by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

Who gave the order: LAPDs beat an unarmed man during a May 1st march. ( PHOTOS BY LAT )

On May 1, International Workers Day, tens of thousands of protesters participated in mass marches for immigrant rights in California and around the United States. While Bay Area rallies peacefully brought diverse groups together and drew attention to the more than 1,500 local raids on illegal immigrants in recent months, a Los Angeles event ended in violence. Both northern and southern California reported much smaller turnouts than last year’s record-breaking protests.

The L.A. clashes started around 6 p.m. in MacArthur Park, at the city’s second event of the day, when crowds had thinned from approximately 25,000 to 10,000. Police wielding batons and firing 240 rubber bullets tried to disperse demonstrators who moved into a street, according to rally organizers and reporters. Authorities said several people threw rocks and bottles at officers, who used batons and tear gas to push the crowd back to the sidewalk and then cleared the park.

“There were 240 rounds shot and not one arrest, so where was the threat?” asked organizer Victor Narro of the National Lawyers Guild. “I saw police officers laughing on the street while this was going on.”

News images showed police hitting TV journalists, shoving people who were walking away from officers, and injuries people suffered from rubber bullets.

“They were pushing children, elderly, mothers with their babies and beating up on the media,” said Angela Sanbrano, an organizer.

“The cops didn’t only move people out of the perimeters of the park, they chased through the park firing at anyone who might have been an obstacle, said Ernesto Arce, an organizer and radio host who was hit in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet during the conflict. “I witnessed many people who were shot at from the back,” according to media reports.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who cut short his trip to Central America and Mexico in the wake of the problems at the protests, said he would welcome the FBI’s investigation into the violence at the end of mostly peaceful immigrant rights marches and rallies.

Police Chief William J. Bratton condemned the officers’ tactics and said the department’s investigation, which will review police and news media videos, would focus on the actions not only of the street officers but also of the top decision-makers who gave the orders.

“There were mistakes made here all the way up and down the line. I want to make that clear,” Bratton said at a news conference. He also mentioned that he had talked with the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office and would meet with him next week to “speak to the issues that occurred May 1 and also the idea of possibly having the FBI take a look at this.”

The chief said he hoped a federal review would show the department has nothing to hide while dispelling any claims that police had targeted immigrant rights leaders and supporters.

The several thousand activists who turned out in San Francisco that day carried flags from both the U.S. and Latin American nations, marching up Market Street to the Civic Center rally.

“This is not a movement of politicians, but of human beings — and that’s why it will be successful,” said Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “The laws of this country will not change unless we stay united,” according to news accounts.

A morning march in Oakland down International Boulevard was led by a banner reading: “No mas tratamiento de segunda clase,” or “No more second-class ­treatment,” and covered 15 blocks.

The nationwide protests, school and store closings and boycotts were meant to show the key role that immigrants both legal and illegal play in the U.S. economy. They were also in protest of an immigration reform bill passed by the House in December, which would make illegal immigration an aggravated felony and erect 700 miles of fence on the U.S.-Mexican border. California is home to about one-quarter of the nation’s immigrants.

(Servicios de noticias de cabl\e contribuiyeron con este reportaje).

by the El Reportero news services

Chávez and Morales

BRAZIL – Despite official denials, Brazil’s relations with neighbouring Venezuela and Bolivia have soured in the past month. The courteous manners of Presidents Lula da Silva, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales during the first ever South American energy summit in mid-April did little to hide growing political differences. Indeed, behind the scenes, the Brazilian government sent a tough message to Venezuela and Bolivia, reasserting Brazil’s leadership in the region.

Government compares narcos to al-Qaida

MEXICO: Genaro García Luna, the security minister, said on 25 April that drug gangs were imitating al-Qaida, an Islamic terrorist organisation. García Luna was speaking on the eve of today’s testimony by the defence minister, Guillermo Galván Galván, to congress. The government has launched offensives against the narcos in nine of Mexico’s 32 states, but these offensives have, so far, achieved little: the murder rate in the states where the government has deployed 30,000 troops is up by about 40% so far this year.

Experts: U.S. spies are often in the dark on Cuba

WASHINGTON – American spies don’t know much about what’s happening in Havana as Fidel Castro appears to be growing more active. U.S. reports that he has cancer increasingly seem off the mark, questioning just how much American spies know.

Regardless of having so many sophisticated spy satellites,\the U.S. intelligence community is now too shellshocked from past intelligence setbacks on Cuba and the Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle to aggressively spy on the island, some Cuba observers say.

“Washington, as a result, is now largely ignorant of what is happening within the inner circles in Havana as Cuba undergoes a transfer of power from Castro to his brother Raul,” according to several people familiar with U.S. intelligence on the island, reported the McClatchy Newspapers.

The U.S. intelligence community’s current assessment is that Castro is more ill than Havana is admitting, and that change in Cuba is unlikely in the near term, though a power struggle is possible further down the road.

But nearly a dozen people knowledgeable about U.S. intelligence on Cuba – who all spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss classified materials – painted a mixed picture of the capability to spy on Cuba.

N.Y. mayor explores Mexico for anti-poverty ideas

MEXICO CITY – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got a firsthand look Tuesday April 24, at an anti-poverty program that gives cash grants to poor Mexican families for keeping their children in school and providing regular medical care, looking for tips he might adopt back home.

Mexico’s Oportunidades program has been lauded as a model because it focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty by investing in long-term development.

Bloomberg, who has started a similar pilot program, Opportunity NYC, to help New Yorkers break the cycle of poverty, said he was looking for ways to enhance it.

Oportunidades began operating in poor rural regions in 1997 under the name of Progresa. It later expanded to cities.

The program gives families cash grants to help pay for their children’s schooling and to compensate for what the children would have earned if they were taken out of school and put to work, the traditional option in poor regions of Mexico.

Oportunidades also provides basic health care, including preventive services, for entire families as well as cash to buy food.

(Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this article.)

by Alex Meneses Miyashita

Felix Ortiz

State lawmakers have introduced more than 1,000 immigration bills so far this year’ which more than doubles the amount of immigration legislation introduced at the state level in 2006, according to a tally by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

It claims there are at least 1,169 bills and resolutions which have been introduced this year.

This far into the calendar year 12 months ago the number of bills introduced was about two-thirds less.

In all of 2006, 570 immigration bills were introduced. So far, 57 bills have passed.

The NCSL says these trends reflect the need to address immigration reform upon the absence of federal action.

“Washington’s inability to reach consensus has forced states to roll up their sleeves and get the job done,” stated NCSL president Leticia Van de Putte.

The conference is pressing the federal government to act on immigration reform.

“States can only do so much,” Van de Putte stated. “It’s like we’re trying to scale a 12foot wall with a step stool. The federal government must fix and fund the problem, now.”

Funding concerns have driven 17 states to pass resolutions against the REAL ID Act of 2005, which sets national standards for driver’s licenses and requires all applicants to prove legal status.

New York State Assemblyman Fé1ix Ortiz, also president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, told Weekly Report in February that it would cost his state alone some $200 million to implement the law—about f ve times what was federally appropriated.

“We are not getting a mandate imposed on us without funding,” he said.

Latino and civil rights groups claim the law would harm undocumented immigrants. While several of the bills listed by the NCSL in its preliminary analysis would include certain benefits to undocumented immigrants, the great majority of the legislative proposals would penalize them.

The state bills most commonly range from restricting services for undocumented immigrants, penalizing employers for hiring them, allowing state and local police to enter a federal program to enforce immigration law and requiring proof of citizenship to vote, among others.

Legislation extending benefits to undocumented immigrants commonly range from granting them driving certificates and in-state school tuition and funding English language learning programs.

Oklahoma, Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee have introduced comprehensive proposals as defined by the NCSL. These address several elements and target un documented immigrants and employers who hire them.

Most recently, the Oklahoma state Senate passed 41-6 legislation which has been reported as one of the country’s most restrictive bills against undocumented immigrants.

­It penalizes employers hiring them, criminalizes harboring or sheltering them, strips public benefits away from them and allows local police to enter a federal program to enforce immigration law.

Sen. James Williamson, the author of the bill, stated it was “a fair, even-handed approach to problems Oklahoma is facing as a result of illegal immigration.”

Opponents offer an alternative view. They call it mean in spirit.

Additional preliminary findings of the NOSL report are available at www.ncsl.org.

Hispanic Link.