changes two years later. And yet, problems persist.

In the three-year period from January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2016, the CCRB closed 257 complaints in which civilians reported that officers had interfered with their ability to record police activity. This police interference included, but was not limited to, officers instructing civilians to stop recording, searching civilians‘ phones for recordings of activity, deleting such footage, and damaging recording devices.

In fact, those with the most time on the job seem to have the greatest difficulty following instructions and policy changes.

Eighty-four percent of the officers named in interference-related allegations (180 subject officers) had more than two years on the force at the time the alleged incidents occurred. Of those, 53 percent (113 subject officers) had between three and 10 years on the force when they were alleged to have interfered with civilian recordings and the remaining 31 percent (67 subject officers) had more than 10 years on the force.

The NYPD "Finest Message" on recording distinctly notes what officers aren't supposed to do when encountering a citizen photographer:

Recognizing the affirmative right to record police action, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should a Member of the Service:

Threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an observer from recording the police officer’s activities, assuming the observer is at a safe distance;

Intentionally block or obstruct cameras or other recording devices when there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to do so; or

Delete any pictures or videos from the observer’s camera, or order observer to delete such pictures or recordings.

But these orders were violated repeatedly. The most common excuse for violations was the officer didn't remember doing it or denied the violation had occurred. [MORE]

New Study: Black Homeownership Falls to 42.2 percent

From [HERE] For the 12^th consecutive year, America’s national homeownership rate has declined, according Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS)’ annual report, “State of the Nation’s Housing 2017.” This year’s report also found these declines vary by race and ethnicity.

As some might expect, the steepest homeownership decline occurred in Black communities, where the percentage of homeowners dropped to 42.2 percent. Among the nation’s largest metro areas, Black homeownership declined the greatest in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas and Detroit. By contrast, Latino-American homeownership is higher at 46 percent, but both communities of color severely lag behind the nearly 72 percent rate of White homeownership.

“The ability of most U.S. households to become homeowners,” states the report, “depends on the availability and affordability of financing.”

And therein lies the crux of the problem: access and affordability.

The lack of access to mortgage financing in Black America has a long history rooted in outright discrimination by private actors such as banks, and supported by inequitable federal housing policies that favored white communities, while intentionally disadvantaging Black communities. This discrimination hindered generations of Black families from entering and remaining among America’s middle class. These practices also resulted in lower levels of both Black wealth and homeownership.

Today, applying for a mortgage means a visit to a bank where high incomes, low debt and high credit scores are among the most favored measures for loan application success. Since the foreclosure crisis, according to the JCHS report, the median credit score for an owner-occupied home purchase origination increased from about 700 in 2005 to 732 in 2016.

Just as communities of color were wrongly targeted for predatory and high-cost mortgages that pushed them into foreclosure, these same communities are the most likely to have suffered credit score declines from foreclosures, unemployment or delinquent debt—or a combination of all three.

According to a 2017 CFED report, “A Downpayment on the Divide,” the mortgage denial rate for Blacks is more than 25 percent, near 20 percent for Latinos, but just over 10 percent for White applicants.

The issue of housing affordability is just as challenging. CFED also found that whites are three times more likely than Blacks to receive financial assistance from families to pay for down payments and other upfront costs that accompany a mortgage. The racial disparity is due to America’s history of whites being able to accumulate wealth through homeownership opportunity while Blacks were denied. As a result, Black households typically delay homeownership 8 years longer than Whites, resulting in a comparable delay in building home equity.

JCHS also found that nearly 39 million American families are financially challenged with their cost of housing.

So, is the American Dream of homeownership realistic for communities of color?

A June 29 public hearing before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee focused on how mortgage finance reform and government-sponsored enterprises, also known as GSEs, must live up to its “duty to serve” all communities.

“Homeownership is the primary way that most middle-class families build wealth and achieve economic stability,” testified Mike Calhoun, President of the Center for Responsible Lending.  “Wide access to credit is critical for building family wealth, closing the racial wealth gap and for the housing market overall.”

In the throes of the 1930s Great Depression, Congress created the GSEs to provide stability to capital markets and to increase the availability of mortgage credit throughout the nation. They were also given a mandate: Serve all credit markets all times, ensuring access and availability across the country.

From 2003 to 2006, the years leading up to the housing crisis, the GSEs followed an unfortunate private mortgage market trend. By loosening underwriting guidelines, particularly for Alt-A no documentation loans, millions of foreclosures occurred and GSE credit losses led to conservatorship under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, also known as HERA. HERA also enacted a number of reforms that have made today’s market stronger.

Now, with far fewer foreclosures nationwide, Congress is deliberating over the future of the GSEs and $6.17 trillion in mortgages they now hold along with Federal Housing Administration issued mortgages.

“Home equity accounts for only 30 percent of the net worth for wealthier households,” continued Calhoun, “but constitutes 67 percent for middle-to-low income households. Home equity accounts for 53 percent of African-American wealth as compared to 39 percent for whites.”

Homebuyers of the future will be more racially and ethnically diverse than those of the past. The JCHS reported that non-whites accounted for 60 percent of household growth from 1995-2015. By 2035, it predicts that half of millennial households will be non-White.

When communities of all sizes, colors, and economies succeed, so does America. While much of our nation has financially recovered from the foreclosure crisis that brought the loss of homes, jobs, businesses, and wealth, recovery has been uneven and left many communities behind.

Those entrusted with leadership roles in the public and private sectors must agree that it is in our national interest to ensure that the recovery is inclusive and sustainable long-term. Broad access to mortgage credit still helps families and the national economy.

“The goal must be to ensure that the full universe of creditworthy borrowers—regardless of where they live, including in rural areas, or who they are—have access to the credit they need to be able to secure a mortgage so that they can build their American dreams,” concluded Calhoun.

Democrats release roster for ‘election security task force’

The Hill

The Democratic leaders of a congressional task force on election security on Thursday released the names of its six members. 

The task force was announced last month, in the wake of new revelations about Russia’s effort to target state and local election-related systems ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

The task force will include Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Robert Brady (D-Pa.), its chairmen, as well as Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), Cedric Richmond (D-La.) and Val Demings (D-Fla.). 

The U.S. intelligence community said in January that Moscow accessed state and local electoral systems not involved in vote tallying as part of a wider effort to interfere in the presidential election. 

Last month, an official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) testified of evidence that Russia targeted election-related systems in 21 states. While officials maintain that the efforts did not affect vote counts, the development has nevertheless exacerbated fears on Capitol Hill about the possibility of foreign interference in future elections. 

DHS has moved to provide additional protections to states by designating election infrastructure as critical earlier this year, though the move has received pushback from state and local officials. 

In a joint statement, Thompson and Brady accused Republican lawmakers of displaying “no appetite” to help protect election systems going forward. 

“Ensuring the security of our election systems for our next major election should not be a partisan issue and should be a top priority for both Republicans and Democrats,” they said. “It is clear that if we continue to do nothing, we make it easy for Russia — or anyone else — to meddle in our elections and undermine public confidence in democratic institutions.”

While Republicans have raised alarm about Moscow's actions, they have been caught in a tricky position as a result of the federal investigation into Russian interference, which includes whether there was coordination between President Trump's campaign and Moscow. 

The task force will hear from experts on election infrastructure security and cybersecurity about how to guard against future threats in the 2018 midterms and beyond.

US authorities handle white supremacists with kid gloves while branding Antifa protesters 'domestic terrorists'

AlJazeera

On June 12, 2017, New Jersey's Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHSP) added a new name to its list of "domestic terrorist" threats: Antifa. The report characterises "Antifa" as a group of "anarchist extremists" who "focus on issues involving racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, as well as other perceived injustices," a half-baked definition, while technically accurate, is far from comprehensive. Unlike the other American entities that have earned this dubious distinction (and despite what hysterical FOX News hosts like to shrill), Antifa isn't an organised group, a gang, or even a society.

Antifa - shorthand for anti-fascist - isn't an organisation at all; it's an idea, one that's been knocking around since the 1930s and that has found newfound relevance on our shores since the rise of Trumpism and the current administration's sharp pivot towards the far right. It's also one of the few bulwarks left against the rapid growth of America's white supremacist movement, a development that seems to leave the state, the authorities, and the police wholly unconcerned. [MORE]

Revisting Prof. Martin Bernal's book “Black Athena”

Ensuring Racial Diversity in Iowa Juries

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that judges must broaden their analysis when determining whether jury pools have sufficient racial diversity to guarantee a fair trial, reports the Associated Press. The ruling came in an appeal by Kelvin Plain Sr., a black man convicted by an all-white jury of harassing a neighbor in 2015. The court rejected the method previously used to gauge the racial composition of a jury—reversing its own ruling from a case 25 years ago—and declared that judges must use multiple tests to evaluate the composition of a jury pool. 

Iowa judges previously used an absolute disparity test to compare the percentage of blacks in the county population with that of the jury pool. “Justices acknowledged that since their 1992 case, the U.S. Supreme Court and others have concluded that method is not an accurate indication of minority balance in locations where minorities represent less than 10% of the overall population”—which applies to all Iowa counties—writes reporter David Pitt. The justices also strongly urged judges to use instructions seeking to heighten jurors’ awareness of unconscious racial bias. 

LA City Council Decriminalized Street Food Vending in Reaction to Trump

“Once Trump was elected and his anti-immigration, anti-Latino rhetoric was at the forefront of his campaign … the city council decided to move forward” with decriminalizing street food vending in Los Angeles, Councilman Jose Huizar told NPR. Until then, vendors, who are mostly immigrants, had been ticketed or charged with misdemeanors for street vending without a permit. After the presidential inauguration, the council voted unanimously to decriminalize street vending, thereby reducing the likelihood that an infraction would lead to deportation. By March, Los Angeles had started pilot testing a vendor permitting system on Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority property, but had yet to implement a citywide permitting ordinance. More details on which types of vendors can operate, regulation enforcement, and balancing the concerns of brick-and-mortar businesses still need to be addressed.

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

The Intercept 

One of the most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”

Racist Netanyahu Tells European Leaders Concern for Palestinian Rights Is “Crazy”

From [HERE] The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was caught on tape on Wednesday urging four European leaders to help him undermine a provision of a European Union trade agreement that imposes an obligation on Israel to respect the rights of the millions of Palestinians it rules in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In private remarks to the leaders of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia that were accidentally broadcast to members of the Israeli media outside the room, Netanyahu was overheard calling it “crazy” for the E.U. to insist that Israel honor Article 2 of an association agreement signed in 1995 which makes trade with the bloc conditional on Israel’s “respect for human rights and democratic principles.”

Recordings of the Israeli leader’s comments, made by correspondents for Haaretz and Israel’s Channel 2 News, were quickly posted online. [MORE]

Remembering Franz Fanon and what he means today

iol

He has long been dead, but his ideas are truly alive. Still dangerous. On July 20, Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary, philosopher, doctor and perhaps the most influential anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century would have been 92. His ideas of race and critical theory of colonisation and assimilation have never aged.

Born in Martinique in the French Antilles, Fanon lived in France, Algeria, Ghana and Tunisia. He died from cancer at the age of 36 in 1961. His work was all encompassing; becoming a supporter for the Algerian struggle for independence from French rule, and a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front.

Fanon’s ideas in those times were as revolutionary as they are today; rejected, fought over, and yet welcomed by those most inspired by its single-minded vision of social change. Fanon’s ideas formed the backbone of much of Steve Biko’s work on black consciousness and the need for decolonisation. The mutterings of decolonisation by today’s students, or the Fallists are, by definition, Fanonian.

Interpretations of his large body of work have shifted with the times: ideas used and abused by thinkers, leaders and snake-charmers alike. But at its core, the values remain the same. [MORE]

Rep. Keith Ellison on GOP Healthcare Plan, Bill Targeting Muslims & Philando Castile Settlement

Investigation of Ivanka Trump Factory in Indonesia Reveals Worker Abuse, Earning $1 per day

White [GOP] Michigan Town official calls for the death of ‘every last Muslim’ on Facebook, refuses to apologize

ThinkProgress

A northern Michigan village president is refusing to apologize for a series of anti-Muslim Facebook posts, including one that called for the death of “every last Muslim.”

Jeff Sieting is town president of Kalkaska, Michigan, a town of fewer than 3,000 people. He has served as an elected official in Kalkaska since 2010 and has a history of posting anti-Black Lives Matter and pro-Trump Facebook statuses, along with alt-right conspiracies like Pizzagate.

A Kalkaska town resident named Cindy Anderson noticed the recent Islamophobic post, and others like it, a few weeks ago. She and other residents confronted Sieting about them at a June 26 town meeting.

“You ran for office to represent all the people of this community, not just the white, non-Muslim ones,” she said to Sieting. “You were supposed to represent all of your constituents.”

Sieting has maintained he was exercising his first amendment right to free speech, saying he “owes nobody an apology for exercising my First Amendment rights.” He also positioned himself as the victim, claiming that Kalkaska residents have turned against him for his outwardly pro-Trump attitude. Sieting runs the village hotel and placed a banner in front that reads, “Pray 4 Trump.”

“When I refused to take [the banner] down, [opposing residents] decided that I was all of the sudden interesting enough to go dig back in my personal Facebook page, a year-ish, roughly, and find something that really didn’t sit well with them,” Sieting told Michigan Radio. “And so then they took it and pasted it all over the place. I didn’t hang that comment on the front of my hotel. I put it on my personal Facebook page. The article truly was very interesting and worth posting.”

Residents have pushed back on this, arguing that his role as village president places limits on what he can and cannot post about. [MORE]