by Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger

President Obama has often statedthat immigration reform cannot be approached in a piecemeal fashion, and that his administration would tackle the issue in 2009.This week, Obama will be meeting with members of Congress to kick off abi-partisan approach to reform. These meetings don't guarantee anylegislative action will take place this year, but are at least anencouraging sign. In the meantime, the deportation industry shows nosign of slowing, hate crimes are rising and hate groups are being mainstreamed. As a result, the polarization between reform advocates andfoes is getting worse.

New America Media's Jun Wang writes about the disapointing consensus reached by a panel of immigration activists last Thursday at California StateUniversity in Los Angeles. A lack of movement around immigration reformwon't help curb rising rates of hate crimes against Latino/as, andcompounds other instances of "othering" and racism. According to onepanelist: "Employers in conservative cities" are learning that "theyare better off not hiring people who are 'foreign looking or havingforeign sound names.'”
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger

Now that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner isn't going to impose pay restrictions on bailed out Wall Street executives, it's critical to remember that severe economic inequality was a major factor in the financial meltdown. Our tax code funnels money into the hands of our wealthiest citizens, which means that our financial system protects the interests of the affluent—not the the average citizen. The broad divergence between our core democratic values and the existing U.S. economic structure must become part of the public debate over financial reform.

As Les Leopold notes in a roundtable discussion with GritTV's Laura Flanders, much of the Wall Street meltdown can be traced to a steady redistribution of wealth to the wealthy dating back to the Reagan years. Poor people, after all, do not have money to invest in the Wall Street speculation machine. By 2007, the financial world accounted for over 40% of U.S. corporate profits, an astounding percentage for a business intended to facilitate the operation of other industries. According to Leopold, we need to find constructive ways to

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CUNY Students Mobilize for DREAM Act: Proposed Legislation Would Create Instant Path to Citizenship for 360,000 Undocumented Immigrant Youth

By John Tarleton

After studying forensic psychology at John Jay College for the past seven years, Karla could be making $30-40 per hour in her chosen field. Instead, Karla, 25, pursues her Masters by day and toils by night as a waitress paid off the books at a Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn. She hopes that Congress will finally pass the DREAM Act this year, which would provide an education-based path to citizenship for herself and hundreds of thousands of other young people who were brought to the U.S. as child immigrants by their undocumented parents.

“I have to study,” said Karla, who immigrated from Mexico with her mother when she was eight and has no close family ties in her native country. “I have nothing else to look forward to except to waitress for the rest of my life.”

A DREAM DEFERRED

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BREAKING NEWS: Activists Risk Arrest to Stop Mountaintop Removal

14 Activists Arrested in Peaceful Protest to Stop Mountaintop Removal scaled 20-story tall machinery to call attention to nation’s worst form of coal mining in first ever ascent of a mountaintop removal site’s dragline.

COAL RIVER VALLEY, W. VA –  At 5:00AM this morning 14 concerned citizens entered onto Massey Energy’s mountaintop removal mine site near Twilight WV. Four of them scaled a 150-foot dragline and unfurled a 15×150 foot banner that said, “Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining”.  The climbers were on the enormous dragline, a massive piece of equipment that removes house-sized chunks of blasted rock and earth to expose coal, and remained there for over three hours. Meanwhile nine others deployed a 20×40 foot banner on the ground at the site which read, “Stop Mountaintop Removal:  Clean Energy Now”.

Police arrested David Hollister, Melissa O’Neil, Chelsea Ritter Soronen, Lynn Stone, Charles Suggs, Rodney Webb, Jeanne Kirshon, John Johnson Greg Yost, Jessica Sue Eley, Lisa Ramsden, David Pike, Paul Brown, and Kurt Delano Mann. 

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A sensible youth?  Not when it comes to cocaine!

From l’Humanité.

According to an annual report, teens report a decrease in their use of tobacco and marijuana.  Contrarily, cocaine (though it remains on the fringe) increases in distribution.

Jean-Michel Costes, director of the French monitoring center for drugs and drug addiction, presents the results of the 2008 ESCAPAD survey.  Conducted with 40,000 French seventeen-year-olds, the survey allows us to examine the consumption habits of the nation’s youth.  

What trends did you notice in the habits of teenagers?
We noticed little change, not even a decline in regular usage of marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol.  The report is generally positive despite some worrisome subjects, such as occasional drunkenness, which saw a slight increase in frequency from last year.

How can you explain this increase?
Pleasure and ease of use are the most widespread motives for [...]More