Eddy Martínez
Singer-author and businessman Eddy A. Martínez is celebrating his birthday. Martínez, of Nicaraguan origin, who has just finished recording his CD of romantic music, has worked in the field of real estate for more than 25 years in the city of San Francisco, where his regarded as a good friend of many and very much liked by all. The personnel of The Reporter sends him very warm congratulations on this so special day.
Group deSol one of the band to perform during SF Carnaval (May 24-25) in SF
This June all Oaklanders vote for candidates for the At Large City Council seat. Come hear these candidates’ positions on issues important to working families.
All At Large candidates have been invited to participate. Join us in continuing this effort to Build Oakland for Everyone!
Sponsored by Oakland NetWork for Responsible Development (ONWRD), Oakland People’s Housing Coalition, and the League of Women Voters. Held at the East Bay Community Foundation. These organizations are nonpartisan organizations that neither support nor oppose any political party or candidate for office. Wednesday, May 14, 2008, at 6:30 p.m., at the East Bay Community Foundation, 200 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland.
Intergenerational meeting of salsa music and poetry
If you are a salsa music lover prepare for an unforgettable night where a group of salseros of recognized international trajectory, will have an artistic meeting seldom seen with so many new styles.
The experience of salseros of the category of Benito Cereno and Manny Martínez will join the energy of new values during a musical evening, which you will be able to enjoy big time.
Also a group of poets will put a romantic touch to this event which will take place on Wednesday, May 21, from 8:00 p.m at the la Peña Cultural Center, located at 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. $10 cover charge per person and $8 for students. For more info call 415.642.4784 or visit http://lapena.org.
Beyond asylum and jail: Protecting and treating people disabled by mental illness
The media frenzy that recently surrounded the involuntary psychiatric commitment of a certain celebrity singer at the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital brought to the American consciousness the concept of a 72-hour hold–a legal requirement of the Lanterman-PetrisShort Act (LPS) for “mentally disordered persons.”
On May 27, mental health experts and legal scholars will discuss how to fix a law that has backfi red, as countless individuals suffering from mental illness have ended up as criminals in our legal system without justice or treatment.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., sponsored by the Commonwealth Club. UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Auditorium or UCLA’s Semel Institute Auditorium. For more info call 415/597-6734.
Presentation of Cristina Maura ballerina and choreographer
In the celebration of her V anniversary, the International Festival of Arts of San Francisco will present once more the famous Brazilian ballerina and choreographer Cristina Maura.
The event will take place on Thursday, may 29 from 7:00 p.m; on Saturday, May 31 at 9:30 p.m; and Sunday, June 1, from 4:30 p.m. at the Mission Theater Dance, located at 3316 24th and Mission streets. $20, and $15 for groups or studentes. For more info call 415-292-1850 or 800-838-3006.
COMPETING IN CANNES: Two fi lms starring Latino Oscar-winning actors are among the most expected at this year’s most important international film festival.
Director Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona are among the 20 competing films announced last week for the 61st annual International Film Festival at Cannes, France, to be held May 14-25. Soderbergh’s four-hour fi lm about the Argentinean hero of the Cuban Revolution stars Benicio del Toro, a 2000 Oscar winner for Traffic, from the same director.
The production had previously been announced as two separate fi lms. El argentino and Guerrillero. It was shot last year in Mexico, Spain and Puerto Rico at a reported cost of $70 million. The film also stars Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno.
Allen’s film was shot in the title city and stars this year’s supporting actor Oscar Winner Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men), as well as Penelópe Cruz and Scarlett Johansson.
This year’s festival includes films by two Latin American directors, including a debut by Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, who competes with La mujer sin cabeza. Brazil’s Walter Selles, whose own film about Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Diarios de motocicleta premiered in Cannes in 2004, this time competes with Linha de passe.
Opening and closing films were not announced, but an expected contender for the first slot is the latest one by another Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles. The English-language film is Blindness, based on the novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago.
In a related film item, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, whose own El laberinto del fauno competed in Cannes in 2006, will spend the next four years in New Zealand working with producer Peter Jackson on The Hobbit and its sequel.
Del Toro will direct both films based on the J.R. Tolkien book. Jackson directed the Oscar-winning trilogy based on another Tolkien series of books, The Lord of the Rings. Del Toro has a sequel of his own coming soon to theaters: Hellboy II: The Golden Ammy.
ONE LINERS: Jennifer López will charge $1.5 million to appear next June in a Russian awards ceremony by the MUZ TV channel… The nuyorican star will appear in a yet-untitled reality series for TLC, which will offer a behind-the-scenes into her life as actress, recording artist, businesswoman and new mother. While it was unclear if husband Marc Anthony will appear in the show, the cable channel also announced a production deal with the husband-and-wife team of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. For the second year in a row, the ABC sitcom Ugly Betty has won the outstanding comedy series honor at the 19th annual Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards in Los Angeles last week. Hispanic Link.
Felix Elizalde
The Hispanic Caucus of the State Assembly recently honored Felix Elizalde with a resolution, for his arduous work and promotion in pro of the health and well-being of Latinos ones and in the occasion to have finished the Program of Leadership in Health of California.
The Program of Leadership in Health of California is a one-year intensive initiative, and in it participate elected Latino leaders to governmental positions by the voters. The Program created by NALEO, the National Association Latino Elected Offi cials does emphasis on the struggle against the obesity and other chronic illnesses.
Added to it, Elizalde received recognition on behalf of Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi (District 18,) and state Sen. Ellen Corbett (District 20.) “His passion and commitment in improving the lives of others is incomparable. Felix has put countless hours of his time to the service of the community by means of his participation in boards and commissions. Felix has demonstrated a big effort to contribute in everything possible to assure that Latinos should have a better standard of living, as well as the rest of all the residents in the East of the Bay,” Corbett said.
In response, Elizalte exalted the work of the organization. “ I congratulate NALEO for their excellent quality of experts and resources they put at the disposal of those who participate to really make us understand about the key rolls that we have on the decisions in laws and policies that govern the health of the people, in the schools, and in the community,” said Elizalde.
And he added that “ the students and families of the County of Avenue are lucky to be provided with the unconditional support of Superintendent Sheila Jordan, and that of director of Programs of health Christine Boynton, both leaders from the Office of Education of the County of Alameda.”
NALEO created the Program of Leadership of Health in California in response to the growth of the Latino population and the increase in chronic illnesses.
The program has the specifi c intention of contributing to the advance of the health and wellbeing of the population, including that of Latinos. The participants met four times a year; the presentations and discussions in group included: educational well-being, design of communities, safety in the local communities, transport, housing, recreation, and access to fresh food within reach of the budget of the families.
Fernando Lara was going to get married on April 26, 2008, but his wedding it’s been postponed… indefinitely. The 15 thousand dollars him and his wife to be, along with their families had already spent, are lost.
Two days before his wedding, Fernando went to O’Hare airport, in Chicago, to pick up his father and grandmother. His father came out half an hour after the flight landed, but not his grandmother, a venerable lady of 80. After another half an hour, Fernando asked about her to the immigration officers. Their only response was to ask him for an ID and immigration papers. Fernando has been in immigration detention ever since, while his deportation is processed.
His fiancée and his mother wanted to immediately buy an airplane ticket and take it to immigration, to ask them to take hem directly to the airport and deport him. The couple decided, the first time Fernando was able to call from jail, that they rather go back to Mexico.
But there’s no go. Immigration refuses to set him free, to assign him a bond to pay (maybe because of the flying risk?,) and he is still in jail.
The reason for all this seem to go well beyond reason: keeping immigrants in jail is a big business.
By the end of 2007 there were, according to the George Bush regime, some 27 thousand immigrants in detention. Per night, as if they were in some good hotel, somebody is pocketing about 95 dollars, for a grand total of about a billion dollars a year.
Two companies, Corrections Corporation of America, and the Geo Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections, which already have the concession of 8 of the 16 federal detention centers in the United Stares, are launching an aggressive campaign to privatize the rest of the jail system.
As a matter of fact, since the government announced more aggressive raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants, the declared intention was not to build more jails, but to rent and give them out in concession to private parties. Already the county authorities, which keep in their jails about 57 percent of all detained undocumented “aliens”, have their jails managed by private companies.
Maybe they are not even related, but a woman by the name of Louise Gilchrist, same last name of one of the founders of the Minuteman Project, spokesperson for Corrections Corp., says they could provide “all beds Immigration my ever need.”
Less immigrants, more money
Curiously enough, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, the crisis in the housing industry and related jobs caused the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico to fall in around 50 thousand last year.
It is important to make this clear, because part of the strategy of new jails, increased raids and deportations is not focusing on border crossers, but on those already inside the United States. Why bother detaining 400 thousand people who sneak in, if you can go after the 12 million already here?
There’s where the list of the 600 thousand “criminals” comes from: from drug dealers to people who lost their legalization, adjustment or asylum cases, for whom Immigration already has names and addresses, and from all the “OTM’s”, Other Than Mexicans, title given by the Migra to all undocumented immigrants who are not from Mexico and have been detained but set free because is not as easy to deport them immediately.
This strategy allows the Migra to have “clients” almost permanently, and despite the market exchange going down because of oil prices and other economic problems, shares of Geo and Corrections are going up at a fast pace. From February to date, when Bush announced his new strategy, Corrections shares went up from $42.50 to $53.77, a 27 percent gain, while the shares of Geo went up from $23.36 to $39.24. A “modest” 68 percent in a few months.
At this point, it is only fair to state that living in the United States without papers is still not a crime, despite Republican Jim Sensenbrenner and Democrat Shuler putting all their efforts into it. It is still an administrative fault, but that category plays against undocumented immigrants caught by the Migra. Fernando and many others have to wait in jail for long periods of time without a lawyers being immediately assigned to them. In some cases, they are not even allowed to make phone calls to get in contact with their families or private lawyers.
In closing, undocumented immigrants are “contributing”, albeit not willingly, to the economy of the United Status even in the Migra jails. Resides taxes, contributions to the Social Security, Medicare and who knows what else, and the faithful payments every April 15 without the right to unemployment, pensions and other benefits, undocumented immigrants are “helping” some entrepreneurs to get richer. As Judith Greene, Director of the research group Justice Strategies says, “Privatization of jails for immigrants is part of the American entrepreneurial spirit of this country, but frankly this is an ill spirit.”
Oh, and the next México del Norte, I promise, Hill be on the 60 undocumented immigrant who have died in the Migra jails … don’t miss it!
Lea “México del Norte” en Internet: http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/mexicodelnorte.
Marvin J. Ramirez
Sometimes during deadline, is hard for an editor who works alone with very little help, to come up with a last-minute idea for writing an editorial.
This was the case of myself at the time or sending this edition to the printer. I just couldn’t think what to write about, I was blocked for a while.
But I started to look around in my thoughts and remember how most people can’t see what’s really happening to our beautiful country.
Perhaps not many people in the United States understand of why many things are not going right for most citizens: the more you work, the more debts you’re in, and afraid of falling to the financial bottom. It seems that we are going nowhere.
The harder you work to buy a house playing by the rules, the more you later find out that those rule weren’t really made to protect you, the hard-working citizen, but to protect some invisible corporation based somewhere in another part of the world, and that your own government can’t do much for you. It just watches you to be thrown on the streets and be stripped of your fundamental rights afforded by our Founding Fathers.
With this intention, I am publishing this piece from author Mark Nestman, that I found sometime ago, which I hope will give you an idea of what could be going on and what could be for our future.
Soon you’ll have to ask permission before you fly
Last year, I wrote here that if Uncle Sam gets its way, we’d all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave – or re-enter – the United States.
Now, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) proposed a similar system for travel on commercial airlines WITHIN the United States. Both sys- tems will come into effect Feb. 19, 2008.
Under the TSA’s “Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) initiative,” you’ll need to obtain permission from the U.S. government to travel on ANY commercial airliner or ship that goes to or from the United States. You won’t receive your boarding pass until you are cleared by APIS. You’ll also need permission to travel through the United States (e.g., if you’re changing planes at a U.S. airport on a trip between two foreign countries). It doesn’t matter if you’re a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
Everyone will need permission to enter – or leave – the United States.
Then, on Aug. 23, 2007, the TSA issued proposed regulations for its “Secure Flight” program.
The TSA wants commercial airlines to submit passenger information through a single DHS portal for both the Secure Flight and APIS programs. This would result in one DHS system responsible for watch list matching for all aviation passengers. Naturally, the entire process – for both domestic and international travel – will occur in total secrecy. If you’re denied permission to travel, you won’t be able to appeal the decision to any court. Your only recourse will be through the TSA bureaucracy. Essentially, you’ll be reduced to pleading with the TSA to say something like, “pretty please, give me a boarding pass.”
What this amounts to is essentially a reprise of the infamous “internal passport” system in effect in the former Soviet Union. In 1933, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin introduced “internal passports” that prohibited Soviet citizens from leaving their place of residence without permission. Over time, the internal passport became the prime instrument of Soviet oppression over its citizens. It’s bad enough needing to ask Uncle Sam for permission to leave the United States, and to reenter it. But an internal passport is a blueprint for totalitarianism.
Mark Nestman, Privacy Expert & President. The Nestmann Group www.nestmann.com. This article was written in 10 -4 -7.
Residents of one East Oakland neighborhood, including foreclosure victims and public officials, toured devastated neighborhood due to abandonment of properties.
They say they are fed up with blight and crime and they blame some of the problem on the foreclosure crisis. On Wednesday evening they made sure City Hall took notice.
Fannie Brown took Oakland City Councilwoman Desely Brooks on what she called a “reality tour” of the 11 block area from 78th Ave. to 89th Ave.
Brown, who says she has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 40 years, said that 150 homes in an 11-block area have been abandoned in the past year or so. Many of them were foreclosed properties. Brown said: “Our communities are being brought down, our property’s values are going down. We have drug dealing, trash dumping.”
She said the empty houses are magnets for crime and squatters.
After the tour, City Councilwoman Brown said she plans to propose legislation to require lenders who foreclose properties to maintain them, to make sure that they are not creating blight or are a neighborhood nuisance.
One homeowner, Gerald Ruffin, likes the idea. The retired forklift driver said that he is facing foreclosure after his mortgage payment went from $1500 a month to $2200.
The neighbors would like to see Oakland impose fines on banks and other owners of blighted property up to $1000 a day until the correct the situation. If they refuse, they want city employees to do the work and bill the owners.
Businesses are disappearing in the Mission (photos by Marvin J. Ramírez)
Two people (above) walk speaking in their cell phones in front of two closed shops, maybe unaware of a possible recession in the country that is leading many merchants to close their shops. Below, two people take advantage of a closing sale n one of the stores to buy something cheap.
Corazón Coffee Shop closed weeks before, while the shop next door, The Mahde Trading, Co., closed its doors on April 30.
Its owner told to El Reportero that he blames President Bush for the closing after nine years in business.
Three other stores have also closed on Mission St. between 23er and 24th streets. Is this a sign of a major financial catastrophy to come?
Just please, don’t ask Bush to answer this question.
Ferndando Lugo
The remaining conservative chiefs govern few nations
ASUNCION, PARAGUAY — The victory of the “bishop of the poor” in Paraguay’s presidential election expands a wave of leftist leadership across Latin America and further isolates the few remaining conservative governments.
Once Fernando Lugo is inaugurated on Aug. 15, the only right-leaning governments in Latin America will be Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico — and arguably Peru, where a left-leaning populist party has gradually edged to the right.
“The triumph of comrade Fernando Lugo is … yet another stone in the foundation of this new Latin America that is just, sovereign, independent — and why not, socialist,” Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa gushed during a visit from Argentina’s new leftist President Cristina Fernandez.
Hours after toppling the world’s longest-ruling party, Lugo repeated his distaste for labels: “I’m not of the left, nor of the right.”
But the former Roman Catholic bishop has said that Marxist-influenced liberation theology inspired his advocacy for the poor, and his victory clearly pushes Paraguay toward the left from the Colorado Party, which has ruled through dictatorship and democracy since 1947, including 35 years under brutal anticommunist Gen. Alfredo Stroessner.
Latin America’s leftward tilt began with the arrival of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez a decade ago, then continued with new presidents in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
“Paraguay’s election is just further evidence that Latin America’s political geography has changed in basic ways,” said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington based think tank.
That said, there’s a lot of political space between those leaders. Chavez has nationalized foreign companies and called President Bush the devil. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet is a great booster of free-trade who Bush calls “charming.”
Lugo, 56, may well find himself somewhere in between. His Patriotic Alliance for Change includes socialists, centrists and even conservatives, all of whom will be fighting for a voice in his government.
He said Monday that his top priority will be to help Indians mired in poverty.
(Associated Press and AFP contributed to these reports).
Luis Gutiérrez
Members of the all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus blasted their party for a series of immigration hearings that will take place in the coming weeks which focus on what they say are piecemeal or punitive enforcement-only bills.
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (111.) said the Democratic majority is “no better than the Republican majority we defeated” if it continues focus on “punitive” measures or on certain visas for select immigrants and ignores some 12 million undocumented immigrants.
“If we don’t stand up for all immigrants, then we’re not standing up at all,” Gutierrez said. “Does it matter that the Democratic Party won a majority in Congress?
Rep. Raul Grijalva defended the CHC against claims that the caucus is obstructing action on visa-related legislation and lashed out that its members’ efforts to pass comprehensive reform have been replaced by the “spineless action~ of the Democratic Caucus.
The lawmakers declined to identify names when pressed.
During their April 23 press conference that included CHC chair Joe Baca (Calif.), Ruben Hinojosa (Texas) and Charles Gonzalez (Texas), the CHC members called on the party to take on aggressively the issue of comprehensive immigration solutions.
Baca said the hearings scheduled in the House Judiciary Committee focus on bills that are just a “Band-Aid being used to cover up a gaping wound.”
One of the committee’s hearings will be on the bipartisan enforcement-only bill known as the SAVE Act, by Reps. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), which would strengthen the borders and require use of E-Verify to check on the legal status of workers.
Baca and other CHC members support a bill known as the STRIVE Act, by Gutierrez, which includes a path to legalization for the undocumented as well as enforcement.
Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration at the National Council of La Raza, said the CHC did what was necessary to remind their colleagues of the need for a comprehensive plan.
“We cannot address immigration with half solutions,” she said.
Doug Rivlin, spokesperson for the National Immigration Forum, said the Democratic leadership is trying to “control” the Shuler-Tancredo bill. Jack Martin, special projects director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said it is unlikely the SAVE Act will go very far “so long as the Democratic leadership in Congress remains firmly opposed.”
The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that maintains she is committed to “balanced, fair and bipartisan immigration legislation.~ She blamed President Bush and the Republican leadership for the lack of progress on it.
But Rivlin agreed with CHC members that the issue cannot be dealt with “piecemeal,” adding that they are doing “the right thing, to say, there are 12 million vulnerable immigrants in this country’ there are (48) million Latinos, and we shouldn’t be ignored.”
Martin said the problem with the position assumed by Gutiérrez is that “he doesn’t accept any distinction among those in the country legally and those here illegally.”
Baca admitted it will be difficult to overhaul the immigration system in a comprehensive way in an election year’ but added it is necessary to keep the issue alive.
“We’re not going to be silent” he said. “We’re going to come out and say let’s get something done.” Hispanic Link.
Welcome to our Marvin J. Ramirez website! We are an innovative newspaper located in the heart of San Francisco. With a relentless passion for telling powerful stories, we inform our community with truthful news, insightful analysis, and compelling reporting.
Contacto: lreportero@aol.com
© Copyright 2023. AMAYCOM.NET. All rights reserved.