"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Latinos losing sleep worrying about death

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2102278,CST-EDT-esther15.article

Latinos losing sleep worrying about death

　

March 15, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

 

How you doin'? Did you get enough rest over the weekend -- catch up on your sleep? If not, join the club.

Oh yes, the subject of sleep is near and dear to my heart, and I can tell you from personal experience that none of us is getting enough, and last week the good folks at the National Sleep Foundation made it official -- yet again -- with the results of their annual Sleep in America poll. This time with the twist of gathering data comparing whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

It didn't surprise me one bit to see that no group had a majority reporting the good, solid seven to eight hours of sleep most often recommended by doctors for optimal health. I myself had been clocking in at a shameful four or five hours per night for the last few years, and it took several months of being miserable for my doctor to finally convince me that the deficit would kill me sooner than later. Through diligent work, I've now slept an average of 8.09 hours a night over the last 77 days, but it certainly hasn't been easy.

There's just too much to do in place of sleeping -- and I don't mean just chores.

Sure, most people lose sleep over things that are bothering them, but Hispanics ... well, for us it's an art form. According to the study, Hispanics are the group most likely to say they're kept awake by financial, employment, personal relationship and/or health-related concerns -- 38 percent of Hispanics, compared with 33 percent of African Americans and about 25 percent each of whites and Asians.

This is me, my family, and my friends' families: sleepers so light that morning dew forming on the lawn can rip one out of a sound sleep, providing ample time to fret about how the family will ever pay for their funeral someday.

This is not an exaggeration; it's a variation of death -- or the road to it -- that keeps Latinos awake at night. The economy, love/family and health worries are just the smoke trail spewing out of top of the angst express. According to the National Sleep Foundation, about 2 in 10 Hispanics and African Americans say their sleep is disturbed every night or almost every night by at least one of these concerns.

I have none of these worries, so I lay awake at night worrying about my parent's worry levels. Crazy, I know -- but that's culture for you.

Growing up in my household -- a traditional "Hispanics in America" home with the babies and the elders all under one roof -- it was a common occurrence for the grandmas to be up in the middle of the night fretting, and for long-faced fathers to look to the breakfast table for something warm to take the chill out of a long, agonizing night -- "Oh, I was just up ... thinking."

And let's not even get started on the aches and pains. This same study reports that Hispanics are more likely than blacks and Asians, and twice as likely as whites, to say that health concerns have disturbed their sleep at least a few nights a week. Even I succumb to this one regularly.

Incredibly, you'd think the good vibes from having the highest rate of sex before falling asleep (10 percent of both blacks and Hispanics claim to have sex every night or almost every night in the hour before going to sleep, compared with 4 percent of whites and 1 percent of Asians, for those of you keeping score at home) would keep the mind from awakening to torment the self with anxieties.

But no.

It's a darned shame, really. All this losing sleep over the things you can't control rather than resting up to take action on all the things you can control is killing us all.

I've mended my ways and am aiming for a solid 8.5-hour average over a 100-day period, and I'm hoping the warm milk and the thick, data-laden public policy reports will get me there serenely.

 

 

Parents cringe as more Latino students go away to college

Parents cringe as more Latino students go away to college

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2075669,CST-EDT-esther01.article

March 1, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

'Go away!" I tell them. Let me explain. On occasion, well-meaning teachers call me in to high schools to talk to kids who are poised to be the first in their family to attend college. I get to impress these future leaders of America and their parents with the endless benefits of higher education.

Dutifully, I cover all of the important stuff that comes from completing a degree or certification: the increased opportunity for a lifetime of stable careers, the pure joy of intellectual enlightenment. Then I get to the part that makes parents cringe: the unparalleled fun of breaking away from all you know and becoming an independent adult for the first time ever.

Often this goes over poorly with the parents in the room. When it's a predominantly Hispanic crowd, the brows furrow in a synchronized wave of distaste at the mere mention of "going away" to college. That's because in Latino households where a college education is a cherished hope, it's also generally expected that the student in question will stay home to be supported by the family in the endeavor.

Culturally speaking, Latinos are literally all about the family. Generations live together under the same roof, caring for each other from infancy to old age. You fear Dad more than you fear God, and Mom is the center of the universe. So no matter how much of a fancy schmancy smarty pants you think you are, you just don't break Mami's heart by going away to college!

From the perspective of so many parents who didn't get the opportunity to do so themselves, you just don't let your tender young child go off hundreds of miles away to study and do who-knows-what with who-knows-who. In my case, my parents knew better than to try to stop me, and lo all these years later, I can finally say there are a whole lot of others following in my footsteps.

A recent study by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that since 1975, the share of Latino freshmen at four-year colleges who choose schools more than 50 miles from home has risen from about 46 percent to nearly 59 percent. At the same time, those attending four-year colleges within 10 miles of home dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, while the proportion of white freshmen who went away to school stayed unchanged, about 66 percent.

This obviously points to the explosive growth of an acculturated Hispanic middle class comfortable with the idea that college is a ticket to the "American Dream" and that high school kids graduate and leave home for school, rather than get a job to help support the rest of the family.

Sure, the whole issue of where Latinos study is trivial when you stop to consider that despite all efforts, only 27 percent of Latinos ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That's an increase from the 1980s, but still low compared with whites, at 43 percent, and blacks, at 33 percent.

But going away -- if the opportunity is within reach -- is really important. Even Latinos who stay home know they're missing out on a special part of life. "At first, I really didn't want to go away," Ana Perez, a senior at DePaul University who lives at home in Humboldt Park and commutes to school, told me recently. "I'm really close with my family, and I didn't want to lose out on being with them."

Ana admitted that although her parents never came out and said she shouldn't go away, her college years were never discussed in the context of being out of the nest. Now in her final months as a college student, she says she's happy with her choice, but "I wish I could have done it. I didn't get to experience a lot of things -- being on my own, learning how to rely on just myself. When I have my own kids, I definitely will encourage it."

That's just how it goes: the Esthers and the Anas of the world will continue to go out and broadcast how rip-roaring wonderful college life can be, and in a few generations, a whole culture will be changed for the better.

DHS’ FYI on Illinois’ illegal aliens

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

The Department of Homeland security provided a keyhole of hopeful light for the reform crowd on Tuesday. They published "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2009" which was written by Michael Hoefer, Nancy Rytina, and Bryan C. Baker.

The report provides estimates of the number of illegal – they use the term "unauthorized" – immigrants residing in the United States as of January 2009 by period of entry, region and country of origin, state of residence, age, and gender. It also provides a favorable environment for the comprehensive immigration reform movement in that it shows that there are now less illegal immigrants residing in the US than there once was. This lessening will surely be attributed to better practices in DHS’ enforcement of existing laws, though they do also credit the Great Recession.

The bottom line is that true reform was not going to be a palatable concept to the illegal-immigration-is-killing-this-country crowd while illegal immigration was booming. The rallying cry on that side back in 2005 when the Sensenbrenner bill was introduced was – and continued to be – that you cannot talk about human reform and dealing equitably with those already here when the borders were still bleeding illegal immigrants daily. I always thought that was a good point that never got the attention it deserved.

At any rate, as you’ll see from DHS’ report -- whether for enforcement climate reasons or economic reasons -- illegal immigration has slowly abated and this might provide an opportunity for productive reform talks between both sides of the aisle.

Here are the items I’ve selected as the report’s highlights:



Between 2000 and 2009, the unauthorized population grew by 27 percent. Of all unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2009, 63 percent entered before 2000, and 62 percent were from Mexico.



Between January 2008 and January 2009, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States decreased seven percent from 11.6 million to 10.8 million.

Here are state stats:



Between 2000 and 2007, the unauthorized population grew by 3.3 million from 8.5 million to 11.8 million. The number of unauthorized residents declined by 1.0 million between 2007 and 2009, coincident with the U.S. economic downturn. The overall annual average increase in the unauthorized population during the 2000-2009 period was 250,000.

 

Here is country of origin info:



The unauthorized resident population is the remainder or "residual" after estimates of the legally resident foreign-born population – legal permanent residents (LPRs), asylees, refugees, and nonimmigrants – are subtracted from estimates of the total foreign-born population

　

Here are demographic details:



The unauthorized resident immigrant population is defined as all foreign-born non-citizens who are not legal residents. Most unauthorized residents either entered the United States without inspection or were admitted temporarily and stayed past the date they were required to leave. Unauthorized immigrants applying for adjustment to lawful permanent resident status under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) Section 245(i) are unauthorized until they have been granted LPR status, even though they may have been authorized to work. Persons who are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS)—an estimated several hundred thousand—are not technically unauthorized but were excluded from the legally resident immigrant population because data are unavailable in sufficient detail to estimate this population.

　

DHS has said that from now moving forward, this report will be updated and made available annually based on "the [annual] foreign-born population collected in the American Community Survey and on the estimated lawfully resident foreign-born population derived from various administrative data sources."

We’ll stay tuned. Until then, the full report can be found at http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2009.pdf

　

　

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Melting pot giving rise to post-'Latino' Latino politicians

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2021807,CST-EDT-esther01.article

Melting pot giving rise to post-'Latino' Latino politicians

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA　

February 1, 2010

I have no idea what 2050 will actually be like, but I'm imagining it will be fantastic beyond my wildest dreams!

By then I'll have mastered the piano and will be making tons of cash singing nightly cabaret gigs, not a bit bothered that no one is interested in what I've got to say about the world anymore because there'll be plenty of multi-ethnic people opining on current affairs in whatever passes for digital newspapers by then. Me and my "unique perspective," which is representative of the "emerging" Latino population, will have become as defunct as my gas-powered car.

By then Hispanics will be about a quarter of the population. Add the 15 percent of the population that blacks are projected to be, plus the children of today's estimated 3 million mixed-race couples, and there surely will be so many "minority" journalists, columnists and lawyers, engineers, scientists and sports stars that no one will care what I think anymore because I'll be just another face in the multi-hued crowd.

That happy thought sprang to mind last week when I was asked to go on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ's news program "848" for a discussion of the "Future of Latino Politics."

I chuckle when I hear stuff like that because the real future of Latino anything is a mainstream, U.S.-born, English speaking one that will be about as exotic and ethnic as the Chicago Irish.

Sure, there'll be the obligatory heritage parades, but it'll be a "unique cultural identity" that's given consideration only annually and will be adopted by anyone who happens to be walking by and thirsty for beer. Think: Cinco de Mayo.

While the conversation's starting point was a recitation of Latino politics' greatest hits -- the supposedly defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization, the highly emotional Jesus Garcia/ Rudy Lozano campaigns against clouted incumbents, the rise of the young professional types like ex-Ald. Manny Flores -- I think I brought us back to the reality that the continually churning melting pot is already giving rise to the post-"Latino" Latino politician. Which is to say, a politician who's running as a candidate, not as a Hispanic candidate.

It's too soon to visualize that, I know. The Latino population as we know it today is relatively new to the United States, and its politics are defined by the civil rights, worker's rights and immigration reform concerns that naturally have particular resonance to a community still gaining a foothold in our society.

But much like the Italians and the Irish before them, who became just another thread in the fabric of this country, Hispanic community leaders will someday stop gathering from across the country to discuss a "Latino agenda" of social and political empowerment and instead concern themselves with focusing on more universal themes such as the U.S. economy, health care and education.

People often disdain my constant scanning of the horizon to a time when no one will focus on such matters as whether your mom's mom came from Latin America or Latvia, completely ignoring that our whole American conscious is made up of all the cultures of the people who live here and there's nothing wrong with focusing on the scary-to-some time when Latinos will have completely melted into the melting pot.

Like I told the radio show producer, as assimilation draws immigrants into the "American" culture -- as it always has and always will -- this "Hispanic" narrative that's currently playing out will become old hat. In the not-too-distant future, we'll be talking about the future of Muslim politics or of East Indian politics.

Or, if I look into the faces of my own family's children, we'll be talking about the rise of quarter-Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-black politics, quarter- Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-Filipino politics, and quarter-Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-white politics.

But it'll be called something else by then: just plain old politics.

And me? I won't have much to say about it, I'll be too busy tinkling the ivories, crooning "When You Wish Upon A Star" for you.

 

How will kids be healthy if their parents eat junk?

How will kids be healthy if their parents eat junk?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2009208,CST-EDT-esther25.article

January 25, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

 

In the early-morning hours before Michelle Obama addressed the Conference of Mayors in Washington to make her pitch about the importance of curbing childhood obesity last week, I was sitting in a crowded elementary school gymnasium with kids and their parents, fearing for the heart attack victims of tomorrow.

The occasion was a salute to the school's honor roll students, which certainly called for an extra dose of celebratory sugar, sure. But it wasn't the kids' liberal dose of syrup for the French toast sticks that concerned me; it was parents' obvious lack of any nutritional cognizance that sounded the alarms.

Children mimic their parents' behaviors and habits, and if a child sees his mom or dad bypass the freshly cut fruit and whole-grain bagels in order to load up a plate with greasy muffins, iced sweet rolls and French toast sticks drenched in syrup destined to be downed with a handful of juice boxes, what, exactly, will they understand about healthy eating habits?

Though, who can blame anyone for looking for some sweetness in life these days? I'm sad to say there were tons of parents at this breakfast because so many are out of work. I heard their stories myself: One dad was telling an acquaintance he had been laid off months ago and his wife was working two jobs. Another lady was worried about making it to an upcoming Parent Teacher Organization meeting because her scant hours at work are all over the map and she's never really sure where she's going to be. Who could begrudge these people a couple of extra free cheese danishes?

During her speech, Obama rattled off facts: Nearly one-third of children in America are overweight or obese, and one-third of all children today will eventually suffer from diabetes -- in African-American and Latino communities it goes up to almost half. She cited recently published studies stating that obesity could now be an even greater threat to Americans' health than smoking, that medical experts are predicting the next generation is on track to have a shorter life-span than their parents, that budget cuts are decimating school gym time, and that crime makes it impossible for most parents to tell their kids to go out and play until dark.

I'd add that we are also burdened by school systems that pump our children full of sugar and fat-laden breakfast and lunches -- the poorest among them for a low cost or for free -- and then wonder why they get labeled by frustrated teachers as behavior-issue problem kids. Also add that parents don't understand the consequences of what their kids eat because they never learned what healthy eating means.

The first lady closed her speech by praising creative ideas some cities are trying in order to manage the problem, but she also soberly stated the obvious: Efforts to curb childhood obesity won't be cheap, easy or quick. I agree with her and add that it's doable. At the very least, it's the worthiest goal I can think of.

We may have tragically lost a generation to killer eating habits, but if the statistics horrify enough leaders and role models into action, helping others understand good nutrition, then in about 40 years we'll have a whole crop of young parents -- and enlightened grandparents -- who'll know that "fruit punch" is not fruit juice, and certainly not preferable to fresh, frozen or dried fruit.

They'll get it that a "special treat" is not something that occurs hourly or even daily. They'll know that if you have time to surf the Web, you can also make time to box your best friend on the Wii. And they'll understand that -- repeat after me -- chocolate-chip bagels, banana split-flavored yogurt and blueberry jam granola bars are not "health food."

2050 here we come!

Statement from President Obama on the Passing of Chicago Reporter Carlos Hernandez Gomez

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I’m sad to say I never had the unique pleasure of meeting the celebrated journalist Carlos Hernandez Gomez.

This is how his obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times described him:

"Carlos Hernandez Gomez, political reporter for CLTV, stood out among Chicago reporters not only because of his old-school fedora, but also because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago politics.

He didn’t need notes to tell his audience who was backing whom in a campaign, why a specific endorsement was so important — or why two politicians couldn’t stand each other.

Off camera, he was the life of the party, a friendly, down-to-earth storyteller who would do spot-on renditions of politicians’ speaking styles — often at their request.

Mr. Hernandez died Sunday evening following a battle with cancer that was diagnosed on Christmas Day, 2008. He was 36.

"Carlos was more than a great reporter and a great friend to hundreds of people. He had a great heart," said Sun-Times investigative reporter Steve Warmbir, who was best man at Mr. Hernandez’s wedding.

"In a business filled with cynics, he was one of the kindest and most decent people you would ever want to meet."

Mr. Hernandez grew up in the Chicago neighborhoods of Lincoln Park and Portage Park, and was fiercely proud of his ancestral home of Puerto Rico.

A graduate of Quigley Seminary, he attended DePaul University and was an editor at the DePaulian, the school’s student newspaper.

He covered local and national politics for WBEZ-FM and the Chicago Reporter before joining CLTV in 2005.

"To a certain extent he was a throwback," said U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, who visited Mr. Hernandez at Northwestern Memorial Hospital Sunday. "He wanted to dress the part with the glasses and the hat. He was kind of retro. He decried modern journalism where you do a superficial story as fast as you can."

"Coming from public radio, he was determined not to dumb down the news. He would rather do a thorough story about a complicated issue and he explained it. He had this great sense of humor and could do great impressions of elected officials. With his boyish sense of humor he made us all laugh and smile."

Survivors include his wife, WGN-TV reporter Randi Belisomo Hernandez; father, Carlos Hernandez Sr.; mother and stepfather, Myrna and Tom Kinsella and brother Jason.

Funeral arrangements were pending

President Barack Obama released the following statement at 12:45 today:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_______________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 18, 2010　

Statement from the President on the Passing of Carlos Hernandez Gomez

"I was saddened to hear of the passing of Carlos Hernandez Gomez.　 Our paths first crossed when I was a State Senator.　 He was a throwback in the style of Chicago’s storied political reporters.　 He loved Chicago, and he relentlessly sought to tell its story with the commitment to truth and the insatiable curiosity that any good reporter has to have.　 I quickly learned that when you saw his sharp fedora in a crowd, hard questions were coming.　 But Carlos always played it straight.　 And I always enjoyed our interactions in Springfield, Chicago, or on the campaign trail.　 Carlos was a role model to many, and an integral part of the Chicago story he strived to tell.　 My thoughts and prayers are with his wife Randi and his family."

##

Mr. Gomez had the same profound impact on the city as many of the stalwart reporters Chicago is famous for but he did it as one of a very, very few Hispanic journalists working today – and, most notably to me, as a journalist who neither highlighted his heritage for any sort of gain, nor shrank away from it.

My very favorite part of his reporting was when he said his name! It was always this perfect, perfect English throughout the report and then his perfectly pronounced name in all it’s rolled R’s glory. I loved that!

Yet people would complain about it to me! They were literally surprised, or offended at the aural intrusion, they felt he was waiving his heritage in their faces when the guy was simply just pronouncing his name correctly.

Either way, people took notice of Carlos Hernandez Gomez – and not mostly for his name. He was a respected and knowledgeable journalist with a style all his own. A real American original.

And he will be missed.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Tossing out Chicago cop exam is a ridiculous idea

Tossing out cop exam is a ridiculous idea

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1983808,CST-EDT-esther11.article

 
January 11, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Slap me on the back, pals, I've come up with a brilliant plan to solve the persistent problem of the lack of enough highly qualified high school math teachers to train the scientists and engineers of tomorrow: Let's not ask potential math teachers to pass the state's required-for-certification test in mathematics.

Problem solved.

Also, a recent study by a Columbia Law School professor has found that despite the push to diversify the student body in law schools to better reflect our nation's multicultural population, both the percentage and the number of black and Mexican-American law students remains low and has actually declined in the last few years. Let's fix that one right here and now, too: Throw out the Law School Admission Test.

While we're at it, the country has a shortage of family-practice doctors -- the real money is in orthopedic surgery these days. So let's just drop the board certification requirement for doctors going into primary care.

What, you don't like the reasoning here? Maybe because the idea is stupid. Simplistic and lazy in that it doesn't fix -- or even address -- the problem of finding ways to get more qualified people of a certain background into a particular profession. It merely sidesteps the problem while creating bigger problems. It doesn't take a genius to see that the cure in each case is far worse than the ailment it's intended to heal.

So why would anyone even consider creating a police corps that reflects our fine city's diverse populace by just tossing the entrance exam? Faced with a suddenly intolerable 54 percent Caucasian police force, sources told two Sun-Times reporters, that's exactly what City Hall seriously is considering.

Oh, we're told, there would be other benefits if the city were to eliminate the police entrance exam. Besides making it easier to hire minority officers, the city would be spared the considerable expense of providing and scoring the test, and it would avoid costly legal challenges by those who fail the exam.

My favorite cops called me the day the story ran. They were incredulous, disgusted, offended and angry.

But the angriest messages I got were not from police officers ticked off that this scheme to maybe drop the entrance exam basically represents a lowering of the high standards they had to meet in order to become one of Chicago's finest. They had to work to become members of the second-largest police department in the United States, a department, I might add, that in the last three years has had to deal with several embarrassing situations of violence and brutality against civilians.

Nope, the people I heard from most were multiracial, multi-ethnic and multi-mad at the implication that minorities are such dolts that the only way to integrate a homogenous organization with high standards is to drop those standards.

"Condescension is the worst form of discrimination," one woman wrote to me, angered by the ridiculous claim that creating a rigorous test that is fair to anyone of any gender, culture or color would be too much of a burden.

Could it really be true that becoming one of the easiest police departments in the country to slide into -- few other police departments, and none in major cities, lack an entrance test -- is preferable to putting in the time and effort to becoming a pioneer in culturally sensitive, cognitively arduous police entrance exams for a diverse 21st century police force?

The word "laughingstock" comes to mind.

As does Groucho Marx's famous condemnation, which will ring in the ears of Chicago police veterans and future cops if this plan is adopted: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

Why Gutierrez' immigration reform plan has no chance

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1950288,guiterrez-reform-plan-esther-cepeda-122109.article

Gutierrez' reform plan has no chance

December 21, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

To give you an idea of how much impact Rep. Luis Gutierrez' immigration reform proposal made on the national agenda when he debuted it last Tuesday, this is the number of White House press corps questions asked on the subject at that day's press briefing:

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

The attention was on the President Obama's health-care meeting with the Senate and Illinois' Thomson prison -- the so-called "Illinois Gitmo" -- and what to do with those other pesky foreigners, with a few questions on climate-change talks in Copenhagen, a few on Iran's nuclear intentions and even an inquiry about an obscure Hawaiian government reorganization act that might get attached to the Pentagon spending measure.

But not a single question -- or comment from the White House press secretary -- regarding that day's immigration law reform proposal.

Yep, immigration reform, a topic the Obama administration vowed as recently as April would get much-needed attention -- and possibly a proposal for a comprehensive overhaul -- in 2009.

So why did the nation's news editors and the elite White House press corps completely ignore Gutierrez' proposal?

Because there isn't a snowball's chance for a plan to allow 12 million illegal immigrants to waltz out of the shadows and into the open arms of a United States that is breaking under the weight of 10 percent unemployment.

Hey, you can't blame Gutierrez for trying -- there are plenty of productive, nonviolent illegal immigrants who would be a tremendous asset to this country and should be allowed to make it better -- but he picked the wrong time and the wrong tactic.

There's never a bad time to figure out how to treat humanely people already illegally living in our country, but some moments are better than others. Now, as the White House deals with the economy, unemployment, health care, climate change, Afghanistan and about a million other things, is definitely not the best time.

What the Obama administration is doing at the moment is bending over backward to combine special humanitarian deportation exemptions -- i.e., star UIC student and DUI offender Rigo Padilla -- with a comprehensive worksite enforcement strategy and reforms to the sometimes horrifying immigration detention system. The idea is to demonstrate progress.

To the chagrin of some immigrant advocacy organizations, these efforts indicate that the issue does enjoy priority status in certain measurable ways and dilutes the "us-vs.-them narrative" that whipped up such a passion during the George W. Bush years.

Then there's Gutierrez' actual proposal: purposely dependent on mass legalization, lacking a temporary-worker program, and leaving completely unanswered the million-dollar question of how this plan is significantly different from the amnesty of the 1980s, popularly believed to have been the precursor to the massive influx of illegal immigrants that sparked an angry and frustrated backlash -- the "send them all home" Sensenbrenner Bill of 2005.

Gutierrez is right to push the reform envelope, but he must go back to the drawing board. And while he's there, here's my advice: Forget the prayer vigils and the sob stories and instead talk to people about this country's economic progress. If interested parties want to see productive, pragmatic -- and therefore humane -- immigration law reform come to pass, they need to break out the business case. Let's see the numbers. Get a truly bipartisan panel into a room with a team of statistical analysts tasked with creating an unbiased accounting of the costs and benefits of legalization.

Weigh in all the factors that scare the bejeezus out of the detractors -- increased education and health-care costs -- add in all the benefits we'd supposedly gain, like young, hardworking U.S.-loving citizens. Then make the airtight business case required to either propose a reform that actually has a chance of passing or relegate the whole thing to the waiting room until -- as one keen observer put it -- "the last unemployed American finds a job."

 

A Chihuahua holiday message of hope and happiness

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Oh but such sad, sad news on the Chihuahua front! This from today’s New York Times:

Chihuahua Tale (published: December 14, 2009)

Animal shelters across California are juggling Chihuahuas. A rising tide of abandonment has led the little dogs to now rival pit bulls for the unhappy title of most popular, most unwanted breed.

In Oakland, half the dogs at one shelter are Chihuahuas. In San Francisco’s municipal shelter, the proportion of full- or part-Chihuahuas is one-third and rising. Officials in Los Angeles have taken to airlifting them to the Northeast, which has many more Chihuahua lovers than shelters here can supply.

Shelter officials say breeders and puppy mills have been saturating a market that has been artificially stoked by pop culture. Add a deep recession, and it’s easy to understand the flood of plaintive stories and photos of unwanted dogs on shelter Web sites and on Craigslist, so far from the sunny worlds of "Legally Blonde" and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."

But let’s leave Elle Wood out of this. Too many people learn too late that their little handbag companions can be nervous, yappy, fragile — they are prone to chronic problems with their teeth, skulls and bones — and expensive to maintain.

As shelters try to solve what is essentially a distribution problem, states need to discourage reckless breeders and pass laws requiring spaying and neutering. People also need to realize the responsibility they are taking on before they buy or adopt any dog. The dogs deserve a safe, caring and permanent home. (And, if it’s a shorthaired Chihuahua going to the Northeast in winter, a sweater.)

Yep, it’s been a full year that I’ve been writing about the effects of the economic downturn on pets ("Trickle-down economics: housing crunch hits man’s best friends") and the hits keep coming. Last time I spoke to Tom Van Winkle, the Executive Director of the Animal Care League in Oak Park, IL, not only were there still more pets arriving every day but also fewer and fewer good home to place pets in – and less dollar donations flowing to keep them sheltered.

But, alas, it may be tough out there for man and beast but the holiday spirit of hope must burn brightly. And with that I offer this happy holiday poem to steel you through the cold days ahead. Enjoy!

Chihuahuas y La Noche Buena

Adapted by Rio Lara-Bellon.

Adaptation is Copyright © 1996 by Rio Lara-Bellon All Rights Reserved

'Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the casa

Ni un raton se movia!Caramba! ?Que pasa?

Los ninos were all tucked away en sus camas,

Some in long underwear, some in pijamas.

While Mama worked late in her little Cocina

El viejo was down at the corner Cantina

Living it up with amigos, !carrajo!

Muy contento y un poco borracho.

While hanging the stockings with mucho cuidado,

In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado

To bring a los ninos both buenos y malos,

A nice batch of dulces y otros regalos.

Outside in the yard there arose such a grito

That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.

I ran to the window y mire' afuera

And who in the world do you think that it era?

Santo Nikos in a sleigh and a big red sombrero

Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!

And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados,

Were eight little *CHIHUAHUAS*, approaching volados.

I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre

Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:

Ay Milo! Ay Tobee! Ay Frida y Sasha!

Ay Todo! Ay Pepe! Ay Poco y Nacho!

Then standing erect with hand en su pecho

He flew to the top of our very own techo

With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea

He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.

Then huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,

With soot smeared all over his traje de gala,

He filled all the stockings with bonitos regalos

For none of the ninos had been muy malos.

Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,

He turned like a flash y volo' como el viento.

And I heard him exclaim (y es la verdad!)

"MERRY CHRISTMAS A TODOS, !! FELIZ NAVIDAD !!"

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Blind spots can mar view of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1938047,CST-EDT-esther14.article

December 14, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

The first time I ever set foot in Pilsen was as a newly hired reporter after a white editor asked me to go there to "find some Latino stories" for the next day's paper.

That might sound weird to some, but I'd always been a Little Village gal. For as long as I can remember, my family had made monthly Sunday treks from our Lake View two-flat to "La Garra" at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also known as the Maxwell Street flea market. Afterwards, it was up to 26th Street to hit the Mexican bakeries and shops.

And I cannot remember a time when I wasn't intimately familiar with the city's Hasidic Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Polish neighborhoods, but Pilsen was just a big old blind spot for me.

I've often written about how I hate it when people assume I grew up there -- that's a sort of a blind spot, too. It's one of many, many blind spots many of us didn't even know we had until a transplant to our fine city took it upon herself to define them.

Fascinated by Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods when she arrived back in 2000, Maria Krysan, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at UIC, decided to gauge residents' knowledge of city communities and quickly realized that Chicago's North Sider vs. South Sider pride stands akin to that of the Union and the Confederacy in the 1800s.

In her report, "Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge," based on a 2005 survey of more than 700 adults living in Cook County, Krysan explored the gaps in awareness these different groups had of the myriad segregated, integrated and everywhere-in-between neighborhoods in the Chicago region. She called these gaps "blind spots."

Like all good studies, it quantified gut feelings that had never before been confirmed, with simultaneously obvious and shocking results.

For instance, on the common-sense front, Krysan found that whites were generally unfamiliar with communities that featured a significant black population or were racially integrated -- including a few communities with majority white populations, such as Beverly and Homewood/ Flossmoor. Relatively unknown communities for at least a third of the African Americans surveyed included distant suburbs with majority white populations, such as Libertyville and Crystal Lake, in addition to racially and ethnically diverse Chicago neighborhoods such as Uptown, Logan Square and Albany Park.

Latinos, though, are in a league of their own when it comes to blind spots. Hispanics, when compared to whites and blacks, were oblivious to more than twice as many communities.

With the exception of Hispanic-centric spots such as Humboldt Park, Cicero, Pilsen and Little Village, more than half of the 41 communities used as examples in the study were "unknown" to a third or more of the Hispanic respondents. We were equally in the dark about segregated, integrated, city and suburban communities alike.

"Well, the bright side is that once you control for background characteristics like socioeconomic status and number of years of residency in the city, Latinos are quite knowledgeable about a wide range of communities; more so, in fact, than whites and blacks," Krysan told me. "But, from a practical standpoint, you can control away any factor to level the results and, the fact is, the Hispanic community in Chicago is still relatively new to this city -- not in all cases, of course, but generally -- and these blind spots do exist."

The neighborhood knowledge gap for Hispanics isn't the end of the world, but it keeps us more apart than we actually are. As it turns out, there are lots of inviting racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods and suburbs, in addition to the well-marketed Oak Park, but most of us just don't know about them.

It has now been many, many years since I first set foot in Pilsen, but judging from my knowledge of the 41 neighborhoods on Krysan's list, I still need to get out more. And, probably, so do you.

New breast cancer screening guide will disproportionately hurt black and Hispanic women

New breast cancer screening guide will disproportionately hurt black and Hispanic women

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1899099,CST-EDT-esther23.article

November 23, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

The damage has been done. Hours and hours of door-to-door, woman-to-woman outreach into high risk, underinsured populations who usually wouldn't give the health of their breasts a second thought was undermined in a single moment, with a single proclamation.

Within moments of the federally funded U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's announcement last week of looser guide- lines for breast cancer screening -- no more automatic mammograms for women in their 40s, biennual rather than annual mammograms for women 50 to 74, and no more breast self-examinations -- there was outrage, confusion, disappointment.

And rightly so.

"It's difficult to even talk about the consequences of such an announcement without focusing on how absolutely wrongheaded the recommendations are and how damaging they are to the people who need them most," Dr. David A. Ansell, chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center told me, with exasperation, last week.

As a member of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, he was both horrified and flat-out angry as he considered the potential fallout of the confusion spurred by the news.

He wasn't alone. In fact, the push-back was so swift and intense -- interested parties ranging from the Obama administration to breast cancer survivors thought the non-binding guidance was damaging at best, borderline murderous at worst -- that the task force had to "clarify" that it did not, in fact, mean that women shouldn't examine their breasts or get mammograms in their 40s.

But it's too late.

Certain specific demographics will not be dissuaded from demanding the highest level of preventive measures during regular doctor's visits, but African-American and Hispanic women are much more likely not to have access to adequate health care, not to get regular screenings and not to get the best treatment when a screening does identify a problem. The sad bottom line is that though white women get breast cancer at higher rates, black and Hispanic women are more likely to die from the disease. How much damage these confusing headlines will do to the health of the many women who are already at high risk won't be known for years.

"Putting this out sends the wrong message," Ansell said. "It is unconscionable and a major mistake. It throws a monkey wrench into all we've been working for."

Most reasonable people agree that mammograms, like most preventive health measures, aren't always necessary or accurate. But even organizations that take their cues from health-care experts who doubt the wisdom of the current breast screening protocol, which calls for hefty testing, are reeling.

"We have had an unprecedented number of outraged people contact us in the last few days just angry and worried about what this could mean to our work," said Christina Koenig, a spokeswoman for the Breast Cancer Network of Strength. The network recently received a $50,000 first-year grant from the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force to educate low-income, medically underserved women in Chicago's Hispanic communities and facilitate access to breast screening services.

"Whenever there is confusing medical news, there's always a higher chance of yet more underserved people falling through the cracks or being confused or intimidated into just not thinking about it at all," Koenig said. "But we will continue reaching into African-American, Polish and Latino communities with the message of being your own best advocate for your health."

Rarely is the medical community in complete agreement about anything, and of course the best strategy is always to take charge of your own health, but that's a message that doesn't ring loudly enough for the highest risk among us.

Regardless of how many more restatements or clarifications we hear about the best preventative measures to take against breast cancer, we may never know how many mothers, sisters and wives will be lost in this baffling skirmish.

So what if Sammy Sosa takes a walk on the white side?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1885899,CST-EDT-esther16.article

So what if Sosa takes a walk on the white side?

November 16, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

　

So what about Sosa? If he wants to be what the kids today call "light skinned-ed," well, is that so wrong?

The blogosphere is burning up with beastly, snarky comments and pictures of retired Cub Sammy Sosa, who has denied he has a skin disorder and instead credits his new hue to a skin-hydrating cream he's not ashamed to admit accounts for his stunning skin lightening.

I've seen people react with rabid disgust to Sosa's new look, with the main theme of the outrage centered around the idea that he's "making himself white" ostensibly because of some sort of self-hatred toward his dark Latin-American roots.

The filthy rich ex-slugger was born in the Dominican Republic, a land of lots of white sandy beaches and dark coffee-bean-colored skin.

But why is Sosa's desire to be lighter-skinned self-hatred?

Or better yet, why does it represent -- to some -- any more self-hatred than the adults who get braces to straighten their naturally gnarly teeth, or the man who gets a hair transplant to replace his long-departed hair, or the woman who can afford to de-gravity her once-perky bosom?

Sosa, who is making international headlines once again -- this time on a topic unrelated to cork -- has gotten so much heat about this he felt the need to tell an inquiring Univision television reporter, "I'm not a racist. I'm not like that. I'm just a happy person."

Sheesh.

My dad is from Ecuador and he is a very dark-skinned -- excuse me, a verrrrrry handsome, dark-skinned -- man. His whole life, our entire family and all his friends have called him by a nickname that referred to his dark caramel color. My mom is from Mexico and so very light she fries like a potato in a McDonald's deep fryer after being outside for 10 minutes.

I'm the lucky one: I get to be dark in the summer and light in the winter.

But what if that weren't so? What if I were really dark all the time -- would I be a "freak," "ashamed of my race," "disturbing" or "self-hating" if I were to lighten my skin?

Maybe I should go to the tanning salon -- like my white friends do to get their skin golden brown -- in the winter to stay closer to my "roots."

And by the way, would you say it was an affront to my lineage or a mark of low esteem when I asked my dentist to pull four of my teeth to get braces? I love myself plenty, thank-you-very-much.

The guy is rich, and when you have lots of money, you get to spend it on basically anything you can think of. When I first heard about his new skin color, my mind jumped to wondering whether he has also purchased any Beatles songs or large ranches equipped with carnival rides and the like -- but no, he seems to be mostly the same old Sammy.

He's just a Sammy who maybe looked in the mirror one day and said, in his best Lou Reed voice, "Hey, babe, take a walk on the white side."

Doot do doot do doot doo doo doot . . .

C'mon, it's the year 2009 and we have a black president in the White House. Black is beautiful, brown is all around and white's still just right. Isn't it about time we stop judging people by the color of their skin -- or by the color they choose their skin to be?

　

Esther J. Cepeda will blog about her darkening skin color right from the beaches of the Dominican Republic this December on

www.600words.com.

Economic tier scheme for CPS selective enrollment schools: go back to the drawing board

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Looking back on it, I just don’t know how I made it in.

Growing up at Addison and Lincoln there was no question where I wanted to go to high school: the gorgeous, ivy-covered walls of Albert G. Lane Technical High School up the street at Addison and Western.

The place where, every time I mentioned it, older folks would say "that place, yeah, my brother went there…before they let girls in."

I remember the first time I ever graced Lane’s halls as a knock-kneed 8th grader back around February of 1988. There, on that stunning campus, I took something called an "entrance exam." When the bell rung, out flooded big girls and boys of every color, style, and age imaginable and I remember I just could not wait to join them and be totally cool with a new-wave hair-do and black and white tights in thick black clod-hopping combat boots.

Also I remember being told to not hold my breath. "I hope you noticed all the other boys and girls in that auditorium taking the same test you did, Esther," Mr. Nutley, the St. Andrew’s school principal warned me and the three other kids who had braved the elements to take the test. "They’re all really bright, too, I hope your family applied to other schools just in case."

Fast forward to November 2009.

I absolutely cannot begin to imagine what sort of Dickensian horror city parents today go through to get their kids into decent schools. Even the schools in the "good" neighborhoods have spotty teaching quality and the rest – well, their achievement and standardized test scores speak for themselves. That leaves selective-enrollment schools like Lane Tech and Payton College Preps, and magnets like Whitney Young and Chicago Metropolitan High schools.

Now, in the wake of the "clout scandal" and the recent tossing of the 1980 desegregation consent decree that had given schools leeway in admissions based on race, the Chief Mathemagician at CPS, Ron Huberman, has come up with a plan to select enrollment to these schools based on family income.

As ace education reporter Rosalind Rossi outlined in Wednesday’s Sun-Times story "College Preps to admit by income" there will be four economic tiers ranging from $22,959 to $61,862, which is estimated to cover about 600,000 students – the neediest in the city. But it leaves the "middle class" kids whose family’s household income is above that top number. The kids of Frank the fireman and Darla the nurse who are doing alright, but probably not alright enough to send their kids to private schools if they can’t get them into the "good" CPS schools.

I have consistently clanged the bell of educational equality based on socio-economic status over race for years, and I’m really glad Huberman has taken his statistical analysis skills out of the same tired old race box, but I worry that there will still be kids unfairly left behind.

Depending on whether the plan gets voted in by the CPS School Board December 16th and then on a "principal pick" situation, the admission status of a sibling, scores on entrance tests, and/or proximity to schools, there’s still ample opportunity for families to be left out in the cold.

What, exactly, is so wrong with putting ALL eligible kids – ignoring race and income –

in a locally televised lottery for all to see?

Why are we contriving to ensure the proper mix of students by segregating them whether it is by race or income? In either case you exclude city residents because they aren’t the right color or because they’ve been fortunate enough to make a decent living for themselves. It just doesn’t feel fair.

My parents, thank goodness, were professionals who came to this country with some serious skills. They lived out an American Dream that included a private elementary school that enabled me to make the cut and live my life-long desire to attend Lane Technical High School.

If I were trying to get in today – under this new plan, if it is passed – I would have lost a leg-up on the ethnicity aspect (which would have been perfectly fine by me), might have still shined based on my academic prowess, but might have gotten passed over because my parents made too much money. I don’t like those odds.

All parents want to believe that if they work hard, they can get a decent education for their kids. City parents know it’s a gamble between a bad or so-so school; short of leaving town, all Chicago parents just want an equal chance at some of the better schools regardless of their income or race.

The CPS School Board – which was appointed to represent all parents, not just the financially neediest ones – must ensure they get their fair shot.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

For Latinos lack of information -- not fear -- hurts census counts

 

November 9, 2009

Lack of info -- not fear -- hurts census

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1872772,CST-EDT-esther09.article

Let's get past the stereotypes and get down to business on this census thing. I'm talking about the push to accurately count Hispanics during the 2010 U.S. census. Though organizers and many in the media like to say that the biggest barrier to counting Hispanics is fear on the part of illegal aliens, it's not all about fear.

For the uninitiated, the U.S. census has been taking the most accurate count of everyone it can get its hands on since 1790. The boundaries of political districts and the public funding for a million different things, such as social services, are decided based on census figures. But over the years, there has been a recurring argument about whether illegal aliens and other noncitizens, such as legal permanent residents, should be included in the tally.

The most recent dust-up came courtesy of Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. Completely ignoring the fact that Congress over a year ago approved every question on the surveys being printed by the U.S. Census Bureau, Vitter decided that funding for the census should not be released unless questions about citizenship and immigration status were included. His real aim was to make sure congressional districts would be redrawn solely on the basis of the population of American citizens -- and did not include noncitizens.

This upset Hispanic advocacy organizations struggling to mobilize a "difficult-to-reach" community to make sure they're counted. Last week, the Senate ignored Vitter's amendment and the whole case was closed. Again. (A Census Bureau spokeswoman said they go through this dance every 10 years!)

Meanwhile, the big story about this must-count "hard-to-reach" Hispanic population, whose numbers have so quickly swollen, remains centered on fear. Fear that illegal immigrants and their families -- even those members who are legal residents -- will opt out by making it impossible for any "official"-type people to find them.

Yes, there are millions of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. Guess what? Millions of them are not of Latin-American origin. And early estimates, based on 2000 census figures, already predict that the nation's Hispanic population increased to 50 million from 38 million, with U.S.-born "second-generation" Hispanics like me driving the growth.

But the real story is not about fear. Hispanics tend to be undercounted for the same reason many other Americans -- whites, blacks, Asians, etc. -- are undercounted: a simple lack of awareness.

"The number one thing I hear when I'm out in the community is 'what the heck is the census?' " said Elisa Alfonso, regional census director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund's Chicago office. "This 'illegal fear' thing is nothing but a distraction."

The organization started its census outreach into the Chicago area's metro and suburban Latino neighborhoods in August.

"The main barrier continues to be what it has always been -- not just for Latinos but for the populations as a whole -- lack of information about the census," Alfonso said. "I've been all over the region, and I'm sorry to tell you that though some of us think of being counted in the census as a lofty civil rights issue, that does not resonate with people. I'm going to churches, community centers and schools where the organization leaders and even the teachers don't know what the census is."

That, too, will change. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 opened the way for about 2.7 million immigrants to be legalized, which means many members of the extremely young Hispanic community have gone through only one or two census counts.

As Hispanics come to make the connection between filling out a census form and a better quality of life -- in higher census numbers there is funding and political power -- they will likely become as familiar with the census process as non-Hispanics.

The quicker those who are aiding the Hispanic outreach effort figure out that the main concern for this population is not fear of "La Migra!" the more successful they will be in counting and serving this "hard-to-reach" community.

Day of the Dead goes mainstream

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Chicago Sun-Times November 2, 2009

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1859076,CST-EDT-esther02.article

Death is all around us. Well, that much is always true, but it has been especially so around my house, where, since Sunday, my living room has been graced by the yearly addition of a candled, flowered, candied altar to my dead.

Yep, it's that time of the year: Saturday was Halloween, followed immediately on Sunday by the first day of the Mexican, Central and South American celebration Dia de los Muertos, a festival-like tradition honoring departed loved ones.

Today, Nov. 2, is when the whiskey, tequila, heavy food and cigarettes are usually brought out because that's the day deceased adults are honored. But I go to town with candy, toys, flowers and light-hearted trinkets on Nov. 1, which is the day infants and children are remembered -- and the day my own departed young one is celebrated in my home.

The coolest thing about this year's Day of the Dead celebrations is that this -- I proclaim -- is the year it went mainstream. It's no surprise every year when the Mexican supermarkets and bakeries put out the annual sugar skulls, pan de muerto -- "bread of the dead" -- and skeleton pinatas. But this year I've seen Mexican muerto skull sugar cookies in very mainstream bakeries, and I've seen feature stories all over the Internet, in mainstream newspapers, magazines and on TV about how to make the vibrant and fun accoutrements of this Latin American holiday.

I love that for two reasons. First, non-Latinos are learning about Hispanic culture and naturally integrating bits and parts into their own Halloween affairs -- melting pot, I think they call it.

Second, it's a great education for that segment of the Hispanic population who didn't grow up with this tradition. Culture is funny that way, some touchstones ignored by one generation only to be taken up by the next.

Take me, for instance. You might be imagining a young me flanked by black lace-garbed Mama Cepeda and Abuelita Cepeda in a great big sun-drenched kitchen decorated with colorful clay cooking pots, learning with tiny hands how to roll out the masa -- dough -- for the pan de muerto. Perhaps you imagine us decorating the graves of our loved ones. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

A family trip from the bosom of the North Side all the way to Pilsen's National Museum of Mexican Art to see dressed up little skeletons? Not once.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Culture can be so very strong that it need not be drilled in via field trip or workshop. Think chocolate bunnies at Easter.

No, I grew up in this city living whatever the "typical American life" means. Since Mayor Daley never dyed the Chicago river black on Dia de los Muertos, my family never made a fuss about it, reserving their loving attention to ensuring year after year of picture-perfect Halloweens for me.

Like I said, culture is a funny thing. It can skip generations, yet it is so strong that it can leave a homeland, travel thousands of miles and settle into new interpretations. This is only my sixth year of setting up a Day of the Dead altar.

When I started, I felt the need to connect to something symbolic in my heritage, but I didn't want to share my new personal tradition with anyone. I didn't want to deal with explaining that it's not some Satanic hoodoo voodoo thing.

But how scary can Latin American traditions really be to anyone -- even those who fear the melting pot has become an unwieldy and distasteful chunky stew -- when grocery chains sell Day of the Dead greeting cards and delightful pictures, and recipes for traditional sugar skulls, sweet bread, and hot chocolate seem newly omnipresent?

To my great happy surprise, I've "come out" of the Dia del Muerto coffin only to find a pre-Colombian, all-American tradition rising in the U. S. of A.

College from Pennsylvania to Chicago’s Southside to the Future, with Fish.

"Way more than 600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Let’s celebrate! And let’s celebrate fish! And fishing!

Yes, you heard me right.

Between the shootings that happen steps from school boundaries and the domestic violence that splatters on the very kids who are supposed to grow up and lead us to a brighter, better tomorrow, it seems like there’s just not a whole lot of good news to celebrate on the teen front.

I have some. Good news – not fish, that is. But more about fish later.

This weekend while you and I relax Friday after work, then sleep late, overindulge Saturday night, and finally veg in front of the Bears game Sunday afternoon, there’ll be about 160 Chicago high school students gathering at Daley College Arturo Velasquez Institute and Little Village Lawndale High School to think deep, intellectual thoughts about the heady topic of food.

The occasion is the "New Frontiers of Knowledge" program a new collaboration between Bucknell University and nine Chicago public and charter schools. The program, starting Friday morning, is bringing together twenty-six Bucknell University students and faculty members to spend three full days helping our kids think critically, scientifically, economically, and artistically about food.

That’s right: our group of college-kid-wannabes aren’t going to train for some sort of academic competition or prepare themselves to do well on standardized tests, they’ll be talking, questioning, analyzing, defining problems, drawing conclusions, and reflecting.

In short the all-volunteer Bucknell crew – fresh in from a ten-hour road trip from their Lewisburg, PA campus – will be teaching our kids what it really takes to succeed after high school graduation.

"For twenty years we’ve worked with populations of students from average to the best and the first thing we discovered is that the number one determinant of success in college is not academic ability, rather it’s the ability to be self directed and to be able to do critical processing," said Rolando Arroyo-Sucre, the chief officer for diversity and equity at Bucknell University, who is spearheading this extremely ambitious project.

Triggered in part by the 2008 report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College, and Bucknell University’s strategic plan to increase diversity on its campus, the collaboration wants to help prepare talented underrepresented inner city Chicago high school students for admission and academic achievement at private, selective, liberal arts colleges.

Translation: this weekend, while small groups are busily looking at food-wonderful-food through the lenses of the key components of liberal arts education, our high-schoolers will be gleaning from the Bucknellians what the demands are at highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities, what the transition from high school to college means, and, frankly, how to deal with being a kid from the other side of the tracks attending a predominantly white institution of higher education.

During the training of the Bucknell volunteers, Arroyo-Sucre said he emphasized that despite the fact that the high school participants will be underprivileged, the bigger lessons to impart should revolve around familiarity with the higher education culture. "Hispanics, blacks, poor whites, the challenge for them is not a color one, it’s actually socio-economical and the lack of familiarity with the system," Arroyo-Sucre said.

"These kids will have fun working in teams, making presentations, having side conversations about college life, and gain valuable peer-to-peer relationships, but the really exciting thing is this idea of the 160 of the best and brightest realizing they are not alone," Arroyo-Sucre gushed. "I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen the students realize it is OK to be what they are – to be smart. They see it’s OK because there is a critical mass of people who feel the way they do, people who enjoy learning."

When I caught up with Abraham Ramirez, 15, and Martina Camacho, 16, both from Hubbard High School on the city’s far-southwest side, believe me, they were ready to squeeze every drop of opportunity from the experience.

"I’m looking at it like a way to figure out how I’m going to get there," Abraham, a sophomore, told me, referring to "college" as a not a place but almost as another world. "I want a good career when I grow up, and spending the weekend with my friends and college people sounds interesting."

Martina, a junior who has had a life-long dream of becoming a pediatrician, is especially looking forward to finding out what this whole "thinking out of the box" business is and how she can use it to get to where she’s going. "I want this [experience] to be something I can use outside of school, like, to really improve my life."

She won’t be disappointed: this weekend is just the beginning of a years-long collaborative process between students and the Bucknell crew. They’ll be keeping in touch through web-based communication tools, working on a long-distance group project that will last a full year, and prepare for a conference next fall, all while maintaining the very relationships that will de-mystify college not only for themselves, but for their friends and families as well.

Arroyo-Sucre has the highest of hopes, not only for this "class" but for the ripple effect it could have. "As we get the student portion of this program set, in the future we’d like to include teachers and counselors to teach them how the college professors approach the work. Then there are the parents – the idea is to find professional mentors for parents and creating small groups where the parents can ask questions, have brag time, and get to feel comfortable with learning and enabling their students to learn," Arroyo-Sucre said. "Teaching parents how to help develop skills and instill motivation in their students is key."

Of course this out-of-town, fresh-faced, idealistic team has their work cut out for them but they’re dreaming big for Chicago students – thank goodness – even as we residents wallow in self-pity for how enormous their challenges are.

Arroyo-Sucre sees it as a simple thing, really, "We’re talking about these high-level theories for college admission and success, but we’re not giving away fish, we’ll be teaching these students how to catch their own."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Semantics matter in illegal immigration debate

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

A few weeks ago the following press release from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists was roundly ignored from sea to shining sea: "NAHJ Urges News Media to Stop Using the Term 'Illegals' When Covering Immigration."

I usually have no patience for these types of outrages because they inadvertently make themselves sound thin-skinned and clueless. In this case it's the terms "illegal" or "illegal aliens," that the NAHJ did a terrible job of deriding in their release.

"By incessantly using metaphors like 'illegals,' the news media is not only appropriating the rhetoric used by people on a particular side of the issue, but also the implication of something criminal or worthy of suspicion," NAHJ Executive Director Ivan Roman said.

Uhhh, no one's going to bat for you on that point, Ivan. The so-called "implication" NAHJ refers to is not so much an implication but a fact: We are, after all, talking about people who have broken a law and therefore have done something that can easily be defended as both "criminal or worthy of suspicion."

There are better arguments against offensive terms, and I've written about this very issue at length, both defending the legal term "illegal alien" and decrying the pejorative term "illegal."

This whole "alien" business is simple: the legal term, in relation to immigration law, simply means "One who is not a citizen or a national of the United States."

A "legal alien" is someone like my uncle Juan who is a legal permanent resident — he's not a citizen nor was he born here (a "national"). Not to be confused with someone like his brother Carlos, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and therefore no longer an "alien" despite his love of the starry night sky.

Now here's what gets tricky: the lady who sells corn on the cob slathered in mayonnaise and topped with parmesan cheese on 26th and St. Louis streets in the Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, she may be here illegally. She may have overstayed her tourist visa or may have entered the country with the intent to work here without proper permits. So what is she?

She's an "illegal immigrant."

Some would like to couch that to a more politically correct "undocumented worker," but that's a euphemism. The government's official term for people who are living and working in the United States without explicit permission from the government is "illegal aliens." It's nothing personal.

The tricky part, you ask? For me, here's where it crosses the line, let's take Mrs. Corn Vendor in the previous example:

If you were to say she's "an illegal," that's where I bust you out for being . . . I don't even know how to put it . . . divisive? Rude? Cold? I'm not sure, but not nice, and most importantly — imprecise. Why?

To say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is an "illegal alien" is to describe her in the context of her immigration status. However, to say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is "an illegal" is to make an abstraction of her and to dehumanize her.

The NAHJ is correct in insisting on a higher degree of journalistic objectivity. But since when are editors supposed to employ the use of euphemisms in order to report news? For the record: never.

Still, it wouldn't hurt for the Mainstream Media to get past the NAHJ's obviously emotional request and confront the heart of this matter: responsible, fair, and non-simplistic coverage of the complex illegal immigration issue is in order.

Take away the flaws in logic and Roman's ultimate sentiment rings true: "The words used can be part of the problem or can contribute to fair coverage and a fruitful public debate."

Write to Esther J. Cepeda at eejaycee@600words.com

This column was first published:

The Tampa Tribune, Tampa Bay, FL (10/17) "Semantics matter in 'illegal' debate" http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/oct/17/co-semantics-matter-in-illegal-debate/news-opinion-commentary/

The Star Press Muncie, IN (10/18) "Semantics do matter in the 'illegal' debate" http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20091018/OPINION/910180308

Arizona Daily Star, AZ (10/21) "Semantics do matter in immigration debate" http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/314029

Chicago Boxer David Diaz: facing his future in the ring Saturday

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

There’s really only one good reason to watch a boxing match: ass-kicking.

Face it: you can talk about sportsmanship, you can talk about guts, grit and determination, you can talk about technique. But when it all comes down to it, there are two men in a ring and one of them is going to get his ass kicked.

It’s either going to be your guy, or your guy’s going to pound someone until the bell rings done. The question is, is it going to be quick or protracted and bloody – and is your guy going to be the one still standing?

Last time, my guy got his ass kicked. Bloody.

"Oh-my-God-make-it-stop!!!" bloody.

It was June 28, 2008 and Chicago boy/Olympian/World Boxing Council Lightweight champion David Diaz was taking on Manny "The Mexicutioner" Pacquiao at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for bragging rights and about $800,000 bucks.

Diaz came out slow and by round two he’d already been cut on the face. By round four it was a wonder Diaz could even see with all the blood pouring down his broken mug.

Round eight was pure torture for both Diaz and everyone watching – no one expected him to be able to stand up straight for a ninth round but he went in there and Pacquiao just knocked his block off sending him to the mat facedown to lose his world title in a puddle of his own blood. Technical knockout.

It was horrifying…but you had to hand it to him, the guy just would not be kept down and his determination was a beautiful thing to behold.

No one who’s ever seen David Diaz fight doubted for a second that he’d be back and this Saturday September 26 will be his first since losing his belt to Pacquiao. Diaz (34-2-1, 17 knockouts) will face-off against former two-time world champ Jesus Chavez (44-5, 30 KOs) at the UIC Pavilion.

 

I talked to Diaz last week and led off with the sheer morbid curiosity about how one comes back from a nationally-televised beat-down, a year older and a bum knee later.

"I was down, the ego was shot. I felt it was a moral victory but at the end of it I still lost," the 33-year-old Northsider said. "I felt like I’d let everyone down: my family, my kids…I was really hurt for like two weeks but it was them who got me going."

Amazingly, he hurt his knee from playing on his laptop, sitting cross-legged on his recent best friend, the couch. "I didn’t start training until April of this year because of the excruciating pain and then the surgery," he said, joking that it was his wife who suggested he either get back in the ring or paint the house. Knee pain and all, it was an easy choice.

Diaz says it’s all good and that he’s now in the best physical condition of his career which is, of course, what all aging athletes tell themselves and their fans. "I just think it’s going to come down to conditioning; we’re both the type of guys that don’t back off for one bit," Diaz said of Chavez, a Mexico native who has made his home in Chicago since the age of five.

Either way, there’s absolutely no doubt that it’ll be a hell of a fight to watch – after all, somebody’s going to get his ass kicked and the only question is whether it’ll be quick or bloody. Being a fan, I’m voting for a little of both – but this time with Diaz still standing at the end.

"Long term I want to be champion again and have the city behind me again – when I was a champion it felt so good and so right and I want that again," Diaz said. "Hopefully this is a step towards trying to realize that moment. This Saturday, this is going to be the kind of fight that Chicagoans are going to love."

Tickets are still available: Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.com), the UIC Pavilion Box Office (312-413-5740) and the 8 Count Productions Office (312-226-5800).

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

When using term “illegal” words do matter, but pick and choose your battles

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

 

God bless Rev. Father Jose Landaverde, his heart is in the right place.

Saturday I received a breathless press release from the outspoken leader of Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Catholic church: "Immigrant Community demands an apology from President Obama."

What his 900-word press release lacked in brevity was made up for by the colorful historical narrative that covered events from the Founding Fathers to slavery to the U.S. labor movement and, of course, immigration law reform.

The crux of the matter: a perceived slight – "Members of the immigrant community in Little Village demand from president Obama an apology for calling them "Illegal". No human being is illegal!  We are people with dignity and we demand respect."

I’ve written about this very issue in the past, both defending the legal term "illegal alien" and decrying the pejorative term "illegal."

This whole "alien" business is simple: the legal term, in relation to immigration law, simply means "One who is not a citizen or a national of the United States."

A "legal alien" is someone like my uncle Juan who is a legal permanent resident – he’s not a Citizen nor was he born here (a "national"). Not to be confused with someone like his brother Carlos who is a naturalized U.S. Citizen, and therefore no longer an "alien" despite his love of the starry night sky.

Now here’s what gets tricky: the lady who sells corn on the cob slathered in mayonnaise and topped with parmesan cheese on 26th and St. Louis streets in the Little Village neighborhood, she may be here illegally. She may have overstayed her tourist visa or may have entered the country with the intent to work here without proper permits. So what is she?

She’s an "illegal immigrant."

Some would like to couch that to a more politically correct "undocumented worker" but that’s a euphemism. The government’s official term for people who are living and working in the United States without explicit permission from the government are called "illegal aliens." It’s nothing personal.

The tricky part, you ask? For me, here’s where it crosses the line, let’s take Mrs. Corn Vendor in the previous example:

If you were to say she’s "an illegal," that’s where I bust you out for being…I don’t even know how to put it…divisive? Rude? Cold? I’m not sure but not nice, and most importantly – imprecise.

Why?

To say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is an "illegal alien" is to describe her in the context of her immigration status.

However, to say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is "an illegal" is to make an abstraction of her and to dehumanize her.

Same goes with other variations:

To say "Jose is Mexican" is to say that Jose is from Mexico. Maybe he was born there, maybe he moved there from Britain when he was 2, maybe he met his wife there, has lived there for 24 years and is visiting the U.S. today.

To say "Jose is a Mexican" is to make a judgment about Jose based on whatever the imagination conjures up about people who are from Mexico. I cannot think of a single time in my entire life that I have ever heard "…a Mexican" that it wasn’t said in some sort of derogatory way.

Let me give you a different example:

My friend Shanti Shmulevitz is Jewish. I would never say Shanti is "a Jew," because that leaves it open to interpretation… what the heck might that mean? What do you think of when you hear the term "Jew?"

Back to Father Landaverde who – along with many other hardcore pro-illegal-immigrant-rights activists – demands "immediate cessation of raids, deportations, and the E-Verify Program."

That seems like plenty to keep anyone busy, Father. Why throw a grammar lesson onto the pile of demands for a president who has already committed to respecting legal and illegal immigrants enough to take up immigration law reform as soon as this health care business is buttoned up?

Cut the guy some slack, he’s not slurring anyone.

And you aren’t helping your cause.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Who's the liar? In search of the million dollar illegal immigrant to end all health care reform

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

The health care debate has been hijacked by angry people who have health insurance, don’t want their applecart upset, and thusly have resorted to spreading out-and-out lies about the current attempt at reform.

Some so angry, they’ll catcall the president during a nationally-televised address to congress. Thanks for being so classy Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, as you yelled "You lie!" when Obama said no illegal immigrants would receive benefits under his plan.

Let’s get something straight about all of the healthcare proposals currently being floated in Congress: IF the federal government DID subsidize health care, illegal immigrants would be excluded from benefits.

Too vague for you? OK, let’s try it a different way: there is a section in all of the bills, such as I understand them, specifically outlining that there will be no federal payments for undocumented aliens.

The Library of Congress’ research arm released a report on August 25 verifying that in all the proposed bills, "unauthorized aliens would be barred" from receiving any federally subsidized money for health care.

Oh that’s not stopping the same sorts of people who dreamt up "death panels" for insisting otherwise as they try to fire-bomb health-care reform, according to Julia Preston in today’s New York Times piece "Health Care Debate Revives Immigration Battle."

According to the article, people like Senator Charles E. Grassley will tell you that though this restriction is clearly articulated, the House bill is "so poorly cobbled together" that it effectively moots the restriction.

Texas Representative Lamar Smith said that Democrats had "intentionally left gaping loopholes" that would allow – heck, even encourage!!! is the subtext – illegal immigrants to get federally subsidized health care.

How to keep illegal aliens to foxtrot through loopholes, however, is a sticky matter. In 2005, a law was passed requiring all applicants to Medicaid to verify their citizenship status, and some have floated the idea of using those same guidelines for any new program.

But, ouch, this country doesn’t have a feasible and comprehensive system for keeping track of who’s who here – probably a relic from olden days when the citizens of this country weren’t quite so eager to ensure that the non-citizens among us were run out of the country on a rail.

Sure, we could require every person currently living in the United States to produce proof of citizenship for nearly anything but guess who gets left out in the cold?

Old people, who can’t produce original official birth documents.

The flaky, who have a tendency to lose stuff.

Victims of fire or other natural disasters, who lose all of their possessions.

There are surely about a million scenarios, but for a moment forget any future systems; the current one is conducive to a lot of head-scratching. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform audited and analyzed the verification costs and results of six states and found that the more stringent rules imposed by the 2005 legislation requiring proof of citizenship increased federal costs by $8.3 million and only detected eight illegal immigrants on the state rolls.

Yep, that’s about a cool million spent per illegal immigrant.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to drop the verification requirements and enact some sort of cruel, Dickensian punishment for defrauding the government of Federally funded benefits (that’s almost close to being true already, which might be the number one reason there were only eight lawbreakers found in that particular study)?

Wouldn’t that $8 million be better spent – if any far-reaching health care reform bills were passed – on outreach into communities with high illegal immigrant populations to let them know that the new laws require them to buy health insurance or face tax penalties?

Tax penalties above and beyond the current penalties of paying into social security and the Internal Revenue Service without a penny of benefit in return, that is?

What – you didn’t know that? Yes, illegal immigrants pay taxes: FICA and Medicare. Let’s not forget Social Security – to the tune of $12 billion in 2007. Plus sales taxes, and gasoline taxes. And also property taxes, which fund almost all of the costs of local schooling in Illinois and the rest of the country. Hey, I’m not saying any of this is good or bad, but it is a fact too-often overlooked.

But what the heck, let’s just go ahead and bar anyone who can’t come up with an official document – legal or illegal, black, white, brown, whatever –  from access to health care, whether it be preventative or emergency.

After all it’s not like we all breathe the same air. Or ride the same buses, or attend the same schools – elementary, high school, or college – together. It’s not like we have an H1N1 flu outbreak looming over us…those pesky viruses know how to target only those who’ll have the means to overcome illness.

Nope, all the legal, currently-insured people should just continue to do their best to dive-bomb healthcare for the legal or illegal neediest among us so they can live healthily and happily ever after.

Thanks a lot, Joe, for adding to the chorus of "haves" who will say just about anything to keep healthcare from the "have-nots."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Will the immigrant story play in 2010?

posted August 31, 2009 at http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1743767,CST-EDT-esther31.article

Will the immigrant story play in 2010?

ESTHER J. CEPEDA

As we head smack-dab into the middle of election season again, let's take a look at the personal narratives of some of this season's colorful crop.

Of the handful of universal political stump speeches -- love of country, mom and apple pie, reform -- one in particular has resonated especially with crowds from sea to shining sea: being the child of immigrants and living the American dream.

But how does that play out today as we steel ourselves for another round of contentious immigration law reform battles in 2010? I set out to take a temperature read on whether the "child of immigrants who achieves the American Dream" page of a candidate's personal story still makes people feel all warm and fuzzy -- or just gets their blood boiling.

Tall, alabaster-skinned Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who's running for U.S. Senate, speaks openly about his heritage.

"As you can tell from my last name, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that ... I am the proud son of immigrants," he told a group of Hispanic businessmen and women at a recent conference. "My parents came here from Greece with nothing, didn't speak the language. My father started his own business ... and achieved a level of success for himself and his family that is part and parcel to the American Dream."

For Alexi, this story line is a total asset -- surely no one immediately wonders whether Giannoulias' parents came into this country legally or not.

"It connects him to a working-class background and humble beginnings," political consultant Jeff Riley told me. "For others, it might be a double-edged sword."

Of course it is. Others, for example, who are Mexican-American.

One little-known candidate for lieutenant governor, Elmhurst-based Thomas Castillo, finds himself maneuvering a very fine line of potential liability when talking about his immigrant roots.

"I'm Mexican, Italian, American Indian, German and Irish, so it doesn't really come into play," he told me in his thick Sout' Side accent.

So far the only Latino running for statewide office, Castillo is a long shot. He's a never-elected, mostly Mexican, Obama-inspired newcomer.

"Most people hear the name and assume I'm Italian, but I don't want it to matter anyway. I don't want people to vote for me just because I'm Latino," he said. "Of course, I'd be an idiot to not make that connection to Latino voters, but you have to be aware of your audience -- I've tried to avoid any divisive stuff because I don't want to be typecast as 'The Latino candidate.' I'm focused on talking about how to be a representative for all people across Illinois."

That's exactly the tack Pete D'Alessandro, a longtime political consultant, has suggested to candidates he's worked with over the years -- Giannoulias included.

"You are what you are -- use it to your advantage," he said. "And, above all, forge a connection to your constituencies."

Still, in increasingly global Illinois, just being who you are can present as many challenges as opportunities, especially a mere four years after Congress floated harsh anti-illegal immigration legislation and even more so during a recession.

"This remains a tough issue," said Chicago-based public affairs consultant Jim Prescott. "Talking about immigrants living the American dream in a positive way in a campaign could be difficult even though there is nothing more American than coming to this country and succeeding."

It's not difficult at all for Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is running for Illinois Comptroller in the Democratic primary.

"I am an immigrant," the former deputy state treasurer told me on the day he officially announced his candidacy near his hometown of Peoria. "I was born in India and was very young when I came here. This country has given my family everything, and people feel really good hearing about my story."

Krishnamoorthi said he's aware as he travels the state that he might have to respond to a heated cross-examination about how Illinois is outsourcing tech jobs to places like India. But he's not worried about double-edged swords. He exudes a palpable American folksiness -- just call him Raja, he says -- that is the antithesis of foreign.

"Despite what's swirling in the greater immigration debate," Krishnamoorthi said, "people still want to hear that it is possible to reaffirm the highest values of our country and attain the classic American dream."

In politics, as in life, The American Dream -- haunting, prophetic, or sweet -- is recurring.

A new day for the U.S. civil rights movement under Obama administration

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Well, you can say whatever you want about Obama – that he’s fumbling health care, that he’s not moving fast enough on immigration law reform, that he needs to get it together in Afghanistan – but six months into it there’s a lot of good, too.

Take the administration’s renewed commitment to upholding basic civil rights, a mission that had been put well on the back burner during the Bush administration.

Just in time for Labor Day, the New York Times’ Charlie Savage published a front-page story, "Justice Department to Recharge Civil Rights Enforcement," chronicling the Obama White House’s focus on basic civil rights. Yes, civil rights that involve minorities but also those that go far beyond color and into the fertile, color-blind territory of poverty-induced ills such as voting rights, hate crime legislation, housing and hiring practice issues.

The last throes of the George W. Bush administration’s willful ignorance of civil rights issues manifested itself through the unfortunately timely swatting away at voting rights just as the country geared up for what was arguably the most electrifying and landmark presidential election in the last century.

Savage’s story started out with the statement that, "President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics [of enforcement against policies…where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly] preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination."

As you’ll see in this blast-from-the-past video commentary (October 2007) I railed against one Bush administration official who not only offended minorities, but also the elderly in defending limiting access to voting.

Here’s the text:

"Here's one for the "We're screwed!" file: Last week, John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a bungled attempt to diminish the threat to voting access that GOP-backed photo identification requirements might have on the elderly (many don't have driver's licenses), told the National Latino Congreso that minorities shouldn't sweat it.

"Creating problems for elderly persons is just not good under any circumstance," he said. "Of course that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

No dice, John-John. But don't take the word of the brain trust at the Esther J. Cepeda Rule of Thumb Public Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, Latinos' life-span will increase to 87 by 2050, surpassing all other ethnic groups and increasing -- as a proportion of the total elderly U.S. population -- from 5 percent to 16 percent.

Set aside the better prenatal and lifelong health care, nutrition, environment and education U.S.-born Hispanics will enjoy, research shows even undereducated, poor immigrants who come here from rough circumstances will live longer.

For example, one study of life-expectancy forecasts from the University of Pennsylvania showed a 65-year-old female immigrant will live about 11 months longer than a U.S.-born white woman.

I chalk this most recent slight up to the same sort of not overtly mean-spirited ignorance that plagues some corners of the country.

Sorta like Bill O'Reilly being shocked that no scary black people accosted him while he was dining at a Harlem restaurant with the Rev. Al Sharpton. But coming from the guy who's supposed to be watching my back on civil rights, it's truly disturbing.

So, don't reserve the burial plots yet, Mr. T. Let me break it to you: We're here to stay, and some of us just can't wait till the next election."

I’m just all too pleased that – despite the many things Obama has failed to yet deliver, and the many things that he’ll surely disappoint on because he is, in fact, just a human – after that "next election" is now. And finally the proper attention will be diverted to the neediest of civil rights advocacy among us.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Add this healthcare solution to the debate: Mexican and Latin American folk remedies for the ultimate Do-It-Yourselfer

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I am not a curandera – healing woman – nor do I play one on TV.

Also, I am not an abuelita –granny – old world to me means fax machines.

But seeing how the healthcare debate the country is having with itself has devolved into shouting matches at town halls – and the CDC announced today that any vaccine for H1N1 flu might not be available until maybe mid-October – I present you with cheap, alternative health care solutions for these troubled times.

They may not be as fancy-pantsy as an IV dripped dose of good old U.S. un-socialized healthcare but – for reminiscing and entertainment purposes only – here’s a little something for what ails ya, straight from the legions of associates of the Esther J. Cepeda Rule of Thumb Public Policy Institute, a bi-partisan think tank.

Baby colic:

When babies get fussy, take the dad’s shirt that’s been worn and has his "scent" and rub it all over the baby as you say a prayer.

Alternatively, hover a raw egg in the sign of the cross over the baby while praying – these get rid of the mal ojo or evil eye, according to 80% of abuelitas polled.

Also, grains of salt administered orally. Not doing it? Boil one whole, intact chicken foot and let the kid suck on it for awhile.

Burns:

administer urine liberally – preferably your own, but in a pinch, I imagine anyone’s will do – immediately. Reportedly also excellent for fever blisters and insect stings. According to the pop singer, Madonna, it also works for foot fungus.

Common cold:

Vicks Vapo Rub– "VeeVapoRoo" to the uninitiated – and lot’s of it! Oh this was also cited as a remarkable salve for sore throat and headache. Alternatively, a shot of tequila with honey and lemon.

Cough:

"iron" the chest with a warm – not hot – iron. Lacking that hardware, boil garlic in milk and drink.

Cuts/wounds:

apply a fresh spider web, much like you would use gauze. Alternatively, apply the membrane from the inside of an eggshell. In a pinch, pack a wound with tobacco from a cigarette – preferably unlit.

Constipation:

mineral water – administer liberal doses both orally and, ummm, rectally.

Diarrhea:

Coca-Cola with lemon. Some swear by 7-Up, though all carbonated beverages are highly recommended for any stomach ailment.

Ear ache:

Roll up a newspaper into a cone-shape and light the end on fire to cure an inner ear-ache (not for ear infections). Also, a candle or lit cigarette held to the ear opening. "It definitely works!" – or so I hear.

Eyes/ foreign object in eyes:

rub (long) hair on eye until soothed. Also, avocado smeared on the eyes to promote long, beautiful lashes.

Fever:

take a gordita or other puffy tortilla-like foodstuff and affix to the pained belly area with rubbing alcohol.

General malaise:

Vick’s Vapor Rub. Smear, sniff, or spread on face or afflicted area.

Headache:

two wet leaves of hierbabuena, AKA mint, placed on each temple. Leave on until headache goes away. Also suggested are slices of potatoes affixed to each side of the forehead.

Hangover:

a slice of pan Bimbo, a brand of sliced white bread, soaked in pure cane alcohol affixed to the stomach area.

Insect Stings:

tobacco leaves affixed to the sting. Of course, there’s also urine…see "Burns" above.

Insomnia/sleeplessness:

For a kid that can't sleep, bathe in lettuce water, then put to sleep with a leaf of lettuce under pillow.

Menstrual cramps:

hierbabuena – mint – in tea form. (Do Mentos count?)

Sore throat:

Mash a roasted tomato and, while still warm, place on soles of feet and wrap in a sock. Alternately, roasted tomato slices laid directly on the throat.

Also, a concoction of chopped garlic, lemon juice and honey is common. Less common: fresh-killed lagartijos – little lizards – for a verrrrry sore throat. Slice the lizard's underside to get the organs out and apply to throat. "It worked!" someone swore to me.

One more, and this quote is just too precious to mar with my pen: "And let's not forget the pulling of the hair in just the right spots of each side of the head to reduce the swollen tonsils."

Stomach ache:

a hot cup of manzanilla, AKA chamomile, tea. A tablespoon of olive oil is also common. For the really bad pains, rub stomach with a pasty mix of lard and baking soda (not baking powder).

Stiff neck:

affix a pair of "worn" underwear – "yours or someone else’s" – around neck to straighten out a sore neck. Alternately, get a few friends to roll you around on a taut blanket.

Toothache:

Pack the tooth in allspice. Re-apply as necessary.

People please – do not report me to the self-medication police! This information proves only that…drumroll please…the Placebo Effect is real!

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

ACT prep a step towards college

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1730856,CST-EDT-esther24.article

ACT prep a step towards college

August 24, 2009

ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Let me give you the silver lining first: In 2009, an unprecedented 134,000 Hispanic high school students across the United States took the ACT college admissions and placement exam -- a 16 percent increase over last year and a whopping 60 percent increase since 2005.

The ACT's College Readiness Report, released last week, calculates that this year's average composite score for Hispanics was 18.7 -- matching a high first reached in 2007 -- out of a perfect 36. And while scores in English and reading held steady, math and science were a tenth of a point higher than last year.

But now the cloud:

Despite that record growth in the number of Hispanics taking the test, their actually college readiness skills (meaning they scored high enough on the ACT to indicate they are sufficiently equipped to earn grades of C or better as college freshmen) have been flat -- and unspectacular -- for the last three years.

If you compare that 18.7 average by Hispanic students to the average of 21.1 by all students who took the ACT, the Hispanic students' scores are not that heart-stoppingly bad. But while 23 percent of all students who took the ACT met the test's college-readiness benchmarks in English, math, reading and science (not that such a paltry number shouldn't give you nightmares), only a scant 10 percent of Hispanics did so.

Yes, for the third year in a row, only one in 10 Latino students who took the ACT have a good shot at success in college.

But let's stop right there for a minute -- because just the fact that they're taking the test at all is darned good news.

It's little-known that every single 11th-grader in Illinois takes the ACT each spring as part of the Prairie State Achievement Examination. For free. During class time.

And though some players in this country's education-industrial complex decry standardized testing as patently wrong, culturally biased, unfair, irrelevant, etc., just administering the ACT to every student in Illinois is a gain.

According to the ACT, Illinois' universal testing requirement has made it -- along with Colorado, Michigan, Kentucky and Wyoming -- a major driver in getting Hispanic high school students on the map of college success. Taking this standardized, curriculum-based test, which compares students' scores to each other, ensures that Latino students are considered.

But even more important, our state's every-spring ritual instills in Latino students the idea of "college preparedness" as a staple of Hispanic life for generations to come.

It is well-documented that students who meet or surpass the test's benchmarks in English, math, reading and science are more likely to go to college, stay in school and -- most importantly -- graduate with a degree.

If more Hispanic families understood how critical it is for their children to not only know what the ACT is, but to prepare to take it in their junior year of high school (and that it is vitally important to fill out the form completely, including college preference selections, so colleges will receive the results and can offer scholarships), we might start shoring up this gap.

Awareness alone isn't going to overcome the hurdles of poverty, low-quality schools, language barriers and close-to-zero familiarity with basic tenets of college preparedness that many Hispanic families struggle against.

But just getting that spring ACT test on every family's radar -- families that often are predisposed to understand the high-stakes 11th- and 12th-grade testing because that's the norm in many Latin American countries -- might help get more Latino high school students into free, but elective, school-provided prep classes and prep test sessions.

At a bare minimum, a little ACT knowledge, combined with some extra sleep the night before the test and a healthy morning snack, could put our Hispanic -- and black, white, native-born or immigrant kids -- on track to push Illinois' 2010 ACT test scores onward and upward.

Esther J. Cepeda blogs at 600words.com.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Hispanics quickly gain digital skills

 http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1719142,CST-EDT-esther17.article

August 17, 2009

Hispanics quickly gain digital skills

by ESTHER J. CEPEDA

A few weeks ago, the City of Chicago released a report titled "Digital Excellence in Chicago: A City-Wide View." It enumerated -- among other sky-is-falling statistics -- that African Americans in Chicago were 6 percent less likely to use the Internet than whites, called out Spanish-speaking residents as being the rarest users, and topped the entire thing off with: "Latinos as a whole stand out as the least-connected residents."

My immediate thought -- after hitting the roof -- was this: That report may well be true, as far as it goes, but it leaves a dangerous impression that Hispanics in Chicago -- and by implication all across the country -- are digitally clueless. But, in fact, also true is that though they lag behind whites, a big percentage of Hispanics are online -- and more wade into the Web every day, at a faster rate than any other group.

Plus, when Hispanics go online, surf's up.

In a recent report called "The Power of the Hispanic Consumer On-line," Scarborough Research says that a majority -- 54 percent -- of Hispanic adults were online way back in 2007 and that number was growing by about 13 percent a year -- so you know the percentage is considerably higher by now.

Then I remembered that in late March, Chicago-based research firm Mintel released results from a survey showing that Hispanics who are online are more likely to have profiles on social networking sites than non-Hispanics -- 48 percent of them have one compared with 43 percent of black Americans and 31 percent of whites. Other findings from that survey suggested that Latinos online adopt new media technology more quickly than non-Latinos, spend far more time than non-Latinos listening to Internet radio and downloading music and devote more time weekly to surfing, playing multiplayer games and blogging or commenting online.

Just last April, comScore Inc. released numbers that showed that during the past year, the growth of the U.S Hispanic Internet audience outpaced that of the total U.S. online population in terms of number of visitors, time spent and pages consumed. Those Hispanic online visitors -- 20.3 million just in the month of February -- made up 11 percent of the total U.S. online population.

But a few statistics don't tell the whole story. So I blew in some calls to people in the trenches with the young, old, black, white, brown, underemployed and out of work to get their take on things.

Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an organization that promotes better education in minority Chicago communities, was surprised by the Chicago study, too.

"From my perspective, there is absolutely a divide but mostly among middle-aged and older people," he said. "The younger people realize you have to be connected digitally to even exist anymore and they understand many businesses only accept resumes and applications over the Internet."

Alvaro Obregon, new communities program director for the Resurrection Project, said: "Yes, there are issues with access, but if you look out there you'll see young children doing the texting, they've got their mySpace, and this is forcing parents to say: 'I want to know what my kids know' and they're getting out there and learning it."

Catherine Zurybida, a coordinator at the Odyssey Project, which offers free humanities college classes to low-income students, immediately articulated my gut reaction:

"If that assumption was made by employers, they might conclude that a white candidate has better ordinary, everyday computer skills than a minority," she said. "I would say that's certainly not true, and it's a very destructive stereotype."

Exactly! The easy-headline-grabbing reports are not necessarily inaccurate, but they don't tell the whole story and have a way of getting stuck in people's minds to form limiting stereotypes. But now you know better.

So, clip and save my stats, too. And never let anyone's numbers keep you from knowing that if we really want to talk to each other, technological barriers can be overcome.

Esther J. Cepeda blogs at 600words.com.

The Language of Paying Respects: the English-Spanish connection at a Chicago business who’s who

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

In all the years I’ve been attending the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s annual Business Expo breakfast I’d never noticed it, but about five minutes into the remarks I started keeping score of each speaker’s use of the Spanish language.

Last week’s event started off with ABC7’s John Garcia light-heartedly making fun of his own tortured language skills – "if Spanish is my second language then it’s a distant, distant second" – an especially funny observation given that there wasn’t a soul present that needed any translation. I’d say about 25% of the well-heeled crowd was extremely Caucasian, with the rest representing the cream of the second-generation Hispanic business crop.

I’ll tell you who made me sit up and pay attention: Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias who – somehow – graciously managed not to drop a certain Hyde Park basketball-playing VIP’s name.

"Good morning to all of you and thank you for inviting me to speak to you this morning…the Latino communities, businesses and buying power is growing faster than in any other group in the United States and your contribution to the international market is indispensible," the candidate for U.S. Senate said. "When I came to your membership meeting in April, I promised to stay in contact with you and make issues affecting the Latino community a top priority."

Boilerplate, sure, but why was nearly everyone on the very edge of their seat?

It was delivered in nearly flawless Spanish, and some of those words were hard!

And so it went as I started keeping score of who – of Chicago’s who’s who (which included Governor Pat Quinn, Hizzoner Da Mayer Daley, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, and County Board President Todd Stroger) – was at the Chamber breakfast to pay their respects to the hot Hispanic businessmen and women of our town. And, who did so in Spanish.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about all English everywhere all the time, but I have to admit, I LOVE it when non-Latinos speak "my language."

No – I’m not a fan of pandering for pandering’s sake – but there’s just something about someone addressing you with words they’re unfamiliar and maybe a little uncomfortable with. It shows not only a level of respect, but of warmth.

For instance, Ellen Costello, President and CEO of Harris Financial Group – who’s just as white as white can be, god bless her – got up in front of us and said, "Good morning and thank you for coming" in that halting way where you just knew she was nervous and unsure but, by golly, she did it. I found myself silently cheering her on with each word and being honestly proud of her – and impressed – when she finally got through it.

And there’s the flip-side: sticking with the English because you don’t have to prove yourself. Governor Pat Quinn and Mayor Daley may not have ventured into rolling-R territory but they really said it all about the nature of their respect for the Latino Business community by just being there.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez was all over the map – he spoke Borriquen, English, Spanish, and Spanglish (almost too much considering the crowd). For a minute there I thought he was going to break out the Urdu, but that’s just Luis.

Interesting aside

: Gutierrez made some very clear remarks about the possibility of a Hispanic being elected as the next Governor of the great state of Illinois, adding: "A Rodriguez, Gonzalez or Martinez will become governor and that day is coming in Illinois." Foreshadowing? They were all names ending in "ez." Hmmmmm…

Final interesting observation about language and of walking the fine line of pandering to and pitching your audience: Of all the luminous speakers addressing all the Hispanic who’s who, not a single one of them acknowledged the historic nomination of (now) Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, or gave a rah-rah about the 2016 Olympic bid. How weird is that?

Just goes to show that some things can get lost in translation even when they’re unspoken.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

A sea change for Waukegan Latinos

 Chicago Sun-Times

August 10, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Two years ago, the City of Waukegan was on fire. While a furious debate on illegal immigration played out nationally, Waukegan was melting down from the day-to-day logistical frustrations of a city ill-equipped to deal with the cultural demands of an influx of brown-skinned, predominantly Spanish-speaking newcomers.

Like so many towns across the U.S., Waukegan -- a formerly mostly Caucasian, blue-collar manufacturing town 30 miles north of the Loop -- was torn apart by a fervent anti-illegal immigrant sentiment that oozed all over its perfectly "legal" Hispanic residents.

The match was a city ordinance that impounded the cars of drivers caught cruising without a license or car insurance. A critical public safety issue, to be sure, but some Latino residents, who make up over half the town's population, considered it rampant racial profiling.

It lit a powder keg. In June 2007, the Waukegan City Council voted to apply to the feds for two Waukegan police officers to be trained for 287(g) authorization -- a controversial program that would have allowed police to start deportation proceedings for any illegal aliens convicted of violent offenses such as rape, murder, sexual assault or drug violations.

Enraged Hispanic residents exploded in protests.

Over the next few weeks, Waukegan Mayor Richard Hyde vowed to fight for the program to the bitter end, while overzealous community activists descended on an already frightened Latino community, terrifying them with tales of midnight home raids, deportation for not returning library books in a timely manner and other wild exaggerations and nonsense in the name of mobilizing a rebellion.

Things grew so tense that the Waukegan police felt it necessary to strap on riot gear on the day of one City Council meeting, preparing for violent protests. Large numbers of Latinos did in fact turn out to protest, but entirely peaceably.

Fast-forward to April 7, 2009, when Waukegan elected a new mayor, Bob Sabonjian Jr., who immediately withdrew Waukegan's application to the dreaded federal program and welcomed a new police chief, Artis Yancey, to town.

When Sabonjian and I spoke last week, on the three-month mark of his tenure, he said: "There has been a change of mind-set in Waukegan, [this administration] isn't needlessly scaring people."

But he waved off the idea that his actions changed the tide. Instead, he thanked the dedicated Hispanic community groups who backed his race and demonstrated their commitment to a healthy -- rather than a Hispanic -- Waukegan.

The fiery and outspoken community activist Margaret Carrasco agreed with my assessment of the 180-degree trans- formation. "I do believe we're in a better place than we were," she said. "For the first time we have a cross-section of our community -- all races, all ages -- attending city council meetings with the agreement to work together for what's best for our community."

Carrasco offered the insight of the year: "We of the Latino community recognized we needed to take personal responsibility to make new immigrants understand the ordinances and rules of the town, to resolve differences positively, and to join together with the Anglo and the African-American people of Waukegan to include them in our culture and be part of theirs."

What a difference two years makes! There's a black man in the White House, a Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court, and in Waukegan, Sabonjian, Carrasco and Yancey are working hand-in-hand.

No, the tensions in Waukegan haven't completely gone -- and the battle for reforming the current federal immigration system will soon take on new life -- but if we're lucky, the focus will come off illegal immigration and change to immigrant integration.

The Waukegan exemplar proves that a community burned to ashes by a cultural firestorm can be reborn anew.

Esther J. Cepeda blogs at www.600words.com.

2010 U.S. Census? Count me in to bring home the money, honey

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I love numbers. A lot.

I am a geek, a closet demographer, and a sucker for statistical analysis. I’ve accepted this and those who dare engage me in conversation know enough to nod politely when I go all Cliff Claven on them – they understand I must eventually come up for air.

So when I got the press release from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) about kicking off their campaign to educate the Latino community about the upcoming 2010 Census – and how critical it is for everyone to be fully counted – I was…giddy.

The Census really doesn’t get its due; I’ve actually heard people wonder aloud why the government even does it!

Every ten years the U.S. does

a Constitutionally mandated head count which is used not only to allocate Congressional seats and electoral votes, but also provides me and other journalists with endlessly fascinating information about who lives where, what they do, and how that’s different from a decade ago.

Oh, and it means cold, hard cash.

As New York Times reporter Peter Baker said in his February "Washington Memo: Big Drama over who controls the U.S. Census", new Census counts will "shift billions upon billions of federal dollars over the next decade from some parts of the country to others because of population-driven financing formulas."

The trick is to make the Census count as absolutely accurate as possible so that every community gets an exactly proportional piece of that federal-dollars-pie based on how many people actually live in it.

"Educational services, social services, and transportation services – just to name a few – are all based on these Census numbers," Elisa Alfonso, MALDEF’s Regional Census Director told me this morning. "What people don’t know is that for every completed census form returned, their community gains about $1,000 in funding for services that will directly impact their quality of life."

Now, I don’t want to underplay the significance of MALDEF’s task – reaching into Hispanic communities across the Midwest, selling people challenged by Census ignorance, fear of feds, and limited English proficiency is gargantuan.

But though getting such a diverse group of people educated and fully engaged in this decennial ritual will be a toughie, the real story – to me – is just how much easier it will be this time around than in years past.

"Yes, in many ways this is a hard-to-reach community," Alfonso said, "there is general fear from the harsh illegal-immigration enforcement of the undocumented and there are language barriers but there is one difference: in past years there wasn’t a unity in communities.

The immigration marches changed that dynamic so much – people got together, they organized, they helped each other to mobilize and created momentum. Now we can capitalize on that energy. We marched, then we voted, now our task is to be counted."

It never occurred to me that an unintended consequence of the national war on illegal immigration would be that a historically fractured community would come together as a cohesive group that could enact change for itself.

"We have so many different organizations that are coming together to expand our reach," Alfonso said. "Sure there isn’t a perfect unity, but there is a feeling of banding together and they are operating with a higher level of organization and much more savvy than ever before."

That said, because it will be a challenge, MALDEF is starting to get the word out now, but ahhhhhhhhhh the fruits of their labor will be so, so sweet.

More people responding to the Census means adequately-funded school lunch programs, hospitals, and expressways. It means more data for marketers to use to sell you cool stuff you don’t really need but will make you happy, and for me?

It means more numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers…

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Two wrongs don’t make a right - Sotomayor fans shouldn’t be hatin’ on Republicans

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

It’s just days before Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to the nation’s highest bench – unless, of course, a meteor hits the earth and there’s some sort of cloudy apocalypse.

Not that partisan zombies wouldn’t arise from the rubble to complain about each other’s survivalist ideologies, but I’ve digressed.

No, I’m before you today to preach some peace, love and understanding.

I just read a breathless story on USA TODAY’s website "McCain to oppose Sotomayor (though she has the votes to prevail)" It seems that Senator John McCain had the nerve – THE NERVE!!!! – to say he’ll be voting against everyone’s favorite robed NewYorican when the moment comes this Thursday.

Yawn.

Does anyone reaaallllyyy think Judge Sonia has a chance of NOT being confirmed?

The reporter clearly states, "McCain's decision won't block Sotomayor's confirmation, which is expected to be made official this week. She has the support of six Republicans, along with the chamber's 58 Democrats.

But six is not enough, apparently.

The Left is incensed that – get this – those mean old Republicans don’t want some liberal lady (wise Latina or not) to get on the bench. They’re made the Republicans were rough on her during confirmation hearings and one of them even invoked Desi Arnaz, telling Sonia she had some ‘splaining to do, since all Ms. Sotomayor could say was that she didn’t want to comment.

The National Council of La Raza just sent out an e-blast earlier today invoking all recent Republican sins in one message:

"With no regard for her credentials, experience, or record, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Buchanan have all attacked Judge Sotomayor, Rush Limbaugh compared her to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.  Pat Buchanan questioned her intelligence basically because she's Latina.  Newt Gingrich called her a racist via Twitter.  And the National Review even mocked her for pronouncing her own name correctly," the message whined, as if pointing a finger at crazies makes them look any saner.

Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked his Republican colleagues last week to "join Democrats in voting next week to confirm Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying not doing so could bring the same voter backlash against the GOP that followed the party on other issues, such as immigration," according to The Capitol Standard’s Patricia Guadalupe.

So…Republicans should vote, not for whom their conscience dictates, but for the person who will be most likely to please a voting bloc necessary for re-election?

Frankly I don’t like the sound of that, either.

Nope, now is not the time to nit-pick over which Republicans will stick to their straight-ticket guns and vote ‘no’ on this Sotomayor thing. After all, why get in the way of what looks to be an extended but inevitable GOP meltdown?

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and there are better things to be horrified at the Republican Party about than one Supreme Court vote that isn’t going to matter anyway.

C’mon, just for this week: let’s give the Republicans a pass, let’s take the higher road, let’s let them vote ‘no’ and sulk when Sotomayor gets confirmed, anyway.

Let’s teach them what compassion is all about. And yes, that means no "nannna-nannna-boo-boo" after Sotomayor skates onto the bench and into the history books.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Dispelling the Hispanic Chicago Pilsen Myth: We’re – GASP! – everywhere

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

At approximately noon Monday I got so angry I sent out this Tweet:

"Note to the world: as lovely as it is, ALL of Chicago's Hispanics DO NOT live in Pilsen!"

Not five minutes after that, my Blackberry started going crazy - my Tweet had hit a nerve.

Let me back up a minute, though – without naming names or unnecessarily embarrassing anyone – this is what happened: I got a call from a magazine photographer who wanted to take a picture of me to accompany an upcoming article.

I gave my office location – in Chicago’s Loop – and was asked about my home address. Dissatisfied with my answer, the photographer just flat-out asked me if I could travel to Pilsen so I could take a picture in a place this person perceived as a more proper setting for a Hispanic.

Summoning every bit of my self-control, I politely – for about the five-thousandth time in my young life – explained how wrong, wrong, WRONG that is!!!

Now stop right there for a moment, don’t you get me wrong: nothing wrong with Pilsen, per se. It’s a fine, storied place where school buses of white suburban children are taken by their well-meaning Caucasian Spanish teachers on field trips to see the real-live "Lah-tee-nose" making tortillas and selling piñatas.

Pilsen has its charms and all (I have an excellent curandera whose botanica is on Cermak Road), but I’ve never lived there, gone to school there or spent much time there, LIKE THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the approximately 800,000 Chicago Latinos who call the city limits home, or the other million or so Chicago metro region Hispanics!

Yet, I cannot tell you how many non-Hispanics have assumed I was from Pilsen (nyet – Wrigleyville, back before it was Yuppie Town) or otherwise refer to Pilsen as the be-all and end-all heart of the Latino community in Chicago. I think not!

I certainly spent way more time in Little Village, and others said the same about Humboldt Park and Albany Park. This post from "memo-92" on www.city-data.com pegged it concisely:

"The days of Pilsen being THE Mexican neighborhood in the city are long gone. 26th street eclipsed 18th street 30 years ago, and you will find countless ‘Little Mexicos’ scattered all over the metro area, including far-flung suburbs like Elgin and Aurora.

Pilsen remains important as a cultural center and for historic reasons, but at this point it is more attractive to immigrants from the suburbs and UIC [students] – who tend see it as cool, funky, cheap, and close by – than it is to immigrants from Mexico, who tend to see it as not all that cheap, crowded and dirty."

Turning back to my nerve-hitting Tweet, I immediately got messages from my Facebook pals:

Gabriel Garcia commented: "I live in Lincoln Park!"

Veronica Arreola commented: "West Rogers Park representing!"

Charles A Serrano commented: "They also live in one of the four sections of Humboldt Park... And a few in South Chicago – duh!"

Ed Mlakar commented: "some live in Brighton Park"

Gerardo Cardenas commented: "And don't forget the Oak Park Latinos ... the few... the proud..."

David Diego Rodriguez commented: "I'm in Beverly. And a lot of them live in Mt. Greenwood."

Roberto Sepulveda commented: "This reminds me of when my sister was asked to share her experiences of the 'barrio.' Her high school English teacher assumed [this]. We lived in Berkeley, IL at the time."

Ricardo Serrano commented: "Like it or not, we also live in condos Downtown! (you don't have to be Oprah or Gates to afford one) Latinos can own one too :)"

Perhaps the one I liked best, courtesy of Veronica Tapia, says it all:

"Batavia, Lincoln Park, Bucktown, the Gold Coast... we are everywhere, aren't we??? lol!"

Yes we are – and don’t any of you non-Hispanic readers forget it J

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Women, Caucasians, Hispanics - the changing face of StreetWise

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

"StreetWise, StreetWise, getcher StreetWise right here!"

If I’d heard it once, I’d heard it a million times. But never before like this.

In the sixteen years that StreetWise has been around, helping people "help themselves to self-sufficiency through gainful employment," its street sellers have historically been mostly African-American men on their way to rebuilding lives strained under the weight of poverty and homelessness.

Not anymore.

A lot has changed in the last year. The StreetWise newspaper is now a glossy magazine, the roiling U.S. economy has forced middle class workers to nearly unprecedented levels of unemployment and underemployment, and population demographic shifts are literally hitting the streets.

Which is how I came to hear the familiar "StreetWise" call daintily belted out by an otherwise quiet, diminutive Hispanic woman on my daily morning walk.

Meet Germania Toala, one of the next generation of venerated StreetWise vendors: multi-ethnic men and women with a roof over their heads but barely making ends meet in a rough labor market.

On June 24, 2009 – tired of fruitlessly searching for a job as a seamstress after having been laid off from a t-shirt factory a year earlier – Germania woke before dawn to travel from her Little Village apartment to the StreetWise distribution center at 5:50 am to pick up her first-ever stack of magazines. By 6:15am, she was at the corner of Washington and Wells Streets in Chicago’s Loop.

That morning she was, as far as she could tell, the only Latina – and one of a growing handful of non-African-Americans – gearing up for a day of selling the four-color magazine which features original reporting and a helping hand for the vendors who rely on it to make ends meet.

"When I first started, people would look at me sideways like I was strange," Germania told me Wednesday as we drank a cup of coffee to celebrate her one-month mark as a StreetWise vendor. "I even had a police officer come and buy a magazine and give me a weird look. I thought to myself ‘Sweet Lord, is this prohibited here?’

"But I asked Arturo, the seller who got me into this job, and he told me ‘Don’t you worry, as long as you have your permit around your neck, you’ll be fine.’ And I was," Germania said.

I called Greg Pritchett, Director of Distribution and Vendor Services – himself a retired vendor and longtime employee – to ask about my observation that the StreetWise corps of vendors was changing with the times and he was shocked someone noticed.

"It’s been our mission to change the stereotypes of StreetWise vendors all being homeless black men," Pritchett told me. "We are here to provide a hand-up, not a hand-out to anyone who is finding themselves out of a job, or have had their hours reduced, or who just need an opportunity to get themselves on their feet through honest, hard work."

Pritchett said that skyrocketing unemployment levels have brought new faces – Caucasian males, females, Hispanics – to StreetWise, a non-profit organization.

Now sporting 197 vendors, Pritchett says 8 are Hispanic (and StreetWise is looking to expand into more Latino neighborhoods and grow the Hispanic audience), and African-Americans now make up approximately 80% of the force. The number of women is slowly growing – now up to 35% – and the number of vendors who are homeless has dropped to about 25-30%.

The format change to a weekly magazine last November bought with it the opportunity to impress the vendor corps with a different ethic of business acumen and professionalism.

"The vendors have always gotten trained and mentored in our code of conduct before they get their permanent badges," Pritchett said, "they’re made to understand that this is a job, not a hustle."

The vendors pay 75 cents, sell the magazine for $2 and keep the profit. "With that I tell them to get on their feet and then not be afraid to spend some of the money they earned on their appearance – we teach them to sell the magazine, not the homelessness," Pritchett said.

Indeed, as early as spring I noticed StreetWise vendors in suits, ties, and dress shoes. "They learn respect for themselves, how to service the customer better, and how to increase profits. They learn to treat it like a business and there’s a sense of pride."

Pritchett told me a vendor can make $35 on a slow day, $65 on an average day and up to $120 on a good day.

In her four weeks Germania, who hasn’t missed a day, has only gotten up to $40 daily (Pritchett gushed "this lady is doing great!"), but, having been a clothes-seller on the streets of her native Guayaquil, Ecuador, she’s confident because she knows it takes time to build up that core base of regular customers.

"I feel really good about it, and my sons are so happy I’m no longer anxious about being without a job," Germania told me, smiling shyly. "It’s only been four weeks but the customers are starting to recognize me. Everyday someone says ‘good morning,’ or ‘have a nice day.’ Some of them looked on my badge and call me by my name now. I’ve even gotten some alteration jobs on ladies clothes because some have stopped to ask me what I used to do."

The question is, will Germania build her following and – even more importantly – make it through the oppressively hot, humid days that are sure to come, then subsist in the arctic winter?

"I’m going to stick with it," she said confidently, "I’m putting my all into this – and I’m not sure how it’ll be in the cold, but I’ll do it."

If you know someone who might benefit from the StreetWise opportunity, email Greg Pritchett at

gpritchett14@yahoo.com

or call StreetWise at 312.829.2526

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Can’t Get in Your Front Door While Black and Driving While Hispanic

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

In honor of poor, frustrated Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s recent debacle – the Harvard Scholar was arrested on the porch of his house after having trouble opening his stuck front door – I’m reprinting a column I wrote five years ago while living in the bosom of the mildly segregated (at the time) Lake County.

Who can say how one will actually react to perceived harassment by police? Most of us won’t have to ever find out, but lots of us have certainly felt the fear of "the law."

You can say whatever you want about how this particular incident might play out – will the police apologize over the misunderstanding or will Gates, for his reaction to it? – but I think we can all agree, it stinks to be scared of the uniformed men and women tasked with serving and protecting us.

"Driving While Hispanic"

Do you nervously scan the rearview mirror when driving down the street?

Do you cringe when you see a brown-skinned motorist pulled over by two cop cars?

Do people curse you and roar past when you’re innocently obeying the legally posted speed limit down a quiet suburban road?

When scanning the police blotter in your local newspaper, do you spot at least three surnames the same as yours or those of your friends?

If you’ve answered "yes" to two or more of these questions, then you may be guilty of DWH – Driving While Hispanic.

I’ve always prided myself on being an excellent, safe driver – especially careful after the suspension of my license due to three petty offenses within 12 months. Those three tickets might never have been written had I not been DWH – a Hispanic girl behind the wheel of a sparkly, blue-metallic 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

In my book, sadly, a DWH ticket means (separately):

·

driving one mile per hour over the limit

·

making a u-turn when there’s not a "NO U-TURN" sign in sight

·

avoiding a long line at the gas pump by pulling back into traffic (and, therefore, supposedly evading a traffic control device).

Luckily, I’ve moved up a little in life and now own a 2002-model car, one that screams "domesticated suburban female!"

But DWH reactions die hard and I’m still nervous about making a "wrong turn" when I’m out driving. I’m five years without a moving violation – and lovin’ it! – but I live in fear of another DWH citation and the resulting hike in my insurance.

DWH does have an even darker, scarier side, though.

Too many times I’ve been yelled at, intimidated with high-beams at night, and tail-gated for simply driving the speed limit or making full and complete stops at "right-on-red" lights and stop signs.

Being on the right side of the law can be tough when you suspect you don’t have as much wiggle room with police as do some other motorists.

In the Round Lake area, I see plenty of morons doing some really rude and dangerous things on the road. Yet, I don’t see that many non-Hispanic names in the newspaper police blotter.

Maybe it’s just that we’re better at getting caught.

Or maybe the curtains on our conversion vans just beg to be inspected more closely.

Either way, if you’re out driving and you come up on someone valiantly observing the Rules of the Road, please cut them some slack – they’re probably in as much of a hurry as you are, and I’m sure they passed the same exam you did to get their licenses.

More likely than not, that cautious slowpoke up ahead is simply Driving While Hispanic.

"Driving While Hispanic" originally published in The Solar News, July 2004, Round Lake, Illinois

(P.S. I haven’t been pulled over for anything since I’ve been driving the 2002 car.)

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

How much would you pay for U.S. Citizenship?

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Times are tough, we all know this.

The President is trying to pass a healthcare reform bill, businesses are going under left and right, and we still haven’t seen the worst unemployment figures. All while our children are subject to ever-worsening educational conditions and the scholars of our era are beginning to wonder if America will have the brainpower to innovate our way out of this slump.

The United States needs to get its groove back, get a little excitement on, maybe raise a little spending cash. How about we sell U.S. Citizenship?

C’mon, this is not blasphemy (ok, maybe a little).

You can say whatever you want about the United States’ economic woes, but we still have the number one economy in the world, clocking in at about 14 TRILLION dollars in Gross Domestic Product – over triple that of the number two country, Japan. Not too shabby.

To put it differently, you may not be getting yourself a BMW for Christmas but you can go out, right now, and buy yourself a burger and a Coke at McDonald’s for about two bucks, have access to 7 zillion books, movies, and music albums for free at your public library, and get treated for a broken skull at your local hospital whether you have insurance or not.

People all over the world know this and want to come to this country but can’t get in because the "line" to get into this country is – for all intents and purposes – fiction.

So while politicians and the community activists gnash their teeth about border patrols, "letting poverty in," and the "stealing" of U.S. jobs by both low-wage farm workers and high-tech computer experts, why don’t we create a special visa to let people pay their way in?

Never mind the $2,000 bucks or so that U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services charges the hardy souls who live long enough to make it through their maze of red tape, let’s talk about some real cold, hard, cash.

For example, in late June, the Associated Press put a story out of Arizona on its wire about Tucson Medical Center which markets posh medical packages to wealthy pregnant Mexican women who arrive in the U.S. shortly before their due dates to deliver healthy, bouncing U.S. Citizens.

The cost? Ridiculously paltry: "$2,300 for a vaginal birth with a two-day stay and $4,600 for a Caesarean section and a four-day stay, assuming no complications. That includes exams for the newborn and a massage for the new mother. There is a $500 surcharge per additional child," the Sierra Vista Herald story says.

C’mon, we can do better than that, right?

How much do you think Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu would put out for U.S. Citizenship? What about Swedish billionaire Ingvar Kamprad or the Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud? I bet they’d each waive the Customs hassle at JFK or O’Hare Airports for life for a cool million.

Alright, how about for a "regular" person - the cost of the average U.S. home? The cost of a Harvard education? Could our fine financial institutions give out mortgage-like loans to the horde of idealistic, English-fluent, hardworking foreigners who’d be willing to pay off a Citizenship debt for the rest of their American lives?

So how about it? How much is U.S. Citizenship worth – or better yet, for you true patriots out there – how much would YOU pay for your American birthright?

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Are some children more valuable than others? Colorblindness necessary to fix education in U.S.

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Let us, for just a moment, remember back to oh, let’s say, the year 1980.

The U.S. boycotted the summer Olympics, Jimmy Carter bailed out the Chrysler corporation, Mt. St. Helens erupted in Washington state, and Bruce Springsteen’s latest hit "Hungry Heart" was playing on seemingly every radio across the country.

Some might remember these as "the good old days" when things were as easy as, well, black and white.

Yes, back then the number of people who identified themselves as Hispanic to the U.S. Census was 14.5 million, about 6.5% of the population as compared to African-Americans who in that same year numbered 26.5 million and were 11.7% of the U.S. population.

That would have been a more appropriate time for the National Center for Education Statistics' new report, "Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress."

By 1988, however, Hispanics had multiplied by more than one-third since the 1980 census, growing nearly five times faster than the rest of the population, clocking in at about 19.4 million Americans of Hispanic background, representing 8.1% of the population.

The most recent numbers show the U.S. African American population at 14% and Hispanic at 15%.

My point?

It is the year 2009, folks, there is absolutely no reason why the National Center for Education Statistics should be releasing a report about a Black/White achievement gap for U.S. school children to the exclusion of Hispanic students, not to mention Asian and many other ethnicities.

And no reason why newspapers and television and radio stations across the country should be reporting on this admittedly sad state of affairs (see Illinois numbers here) while excluding the context of every other struggling kid in the U.S. – be they poor and white, from a foreign country, or Latino.

I could point out that it has been widely reported for about two years now that by 2050 Hispanics will be 30% of the U.S. population and African Americans 15% and argue for a special report highlighting Hispanics.

But that would be silly – you can already easily find such reports (Google it). But just try getting the mainstream media to put those in the headlines and I’ll personally bake you a dozen chocolate chip cookies.

There is no need to harp on the fact that, despite the very real challenges and biases African American students face in our abominable school system every day, there are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools, making up about one-in-five public school students in the United States.

Rather, it is high time to put the race and ethnicity issue – as it relates to student success in this country – in a coffin and bury it forever.

Any intelligent argument about success factors for U.S. children must center around familial wealth (lack thereof, actually) and kids’ access to decent schools, learning materials, and teachers – regardless of skin color.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a statement Tuesday in which he said: "This report makes clear that … when schools serving children of color are primarily staffed by less experienced, less effective teachers, the effects are tragic."

He is wrong because the part about less effective teachers is a true statement for every child, even poor white or Asian ones.

And that’s how we need to look at this problem if we have any hope of fixing it. Enough of trying to overhaul our education system while looking at the issue through the prism of a black/brown/white/blue-eyed/brown-eyed divide.

We are almost a full decade into the new millennium. No one child is more valuable than any other and, certainly, none of them deserve to be more or less valued in the academic research we’ll need for building a first-class educational system for the next thousand years of this nation’s history.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Postcard from Ecuador

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

Hi everyone,

 

I am in Ecuador, smack dab in the middle of world and having a wonderful time... ahhhh... researching, yes, that's what we journalists call it.

 

There's so much to say about the scene here: I was full-body scanned upon entering the country in order to determine my health as the AH1N1flu scare is going strong across Latin America.

 

It's been rainy and dreary, and the wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage has eclipsed the presidential corruption scandal (Rafael Correa, whose brother denounced him openly in the media here), the big flu tally in Brazil (74 confirmed), and the mess in Honduras (I'm disappointed the White House Press Office has completely dropped talking about the Zelaya situation in favor of the admittedly critical talks with Russia, the G8 meeting, and this emerging China situation).

 

But my mind has been on other things: So far, I have traveled to the center of the Earth and hopped from the northern to the southern hemisphere, I've traversed several roaring rapids via suspension bridge and base jumped off of one of them - twice. 

 

            

 

I've climbed multiple mountain peaks, scaled several rock faces next to waterfalls, visited a farm, seen Quito's first newspaper printing presses, and eaten lots of cool stuff, though not the cuy (guinea pig) pictured here - my adventurous nature goes only so far. 

 

There's much to talk about but, frankly, this respite from the United States is doing me a world of good. See you sometime next week!

 

-Esther

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Post Script ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

July 15, 2009:

 

I've returned stateside refreshed and invigorated, and just damned happy to be back in the most beautiful city in the world.

 

I didn't go so far as to kiss the ground when I walked out of O'Hare, but I was darned happy to have made it back with nothing more than a few minor bruises from falling 50 feet down the side of a steep volcano cliff into a cold river.

 

   

 

Also, to add to the above list, I rode horse up and down the side of a volcano, traversed several very long rope bridges across angrily roiling rivers swelled from the seemingly constant rain, rode a dune buggy through a busy downtown square (at night), ate shrimp freshly plucked from the sea, threw myself off a suspension bridge (twice) over a rocky river, hiked in the jungle, covered my face in mud and drank mineral water straight out of a puddle in the ground.

 

A few things I learned while in Ecuador:

 

1) The culture is laid-back, like REALLY laid back and if you have a Type-A personality, you'll be a tad frustrated while there. For example, like most restaurants and stores, Mc Donald's doesn't open until 9:30 or 10 am and closes about 12 hours later. Sundays are particularly tough to find anything open.

 

2) There is no such thing as coffee "To Go." And if you want it, let's say, at any time before your food arrives, or during the eating, you'd better ask for it as their custom is to deliver coffee at the very end of any given meal. Consider asking for two at a time if you require more than 4 ounces of regular brew at any sitting.

 

3) Gosh those Ecuadorians love the animated cartoon "The Simpsons"! So much so that they show it many times a day, and several times in a row. The show has become such a consuming passion that today the government is considering censoring it because it is inappropriate for families and may be damaging the populace's brains. Oh, and also, the translation voice-overs are spot-on but when there is singing, the singing is not translated and occurs in English.

 

4) It was my experience that the cities of Quito, Machachi, Ambato, Banos, Guayaquil, and Salinas are gorgeous, very safe, and filled with extremely nice people who are, frankly, just happy you're there to visit. The natural wonders are wonderful indeed...there's just no getting tired of looking at the mountains, the waterfalls, or the wide and diverse variety of stray dogs who seem to troll every street in a friendly, non-threatening way. (They don't, however, respond favorably to cookies as they are so unaccustomed to being offered such, ahhh, domesticated fare).

 

5) There is no shortage of newspapers: broadsheets, tabloids, digests, you name it. There are at least 3 national dailies and several local rags to pick from on any given streetcorner and lest you think that this is because there is no internet, forget it. There are internet cafe's (an hour costs 80 cents) on nearly every street corner as well, and every newspaper has all the social media tools like Facebook and Twitter firing on all cylinders, as evidenced by their mastheads. 

 

So there it is - Ecuador in a nutshell. And what a very deliciously nutty place it is!

 

Barack Obama and Alvaro Uribe, Chapter 1

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

President Barack Obama met with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe earlier today in the Oval Office around 3:40 p.m. EST. Seated in chairs in front of the fire place – beneath the George Washington photo – Presidents Obama and Uribe made remarks, paused for translations and photos, then took two questions. Sorta boring, really, in terms of theater.

But the drama of the developing situation in Honduras – against the backdrop of a White House administration furiously attempting to forge closer ties with the Latin American countries that were largely ignored by the Bush administration – made for a head-craning afternoon for those of us who care about our foreign policy toward Latin America.

I’m passing this along because – if today’s opening White House press conference question about whether the Obamas mailed a written condolence to the late Michael Jackson’s father is any indication – you won’t read much about it in the mainstream media. All quotes came from the White House Office of the Press Secretary, and my special thanks to today’s trusty pool reporter , USA Today’s David Jackson.

Obama started with the niceties, then zoomed in: "We discussed, most prominently, the interests of both countries in moving forward on a free trade agreement.  This is something that has been discussed for quite some time.  I have instructed Ambassador Kirk, our United States Trade Representative, to begin working closely with President Uribe's team on how we can proceed on a free trade agreement.  There are obvious difficulties involved in the process and there remains work to do, but I'm confident that ultimately we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States."

Then President Obama made a quite bold statement, one that will surely be argued more in the coming days:

"I commended President Uribe on the progress that has been made in human rights in Colombia and dealing with the killings of labor leaders there, and obviously we've seen a downward trajectory in the deaths of labor unions and we've seen improvements when it comes to prosecution of those who are carrying out these blatant human rights offenses," Obama said. "President Uribe acknowledges that there remains more work to be done, and we look forward to cooperating with him to continue to improve both the rights of organized labor in Colombia and to protect both labor and civil rights leaders there.

Along those same lines, we obviously think that the steps that have already been made on issues like extrajudicial killings and illegal surveillance, that it is important that Colombia pursue a path of rule of law and transparency, and I know that that is something that President Uribe is committed to doing."

Obama, taking a page from Hillary Clinton’s book when she spoke in Mexico back in April, Obama too, took responsibility on behalf of the American People for the drug violence gripping so much of Latin America:

"It's important that the United States steps up and cooperates effectively in battling the adverse effects of drug trafficking. 

And that includes, by the way, the United States reducing demand for drugs.  We have responsibilities.  We have responsibilities to reduce the trafficking of guns into the south that help strengthen these cartels and the flows of money and money laundering that at times involves not just the south – Southern Hemisphere but also the Northern Hemisphere.  And so looking for additional ways that we can cooperate on those issues is very important."

The action then stopped, according to Jackson, "In what is beginning to become a tradition, the Colombian press corps requested and received a group photo with the president."

Apparently, Obama teased members of the pool for not wanting a picture of their own.

"You guys don't want to take a picture with me?," reporter Jackson quoted Obama as saying. "When a media member informed him that we're ‘too cool’ for that sort of thing, Obama said: ‘You're too cool, exactly - you guys are just too cool.’"

Uribe took the podium and, speaking in English, added his own bold statements:

"In the case of human rights, Colombia is rule of law in the utmost expression of public opinion participation.  We -- I am the first with a duty to support of our armed forces, but for that reason of their honor, every soldier, every policeman in Colombia understands that we need credibility for this policing of democratic security, and credibility depends on effectiveness and on transparency.  And transparency is a question of human rights.

Therefore, we are open, we are very receptive, to receive any advice, any suggestion on how we are going to fulfill our goal of ceasing civil violations of human rights in Colombia."

Wow, really? That’s a pretty humbled stance. What does that really mean? I have no idea.

Uribe, a president who enjoys a 70% approval rating in Colombia, followed up on a question from a reporter: "We have a recognition to advance in security, human rights, state restructure, to advance in economics, to advance in social cohesion, and for all these things it is very important to have the permanent support of President Obama, of the government of the United States, of the Congress of the United States."

During further Q&A, President Obama made this statement regarding the situation in Honduras:

"Well, let me first of all speak about the coup in Honduras, because this was a topic of conversation between myself and President Uribe.

All of us have great concerns about what's taken place there.  President Zelaya was democratically elected.  He had not yet completed his term.  We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected President there.  In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.

I think it's -- it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections.  The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America.  We don't want to go back to a dark past.  The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies, but over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States.  And that is a tradition that we want to continue.

So we are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected President, and we will work with the regional organizations like OAS and with other international institutions to see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way."

(Earlier in the day at the press briefing, Robert Gibbs the press secretary had confirmed that President Obama had not had any contact with President Zelaya Monday morning. He did say the White House had been working to avert the coup previous to the Friday incident, but didn’t give specifics on that or on whether there is a working plan for incentives or consequences for resolution of the incident.)

President Obama continued:

"With respect to the free trade agreement, obviously a lot of work has already been done on the free trade agreement, and we are hopeful that we can -- we can move forward to completion.  I don't have a strict timetable, because I'm going to have to consult with Congress obviously on this issue.  We've got a lot on our plates, if you haven't noticed.  And I think that the burden is not simply on Colombia; I think Colombia has done a lot of excellent work.  It is a matter of getting both countries to a place where their legislatures feel confident that it will be ultimately to the economic benefit of these countries.

I have noted a special concern that is bipartisan and shared both by this administration and Congress, that the human rights issues in Colombia get resolved.  President Uribe has assured me that he is interested in resolving those issues.  And, as I said, great progress has been made.  I trust that we can make more progress.  And I think that will help shape the overall environment in which this issue is being debated in Congress."

Asked by a Colombian reporter about term limits and whether Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be limited in any way from running for re-election, Obama gave his standard answer about not getting involved in other countries’ democratic elections.

President Uribe, took the question as platform to discuss Colombia’s brand of democracy:

I said to President Obama, first, I am concerned, because I am a member of one generation of the four or five generations that have not lived one single day in peace in Colombia or prosperity.  Therefore, I consider that Colombia needs to extend in that time security, democratic values, investment in social responsibility and social cohesion – with adjustments.

And I have said to President Obama what I want to say to you.  Colombia is a country of solid democratic institutions.  When we speak about institutions, we cannot speak in abstract about institutions.  We have to speak about institutions in concrete terms.  We have 1,102 mayors directly elected by the people; 32 governors.  The regions in Colombia invest 51 percent of the public expenses.  My government has built governments with all the regional governors and mayors regardless their political regions, and they have many, many political regions.

The justice, administration is independent in Colombia.  Colombia has solid free press.  Colombia has bodies, independent bodies, for control.  Colombia is a country with very solid institutions.

I beg you, journalists, to separate the convenience or inconvenience of perpetuating the precedent with the qualification of our institutions.  Anyway, our democratic institutions are totally solid."

Barack Obama and Alvaro Uribe, Chapter 2, to come.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Ten who are making a big difference for us all – Chicago Latino List 2009

“Way more than 600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

Long story short: nearly every time there’s any sort of Who’s Who/Mover-Shaker/One-to-Watch list in “mainstream” publications there are few, if any, Hispanics on it despite there being a ton of awesome Latinos doing truly amazing things here in Chicago.

 

So, in order to help blunt this perceived shortage of Latino superstars I decided to start one.

 

I asked for nominations, got about 120, threw out the “usual suspects” – like elected officials and already well-publicized business and community leaders – narrowed the field to get a diverse group of immigrants, U.S.-born, younger, older, community, and business types, then did one-on-one interviews.

 

At the conclusion, I found five men and five women all dedicating their personal and professional excellence to making Chicago, Illinois, the U.S. – and sometimes the world – a better place.

 

Let me say it again: these people are not merely engaged in the noble task of empowering the Hispanic community, they have their sights set on making life better for blacks, whites, multi-ethnics, rurals, suburbans, urbans, immigrants, U.S.-born, and everyone in between.

 

And, yeah, these rock stars just happen to be Hispanic.

 

Please join me in getting your inspiration on as you read the stories of the ten incredible people who comprise the first annual “Chicago Latino List.”

 

Click on the title to read the full profile:

 

Concepcion Rodriguez, 45 – Scare-you-straight Caretaker of the Dead

A bilingual Funeral Director and embalmer, reformed gang member and volunteer gang intervention specialist, Rodriguez shows children and teens the grisly ravages of drugs, alcohol and the gang culture. She also talks to communities, affluent and needy alike, about how to reach out to kids they might not even think are at risk. Through her work, she has single-handedly saved the lives of hundreds of Chicago children.

 

 

Cynthia La Boy, 37 – Conqueror of All Obstacles

A single mother and professional living with a traumatic brain injury after a brutally violent crime, La Boy was told by her doctors she’d never be able to care for herself – much less go to college or have a career. Today she works at the Lake County Housing Authority as a bilingual assistant property manager connecting families to clean, safe living conditions and teaching them how to be responsible homeowners. A living miracle, she’s an award winning advocate and authentic voice for people living with disabilities.

 

 

Antonio Martinez Jr., 36 – Charmer of Benefactors

Martinez walked away from a successful dream career in sports marketing to become one of a very few Latinos in the field of professional fundraising. As Assistant Director of Development with the Chicago Community Trust, Martinez raises money to serve the basic human needs of the entire Chicago metropolitan region by supporting vitally-necessary community-based non-profit organizations.

 

 

John Viramontes, 57 – Voice to the Voiceless

An accountant by trade and lifelong community activist by heart, Viramontes dedicates his time to major issues including predatory lending, housing parity, rights for visual artists, and immigration. On an eternal quest for social justice, he’s devoted to improving the quality of life in Chicago neighborhoods and empowering struggling artists nationally by being a community presence and passionate spokesperson.

 

 

Dr. Ana Gil-Garcia, 54 – Leveler of Educational Inequalities

A tenured University Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, author, esteemed community leader, and forerunning advocate for Latino educational leaders, Gil-Garcia is a three time Fulbright scholar and an internationally acclaimed professional.  Gil-Garcia, a published author, works tirelessly for a variety of community organizations and devotes most of her passion to ensuring the Chicago Public School system is a nationally-recognized leader in employing school administration leaders who accurately represent the diversity of their student communities.

 

 

Jose Oliva, 36 – Restaurant Worker Sentinel

A Policy Coordinator with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Oliva is a driving force behind the legislative push to earn restaurant workers such common benefits as paid time off and job opportunity training. As the voice of both affluent teens working summer food service jobs and adults who support families with their back-of-house restaurant jobs, Oliva labors to fight poverty, racism and sexism while mobilizing local worker organizations. He not only teaches these groups how to become active and engaged in the federal political process, but he represents them in Washington, DC, as well.

 

 

Veronica Arreola, 34 – Professional Feminist

As Assistant Director for the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender and the Director of Women in Science and Engineering Program, Arreola is a dedicated advocate for women’s rights, helping them maneuver professions that even today are still dominated by men. As a mother, accomplished blogger, and activist for women’s reproductive rights, she has won numerous awards for her work and is dedicated to helping women and girls advocate for themselves in Chicago and around the country.

 

 

Roberto Cornelio, 51 – Large Business Incubator

The Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Cornelio – a former top executive at Fortune 500 companies – works to raise the funds, nurture the relationships and promote the programs that drive Hispanic business growth and foster the next generation of Hispanic business and business leaders. His work makes it possible for the Latino community’s instinct for entrepreneurship to thrive and, in turn, deliver jobs and opportunities to contribute to the overall economic development and job creation in Chicago and across Illinois communities.

 

 

Nelly Aguilar, 33 – Esquire to the Special

Attorney and dedicated special education advocate, Aguilar – mother to a son with Autism – works to protect the educational rights of children with disabilities. One of only approximately 15 lawyers specializing in the rights of students with special education needs, she campaigns for State and Federal law reform to help families’ secure medical, educational and recreational opportunities for their special needs children. Better still, she trains the next generation of attorneys who will serve the hundreds of thousands of Illinois children with disabilities.

 

 

Matthew Montez, 22 – De-myth-ifier of the Path to College

A former Pilsen/Little Village caseworker, recent college graduate and eternal optimist, Montez has just committed the next two years of his life to the Illinois Student Assistance Corps. After a seven-week training camp, he’s moving to Rockford to teach high school students how to prepare for, apply to and pay for college. Inspired most by those who avoid controversy and succeed despite adversity, his mission is to connect with high school students who will be the first in their family to go beyond a HS diploma, and teach them how to build enough social capital to get themselves into and through the rigors of college.

 

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 - Jose Oliva, Restaurant Worker Sentinel

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

What Jose Oliva wants you to know is simple. It has to do with the people who cook your food, serve your food, and bus your tables at your favorite restaurant.

 

These fine people who nourish and cater to your dining needs – whether they be teenage girls from Wilmette, middle-aged immigrants from El Salvador, or your next door neighbor whose husband left her to fend for herself and her kids – these fine people have it rough.

 

Like a $2.13 Federal minimum wage for servers who make tips, rough.

 

Like no basic job benefits such as “paid time off,” rough.

And folks – even for the people who are just thankful to even have a job in this economy, that’s pretty damned rough.

 

Oliva, a 36-year-old Policy Coordinator with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, is working to change that.

 

“Most people think that all restaurant workers make the well-known federal minimum wage and have sick and personal days, but they definitely don’t,” Oliva told me. “They have the Federal Family Medical Leave Act, which is extended un-paid time off, but if the President says ‘stay home if you don’t feel well’ in response to a Swine Flu epidemic, well, that’s just not an option.”

 

A Guatemala native who immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 13, Oliva is working on two major pieces of legislation, the Healthy Families Act, which would require businesses with 15 or more employees to provide up to seven days of paid sick leave each year. And an increase in the Federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 (Illinois’ is a more robust $4.65, but still).

 

“It’s been 18 years since this dollar amount was set and the real egregious part of it is that this group has been literally singled out,” Oliva said. “It just doesn’t make any sense, there’s no reason for it to stay the same for almost 20 years.”

 

And it’s a pretty big group. Oliva says Chicago has the second largest number of restaurant workers in the country, over 250,000 (only Los Angeles has more) and, of course, one of the largest Latino immigrant communities in the country. “However, neither have direct, full and democratic representation in the economic and political life of our country,” Oliva says.

 

“The influence of the National Restaurant Association as a lobby, for instance, is about the 17th most influential in Congress (according to Forbes Magazine). Meanwhile restaurant workers have no one to speak to their issues and advocate on their behalf. This holds special weight when you factor in that most restaurant workers are immigrants in Chicago and that immigrants have a similar handicap in as far as voice in DC is concerned.”

 

Well, those particular restaurant workers have Jose Oliva. And he’s doing two things:

 

1) He’s working on re-establishing a memorandum of understanding on immigration enforcement so no immigration raids would occur at a worksite where the employees were already engaged in any other activity – like a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against their employer – “so an employer can’t just call for a raid to get rid of the problem workers and then suffer no ramifications even though he was the one breaking the law in the workplace.”

 

2) He’s educating workers on their rights, and on how to band together to help each other fight for better working conditions and more opportunities.

 

“In essence what we need to do is to demystify the legislative process, we need to make sure ordinary people  who go to work feel they have a voice in government or in the companies where they work,” Oliva says. “The only way they can have that voice is to band together on common issues and that voice is magnified only if you take it to the power and speak in unison.”

 

His legislative action sensibility is what sets him apart from others who focus just on the workplace organizing – not that Oliva is a slouch in that department, he trained at the Organizing Institute at Midwest Academy with Jackie Kendall a nationally-known trainer now known for her work with President Obama.

 

“I methodically and scientifically gather workers’ stories for national reports and take it to DC,” Oliva said. “We’re not a union, not just a community organization, we’re a hybrid. We don’t just do rallies in DC, we do both and we’re trying to become a pioneer for organizations treading a new path.”

 

“All workers are interconnected,” Oliva said. “So to the extent you raise the conditions in one place, others follow and raise their wages and conditions. That’s how capitalism works. You have to raise wages; that teenager in Des Moines, Iowa will be positively affected by our work across the country, not just Chicago.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 - Roberto Cornelio, Large Business Incubator

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

What do global, multi-million dollar, Fortune 500 companies have in common with small and mid-sized Hispanic-run businesses in Illinois?

 

Everything.

 

The same squeeze in credit, the same pricing pressures and stagnant volumes. And the same opportunities to diversify into new markets, the same access to a growing pool of talented workers, and the same necessity that so often is the mother of invention and innovation.

 

At least that’s how Roberto Cornelio, the 51-year-old Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, sees it.

 

“This downturn is affecting Hispanic businesses with the exact same issues that affect others: access to markets, access to capital, access to resources, they’re no different from any other businesses in that sense,” said Cornelio.

 

And that’s how IHCC is very similar to other state-wide Chambers, with the Latino twist, of course. “We’re single-mindedly, obsessively focused on promoting and enabling Hispanic business growth and success,” the Mexican-born, lifelong Chicagoan, told me. “We advocate on issues that affect Hispanic business community and provide capacity-building assistance to Hispanic business to help them grow from startups to well-established, competitive companies.”

 

I translate that into empowering Latino businesses with the tools of good old American capitalism. “We give Hispanic businesses a solid foundation and position them for growth,” Cornelio seconded.

 

That’s no small feat, especially when Latino-owned businesses have yet to gain traction as powerbrokers and heavy-hitters in a town infamous for both.

 

And that’s the space where Cornelio – and the eleven-person IHCC – team work the hardest – to get Hispanic-owned businesses to be perceived as players on LaSalle Street and Michigan Avenue, rather than just as 26^th Street bastions.

 

For his part, Cornelio helms the yeoman responsibilities of managing programs and staff, overseeing the Chamber’s finances, executing fundraising activities, and maintaining relationships with corporate partners and stakeholders.

 

The Chamber provides free, one-on-one expert consulting services, training, and assistance programs to entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized companies looking to scale up. “There’s a key transition between immigrants who were the pioneers of the community businesses and their children who are going to business school to get an MBA in order to manage and grow the business,” Cornelio said. “For the first time we will have expertise, training and that network we’ve lacked as a business community.”

 

IHCC instills that expertise in Latino-owned businesses with training on how to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of the Illinois state procurement process, an area of major opportunity. 

 

“Just one of the many areas of opportunity for Latino businesses is the public sector,” Cornelio said. “If you look at the majority of the spend in federal, state, and local governments, there is significant volume in the public sector, but even though there are Minority enterprise partnership programs and other such programs we still have a very small percentage of the overall spend – well under 5%”

 

None of this speaks to any shadowy conspiracy to keep Latinos on the fringes – though I’d argue that keeping someone out and forgetting all about them are equally damaging – but rather, a testament to what a long way we’ve come in such a very short time.

 

“It’s more a reflection of how new and young this community is. Much of what’s happened has happened in the last 15-20 years because of the explosive population growth. We’re now starting to create stability, and that’s a unique opportunity.”

 

Cornelio estimates there are about 45,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in Illinois and anecdotal data approximates that 90% operate in the under one-million dollar revenue range and about 10% see revenues of larger than 1 million dollars.

 

“In the state of Illinois there are hundreds of Hispanic-owned businesses in the range between $5 million to $20 million range, including some producing revenues of $50 million,” Cornelio told me. “Those businesses will continue to drive the economic engine that will fuel the economic enhancement of everyone in the community – through job creation and through the cumulative effects of entrepreneurs employing providers of professional services like accounting and legal.”

 

“Growing Hispanic businesses provides a significant extended economic impact for all businesses in all parts of the city and state. More and more businesses are beginning to realize that opportunity,” Cornelio said. “The accompanying step is to tune this new generation of business leaders into the need to act publicly, to insert themselves in the civic and philanthropic tapestry of the city.  We need to provide a leadership role in the life of the city’s overall business community not just our own.”

 

“When I’m done in 10-15 years, Hispanic businesses will be a visceral part of leadership in a daily, ongoing basis, in all aspects of life, in this city and elsewhere.”

 

 

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 – Concepcion Rodriguez, Scare You Straight Caretaker of the Dead

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

She’s big, she’s loud, and she scares children to death.

 

Well, almost…better said is that 45-year-old Concepcion

 

“Concha” Rodriguez scares kids who don’t really understand the dangers of gang culture with real-life stories about real dead gangbangers.

 

“I talk to kids and tell them about the reality of the gang life, about families seeing their children cold, wrapped in plastic, cut up from an autopsy, and about their screams which will haunt me ‘til the day I die,” Rodriguez told me.

 

A bilingual funeral director and embalmer, the third-generation Mexican-American Rodriguez has worked for Zefran Funeral Home on the South side of Chicago since August 1995. Born in Texas but raised in the inner city of Chicago, by age 16, she was a member of the Lady Aces gang in Pilsen.

 

“I got out of the gang when my 15 year-old girlfriend was shot and killed as she walked with her boyfriend,” Rodriguez recalls. “They buried her in her quinceanera dress.”

 

“I made the choice to leave that lifestyle and become somebody, rather than a statistic.”

 

These days when the 5’10” self-described loudmouth walks into a room of unruly kids who firmly believe they will live forever no matter what, she makes an indelible impression.

 

“Usually the casket I bring gets their attention,” she told me. She takes that casket to schools and community organizations for her presentation “Don’t be Grounded by Age 18 (Tough talk straight from the Funeral Home),” and has a mirror in it, giving one pause when opened.

 

If that doesn’t get them she tells her own story. And if that isn’t enough she’ll get into the gross anatomy aspect. “I show the “Y” incision starting in the clavicle and how you cut from neck to navel, then from ear to ear to open your scalp and saw your skull to pull out your brain,” Rodriguez said.

 

And if that doesn’t get them (she talks to some seriously tough crowds!) she aims for the heart.

 

“Then I go into description when a mother and father has to go identify their loved one at the morgue – with your face cut up, THAT’s how your mother and father are going to see you,” Rodriguez warns. “If that’s ok for you, fine, but I tell them that when you’re in a gang so is your whole family. What if it’s your mother, little sister, or little brother who dies because of your gangbanging? Then their whole demeanor changes.”

 

But she doesn’t always stop there – she can’t. Rodriguez gets a shot at the worst kids: the ones who are on the precipice of real harm, real crime, the ones who could still be saved.

 

“I tell ‘em, ‘you WILL get violated, you WILL get beaten, girls DO get raped. I talk to them about maybe it’s too late for you but keep this away from your brother or sister,”

 

Her message isn’t just for those who live on the rough streets of the inner-city, though, she travels to some verrrrry nice middle-class and affluent communities, brought in by community organizations who know that today’s gangsta, thug culture holds allure for kids who have it all, too.

 

“Some bad seeds will be transplanted to the suburbs, or some bad kid’s going to corrupt your kids who’ve got everything and are bored,” she warns parents and grandparents. “I tell parents how they can get involved make a difference these people who live comfortably, ‘go give one hour of your time at the library,’ don’t just call them ‘bad kids’ lets all get together to make a difference. Besides, showing love and giving respect doesn’t cost money.”

 

But Rodriguez is tame with the adults in the suburban libraries. The really tough kids get an unwelcome trip to her funeral home where the lesson is a little more tangible.

 

“I tell them that if the walls of my funeral home could talk they’d hear the cries of parents, brothers, sisters,” Rodriguez said. “But when they walk out the door they have the chance to get out.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 – Cynthia LaBoy, Overcomer of all Obstacles

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

After being brutally struck with a hammer 25 times when she was just twenty-two, then living through a grueling year of recovery after which her doctor’s said she’d never never be able to care for herself – much less go to college or have a career – Cynthia LaBoy’s family moved her out of their Chicago apartment and fled to the relative safety of Lake County.

 

“The same day we moved, my parents took me to the campus of the College of Lake County and even though they were told ‘she’ll never do anything’ they said, ‘You’re going to get your education,’” said LaBoy, a 37-year-old Chicago-born Puertoriquena who still deals with the challenges of traumatic brain injury after a brutally violent crime.

 

“I needed help reading, spelling, writing, I had to fight for it and struggle, but all these other things opened up and I got the opportunity of a lifetime with the housing job through the CLC financial aid office as a student worker.”

 

Today she’s still at the Lake County Housing Authority, now as a bilingual assistant property manager, connecting families to clean, safe living conditions and teaching them how to be responsible homeowners.

 

“I help all sorts of people not just the Hispanic parts of our community, whether it’s for a leaky faucet or to translate documents from English to Spanish,” LaBoy told me in her strong, clear voice. “I deal a lot with seniors and kids, too, I take care of 150-160 apartments by managing their inspections and re-certifications to qualify as low-income housing.”

 

A fair amount of her time, too, is spent teaching others. “I have families who need to understand the value and importance of cutting their grass, and need to learn what it means to be a homeowner, what the responsibilities are,” LaBoy said. “They’re grateful to have a safe, sanitary home to raise their children on their own and the whole community benefits.”

 

LaBoy blurs the lines of work and play by getting involved with the community experience of the homeowners she assists, too. “I help organize 3-on-3 basketball games, Mother-son activities and Father-daughter dances, and Shop-with-a-Cops.” She even plays on a community softball team – “Cynthia doesn’t say ‘no!’ I didn’t say I could hit the ball but I’m gonna try –” all while being a single mom to a 12-year-old daughter, “Savannah, my pride and joy, my inspiration,” she gushed.

 

“I have the support of my parents who are my rock,” LaBoy said, “they’ve been with me through thick and thin, they’re the ones who taught me that with hard work you can achieve anything if you really, really want it – no matter what you want.”

 

One can hardly imagine what sort of firecracker this young woman was before the violence left her forever enabled by software that helps her with the reading and writing tasks her job demands, but she never even brings it up in conversation. Rather, she is literally a beacon of light who also fails to mention all the other things she does for the betterment of this region.

 

Ms. La Boy received  the Ed Roberts Award – given to individuals who have not let their disability stand in their way – in December of 2008. She was selected in February 2008, as a representative to attend the annual conference for The Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois, and attends the Annual Brain Injury Conference every year in Oakbrook, Illinois.  That never even came up in conversation.

 

“I’m a person with a disability, but I was given an opportunity,” LaBoy told me. “I could have died, but I didn’t die. I’m here for a reason, I have to help people who aren’t getting it otherwise.”

 

“If I can help somebody, if I can inspire them in some way to know you can achieve anything no matter what the obstacles, then that’s what I’m here to do.”

  

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 - Matthew Montez, De-myth-ifier of the Path to College

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

Did you see the Chicago Sun-Times article Sunday about how the economic downturn – coupled with the new-found, unprecedented popularity of “community organizing” – has made it difficult for idealistic young college grads to get into volunteer service corps?

 

Well, count Matthew Montez among the lucky ones!

 

Montez graduated from UIC last month with a B.A. in sociology, and has committed the next two years of his life to the Illinois Student Assistance Corps, a federally-funded program which will be run by the Outreach and Access arm of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the state agency that makes college accessible and affordable for Illinois students and families.

 

After an intense seven-week training camp, he’s moving to Rockford, Illinois to teach high school students how to prepare for, apply to and pay for college.

 

“Well in addition to being one of the best jobs I could find out there, I’m excited to go to someplace that’s similar to where I grew up and get kids to see the value in gaining knowledge,” Montez told me last week.

 

The burly Mexican-American has two things going for him that will go over well with the exact sort of kids he wants to connect with – those who will be the first in their families to attend school post-high school. 1) He has a super easy-going personality, “I love making people laugh,” and 2) He knows.

 

He knows about poverty, even though he didn’t experience it in his own family history. While an undergraduate student, the 22-year-old East Moline native, spent two years as Pilsen/Little Village Community Mental Health caseworker teaching poor and cognitively challenged or emotionally disturbed how to live independently, and positively.

 

“Something that I'm proud of is that I have always maintained a positive attitude in whatever I have done while at the same time having a strong grasp on reality,” Montez says. “I’ve seen people facing incredible challenges but showed them how to keep going. Whether it has been in the classroom, within my extra-curricular activities, or among my peers, I have always seen the positive side of things and have used this mentality to help quench my thirst for knowledge.”

 

He also knows how to get through college. Though not the very first in his family to attend a university (his older sister blazed the trail) he certainly knows a little something about getting in, and more importantly, getting out of college successfully. Plus he’ll learn about a PhD’s worth during his ISAC Corp boot camp.

 

Lastly, he knows how critical it is to teach young people about how powerful knowledge – of all kinds – really is.

“The high school years are probably the most crucial time for a student to understand how to take advantage of the college opportunity,” Montez said. “It’s the opportunity to go get into a classroom setting while being on your own for the first time, the opportunity to become a more mature adult.”

 

“My message to these kids is to look beyond your doorstep and see the real problems that face this world. Learn what is going on in the society and learn how to fix what really needs to be fixed. Understand how the world works and be able to differentiate between the good and the bad. And, appreciate the people around you and those who simply want to live a good life.”

Montez is ultimately focused on having a positive impact on the world, not just Illinois’ communities, or Rockford’s or the Hispanic community.

 

“My main thing is that the most important thing anybody could have is an education,” Montez said. “Whether its knowledge found on your own, or it’s constructed through organized learning, education in any form is most important.” 

 

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 – Nelly Aguilar, Esquire to the Special

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

When Nelly Aguilar’s son Jason was diagnosed with Autism and their school district basically prepared her for her son to spend his life in a basement with non-verbal children, she knew she had found her calling: to advocate for her son.

“I was stunned by the amount of trouble people have to go through to get basic education services, basic rights for their special needs children,” Aguilar, a 33-year-old Mexican immigrant whose lived in the U.S. since she was six, told me.

So the 33-year-old single mom set aside her well-tended marketing career and decided to get a law degree so she could do just that. “I knew I had to make a change, I knew that he would need a lot of support and I thought that if I went to law school I could help him and other children.”

 

Aguilar was a single mom to a child who screamed “15 hours a day” and none of the schools she applied to in her then-home state of Texas had any monetary support for her. DePaul University, however, gave her a scholarship worth leaving her parents behind and starting over in a city she didn’t know with a high-need child.

 

“After he got diagnosed, Jason needed all kinds of therapies and all kinds of help,” Aguilar said, “I would take him to school, then I would go to school, then I’d get out, go get him, take him to his therapies, go home, cook, play, get him down to bed, then stay up until midnight doing homework and studying, then I’d get up the next morning and do it all over again.”

 

All this and it took her only three years and one semester to get through law school! “Then I graduated and studied for the bar, and passed it,” Aguilar said nonchalantly.

 

Today she’s one of approximately 15 attorneys in Illinois who work solely on Special Education law as their focus.

 

“I represent families of children with disabilities in actions against school districts that deny students an appropriate public education. I protect their rights and advocate on their behalf under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),” Aguilar explained. IDEA guarantees students with disabilities an adequate education with the fewest restrictions in the least restrictive classroom environment possible.

 

“In addition, I make recommendations on pending legislation in healthcare and education, I serve on several boards (Access Living, Autism Speaks, and Stone Soup Community Center), and I participate on statewide and national advocacy activities.”

 

Because all of that, AND a son with Autism whose now 9, and “doing really well,” isn’t enough, Aguilar is slated to teach a section of Special Education Law at DePaul University College of Law this fall. “I am the founder of the first clinical legal program in the Midwest that protects the educational rights of children with disabilities.  I secured federal funding for DePaul University's Special Education Advocacy Clinic.”

 

Delving into the intricacies, horrors and inequalities of Illinois’ educational industrial complex is a fool’s errand, but Aguilar helped me put the needs into perspective. 

·    Very few attorneys practice special education law and even fewer attorneys are bilingual and can understand the complex struggles English Language Learners face.  Live Downstate? Tough luck, Aguilar couldn’t name a single one south of Kankakee.

 

·    The average State of Illinois institutional stay for those with severe disabilities is about $140,000 per year but the state usually won’t provide preventative therapies which generally cost much less in the long run.

 

·    In the Chicago Public School District alone there are at least 55,000 special education students with Individual Education Plans. 85% live below the poverty level.

 

·    In the State of Illinois there are approximately 60 due process hearings a year. In Washington DC there are about 300 per month, and that’s not because Illinois families are happier than those in DC, but there is already a law school infrastructure for pumping out special ed. lawyers who – when they win a case, get to send the school district for attorney fees. Here in Chicago, however, in-house legal departments have lawyers at the ready to defend a school district’s interests.

 

Aguilar will certainly start adding to the pool of independent Chicago special education lawyers as a DePaul professor. And she’ll keep fighting for families’ rights.

 

“I do it more for others than for Jason because he’s pretty situated,” Aguilar said. “It brings me so much hope to be able to take a child who has nothing and a family who has been stepped on or passed over, and over, and over – callously, without any regard to the child’s future,” Aguilar said.

 

“When I get a child the right support, then I see them a year later and the kids that couldn’t read now can…it’s like the greatest feeling in the world.”

  

 

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 – John Viramontes, Voice to the Voiceless

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

John Viramontes would make Benjamin Franklin proud. Like our founding father, Viramontes has found the pen to be mightier than the sword.

 

A microscopic sampling of his Letters to the Editor to several major newspapers:

·   

           7/11/05 - "Let Promotion Bloom" in Chicago Tribune, Voice of the People he defends artists’ rights

 

    ·    1/4/06 "Honor a Living Legend" in the Chicago Sun Times, Letters to the editor he writes about activist Florence Scala

 

    ·    8/21/06 "Government needs a better way" in  Chicago Sun Times, Letters to the editor he takes on immigration

 

And this is just the tiniest, tiniest sample – Viramontes, 57, has been sourced, photographed, and published as an authentic local voice all over Chicago and the Midwest in all sorts of publications in multiple languages.

 

Why? Because the man is there. On the ground, in the neighborhoods, listening to people talk about losing their homes, or getting their green card, or being bilked out of their rent money, or any number of things.

 

“When I started helping out at the Northwest Neighborhood Federation in the late nineties, I was working on the injustices of neighborhood – housing availability, predatory lending, blight – I wasn’t looking at ethnicities, I was just trying to help people,” Viramontes told me recently. “In that work I learned I have a tremendous capacity to put myself in other people’s shoes, the ability to listen to others’ stories.”

 

“These are the stories of injustice, unfairness, callousness, bureaucracy,” Viramontes said, “and I’m living proof that getting justice for people doesn’t limit itself to any particular ethnicity, neighborhood or state.”

 

But the cool part about John? He actually gets stuff done.

 

In 1998 the Chicago Police Department’s 25th District issued a Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Community Service and Initiative for contributing to solving an armed robbery where a large sum of money was taken from a North Ave. near Harlem Ave. currency exchange.

 

In 2002 Viramontes was instrumental in getting the Ecuadorian consulate to establish the first ever office in Minnesota, organized by the non-profit National Peoples Action.

 

He has (and continues to) engage the American Association of Museums (AAM) through its president, to consider Heather Hope Stephens’ challenging Master’s thesis “Visualizing The Path Forward: The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 and Recommendations For a Response by American Museums.”

According to multiple people who plied me with testimonies to Viramontes’ work, he has shouldered the responsibility of allowing both the public and arts profession to know the significance of the historic case of Kelley vs. Chicago Park District which was filed using the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 statute and currently on appeal in a Chicago federal court.

 

The Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid? Don’t. Even. Get. Him. Started – that’s a whole ‘nother 600 words.

 

The bottom line here is that Viramontes – a Chicago-born, second generation Mexican-American accountant by trade, trained community organizer, and lifelong activist by heart – cares. And he translates that caring into action and results for people who are too deep in their problems to see the promise beyond them. Everyday.

 

“Perhaps the Irish progressive George Bernard Shaw put it best when he said: ‘I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

 

Life is not a brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.’”

 

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 - Veronica Arreola, Professional Feminist

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

 

Veronica Arreola is a case-study in stereotype-busting:

 

an ardent feminist, but she loves men (she’s been happily married for ten years).

 

She’s the Assistant Director for the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender and the Director of Women in Science and Engineering Program, but she’s also an intensely creative-type and expresses herself beautifully as a writer (more on that in a minute).

 

She’s a dedicated activist for women’s reproductive rights, serving as the co-chair for the Chicago Abortion Fund, and is dedicated to helping women and girls advocate for the right to their own choices in Chicago and around the country, but she respects life wholly (her five-year-old daughter is living proof).

 

Imagine my surprise when I finally got a chance to speak to this woman – who her nominators happily reported has blogged for such outlets as Bitch, Ms., Alternet, Kenneth Cole's AWEARNESS blog, Girl w/Pen and WIMN's Voices – and I met, not a hard-core zealot, but a smart, sweet 34-year-old woman of Mexican descent who lives and dies for the Chicago Cubs.

 

“My basic difference from others is I inherently trust women to make their own best decisions for themselves and their own families based on what is inherent in their own beliefs,” Arreloa told me, “whether that comes from their physician or a place in their heart, or from their spiritual beliefs. I don’t tell women what to do or make those choices for them.”

 

“A zealot is a turnoff in any conversation because most people are in that middle place, rather than firmly on either side,” Arreola explained. “I try to talk to people by bringing in facts, having personal stories, and always coming to a conversation knowing the other person might agree with me on something but not on other things.”

 

Rarely does one run into such clear-headed thinking when the pro-life/pro-choice issue is involved, but I don’t want to harp on that because there’s so much more to Veronica.

 

“My vision is a world, a city, where young girls can turn on the TV, flip through a newspaper/magazine, and read online news anytime and see themselves commenting on policy, celebrating an invention or discovery,” she says. “I want them to look around their neighborhood and always see women as leaders working to make the community a better place to live and work.”

 

Arreola lives that vision everyday through her work as the Assistant Director for the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender and the Director of Women in Science and Engineering Program where she helps women navigate professional fields that are male-dominated.

 

“The number of women in science and engineering ranges between a majority in biology to less than 20% in computer science. The numbers are even worse for Latinas,” she said. “And despite the fact that its 2009, there is still plenty of harassment in the classroom, whether it’s a professor making joke or allowing a male student to horse around, making the classroom a hostile environment. There’s still a real need to go back to ‘sexual harassment 101’ to figure out how to treat your fellow classmates.”

 

“Then there are the other aspects,” Arreolla shared, “My women students are starting to ask questions like ‘when do I have kids?’ and basing career options on these issues. That answer depends on who you ask. Plus women have different challenges; there’s truth to the ‘Supergirl Myth,’ they get a ‘B’ they think they’re not prepared to be scientists. I get to tell them, ‘It’s OK, we get a ‘B’ we move on, and everything’s going to be alright.”

 

And let’s not forget Veronica the blogger, who fills her personal blog Viva la Feminista.com with explorations on the intersection of motherhood, feminism, and life as a Latina.

 

Aaaaand, in all her free time, she also serves on the boards of Women in Media & News and the advisory council for Women Employed. 

 

“I really do see so many of these issues are interconnected… it sounds so cheesy, ‘the empowerment of women,’ but seeing how much women can attain – whether it be education, jobs, a simple letter-to-the-editor –that’s what I work on, that’s what I try to do,” Arreola says.

 

“Helping women find that power is important. If I can help them by teaching and supporting them, that’s why I’m it.”  

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Chicago Latino List 2009 - Dr. Ana Gil Garcia, Leveler of Educational Inequalities

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

It would take well over six hundred words just to list the many, many accomplishments of Dr. Ana Gil-Garcia.

 

She’s a

tenured University Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, a published author, a three time Fulbright scholar, and an internationally acclaimed professional.

When she’s not hosting professional visitors from Belarus, Italy, Armenia, Russia, Georgia, and Ecuador as a member of the International Visitor Center of Chicago, or advocating for Latinos in the academic field of science, she’s a member of the Advisory Council on Latino Affairs of the City of Chicago and a director of the Rotary One Club of Chicago for 2009-2010.

 

But what realllllly drives this woman is her quest to ensure the Chicago Public School system is a nationally-recognized leader in employing school administration leaders who accurately represent the diversity of their student communities.

 

“Latino school leaders are the minority. There are 70,000 Hispanic students in CPS but only 13.6% of school administrators are Latino, in Chicago! How can that be in such a multi-cultural city?” Gil-Garcia told me “There are 114 languages spoken in Chicago!”

 

The Venezuela-born, 54-year-old Gil-Garcia has a bit of a different view – a more global one – when it comes to why it’s important for there to be an equally representative cadre of Latino teachers in CPS.

 

“Chicago is not only for one racial or ethnic group. We have, in every school in Chicago, Hispanics mixing with the other groups,” she said, in response to my questioning how her crusade affects non-Latinos. “By having someone who is coming from a different background than the mainstream, that person will be more sensitive not only to Latinos but to anyone who is coming from a different cultural background, or who speaks a different language.”

 

I’ve not been on the bandwagon, instead advocating for high qualifications as the most important aspect of any school administrator, but Gil-Garcia makes a compelling case.

“Being a Latino or Hispanic doesn’t mean the administrator will be only serving one portion of the population, but that person would be serving a very large population of the entirety of CPS,” Gil-Garcia pressed.  

 

“Last September Latinos used to be the second-largest population as it had been for 7 years, since this past year we are now number one – the largest population – followed by African-American students, then Caucasian kids, then Asian and Pacific Islander,” Gil-Garcia said. “When you take a look at the demographics of the teachers, white teachers are the majority, then second African-American then third are Latinos. It’s so much more dramatic in the numbers of school administrators and the number has been like that for 11 years – we haven’t grown.”

 

I, of course, immediately went to bat for the many, many kids who speak languages other than Spanish – like Polish – and are far from well-represented in CPS or in any other districts across Illinois, and Gil-Garcia retorted:

 

“When we get qualified Latino school administrators, the schools benefit not because she or he is Hispanic or Latino – it’s that the person, being from a different language and culture, has a deeper understanding of what the student and his or her family might be going through to get the learning to occur.”

 

Certainly I couldn’t argue that point, and more importantly, the work that she’s doing at Northeastern Illinois University – teaching graduate courses in the field of educational leadership to teach teachers who are in the process of becoming school leaders for K-12 schools – will absolutely ensure that there are highly-qualified administrators of all races and ethnicities to lead our diverse school populations. 

 

It’s no easy task, but Gil-Garcia is inspired. “My inspiration is my mother, she taught me not to give up, not to despair,” Gil-Garcia said. “We talk every Sunday for at least two hours and she always asks me the same question: what have you done this week to help others?….I must always have a response.”

 

And the other thing Gil-Garcia’s mom always taught her?

 

“‘Haz bien y no mires a quien,’ which means ‘do good – for everybody.”  

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

“600 words” is number 19 of 60 on Chicago’s “NEW News” list

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

"Pregunta del Dia" translates from Spanish into "Question of the Day" and today’s comes from Richard Steele (no, not the British author or the WBEZ radio show host), a long-time fan:

Q. "

Esther, what’s #19 in a list of Chicago 60?  I looked on your website but didn’t see any reference.  You’re #1 on my list!!!  Best, Richard"

A.

Last week was one of those ridiculously busy weeks where good things happened and there wasn’t any time to stop and smell the roses.

I hate to be self-referential but I’ve gotten several inquiries on what in the world this "Number 19" means even though I hadn’t intended to create a mystique by mentioning it in my weekly e-blast (subscribe here for free…I won’t share your email).

Last Wednesday June 10, the Chicago Community Trust published a special report "The New News: Journalism We Want and Need," about local online news outlets. It was researched and written by a team led by Thom Clark and Gordon Mayer of the Community Media Workshop (download copy here).

Basically, the report is an outgrowth of the hand-wringing that seems to accompany any discussion that involves media or journalism "what’s going to happen to news in the internet age?!" The report seeks to provide a directory and assessment of local online news publications and was "based primarily on a survey of bloggers, citizen journalists, and others using an approach that blends self-reported data, Google page rank and Alexa.com traffic ranking, and a qualitative assessment of each site," according to the Community Media Workshop’s press release.

It went on to conclude that the journalism "we want and need" has three characteristics: it’s vetted by editors for accuracy, clarity and to reduce bias, it’s selected from among the mountains of available data to entertain and inform, and it helps frame one regional conversation about challenges and opportunities.

Happily, my editor and the editorial board of NewsTex, Content on Demand – which distributes my work far and wide – provide me with the vetting, and I kick in the entertainment, original reporting and thought-leadership.

So the results look like this, of 60 local Chicago news sources, "600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda" is number 19 and pulling down three-and-a-half stars out of a possible five based on the 6 criteria points gathered from self-reports, third-party sites (like Alexa and Google), and qualitative assessment from Community Media Workshop. I’m also sporting an almost-7,000 e-mail subscriber list, and a Google page rank of 6.

Not too shabby. And thanks for asking, Richard, it’s constant readers like you who keep me going!

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

White House TV Blackout Warning: This is not a test

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

It’s not like today was a slow news day around the White House; a Monday June 15 health care speech at the Chicago American Medical Association was announced, there was a tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum, tons of details to iron out in terms of the GM situation, TARP funds, and the bank bail-out dollar pay-backs, and, of course, more scuttlebutt about angry Republicans trying to slow down the Sotomayor hearings.

But today’s White House press briefing spent enormous amounts of time on…drumroll please…the digital TV transition – coming to an oldie set near you this Friday June 12.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs trotted out Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and subjected the poor fella to the grueling mosh-pit of a press briefing and the questions on the TV timetable ensued.

As you know, we all got a reprieve in the analog-to-digital switch in February (read my column "The End of Television As We Know It!" here) but it’s now time to pay the piper.

Secretary Locke said 2.5 percent of American households, or 2.8 million households are still unprepared, according to his Neilsen data. Are you?

"If you currently have cable, satellite, or some other paid-for television service, you have nothing to worry about," Locke said. "You are prepared; you don't need to do anything, and June 12th you'll see no change in your television reception or programming."  

ok…

"If you have a new television set purchased, let's say, within the last one year, those new television sets come automatically with a digital tuner.  So if you have a television set a year old or newer, you're prepared; you don't need to do anything, you don't need to worry," Locke continued.

uuummmmm…

 "But if you have a television set more than a year old and you're not on cable or satellite, and you're relying basically on free over-the-air service, you are not ready," Locke said. "And you will lose your television service this Friday if you don't act now."

Ouch! Looks like I’m S-O-L; outta luck.  (What can I say? I read a lot! Besides, who has time for appointment TV when there’s YouTube and Hulu?)

Locke continued:

"So you have three options:  You can subscribe to cable or satellite; you can purchase a newer television set that has these automatic digital tuners built in; or you can purchase a converter box.  The Recovery Act provided Commerce with money to help consumers having trouble affording a digital converter box. Millions of households have applied for and received the $40 coupons to cover the cost of these converter boxes.  And the converter boxes start at $40 and we mail out two coupons per household, requesting household.  So that basically means that with the coupons you get a free converter box."

Alright, so, never mind that I ordered one and got one and then let it expire - ooops.

More from Locke:

"While coupons are still available for eligible households, it will take some nine days for us to process and send out, first-class mail, these coupons, and so they will not arrive in time for this Friday's conversion.  We will have these coupons available until the end of July -- July 31st -- or as long as supplies last.  The coupons are good for 90 days each.

If you already have a coupon, please make sure to purchase the converter box immediately at a partnering retail store like Target, RadioShack, Circuit City, or Wal-Mart.  Take it home, hook it up right away -- in fact, you can use these converter boxes now and receive the digital signal now."

(Someone check this guy’s e-trade account, I’ll betcha he bought some Radio Shack stock last week.)

All right, so enough with the smart-alecky "ha-ha." The reason why I’m actually passing this on is that just because I watch my "TV" the same place I read my newspaper – on a high speed broadband internet connection – doesn’t mean real people won’t actually be left with no immediate home or work access to breaking news.

I hate to put the bad vibe out but, around midnight on Friday June 12 would be a perfect time for some ne’er-do-well to strike some pandemonium and showcase just how many low-income and non-English fluent people would get left out of the loop in an emergency.

According to Locke, the propensity to be unprepared for the switch is primarily on the West Coast and the Southwest. He said:

"Los Angeles, while having a small percentage of families unprepared, a small percentage of a huge market is about a quarter-million households that are unprepared.

We're also finding that it's -- ethnic groups are more unprepared than the general population:  African American, Hispanic, almost twice the national average; Asian Americans just slightly above the national average. 

Ethnic minorities, for whatever reason -- it may be due to language -- are not as prepared as others.  But we've been reaching out using Hispanic -- Telemundo, Univision; held a press conference with Mayor Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, Mayor Kevin Johnson in Sacramento. 

Surprisingly enough, seniors are prepared.  And it's the younger generation, households of under 30 that are also more unprepared than the national average."

So here’s my public service announcement…make sure you help your less-technically savvy family and acquaintances with this transition. You may think no one who isn’t living under a rock will be affected by this change but I will be experiencing life without regular TV starting Friday.

And if I don’t have cable, a new TV, or a converter box, what are the chances you don’t know an uncle, grandma, or neighbor who’s going to be reallllllly upset that they’re going to miss Wheel of Fortune on Friday?

Apply for a coupon or find a place to buy a converter by calling 1-888-DTV-2009 or call the FCC if you can’t get the danged thing to work, call 1-888-CALL-FCC.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Where in Chicago is Ecuador?

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I’m taking a look at the presence of Ecuador in Chicago because in less than one month, Ecuador will find a piece of Chicago in it.

That’s right, I’m going to miss out on the barbecue and the fireworks (my first 4th of July outside the U.S.) because I’ll be travelling to the "Center of the World" with no itinerary and no reservations, just a rumpled piece of paper my aunt gave me last week at a family picnic with some long-lost uncle’s email and phone number. And I haven’t been there since I was four.

The plan is to land at Mariscal Sucre International Airport and let my stomach and eyes lead the way to the peaks of the Andes mountains, the monument to the Center of the World – where one can straddle the southern and northern hemispheres at once – and the Galapagos Islands – celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s "Origin of Species" – in no particular order. In a two-week time period, not including en-route stops to Miami and Panama.

So my first natural instinct (once I realized I’m less than 30 days from this trip I’ll literally pack for in twenty minutes time) was to look at my own birth place for insight.

According to the Chicago Community Trust’s Latino Landscape 2008, Chicago is home to 18,796 Ecuadorians who make up 1.09% of Chicago’s Hispanic community (these numbers are from 2006). We are the fifth largest national-origin group in Chicago behind Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and Cuba.

My dad was part of the first wave in 1965–1976 (though he came from Quito via Mexico City where he’d lived for several years) who came and worked mainly in factories, retail and service industries and a second wave arrived in the 1990’s, frequently to join family, and to work in the restaurant, hotel, and garment industries.

Like the majority of Ecuadorians in Chicago, my half-Ecuadorian-half-Mexican family lived on the Northwest side – in Logan Square, Albany Park, Uptown, Lakeview, Irving Park, Belmont Cragin, Edgewater, and West Ridge – which, not surprisingly, is where all of the Ecuadorian restaurants in Chicago can be found.

One thing no one will tell you about Ecuadorians is that though they are intelligent, generous, and kind, they are also incredibly flighty! They are internationally-known for their tardiness, and in fact, Ecuador tried a campaign to eradicate "unpunctuality" but it flopped. And their government, well, let’s just say their new, University of Illinois-educated president Rafael Correa has now been around longer than many other presidents past.

Just as a quick example, I tried to call the office of the Ecuadorian Consul General in Chicago to verify the stats I cite here and none of the four phone numbers listed on various search engines and Ecuador-centric web pages actually worked. Tsk-tsk.

But we’re here, by golly, and in a few weeks I’ll be there.

I’ve already researched the fine points of the bull-penis soup and roasted guinea pig dishes I’ll surely confront in the local restaurants (though I’ll stop in a McDonald’s to see if everyone there eats Big Macs like my cousins do when they visit here: in layers starting from the top down!).

And I logged onto Tu Babel, the on-line regional Spanish dictionary to refresh myself on all the Ecuadorian-specific slang I grew up with in my grandmother’s house that I’ve since forgotten (I still get to hear "achachai!" every once in a while from my dad when he gets cold, but other words – like "canguil" for popcorn and "guagua" for child – will jar me into nostalgia).

So, I’m pretty much all set; now all I need is for any of the 18,796 Chicago-dorians to tell me where to go (or where to stay away from) while I find the other half of myself at the center of the world.

 

UPDATE: This came to me at 7:30am 6/11/09 from the White House Office of the Press Secretary:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 11, 2009

 

Statement by the Press Secretary on the President’s call with President Rafael Correa of Ecuador

 

The President spoke with President Correa yesterday to congratulate him on his recent reelection and to commend the people of Ecuador for their commitment to democracy.  The President stated his desire to deepen our bilateral relationship and to maintain an ongoing dialogue that can ensure a productive relationship based on mutual respect.  President Obama expressed his support for a vibrant democracy in Ecuador that includes a free and independent press as the means of promoting human prosperity, security and dignity, which are important goals for both of our countries and for the people of the Americas.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Sotomayor’s treatment in the media; on being talked about but not being allowed to talk

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Tom Rosenstiel, the Director at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, puts out a report every week about what was covered in the news the preceding week. Yesterday when I cracked it opened, it came as no surprise that for May 25-31, 2009, "Sotomayor Spin Wars Dominate[d] the Narrative."

His opening statement stood in awe of how big a story this was, "based on [the] velocity and ferocity of the new media ecosystem in 2009, one forged by the election, by the rise of social media and cable, and even more than ever defined by speed, political surrogates, diversity and argument."

The report said Sotomayor’s nomination filled 24% of the newshole the week of May 25-31 and ethnicity played a central role in that coverage. "Fully 40% of stories about the nominee referenced her cultural background, meaning her Latina heritage accounted for at least 25% of those stories."

And what was bugging me all week about that coverage? This was very much missing in Rosensteil’s analysis: most of the media ecosystem talking heads helping to fill that news hole were not as diverse as, perhaps, the people they’re covering.

They were pro – like Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times who agreed with me that the media should have focused on her qualifications more than with her backstory. And they were con, like the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass who followed the "reverse racist" storyline. And they were even black, like Clarence Thomas who gawked at the drama, and also female, like Kathleen Star Parker who said we should wait to see what the woman has to say for herself before declaring her guilty of a leftist Latino agenda.

Hmmmm…let’s see who are we missing here?…I’ll give you a hint. Here’s what media columnist Richard "Journal-isms" Prince pointed out in his piece "Latino Commentators Scarce on Sotomayor" when referring to the number of Hispanic journalists who spoke about Sotomayor’s nomination on the Sunday morning political talk-shows:

"There are no Latino journalists on that list.

It's not just this Sunday. In an analysis of the four Sunday broadcast shows this year through April 12, Media Matters for America found that black Americans had been on the Sunday shows 40 times.

"Media Matters also measured the number of Latino guests or panelists on 'Meet the Press,' 'This Week,' 'Face the Nation' and 'Fox News Sunday' this year for the same period," wrote David Bauder of the Associated Press, which commissioned the study.

"The count?

"Zero."

Playing Devil’s advocate as I so often like doing, I contacted Kevin Olivas, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Parity Project Director, and asked whether this even mattered, since a good reporter can report on anything.

He responded in an email:

"It is true that there are good journalists out there who do not happen to be Hispanic who have done a good job in covering the Latino community," Olivas said, "This may mirror Judge Sotomayor’s now infamous quote, but it is very difficult to relate the experiences of Latinos when you have not lived that experience yourself.

If we were back in time and there was an opportunity to have a panel on the civil rights struggle for African Americans and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Ralph Abernathy or Rosa Parks were available, but someone said, ‘Nah, let’s just go with a panel of people who are not African American to discuss this issue,’ how representative would that be?"

Kevin makes an excellent point. I explained it this way to someone else who was having a hard time understanding where Latino journalists – rare as we are – are coming from regarding this slight.

Look at it this way: You know how English-only speakers dislike it when Spanish-speakers chatter away within earshot? The natural human instinct is to imagine that the chatterers are talking about them but they can’t understand so therefore it makes them uncomfortable.

Now imagine how Hispanics feel in a similar situation: here’s a national story about the first Latina Supreme Court Justice nominee and there are plenty of us who can objectively articulate the pros and cons of her merits – with the bonus of a culturally diverse viewpoint – but we’re not allowed to speak. We have to let non-Hispanic news and opinion journalists speak for us, even though we’re very much within ear shot and capable of answering for ourselves.

"How is it possible that Latinos can be left out of the discussion among journalists regarding such a historic event as the nomination of the first Hispanic to the U.S. Supreme Court," Olivas said. "Are there no qualified Latino journalists who could take part in this discussion?"

Of course, I’d have been more than happy to help Meet the Press’ David Gregory pronounce Sonia’s last name – it’s "Soto-‘my’-or" – but I guess I’ll just have to wait until next time.

"Latinos are part of the American experience," Olivas commiserated, "Leaving out our voices means telling an incomplete story."

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com