Are Latinos leaderless? According to a recent bilingual survey, three-fourths of Latinos could not name a national leader. I say it's no big deal. And apparently a lot of other Latinos agree with me.
The Pew Hispanic Center's report – "National Latino Leader? The Job Is Open" – got little if any notice in the mainstream media, most likely, I assumed, because it said what I thought was an obvious fact. Pew asked Hispanic adults to name "the most important Latino leader in the country today." Sixty-four percent said they didn't know, and 10 percent said "no one."
Of the 26 percent who did have an answer, the responses were scattershot: politicians such as outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; organizational leaders such as Janet Murguia , president of the National Council of La Raza; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ; Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ; and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos.
When Latinos discussed the findings on social networking sites and blogs – the place Hispanics go to read and write about themselves – it buoyed my spirits.
"I actually see this as a positive thing," said Cristina Lopez, president of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, an organization dedicated to developing Latina leaders. "The great thing is that our community is so large and diverse that we have so very many leaders."
And not to criticize the Pew Hispanic Center – it does a great job of putting its finger on the pulse of Latino issues in America – but let's flip this a little. As many bloggers noted, say your phone rings one evening and the person on the other end of the line asks: "Name the most important white leader in the country today." Or this one: "Name the most important female leader in the country today."
My guess is that you'd be overwhelmed by the vagueness of the questions. But more importantly, even if 64 percent of Latinos didn't name a national leader, it does not mean Hispanic leaders aren't making things happen. Just look at the midterm elections where Hispanics won two governorships and one U.S. Senate seat.
Another item in the report noted that Latinos don't have a champion such as Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King Jr. The 48 million Latinos who comprise the nation's largest minority are not an oppressed class forced to set aside such factors as diverse as native country, preferred language or citizenship status in order to back one leader pushing a single issue.
And don't let immigration reform cloud this thought. Recall that last month a Pew survey of registered Latino voters found that it came in fifth after education, jobs, health care and the federal budget deficit as a top issue of concern.
Like me and the Latino Twitterati and bloggers who scoffed at the Pew report, Juan Andrade, president of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, thinks the entire premise of Latinos lacking a singular leader is strange. "You'd have to live your whole life under a rock to believe that there is such a person in the white or black or Latino community – that person does not exist," Andrade told me. "Latinos will always transcend their differences for issues that matter, but a 'national leader' for all Hispanics? That just isn't going to happen."
That's not a problem. All around us are Hispanic teachers, librarians, lawyers, activists, police officers, executives, doctors and many others making strides in their work. Any perceived lack of power for not having a "national" Latino leader will continue to be overshadowed by these role models who address the issues that challenge Hispanics – and all Americans – every day.
Esther Cepeda may be contacted at estherjcepeda@washpost.com.
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group
CHICAGO – "You owe us" is not exactly a compelling argument for legislative action, but this is really all that some immigration reform activists have left to goose Democrats to make something – anything – happen during the lame-duck session of Congress.
This doesn't look likely and everyone knows it – Congress reconvened Monday and is facing major, controversial issues such as Medicare payments to doctors, unemployment benefits, and whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.
There are other matters – like ratification of the nuclear arms treaty with Russia – but the ones I just mentioned will overshadow any interjections about the highly flammable issue of immigration reform because of their impact on American pocketbooks. And like it or not, right now all anyone cares about is the economy and their own financial stability.
Don't get me wrong, you can't blame activist groups for trying anything to keep their reform agenda in the public eye at a time when some Republican House members are licking their chops about legislation to deny "birthright citizenship" to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, and do anything else possible to make illegal immigrants' lives hellish enough to inspire a mass exodus.
On the first day of the lame-duck session, President Obama was quoted by Sen. Robert Menendez, who is trying to meet with him to press the issue, as saying he's only willing to move forward on immigration with Republican support. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart from Florida sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to schedule a vote during the session on the DREAM Act, which would legalize immigrant youth who came to the U.S. illegally before the age of 16 and fulfilled strict requirements. Pelosi would join the forever-grateful-to-Hispanics Harry Reid in bringing up the act which has enjoyed bipartisan support for over 10 years but was again smacked down in September when he tried to tack it onto the defense spending authorization bill.
I can't predict whether Congress will respond to this last-ditch effort for relief to those frustrated with inaction on immigration reform, and many observers think a comprehensive overhaul is dead until at least 2012. Either way, the next few weeks should close the five-year "We demand comprehensive immigration reform" chapter in the continuing American saga over how we welcome newcomers and usher in a next chapter I'd call "Political pragmatism, compromise, and small steps delivered substantive progress."
"There's little political will to tackle something as huge as immigration," Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert at Cornell University, told me. "But if people realize they can't pass comprehensive reform the question is, will they be able to pass some smaller bite-sized bills like the DREAM Act, Ag Jobs? Some worry that if small bills go through, the will to get through a larger, comprehensive package is diminished, but smaller chunks could actually make a down payment on comprehensive immigration reforms."
Yet that won't happen unless there is compromise on the part of legislators – and also those demanding the reforms. Pro-reform organizations have failed to communicate their legislative agenda effectively to non-supporters. For the last five years they've left the impression, especially on those who tend toward nativism, that "comprehensive immigration reform" is actually code for an open borders policy that provides amnesty for all. While this might not be true, activists have done a poor job of selling a more concise vision to a country that, according to a recent nationwide poll of registered voters, overwhelmingly believes it is unrealistic to deport all illegal aliens and craves a federal solution including tighter border protections.
This is an opportunity, not a setback. And rather than arguing for what might be "owed" to Latino voters, it's time to convince the average Joe on how both small and large reforms could benefit the entire country and its financial stability.
Esther Cepeda writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group
CHICAGO -- When President Obama's bipartisan panel to reduce the federal budget deficit unveiled a proposal chock-full of deep spending cuts and tax increases last week, it sent ripples of angst across the country.
The items that most set both Republican and Democrat hearts afire -- Social Security retirement age increases, gas tax raises, military cutbacks -- seemed to border on reasonable. But the one that got me was "eliminate funding for commercial spaceflight" to save $1.2 billion by 2015.
I guess the post-Sputnik drive to have the best national space program in the world is officially being laid to rest. The panel obviously didn't recall the White House's reverence of "the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover" as stated on the front page of a 1958 booklet called "Introduction to Outer Space" which was produced to sell the idea of space exploration. Though Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the panel's co-chairs, acknowledged that commercial spaceflight is a "worthy goal," they said they were unclear why the federal government should subsidize it.
Here's a thought: if such a program wasn't bungled by sweetheart-deals involving contractors with no incentive to come in on time and on budget, it could be a profit center. Who will actually popularize commercial space flight by paying for the initially ridiculously expensive boarding costs? The super-rich and corporations looking to do some serious marketing tie-ins that will no doubt make them even more money. Why not position the government to reap the biggest amount of benefit?
Still, the panel isn't completely off the mark. Smart money is on the private sector, which has already made great strides in harnessing the capital and the brain power to make viable trips into space. Just look at British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic -- the suborbital spacecraft took its first solo flight on Oct. 10. And today 26 teams from seven countries are vying for the Ansari X Prize, which will award $10 million to the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 62 miles above the Earth's surface twice within two weeks. Contests like these spur the innovations that will lead to my great-grandkids' ability to perhaps vacation on the moon.
That $1.2 billion budget item had already been slashed from the $6 billion over five years that President Obama has proposed. Now, who would be surprised if our government's financial woes left us permanently at the mercy of other countries to get us to and from the International Space Station after the space shuttle fleet is retired next year?
That's what hurts. If the tough choice is made to decimate NASA even further, then the United States, which put the first men on the moon, will be taking a pass on the leadership opportunity, not to mention investing in the science and engineering innovations we all know can drive technological breakthroughs and job creation.
Worse than that, we'll be turning our back on reaching for the stars.
Esther J. Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group
CHICAGO — If I were a member of the third-largest minority group in the United States, I'd be really frustrated that the immigration issue continues to be discussed almost exclusively with Latin Americans in mind.
As immigrants' rights advocacy groups across the country wonder whether there's even a slim chance Congress will take up debate about comprehensive reform anytime soon, recent national conversations have been set exclusively in the context of the Latino vote and Republican Hispanics.
Despite President Obama's failure so far to deliver on his campaign promise to shepherd through meaningful reforms, Latinos turned out to help Democrats hold a few hotly contested seats. Paradoxically, Hispanics also boosted the Republican Party by helping elect several high-profile Latinos who had few ideas for solving our current illegal immigration woes and instead campaigned on tighter border controls and stepped-up enforcement.
This Latino-centric immigration narrative, while reflective of the population and a key to Hispanic political empowerment, excludes many who also have a stake in this debate.
"It is really frustrating to be mostly left out of the conversation," said Karen Narasaki, president and executive director of the Asian American Justice Center, which advocates for the rights and interests of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. "Mostly it's because the Asian-American vote is missing — the media do not sample the Asian vote to tell what we're really voting on."
Compared with the 9 percent of eligible voters who are Latino, Narasaki estimated the Asian vote represents about 5 percent of eligible voters.
"That '5 percent nationally' gets lost because we're heavily concentrated on the West Coast, New York, and in California, which has the largest Asian population," Narasaki told me. "We believe we contributed probably 6 to 7 percent of the vote in Sen. (Barbara) Boxer's race. In Las Vegas, where we're one of the nation's fastest growing populations, (Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid courted the Asian vote and got it. These are working-class Asians who got together for him but we get lumped into the category of 'other immigrant voters.' "
Census and other studies have put the number of all illegal immigrants in the U.S. at approximately 12 million. About 1.5 million are Asians — representing 12 percent of the total Asian population — with 23 percent estimated to be Chinese, 17 percent Filipino, 14 percent Indian, 11 percent Koreans and the balance from a variety of smaller countries, all with different issues.
For instance, huge backlogs exist in families where immigrant citizens or legal permanent residents can bring spouses, parents and minor children from overseas. Their wait times are heartbreaking. The longest is for Filipinos, Narasaki said — they currently must wait about 19 years to reunite with family members. Chinese and Indians face up to nine-year waits.
Then there are the concerns of refugees from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar who are wary about strict filing deadlines for asylum claims and crackdowns on deportations for minor criminal offenses.
Indians — a highly skilled subgroup of Asians who tend to come into the U.S. on H1B visas — are, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants. But if they lose a job, they have a limited window, sometimes only days, in which to find another before losing their legal status. In such a difficult housing market, homeowning Indians and their U.S.-born children are choosing to stay illegally.
All this makes Asians a mystery to the political parties in which they must gain a foothold to influence immigration reform and other priorities.
"The parties have under-invested in us," Narasaki said. "The Republicans think that because Asians are a minority they must be Democrats and the Democrats think that because Asians are business people, they must be Republicans."
Though a 2006 exit poll showed 79 percent of Asian-Americans voted Democratic, she added: "In the Asian-American community a lot of the vote is up for grabs — depending on the region there's a lot of independence."
We need diverse Asian and other viewpoints in the national conversation about voting blocs and how to deal with immigration-law reform. Their experiences are exactly what voters and elected officials need in order to get past their preconceived notions of who would benefit from an overhaul of our current system.
Esther J. Cepeda's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com
November 8, 2010 BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Chicago Sun-Times
Is it that bad? Is heading the Chicago Public Schools so grinding, so arduous, that Ron Huberman couldn't hang in there a few months longer until the incoming mayor put someone new in place?
It may well be. Still, it seems criminal that he couldn't wait it out just a little while longer so that the Chicago school system wouldn't be forced to stop concentrating on education and staffing matters and instead deal with the uncertainty that the impending musical chairs will bring. But Mayor Daley said it best: If someone doesn't want to be around anymore, it's pointless to try to force it.
Because the mad scramble to see who will be put in the critical position of CEO -- the one we'll have for a long time, as opposed to the one who has little chance to warm the seat for more than six months -- has begun ahead of schedule, the most important question is now in the spotlight: Should CPS' top leader be a business executive or an educator?
Daley has always seen the school system as a business puzzle that only a seasoned executive could sort out, and that's not a bad way to look at it. The day-to-day responsibilities of running CPS Inc. is a $5.5 billion enterprise -- almost 70 percent of which is exclusively dedicated to teacher and staff personnel costs which go up every single year.
Educators, of course, see the top leadership role as one that requires not only extensive higher education in pedagogical theory and educational leadership, but also a firm grip on curriculum and methods for instructing all students, regardless of background. Most think this can come only after having stood in front of classrooms filled with hungry, depressed, exceptionally bright or otherwise unique students.
The reality is that CPS needs a leader that is neither more nor less than an exceptional teacher or brilliant business mind -- it needs someone who is both.
Eons ago, the trajectory of the average school teacher was to graduate from high school into a college education program and then probably spend an entire career at the school where the initial student teaching semester was done. A few would maybe get an advanced degree and move into administrative leadership roles and certainly none of them would have any real-world business or management experience.
That tide turned about fifteen years ago. The demand for teacher training programs for disillusioned doctors, lawyers, marketers and other professionals who wanted to get into classrooms skyrocketed. Then highly competitive programs such as Teach for America and schools run by groups such as the Knowledge is Power Program started booming. They cultivated young wiz kids who knew they eventually wanted to be entrepreneurs, political giants or CEOs but chose to spend a few months training to teach low-income students for a few years.
The reality is that aside from the standard reasons -- politics, posturing and power plays -- neither the current nor the future mayor has to make a gut-wrenching choice between a CPS leader who can navigate the complex details of various federal education programs and their statutory requirements or one who can read between the lines of the profit and loss pages of a financial report.
Regardless of what teachers or bureaucrats prefer in a leader, the students and parents who rely on the Chicago Public Schools deserve nothing less than someone who knows exactly how to run both a successful business and a successful classroom.
By Esther J. Cepeda, Washington Post Writers Group
CHICAGO - If we've learned anything from the midterm election, it's that neither political party has an unrelenting grip on the confidence of the American people. And that hope lives on - hope that the newly elected can pull off the stunt that the last cast of players flubbed: providing leadership.
Every pundit, politician and their mothers have pointed out that Tuesday's numbers don't necessarily mean the country has swerved to the right. In the days before the counts were tallied, the consensus was astounding - really, how often does one see Arianna Huffington and Jeb Bush agree on anything?
Huffington told ABC News that Americans should not fall into the trap of over-interpreting a Republican victory: "(It) does not mean that the nation is rejecting Democrats and affirming Republicans - it means that they are rejecting the way our institutions are working, that they have a deep mistrust of all establishments and that basically our system has not worked for them."
Bush, the former Florida Republican governor, had a similar take in an interview with The New York Times: "The looming victories for Republican candidates ... is not a validation of the Republican Party at all." He went on to say that the real message was one of "disgust with the political class" for not cooperating on kick-starting the economy and getting people back to work.
Not only are these statements conciliatory and politically correct at a time when we need some national civility, they also happen to be true. What we saw on Nov. 2 was a wave of angry, unsure voters who had to struggle to discern which candidate was the lesser of two evils and in many instances took a chance on an unknown quantity rather than keep the same-old, same-old.
There's nothing wrong with this - it's the whole point of our democracy to be able to switch it up when things aren't working.
But now that the winners have been sorted from the losers, who will actually lead? Who will take the chance they've been given and inspire their colleagues to fix our public institutions and get the nation back on the path to prosperity?
For the Democrats, will these election results get them to stop blaming Republicans, and especially former President George W. Bush, for everything and focus on reaching across the aisle to get things done?
Will the Republicans finally formulate a game plan that involves something more than merely tearing President Obama to shreds and attempt to work toward the meaningful changes the voters have asked them for?
We'll see who has got the guts. Angry America has finally hit bottom and the only way to go is up - but we need to be rallied toward it.
"What this country needs is a renewed sense of unity, a feeling that we can believe in ourselves as a nation again," Joe Caruso, an organizational change expert and author of "The Power of Losing Control," told me. This book should be required reading for both new and returning legislators who need some practical advice on how to let go of past stumbles and use influence to actually get things done.
"Americans used to have incredible optimism, but it has faded these last few years," Caruso said. "Today we need leadership that will give the American people not a 'things have always gotten better, so they'll get better again' complacent optimism, but an optimism with a sense of duty to get focused and work hard."
Newly and currently elected leaders will have it only slightly less awful than how things looked in November 2008, so there will be no lack of opportunities to prove they can deliver on their promises of no more "government as usual." After all, the people have spoken and that's the one thing they've all asked for.
In the slicing and dicing of the electorate by age, gender, race, ethnicity, geography, income, political affiliation, marital status, education level and propensity to vote, one type of engaged -- probably disillusioned -- voter tends to slip through the cracks:
Single moms.
The very term "single mom" conjures up an array of stereotypes that generally revolve around the twin anchors of under-education and a reliance on welfare benefits. But single moms are an educated, hardworking, aspirational and rapidly growing part of our community -- and they need the time and attention of our elected officials.
"Candidates should really think about what's most important to single moms -- quality child care and education for our kids and for us. That would really help us focus on making our lives better and help us make our whole community better," says Emily Carrazco, a divorced 34-year-old who everyday wakes and feeds her 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, drops them off at two different schools, then makes to her way to the Loop for a full workday.
Carrazco told me her experiences as a single mom during a short break in her hectic day as an accounts payable clerk.
This was two days after the Eleanor Foundation, a Chicago organization that funds economic security programs for households headed by working moms, released a report shattering old inner-city single mom stereotypes.
According to the report, "Changing Conditions in a Changing World," women-led households have increased 9.77 percent -- more than double the rate of "traditional" households in the Chicago region since 2000.
The number of households headed by single working mothers earning lower-to-moderate incomes grew 18.5 percent between 2000 and 2008, with significant increases in the suburbs, resulting in a third of a million women-led households in the Chicago region.
According to the report, which used 2008 census data, these women are increasingly Hispanic and educated. The percentage of women with less education than high school declined to 18 percent of the total population of women studied, while the percentage of women with a college degree or higher degree increased to 13.
They also work hard for their money. Strikingly opposite the stereotype of the freeloading single mom, 78 percent of these women were employed and only 7 percent were unemployed -- and reported that they were actively looking for work -- representing a 10 percent drop in unemployment in this group since 2000. Of the single moms with a job, 79 percent worked more than 35 hours a week and only 6 percent received any public assistance in the 12 months before the survey.
"It's rough when we're viewed as on welfare, not pulling our own weight," Carrazco says. "I really have to do work of two people, and it's hard to make ends meet. I don't have access to a lot of assistance programs because I don't make a large enough income to live comfortably month to month and I don't make a low enough income to qualify for affordable housing, foods stamps or free childcare. It is the struggle we face day to day."
Carrazco's challenges are magnified by city living. Unlike most suburban single moms, Carrazco deals with two separate private schools for her children because she doesn't want her kids going to the low-performing public schools. Because she has to drive her kids, she can't use public transportation and ends up paying outrageous downtown parking fees, reducing her limited funds even more.
Like other single moms, Carrazco says she has high hopes for Tuesday's election.
"What I'd most like the elected candidates to do is really think what we go through," she says. "Forget about what's politically correct or what others would like to hear and really think about how they'd handle their lives with the challenges single moms face. Would their views be different. Would they run their offices differently? I would hope so."
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group
It is time to shatter the myth of the monolithic "Latino vote."
In countless news stories, Hispanic voters are portrayed as strictly Democratic, single-mindedly concerned with immigration law reform, and willing to vote for a candidate with a Latino-sounding name regardless of the candidate’s stance on policy issues.
This painted-with-the-broadest-possible-brush portrait is not only imprecise, it is insulting. Hispanic voters are a culturally, politically, geographically and demographically diverse group of U.S.- and foreign-born citizens who are just as concerned about the direction of this country’s leadership as other Americans are.
When I’m asked who Latinos are going to vote for, I say "which Latinos?" — there are so many different kinds. There are the naturalized citizens who are recent immigrants from Latin American countries — which have varying ranges of liberal or conservative social norms and political engagement — and those who have been in this country for 20 years or more and might either have a long history of turning out on Election Day or have cast their first vote only recently. Then there are the first- or second-generation U.S.-born Latinos and also those who can trace their ancestors back to the Mexican-American War of the mid-1840s. Their ages range from 18 to 80 and older.
Support for a particular party has gone back and forth between the two major political organizations. Many Latinos feel a natural affinity with conservative and traditional social values and vote Republican — remember George W. Bush’s 34 percent to 44 percent lock on the Latino vote between 2000 and 2004? Today, many Latinos feel Democrats are more responsive to their particular issues.
According to an early October Pew Hispanic Center report, "Latinos and the 2010 Elections," 65 percent of the registered Latino voters surveyed planned to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, compared to 22 percent for the Republican candidate. But for all we know, this could shift again. After all, "get out the vote" efforts in the Latino community have been primarily run by grass-roots Hispanic and community groups and not financed by either political party. Latinos are truly independent.
In that same report, the top four most important issues for Latinos were education, jobs, health care, and the federal budget deficit. Immigration was fifth on that list — only slightly ahead of the environment and the war in Afghanistan. Yes, as the anti-immigrant rhetoric heats up, rankings will fluctuate, but the fact remains that while immigration is important, it’s not all Latinos ever think about.
Lastly, there’s the ethnic solidarity issue. It’s an especially hot topic in the races where a Latino candidate with a hard-line anti-illegal immigrant stance is in the running — Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, Nevada gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval, New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez. I’ve even heard commentators suggest that Latinos might vote for Rahm Emanuel in the Chicago mayoral election because his name sounds Hispanic.
Martin Cerda, research director of Encuesta Inc., a Florida-based Latino marketing and opinion research company, has picked up on this, too, and told me, "Latino voters are coming of age, they’re not going to be a solid voting bloc, they’re getting wise and will think completely outside the box, picking and choosing the very best candidate for themselves."
Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, a Southwest-based group specifically targeting hard-to-reach and infrequent Latino voters, added: "It is so patronizing how people talk about Latino voters based on a handful of polls. People think Latino voters are not smart — but we are not just going to respond to a Latino name or Spanish-language ads, it’s all about how a candidate has invited us to participate in the elections process. And if they get elected and don’t work with the community, they won’t be back."
No one engaged in thoughtful conversations about the political passions of the fastest-growing portion of the U.S. population can rely solely on short-hand assumptions. Latino voters step into the voting booth as college kids, white-collar and blue-collar workers, senior citizens and, yes, soccer moms like everyone else.
Sure, Latino voters will always have a cultural affinity with each other, but what truly unites them is their desire to participate in the American political process.
Esther Cepeda’s e-mail address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com
CHICAGO -- Appearances are important in most situations, but probably none more so than when the president of the United States goes on a foreign junket.
There is tremendous pressure to show an appreciation of the landscape and culture, and demonstrate willingness to work ever closer together -- all while upholding the gravitas, the very American-ness of the office of the president in an international spotlight.
So is it any wonder that, according to The New York Times, the spin doctors at the White House decided to take a pass on visiting India’s Golden Temple? It is beautiful, historic and revered by the authoritative Frommer's travel guide as "the most tangibly spiritual place in the country." But the deal-breaker was the traditional head covering -- a cloth wrap resembling a turban or head scarf -- required for entry.
In a perfect world, images of an American president taking off his shoes and tying a piece of cloth about his head in reverence to another country's holy site would be a healing moment -- a time to celebrate America’s proud history as a country that is tolerant, even welcoming, of varied religions.
This is not that moment.
Never mind that just months ago, the U.S. Army welcomed its third U.S.-born Sikh recruit in a reversal of a post-Vietnam War policy banning the turbans and beards that Sikhs wear as a part of their faith.
Never mind that Obama is not a Muslim -- though a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll found that nearly one in five Americans believes he is.
Though White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that the schedule for the India trip was not finalized -- leaving the door ajar to the possibility of visiting the Golden Temple -- just imagine the frenzy.
Images of this president with the head covering would ignite exponentially more hysterical fears about his allegiance to the United States than did the picture of him on his 2006 trip to Kenya, wearing the traditional robe and head wrap, which came out during the presidential campaign.
Presidential historian Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston pointed me toward a charming picture of Gerald Ford wearing a Mexican sombrero in the Oval Office circa 1974, and noted that it was a different world then. He recalled a 2008 picture of George W. Bush wearing a Peruvian poncho but added, "My guess is you wouldn’t see a modern president wear very traditional items. Today it’s all about looking presidential.
"For instance, when Bill Clinton was president he would wear sport watches, but his aides eventually got him to wear a leather-banded one. In all moments the president is expected to be a reservoir of dignity and to look presidential."
It’s too bad about the Sikh temple. And now I know I’ll probably go to my grave never spotting an American president in a Burmese longyi skirt, a Libyan fez, or a red Cuban tracksuit either.
Esther Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.
By Esther J. Cepeda, Washington Post Writers Group
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
CHICAGO — Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the death of German multiculturalism at a conference of her political party, the Christian Democratic Union, last weekend. She said the very idea that guest workers who immigrated to Germany to fill a labor shortage during the 1960s could “live happily side by side” with native-born Germans was an illusion and suggested a hard line for those who refuse to assimilate.
The whole thing reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s lament about German immigrants in colonial Pennsylvania. They didn’t speak English and therefore couldn’t be addressed “either from the press or the pulpit,” and he feared that their keeping to themselves would mean they’d never join the mainstream. Franklin even supported several schemes designed to dilute the Germans’ influence in the colony founded by William Penn to provide freedom of worship and religion.
Just as we in the U.S. struggle with the idea of how to define and proliferate “American culture” in the context of how to reform our clunky, sometimes laughably unjust immigration laws, other countries are dealing with similar issues brought into stark relief by the crippling global economic downturn.
Whether it’s Turks in Germany, Filipinos in Israel, or North Africans in France, it is time countries embrace the reality that the mobility ignited by our global economies will never end. Rather, they — like the U.S. — must formulate a plan for assimilating immigrants or suffer continued discord.
That’s why Merkel may be on to something. Multiculturalism — the idea that several different cultures can coexist equally and equitably in a single country — has always sounded a little too “separate, but equal” for my taste.
While the United States is far from a perfect example of complete brotherly love with recent immigrants — and the Great Recession has brought out the nativism in many — we come really close. That’s because we remain devoted to the American mythology of being a nation of immigrants that has always assimilated into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We have a steadfast expectation that newcomers will become one of “us,” not stay one of “them.”
The fear of “otherness” is what unites Germany’s sharp conservative turn, Franklin’s angst about the Germans, and U.S. worries about immigrants from Latin America: a large group of foreign newcomers who are united by language and similarities in culture have the luxury of taking respite in each other rather than jumping into their new world.
By its own account, Germany has done little to foster the civic participation of its new residents, who were allowed into the country to combat a rapidly aging population and low birth rates among those in their child-bearing years. Polls have shown that more and more Germans fear that too many foreigners live in insular clusters with little or no connection to the mainstream culture.
The raft of “English-only” and enforcement measures that municipalities across the U.S. are trying to enact seem motivated by the fear that “they” are taking “us” over.
Both Germany and the U.S. ask that new citizens be able to speak the language, and pass a test, but neither country has nationwide standards or programs for welcoming newcomers who may or may not be interested in being more than legal permanent residents. This should change.
The word “assimilation” has always carried negative connotations — even Franklin disagreed with some of his fellow Pennsylvanians who called for banning the importation of books in German and a scheme to encourage government-subsidized intermarriage. But support for the newest members of communities is needed.
Reforming U.S. immigration laws promises to continue at the forefront of our national conversation. But how we stir all our immigrants into the melting pot is as important a part of any comprehensive plan as determining specific rules under which illegal immigrants can stay or must return home. Embracing the challenge of helping newcomers more easily become “us” is still, as it has been for most of our history, our great American opportunity.
Esther J. Cepeda’s e-mail address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com.
If you hadn't heard, last Wednesday the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning approved "GO TO 2040," the first strategic regional plan since Daniel Burnham's in 1909.
You'll be happy to know it's designed to guide development and investment decisions for the next 30 years in the seven counties that make up the Chicago area.
But I'll stop right there because I'd bet 10 bucks most Chicagoans have never even heard of the agency.
Five years ago, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning was formed with the aim of getting representatives from Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties to coordinate efforts to strengthen the entire region. The alternative was to continue to compete with each other for limited resources.
Considering the tensions that have existed between the city and the suburbs since the 'burbs started attracting more and more Chicagoans and businesses, the creation of the agency was a feat in itself and a long time in coming.
It would have been easy for the agency to fall on its face in trying to shape this regional plan. After all, planning isn't sexy, consensus-building can be painful, and frankly, though we've been in special pain for the last two years with the Great Recession, things have been rough for a lot longer than that.
But the plan presented by the agency last week is far-reaching, pragmatic and nuanced. It takes issues we face daily -- such as housing prices that make it hard for people to live near their jobs and traffic congestion that makes for soul-crushing commutes -- and calls for specific investment and development solutions.
The plan touches on water and energy conservation, open space and even on the promotion of sustainable local food. And it offers detailed recommendations for transportation projects -- the rehabbing of aging infrastructure, new construction, public transit improvements and expanded freight networks -- that promise the most bang for our limited bucks.
The plan points out that our schools and work-force development efforts are not keeping up with those in other major centers of commerce -- in the U.S. but also in other countries such as Brazil and China -- and lays out ideas for developing skilled workers to achieve the innovation that will help the Chicago area complete in a global marketplace.
The entire GO TO 2040 plan is a big, thick book, www.cmap .illinois.gov, chock full of ideas that came up through diverse committees and were shaped by the comments of more than 35,000 residents.
Think about that: The average block party committee goes to war over whether to have competitive lawn darts or bean bag tossing, yet the agency's strategy is the result of a consensus among organizations representing the whopping 1,226 separate and independent units of government in northeast Illinois.
The plan offers ideas for reforming state and local tax policy and for improving residents' access to government information.
But most importantly, the plan calls upon all these disparate units of government to coordinate investments of scarce dollars. The challenges facing the entire Chicago region require individual players to forgo a piece of the pie today in order to ensure that there's even a pie tomorrow.
It's worth your time to look into the bold recommendations the agency has outlined, and I'll be writing about them in depth in the coming months. Not every proposed offered will be carried out in the next 30 years, but it's comforting to know that, at long last, we again have a plan.
The 29-day sit in at Whittier Elementary School continues on with parents and supporters still camped out in a makeshift library in a former field house, with the hopes that the Chicago Public Schools system will renovate the structure and make it a permanent library. They say independent experts have found the building to be structurally salvageable.
But CPS insists the building is structurally unsound and must be demolished, creating space for a new play area.
The parents experienced a triumph of sorts last week when the City Council ordered CPS to turn the gas in the field house back on. All the same, the families occupying the field house are drinking bottled water, sleeping on inflatable mattresses and living in conditions that CPS CEO Ron Huberman has called ''unsafe'' and ''an accident waiting to happen.''
''Keep in mind my background was head of emergency management. I know an unsafe situation when I see one,'' Huberman told WBEZ-FM (91.5). ''That is a small building. That building has no carbon-monoxide detector. That building has no fire-suppression system. It's now full of books and it's full of kids. That makes us very, very nervous.''
But jittery nerves have not been enough to bring an end to what any reasonable person would call a disaster waiting to happen.
How things got to this point is beyond me. But with a lame-duck mayor, a possibly lame-duck schools CEO, and a city captivated by February's mayoral election, maybe it's not surprising the standoff has yet to be resolved.
Just for kicks, I talked to most of the declared or contemplating mayoral candidates to see what they would do. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart declined to comment because he's not officially in the race. U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez declined to comment and, to my puzzlement, Rahm Emanuel's ''Tell it like it is'' campaign also refused to weigh in. The rest of the field, of course, said they never would have let such an outrage get so out of hand, which admittedly is easy to say.
Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) cut straight to the chase: ''An elected school board offers way more checks and balances than an appointed one.''
State Sen. Rickey Hendon said the same and added: ''They should build them the library even if they have to build one from the ground up -- that would satisfy the people and that's the most important thing a mayor can do. The money? There's always money.''
Both U.S. Rep. Danny Davis and businesswoman Carol Moseley Braun said they never would have let the situation get to this point. ''I would have called my superintendent in immediately and ensured that the parents would be sat down with and listened to so I wouldn't have to step in,'' Davis said.
And Moseley Braun said she would have raised private funds for the new library, if necessary -- anything to ''not discourage parental involvement.''
Jay Stone, a clinical hypnotherapist, and state Rep. Annazette Collins said they'd listen, listen, listen to parents. But Collins said she wouldn't necessarily give in. ''Though I would try to negotiate, you have to understand that everybody in the school district wants a new school lunchroom, playground, library,'' Collins said. ''You can't give in just because parents sit in. What if everybody did this?''
Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle both shook their heads that such a situation could still play out in Chicago, where Latino parents have had to stage hunger strikes to get schools built. Both practically guaranteed their own school leaders would not get themselves into this sort of mess, but del Valle said he'd "encourage CPS to work it out themselves.''
And Chico thinks the parents are aiming too low. ''They should ask for the park and the library," he said. "It can be done. It kills me that parents have to agonize over such a small issue -- this should have been solved by now.''
All easy to say from the sidelines, but it does feels like February might bring a much needed breath of fresh air.
Rahm Emanuel's official entry into Chicago's mayoral race and the probability of the Bears making it to Super Bowl XLV?
Answer:
Both topics are taking up space and time in the heads of plenty of people who are eligible to vote in the Nov. 2 election but probably won't because "I didn't know" how/when/where or when the deadline to register was and, of course, "What's the point?"
We all have other things on our minds. I totally get that. I'm personally focused on procuring good Chihuahua-size Halloween costumes. But while watching the posturing of all the would-be Chicago mayors these last few weeks has been tons of fun, that's all anyone with an interest in local politics seems to want to talk about, which means the Nov. 2 elections are being totally eclipsed by next February's election for mayor.
Which is exactly why I blew in a call to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners last week to ask how things are shaping up.
My first conversation was with spokesman Jim Allen.
"It's quiet -- and it's alarmingly quiet," he said. "People have leap-frogged to February. Given the significance of the issues confronting the country right now and the major offices on the ballot, our concern is that too many voters have put November 2nd on the back burner."
My next call went to the Chicago chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization which, in partnership with the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, has been doing extensive community outreach to get people registered to vote. Spokeswoman Amina Sharif was as struck by the lack of interest as I am.
"I don't understand why people aren't passionate about getting out to vote," she said. "So many major things are happening right now . . . but people are just fed up and it makes them apathetic to vote."
Ali Malik, the council's New American Democracy Project fellow, says he's seeing apathy in neighborhoods across the city -- it's rough out there.
"We know people don't vote in midterm elections like they do for presidential elections," Malik said. "But I'm telling people that for us in the Muslim community it goes far beyond the controversy over the proposed New York City Ground Zero mosque. There is serious Islamophobia going on and we need to vote for people who will represent all voters equally."
Like the council, African-American, Latino and other special interest groups are hitting would-be voters with issues specific to their concerns to get them to register to vote.
So consider yourself informed: Tuesday, is the last day to register to vote. You have to be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 on Election Day and a resident of your precinct 30 days before the election. A simple Google search will yield the city or county website where you can find your nearest voter registration location, and while you're at it, you can learn about grace period voting, early voting and absentee ballot voting, just in case.
As for "What's the point?" Well, politics literally disgust some people, and I completely understand that, too -- some politicians give us plenty of reason to feel disgusted. But that's not a fantastic reason to pass up the opportunity to pick the person you least hate to make decisions on critical issues that will impact you directly.
Langdon D. Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, put it to me this way: "While there's this great interest in who is going to be the next mayor of Chicago, let's not forget the enormity of the offices up in the air in November. You've got the leaders of all branches of government from federal on down. There's the U.S. Senate, the governor, the president of the County Board to state legislative and judicial races -- they will all have an enormous impact in our lives, let's not overlook it."
The opening bell of the November election season conveniently coincided with independence celebrations for Mexico and several other Latin American countries, the start of Hispanic Heritage Month and more promises from the White House on immigration law reform.
At the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual awards gala, President Obama played to (and delighted) the crowd -- completely ignoring the fact that for two years his administration has pushed the tough politicking of reforming immigration laws to the margins in favor of the simpler pour-money-on-border-security Band-Aid.
"Now, I know that many of you campaigned hard for me, and understandably you're frustrated that we have not been able to move this over the finish line yet. I am too. But let me be clear: I will not walk away from this fight," he pledged. "My commitment is getting this done as soon as we can. We can't keep kicking this challenge down the road."
Really? We've gotten within sight of the finish line? I didn't know the footrace had started. And now that we're coming up on November and the proverbial sea change could turn into a monsoon for both Democrats and Republicans, it's time to give Latinos a reason to go to the polls?
Give me a break.
Hey, guess what? Just because the president got up in front of a who's who of Hispanic America and delivered a too-cute-by-half slam -- "Their [Republican] platform, apparently, is "no se puede." Is that a bumper sticker you want on your car?" -- that doesn't erase two years in which anti-illegal immigration rhetoric has boosted the number of hate crimes against Latinos being reported across the country. It is rhetoric that the White House has done little to combat until now -- now that Hispanics have re-morphed from just another special interest group back to the important "Latino vote."
There is no question other critically important issues are on the table: the heatedly debated Bush tax cuts extension, the Middle East peace process, the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, the continuing corruption in Afghanistan . . . never mind clean energy legislation, the economy and the lack of jobs, jobs, jobs.
I understand the complexities and challenges of this upcoming legislative session, so while I would prefer for immigration reform to stop being perennially ignored, I can certainly understand why now is not the time.
That's why it is extra insulting that the Dream Act is being slapped onto the Defense Authorization bill simply because, as it looks to me, elections are coming up and Obama and the Democrats, remembering their 2008 campaign promises to Latinos, want to look like they're giving it the old college try.
While it's true that the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would bolster our military by maintaining a "mission-ready All Volunteer Force," according to one Department of Defense strategic planning document, the education argument is less palatable.
Legal permanent resident and U.S.-born college graduates are sinking in unprecedented student loan debt and unable to find jobs. Is now really the time to try to sell nervous partisans a comprehensive business case for why it is critical to this nation's future as a knowledge economy to harness the intellectual power and personal enthusiasm of all-American students who, in many cases, didn't even know they were illegal aliens until it was time to register for college?
In my wildest dreams.
Instead, this abrupt election-driven attempt to pass one good long-term, forward-thinking piece of immigration policy stands a chance of not only going down in flames, but of cranking up the kind of rhetoric that is increasingly making Latinos targets of violence. All while engendering more mistrust in the Obama administration's commitment to practical and humane immigration law reform.
And here's the zinger: What are Latinos going to do about it? What can we? Like the rest of the country, not voting in November's elections would be slightly worse than going to the polls to pick between the lesser of two evils.
Eventually, the dogpile will clear. Those likely to declare they have what it takes to lead this city of hot winds and big shoulders will either garner the dollars, personal support and 12,500 valid signatures to legitimately get on the ballot to make a go of it, or be left with a decent story about how many people called him (or her) on that gorgeous September afternoon when Mayor Daley called it quits.
Those who make it beyond "hopeful" status to see their names on the ballot will have a unique opportunity to change the way campaigns are run and politics is played in this town. They will have it within their power to eradicate from our city's lexicon that hideous phrase "the Chicago Way," which implies nothing less than self-serving, graft-slinging corruption.
That whole "vote early and often" and "we don't want nobody nobody sent" Chicago Way shtick is way past its prime and must be allowed to pass into history, just as the images from the bloody 1968 Democratic convention have.
What Chicago needs on the road to Feb. 22, 2011, is not just a good, clean fight, but a smart one.
Chicago being, well, Chicago, it may be too much to ask that there be no hitting below the belt, tripping, pushing, holding, biting, spitting or hitting after your opponent is down. All the same, here's my candidate tip sheet for a spirited 10 to 12 rounds toward City Hall's fifth floor:
• Don't waste our time by exaggerating on the hustings. You will be embarrassed if you didn't actually invent the Internet, fight in Vietnam or teach poor kids to read -- and despite your best efforts, someone will call you out on it. Get your annoying Aunt Millie -- the one who never really liked you much -- to attend all your public speeches and tell you in blunt terms when you've oversold your "humble Chicago roots." Every candidate needs someone who keeps them from believing their own hype.
• Understand, value and respect the experiences, needs and viewpoints of Chicago's diverse population, but don't oversell scant interactions or present yourself as a cheerleader for causes you may not even understand. For example, if you've never had firsthand experience with Chicago's ultra-diverse Hispanic community aside from eating really great Mexican food, vow to learn. But for the love of Pete, don't pander -- no one's going to buy it.
Back in July, a candidate for statewide office sent out a press release announcing he was reaching out to Chicago's Latino community by meeting with local educators and business leaders. Yawn. I've heard nothing since. Double yawn.
• While we're talking about race and ethnicity, let me say this: Anyone who really cares about ensuring that all the residents of Chicago thrive will care principally about visionary leadership, relationship-building and management skills. So please, don't exploit or ignore the differences between the many ethnic, racial or special-interest groups jockeying for power -- harness them.
• About your experience: Spend less time telling us what you did in the past and more time convincing us how you'll scale your skills to tackle the headaches you'll inherit in May 2011. And yes, the challenges are huge, but channel Daniel Burnham and let this city know you intend no little plans.
• Strike a fair balance in working for both the Chicago that serves the people who actually live here and for the Chicago that drives the economies of the surrounding six counties. It's cool to snub your nose at suburbanites, but our fortunes are tied up together, and metropolitanwide alliances cannot be undervalued.
And while you're at it, don't underestimate the leadership and naked determination necessary to keep Chicago on the national and international stage.
Good luck to the candidates for mayor of the best city in the world. In the enduring words of my favorite ring announcer, Michael Buffer: "Let's get ready to rrrrrrrumble!"
Excerpt from just one of the many letters I received after having included the phrase "the current anti-immigrant atmosphere" in a recent column:
"Unfortunately you are mistaken in using the phrase ‘anti-immigration atmosphere’. Many American citizens with brown, black, white, or even yellow skin are angry with ILLEGAL immigrants and the damage they have done to our country. If the millions of ILLEGAL immigrants, Hispanic/European/Asian etc, would have entered through the "front door" instead of the "back door", much aforementioned damage to our country would have been avoided. Now we have governments in bankruptcy due to these cheaters, and people are rightfully angry. You need to tone down your inflammatory rhetoric and see the issue realistically."
My standard response has been that while it’s easy to say that the anger and hatred currently aimed at Latinos is about "ILLEGAL" immigration, the fact of the matter is that I, my family, friends, and neighbors have all gotten called terrible names, sent hateful emails or been otherwise snubbed not based on citizenship or residency status, but because we "look foreign."
Baltimore officials arrested a 19-year-old man Saturday night after he gave a taped confession to police saying he "hated Hispanics."
Let me clarify here: he didn’t say he hated illegal immigrants – he said he hated Hispanics.
Not convinced? Here is a teeny-tiny selection of emails – some just subject lines – that find their way into my inbox, none of which make any reference to citizenship status:
"Immigrants are the scum of the earth. Latinos are the worst of the worst. Execute this scum. Enforce the freaking law. Kill this vermin - DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!"
"Mexico is a malevolent machine of evil malice. Why won't my country declare war on this evil menace - Mexico. Death to Mexico. Death to Mexicans."
You are a spic slut whore"
Hatred is, in fact, boiling over in the U.S. against anyone who does not seem to be from this country - regardless of whether they are U.S. born, or legal permanent residents, or illegal immigrants, or not. (Sadly, it’s not limited to those who look Latino, but is starting to boil over onto any brown-skinned individual who looks like they might be – GASP! – Muslim.)
So to all of those out there who dare say that the current anti-immigrant outrage is all just about legal residency status: stop kidding yourself because you aren’t kidding anyone else.
The fact is that immigrant and non-immigrant Latinos alike are facing pure, bald-faced hatred, ire, and discrimination that goes well beyond perennial annoyances such as being asked how much you charge for mowing a lawn (if you should happen to garden in front of your nice house) or being asked if you "Habla English" for no apparent reason other than the looks of you.
The real question is: what are we going to do about it?
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 reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
Last week, my Sun-Times colleagues Fran Spielman and Rosalind Rossi reported that Mayor Daley is considering Mary Ellen Caron, founder and former principal of his daughter's Catholic elementary school, to be the Chicago Public Schools' chief education officer.
My eyebrows raised. An administrator with little experience with the expansive, highly political bureaucracy of the country's third-largest public school district as chief education officer? Could Caron scale her past experience at an elite private school to the daunting tasks of eliminating achievement gaps, increasing academic rigor, managing meaningful evaluation processes and building capacity among teachers and administrative staff in a system beset by poverty's ills?
Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, two sentences in the story raised the eyebrows of many online readers: "If Mary Ellen Caron is tapped as chief education officer, she would be the first white and non-CPS educator to assume that post since Daley won control of the city's public schools in 1995. Over the last 15 years, the top CPS education post has been held by three successive African- American women, all former CPS principals in a system that is 45 percent black, 41 percent Latino and 9 percent white."
The comments board lit up:
"White? Oh my gosh, she's being judged by the color of her skin, and not based on character? Maybe this is what you Black and Hispanic people should know: RACE has no bearing on her qualifications. I'm sick of the race card."
Another reader wrote: "You mean Chicago has become so bad that black people only must fill positions previously filled by black people. That is racism! Come on, if someone said only white people can be governor of Illinois there would be protest marches in Springfield, and the media would be jumping up and down yelling racism."
And so on and so on.
I agree the position shouldn't be a black entitlement -- nor should it be a Latino entitlement, though 41 percent of CPS students are Hispanic. Every CPS student is entitled to the most qualified person for the job, regardless of political viability, personal relationships or skin color.
As it happens, diversity hiring has been at the top of my mind lately. When President Obama chose Elena Kagan as his Supreme Court pick, she was criticized for her racial hiring record at Harvard. As Boyce Watkins, a prominent African-American scholar, put it: "Kagan did not hire a single African American tenured or tenure-track faculty member. This says, very clearly, that Elena Kagan doesn't care about black people, at least when they are applying to be professors. . . . With all the applications that poured in every year from top black attorneys, she didn't feel that one single black, Latino or Native American scholar was qualified to teach at Harvard university?"
I have discussed both of these news items -- the Caron story and the Kagan story -- with a wide variety of people, and their reactions have been passionate. Dividing into two camps, some insisted that hiring of any kind should be a strictly merit-based, color-blind affair, while others insisted that strong measures must be taken to get people of color fully integrated into every workplace at every level.
Because I agree with both camps, I blew in a call to Gloria Castillo, president of Chicago United, a group that promotes equal access to professional opportunities, to help me square these seemingly opposing views.
"Yes, there has to be a commitment to accessing great talent, and there has to be a commitment to casting a wider net in order to find it," Castillo told me. "For doubters, I'd say do the research. Read Scott Page to learn how diversity of all kinds leads to more positive outcomes."
Page is the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies.
And that, it seems, really is the best way to reconcile the two camps: Go the extra mile to find the very best applicants, including minority ones, for any position, and then be truly color-blind in making the final decision.
That won't necessarily diversify an organization as quickly as anyone would like, but it is the best way to ensure that diversity is equitably practiced in every workplace. And it does so in a way that no one feels discriminated against, unfairly assisted or disadvantaged or a victim to ethnic or racial entitlements.
Now that President Obama has given his definitive immigration law reform speech -- he said we need it but he didn't task anyone with making it happen -- and the Justice Department has filed its legal challenge to Arizona's law on grounds that state law should not preempt federal law, let's take a look at another, related topic: English language fluency.
It's one necessary ingredient in garnering popular support for any immigration reform.
The issue of not being able to easily communicate with newcomers to our neighborhoods, schools and businesses is one bone of contention people love to chew on, and it transcends any particular ethnicity or language.
The following comments from a widely circulated chain e-mail I received are representative of a popular opinion: "Today's American is not willing to accept today's new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 . . . people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home. They had waved goodbye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture."
Concerns that newcomers don't want to become "real Americans" who will fully commit to our language -- much less our culture or values -- underlie the battle to reform our ineffective immigration system. Any reasonable reform plan must make English language fluency a required stepping stone on the path to legal residency.
Surrounding this touchy subject are two myths to be busted: that immigrants don't want to learn the language and that there aren't enough people to teach them. The truths are, of course, more complicated.
It's no secret that it's tough for immigrants of diverse nationalities to take classes to improve their English skills. Each day is a struggle for survival before adding impossible class times, money for books or supplies, child care issues or other barriers.
It's up to us as a nation to take a long honest look at how we -- merchants, marketers, customers, employers, neighbors -- can break down those barriers and encourage English-language fluency for all our residents. This effort would create both a sense of shared community and a multi- language bilingual work force that will help the U.S. compete in an increasingly global economy.
Then, we need to find ways to help organizations who already provide these resources to scale up for the massive task of helping those learning our ridiculously difficult language and find the skilled teachers and eager volunteers who can make it happen.
Mano a Mano Family Resource Center -- a tiny organization in Round Lake -- has hundreds of people on its waiting lists for all levels of English-as-a-second-language classes.
Carolina Duque, the center's executive director, says that in her neck of the woods -- a small town where in the last 10 years Latino immigrants have flooded once-exclusively middle-class, Caucasian neighborhoods -- there's also a waiting list of people ready to volunteer to help sharpen English skills.
"Both community leaders and residents get frustrated by feeling they can't talk to their neighbors, but we're really lucky that the community is working together to overcome those frustrations," Duque told me. "We mostly work with volunteers who don't speak Spanish -- they get so much joy from being able to help others learn English and they want to do more. Unfortunately, we just don't have the capacity to train more volunteers, hold more classes or service all the people who need the help or want to give it."
Round Lake is just one little town where the swirling torrents of immigration, language and culture are coming together with little rage or angst.
If the bipartisan immigration law reform architects can learn from this town's ability to address this critical cultural issue -- and put some muscular incentives behind uniting the country via the English language -- we'll be on a pathway to true reform.
Keeping Mr. Obama accountable on immigration reform
"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"
When I finished listening to President Obama's address on immigration law reform, I wished I could get the last 45 minutes of my life back.
His speech – designed to quell fears he is ignoring his campaign promise to pass comprehensive immigration law reform – brought no fresh ideas to the table, shot down immigrant activist demands for a moratorium on deportation, offered nothing substantive on Arizona’s anti-illegal immigrant law, and failed to put a timeline on any action.
By now you’ve heard the platitudes he trotted out – our history as a nation of immigrants, that this issue is one of the great challenges of our time, that the system is broken and must be fixed, the need for a bipartisan solution.
My disappointment stems from the fact that the president's speech at American University Thursday was supposed to be about accountability – for securing the border, for employers who are hiring illegal immigrants, and for those who are in this country illegally.
Yes, he touched on these topics. He even went out of his way to make clear that he would not consider a moratorium on deportations until reform measures were solidified – openly dissing the activist groups he’s been courting since his presidential run, and allaying the fears Republicans harbor about amnesty-type proposals.
At a speech-viewing rally in Chicago’s Douglas Park, a small cadre of activists openly yelled in anger when the president said such "an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair … and could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration and ignore those waiting in line to come here legally." Jose Herrera, an organizer with the Immigrant Youth Justice League, vowed: "From today on there will be a different response - we will be attacking his and his administrations’ policies and point of view. There is anger but we will mobilize people to demand the moratorium, we think it can be put in place while the larger debate takes place."
Completely lacking in the big accountability speech was any discussion of accountability for the legislators who are wasting their time either hiding under a desk somewhere or venting on TV pundit shows because they don’t want to tackle the tough compromises that will be needed to enact bipartisan reform.
Also absent was any discussion of accountability for a president of the United States who has seen fit to take over a failing car company, reform the supposedly immovable health care system, and kick the asses – and wallets – of the global oil company hemorrhaging oil into our gulf.
What, exactly, was the point of declaring that billions of dollars in annual tax revenue lost to under-the-table payments to illegal immigrants will never be captured because the issue is "held hostage to political posturing and special interest lobbying," if not to call on legislators to get to work and present a proposal by a certain date?
Sure, it might feel good to say that our southern borders are more secure today than they have been in 20 years, and that we have more boots on the ground near the border than at any time in our history. But when the president himself admits that the current system makes a mockery of all the immigrants who are trying to come here legally, he makes a mockery of his every-once-in-a-while devotion to this issue which he called one of our country’s most pressing economic problems and one of the greatest challenges of our time.
The President showed up to his speech without an endorsed framework for a strategy with which to move forward and, worse, failed to exhibit the needed leadership on an issue he says has been at the top of his agenda since he was in the Senate and will not become yet another can kicked down the road.
Obama spoke of the need to end the "patchwork of local laws" and "false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together" but never once indicated who should lead the effort, how progress should be defined, or a set deadline for when he expects to enact a well-reasoned bipartisan reform.
There’s no end to the disagreements that have shaped the battle to reform immigration laws in this country. But there should be an end to speculation about when the country will get around to doing something about it. Obama should make himself accountable to the businesses, citizens, and immigrants of the United States with a timeline and a plan for when this will actually happen.
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 reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
Town that banned illegal immigrants could teach lesson
June 28, 2010
BY ESTHER J CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist
When I consider the illegal immigration dilemma in this country, I always come back to the feeling that we just don't have enough good data on which to base sound policy decisions.
I find no bipartisan or nonpartisan authoritative reports that include a good quantified estimate of the impact of the wide variety of anti-illegal immigrant measures that have been floated either by national legislators or local governments -- all those proposed alternatives to a federal government that just hasn't gotten around to dealing with it themselves.
So here's a thought. Let's for a moment set aside any outrage or disgust that might well up when you think about the recent ban on illegal immigrants in Fremont, Neb., and consider the opportunity this presents.
Last week the townsfolk of that burg voted to banish illegal immigrants from town by requiring landlords to deny rental property to those who can't prove they are legal residents and by requiring city businesses to run database checks to catch illegal immigrants.
The Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a raft of other immigrant and refugee rights groups have pledged to file costly lawsuits to block the decision. They fear the new laws will create an environment ripe for every type of discriminatory mischief against anyone who merely looks like an illegal alien.
The people of this deeply divided town freely admit that the expense of defending their community against the lawsuits would cause great hardship to all its resident -- legal and illegal alike.
So why not do this, all you civil liberties groups: Stand down.
As painful and contrary to instinct as it might be, stand down. Don't file a single lawsuit, just sit back and watch.
Instead of deploying eager, fresh-faced lawyers to fight the new local laws, send in eager, fresh-faced sociologists to observe the laws' impact with a scientific eye.
What might they see?
If you're from the "illegal immigrants are helpless and downtrodden" school of thought -- which imagines that the same people who risked everything to travel from a crummy town south of the border all the way to Nebraska won't get out of Dodge and move on to the next opportunity -- then you might anticipate mass violations of civil liberties against indigent, terrorized victims who will be herded away to some scary immigration gulag never to be seen again.
But if you're like me and happen to think that illegal immigrants may be monolingual but aren't stupid, you might anticipate a mass exodus from a town that doesn't want them to some other town that might, in fact, welcome warm bodies to work at whatever jobs are available and spend their money at local businesses.
It might be a place where immigrants are assimilated and made proud Americans, regardless of their legal status, because there is hope that someday the federal government will find a way to ship back the losers and hold on tight to the stars.
That would be the beauty of rolling with Fremont's plan: We'd get to see what would really happen.
Would Fremont become a thriving, citizens-only zone that offers legal residents a safe, clean place to live and work, enjoying unburdened schools and social service agencies? A sort of present-day Mayberry, where you could take a walk at sunset without feeling threatened by unfamiliar people?
Or, would Fremont become a shadow of its former self -- a quiet town where stores close every week because there just aren't enough people to keep business going? A place where the Metropolitan Community College is no longer bursting at the seams with English-language learners, but there really aren't many students of any kind around anymore.
Or might Fremont find some bizarre but natural equilibrium, some balance in between?
DUBLIN, Ireland -- This column is a love note to the country that has -- more than any other -- made Chicago what it is today: a city defined by a group of immigrants who came to the U.S. tired and poor but overcame institutionalized discrimination to become a politically empowered majority.
Yep, I'm on the Emerald Isle, and everywhere I go I see a little bit of home. In addition to the Bulmer Vintage's thrilling billboard which cheekily asks "North Cider or South Cider?" there are the two stunning Santiago Calatrava creations -- the Samuel Beckett and James Joyce bridges over the River Liffey -- which make me long for the Chicago Spire to come to life.
Let me assure you, based on my admittedly unscientific but in-depth research, that your favorite Chicago Irish bar is a darned good replica of the pubs all over Dublin. And also, I met your Irish uncle; almost everyone I've spoken to in my travels has either been to Chicago or has a relative in our fine town.
Oh, and Dublin -- like the rest of Ireland and much of Chicago -- is filled with Polish immigrants whose ethnic grocery stores dot the town, displaying "mowimy po polsku" signs.
From the sparkling glass high-rises built during the tech boom to Ireland's standing as a top beef, lamb and dairy exporter (hog butchers to the UK) and the dueling Old St. Patrick's churches, there are a million similarities.
I've spent time here learning about Ireland's history of struggle, uprising, independence and migration. What impresses me the most is how these people made names for themselves in the U.S., and how their success could be a model for the Hispanic community.
The Irish started showing up on U.S. soil en masse in the 1830s. They spoke English, sure, but with an accent and were ridiculed, marginalized and discriminated against.
When they weren't being denied work just for being Irish, they generally were used as cheap, disposable labor. Unlike today's Latin American immigrants, they weren't singled out as "illegals" but were demonized as "immorals." Take your pick as to which could be considered worse in historical context.
The key to the eventual economic empowerment of Irish immigrants was a heavy involvement in the political process: They networked, building powerful organizations, then set out to work successful alliances with non-Irish ethnic groups.
That's the inspiring part, the part that makes me feel I'll be writing a similar success story about Hispanic immigrants in a few decades: The Irish came here poor, uninvited and uneducated. They were hated, used and abused, but they worked hard, found their own political voice and eventually became part of the landscape -- just another ethnic minority taking a fair shot at the American Dream while melting down in the great assimilation pot.
Latinos in the U.S. are getting there. For all the angst and gnashing of teeth the Arizona anti-illegal immigrant laws are causing, what cannot be denied is that today's divisive immigration anxiety is successfully uniting the Latino community into an all-American subgroup that can and will come together to have a strong voice in the U.S. It's a community that's starting to flex real political muscle and simultaneously create alliances with Asian, European and other immigrant groups on the rise.
Like the Irish, Latinos and their multicultural offspring will grow up to become just another part of the landscape, with representation in all walks of private, public and civic life. Oh, it'll take a while, but those days are coming.
Like the Irish, Hispanics will achieve complete assimilation through politics.
I can almost hear the cheers at the someday presidential inauguration: "Kiss me, I'm Latino."
LONDON, Eng. -- The beautiful thing about traveling the world isn't so much in getting to see how different other cultures are from ours. (In England they call soccer -- that game played with the ball and the foot -- football. Crazy, huh?!)
No, the truly cool thing is in seeing how similar we are. London, and Europe in general, is every bit as racially and ethnically diverse as the United States, every bit as dependent on legal and illegal immigrants, every bit as troubled by how many there are and how they're treated, and every bit as worried about how they're to be integrated into the larger society.
Last week, as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's attention was pulled away from the White House's analysis of the constitutionality of Arizona's new immigrant legal status law (he's now on the BP oil case), 16 illegal immigrants from various eastern countries attempted to sneak into Britain by hiding in the top of a truck transporting a $1.5 million Aston Martin racing car returning from the Monaco grand prix.
Everywhere I went in London, I was welcomed with thick Polish, German, French, Indian, Vietnamese and Spanish accents. The fair-eyed tended to front desks with computers while the east Indians ran souvenir shops with a billion miniature red telephone booths. Thankfully, I didn't have the opportunity to see if Chelsea and Westminster Hospital was chock full of Filipino nurses, but I'm willing to bet they're there.
During a trip around Kensington Palace, one London tour guide -- explaining London's congestion -- told my group, "We don't know how many illegal immigrants we have in England, we've no way to count them." The city's mayor has been considering an amnesty that could produce an increase in tax revenue, which has gone over like the proverbial lead balloon. Sound familiar?
And there'll be no abatement to the congestion. Despite the global recession, the Migration Policy Institute has found that migration all over the world has diminished far less than originally expected and the amount of money "sent home" has remained relatively steady -- the World Bank said the tune was $316 billion last year.
Arizona is not alone or unique in its varying degrees of populist, protectionist angst among the natives. It's to be found in all the places dealing with the pleasures and perils of new immigrants. I never hesitate to point out that Mexico itself has long been criticized by its neighbor to the south for the terrorizing brutality illegal immigrants are submitted to once they cross onto Mexican soil.
A European example: In January, Italy had large race riots when African migrant farmers fought back after an unprovoked attack by white youths who prey on them for sport.
Still, in lots of places across the United States, there's just quiet acceptance and meaningful attempts at assimilating new arrivals. Immigrant aid organizations in Trenton, N.J., have begun issuing identification cards that city and county government agencies are recognizing in the service of fighting crime, treating the sick and increasing trust in local law enforcement.
On the other side of the globe, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has waived rules so that companies hiring foreign workers no longer are subjected to quotas for work permits and visas, and they won't have to submit diplomas to prove a candidate's qualification.
Simply by doing that, says Ernst & Young, Russia has moved "from one of the least welcoming to one of the most positive immigration systems in the world for top talent."
Yes, the true beauty of getting away from home is that you can really appreciate that we're all in this big global boat together, facing the same issues, floundering and flourishing.
But those who flourish are those who look at legal and illegal immigration as both a challenge and an opportunity, not just a roadblock.
The latest casualty in the war against illegal immigration is not the Highland Park girls basketball team, it's -- drumroll please -- reason. You know: the sense that God gave a goose.
How else to explain the flat-out immigration madness sweeping this great nation?
Take the Highland Park High School decision to pull out of the Holiday Invitational girls tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz., in December, which they happily committed to back in March before Gov. Jan Brewer decided to sign the infamous SB 1070 bill. That's the law that critics say legalizes racial profiling against Latinos based on vague gut reactions as to who might or might not be an illegal immigrant.
School District 113 decided to pull out for so-called safety reasons, but Assistant Supt. Suzan Hebson threw in that the trip "would not be aligned with our beliefs and values" because of the recent Arizona legislation.
OK, how tacky was it to let the Arizona organizers of this school-sponsored event, who had nothing to do with this state law, find out about the rebuke via the Thursday morning news? Very.
But not nearly as tacky -- scratch that, make it senseless and borderline cruel -- as using the hopes and aspirations of a team of plucky young basketball-playing, cookie-selling schoolgirls who actually won their first conference title in 26 years to make a national political statement.
A national political statement that, by the way, lit a fire under Caribou Killer Barbie Sarah Palin and gave the rest of the hysterical Mexican haters who pose as strict defenders of immigration laws a unique opportunity to actually be 100 percent right about something.
This e-mail message from one such constant complainer -- who proudly begs for "CINCO-DE-PORTATION!" -- hit my inbox first thing Thursday morning: "You probably heard by now . . . Well i [sic] myself thinks [sic] this is totally wrong, and has broken these girls [sic] hearts. They played their hearts out to win and qualify for the tourney. They worked so very hard, with bake sales, car washs [sic] etc. to earn the money to finance the trip also. Only to have the politicly [sic] correct liberal idiot administrators say they can't go. If you would, please email the school's administrator and tell them they are WRONG."
When you're right, you're right, buddy -- and congrats on the coup.
Just as Arizona has blurred the line between what's under the purview of federal law and state law, so has Highland Park High School blurred the line between politics and educational experiences. Sadly, they won't be the last.
The backlash against Arizona has become a national movement. Local governments across the country are suspending travel to the state and banning future contracts with businesses headquartered there, and masses of people are in some way or another boycotting the state in hope of getting the law repealed.
Now that Brewer has signed yet another bad bill into law -- this one aimed at ensuring that no Arizona schoolchildren receive instruction in classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocate ethnic solidarity -- Arizona will surely continue morphing into a national joke.
I don't know if this new law banning ethnic studies classes will uphold its stated desire to teach Arizona's schoolchildren "... to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." More likely it will legislate that no non-Caucasian child can learn about his or her family's heritage.
What I do know is that all this immigration-related craziness should, as much as humanly possible, be kept out of school classrooms and playgrounds. We can't let our country get so hysterical over a single issue that we lose sight of how wrong it is to play politics with kids.
Your country is counting on you: Fill out census form
April 12, 2010
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist
So I finally did it last week -- I filled out my census form.
It was mostly a piece of cake. The darned thing had been lying around my house for almost two weeks and I was actually considering just making the census people come out to my house to harass me for it, but it costs the government 135 times more cash to send out live bodies than to get the form in the mail (42 cents vs. 57 dollars) and I just can't bear to waste.
What precipitated my desire to get it filled out was that my parents haven't gotten a form yet -- never even got the letter telling them the form would soon arrive at their house. Being the good citizens that they are, they were asking all sorts of concerned questions about how to get one.
That made perfect sense. Back on April 1 -- "Census Day" -- the Pew Hispanic Center released a report that said foreign-born Latinos are more positive and knowledgeable about the 2010 U.S. Census than are native-born Latinos.
I love it! I'm not a contrarian by nature but I do enjoy it when stereotypes are shattered in favor of fact-based realities. Back in August, when I started writing about the effort being poured into educating the Latino community about the importance of filling out the census form, I got pushback for reporting that even Spanish-language community organizers agreed that it was regular old garden-variety lack of awareness -- rather than some overblown fear of malevolent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents -- that would be the big challenge.
In the months since, the U.S. Census Bureau has dumped almost $28 million into Hispanic media advertising for the 2010 Census, compared to the $19 million they spent for the 2000 Census. Bottom line: All that cash bought an awful lot of Spanish-language network infomercials to make sure Hispanics aren't undercounted because of fear or ignorance.
And it worked. The same Pew Hispanic Center Survey, "Latinos and the 2010 Census," noted that "while majorities of both groups say that the census is good for the Hispanic community, the foreign born are significantly more likely to feel this way." (Last time they checked, among Hispanic adults 18 and older, 47 percent were native born and 53 percent were foreign born.) "The foreign born are also more likely to correctly say that the census cannot be used to determine who is in the country legally; more likely to trust the Census Bureau to keep their personal information confidential; and more likely to say they have seen or heard messages encouraging them to participate in the census."
Go figure.
Too bad the form confuses this same key demographic. Of the 46.8 million Hispanics counted in the U.S. in 2008 (that's 15.4 percent of the total U.S. population -- up from 35.3 million in the 2000 Census), I wonder how many of them were baffled by question No. 9?
Yep, after the relatively easy No. 8, which asks if you're of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin and then requests a specific type, question No. 9 asks, "What is the person's race?"
So many of my Mexican-descended acquaintances e-mailed or called me inquiring about this and I was amused to say, where appropriate, "I hate to break it to you, but you're white!"
It just goes to show you that people know even less about the difference between race and ethnicity than they do about the arcane origins of our national census. They need not sweat it, though. Though you can't fill out your census form online, anyone can call (866) 872-6868 to deal with their mini-identity crisis or get other assistance filling out the form.
That number is the same number to call if you didn't get your form, which I hope Mama and Papa Cepeda take note of because their biggest fear is not whether their favorite government will somehow use this census information against them, but rather, if it will accidentally forget to count them.
Feds have to stop inhumane treatment in deportation
April 5, 2010
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist
Boneheaded. Ham-handed. And let's not forget tone-deaf. These are the only adequate ways to describe the Obama administration's bungling of the issue of illegal immigration.
Forget politics for just a moment, forget the oh-so-important "Latino vote" and forget the activists pushing the family togetherness agenda: You don't pony up 100 million bucks in aid to a country devastated by an earthquake in what is described as "one of the largest relief efforts in history" only to allow Haitian refugees to be thrown into an American gulag immigration detention system by our very own Immigration and Customs Enforcement Keystone Kops.
If you didn't catch last week's New York Times' latest immigration revelation, here it is: Survivors of January's Haiti earthquake who were escorted onto planes by our very own Marine Corps landed in Florida and were immediately arrested and held for deportation -- even though deportations to Haiti were suspended almost immediately after the gravity of the quake was known. Letters and calls for their release went ignored, as were offers of free trauma therapy for these law-abiding victims of a natural disaster who were -- and some still are -- held as criminals in the sometimes bottomless pit of immigration jails.
Let's throw more on the pile: The New York Times heightened awareness of a new study by the Texas Appleseed public interest law center that documented the egregious treatment of mentally ill individuals trapped in federal immigration jails.
The Washington Post uncovered private Immigration and Customs Enforcement memos that encouraged agents to meet "deportation quotas" by going after the low-hanging fruit of those who can be deported quickly -- a k a illegal alien workers -- instead of the violent or otherwise dangerous criminals whose cases take longer to litigate.
But I've gotten carried away ... Let's not get caught up in the myriad ways that the federal government's responsibility to humanely treat even those awaiting a swift farewell from the U.S. for good reason is routinely ignored. Let's focus on boneheaded, ham-handed and tone-deaf.
Look, we all get it: The lip service coming out of this administration says immigration is important, even though month after month after month the issue has been put on the back burner. Immigration law reform never gets mentioned as a major White House agenda item. The moment health-care reform was passed, the talk started about Social Security overhaul, not immigration. And that's fine, it's really not the most pressing issue facing the country at the moment. How about they just come out and say it, though?
OK, so stark honesty from the Obama administration on setting a timeline for a rigorous national conversation on the issue of illegal immigration might be too much to ask this year, but how about some good old-fashioned competence in the meanwhile?
String the ardent supporters along if you must, White House. Go ahead, demand prerequisite Republican support for meaningful, comprehensive immigration law reform -- before the ball even gets rolling -- with a straight face. Keep throwing one-line references to the issue into nationally televised speeches while you're at it.
But in the meantime, run our federal system for processing illegal immigrants with the professionalism that befits this country of immigrants.
No bells and whistles, no red carpets -- just follow the letter of the law when it comes to the dignity and physical well-being required in processing, housing, transporting and caring for such people while they're on our glorious American soil.
And before the administration's left hand points to exemplary humanitarian aid to Haitian earthquake victims, let's make sure the right hand isn't choking the immigrants we deliberately flew here, treating them in the same rough manner as the ones who show up uninvited.
I'll be the first to admit, I've never ever once met a person who likes to sneak an occasional smoke that was dissuaded from buying a pack of straights because of the warning label.
How long has it been since every new car manufactured or assembled in the United States rolled off the line without a warning ironed to the front visor practically begging parents not to buckle an infant car seat in front where an air bag could crush it? Yet, just the other day, I saw a knucklehead who obviously can't read simple pictographs doing just that.
Really, who among us can say that the now-ubiquitous nutrition fact labels even once kept us from a late-night binge of chocolate milk and Twinkies? No one who isn't a liar.
And yet public health measures, however pointless or counterintuitive, aren't failures because they fail to completely eradicate unhealthy behaviors. They succeed because a million little behavioral changes add up to something bigger.
Who will question that smoking labels have proved effective in at least killing the plausible deniability that ciggies aren't good for you? Most people now understand that you stick junior in the back seat. And those nutrition labels have without a doubt made an impact -- good or bad depends on what your scale said this morning -- on consumers' decision-making when it comes to buying packaged food.
That said, I'll admit I'm practically on my knees in ecstasy that the new health-care legislation -- cue the villainous music -- will require calorie counts to be posted on menus at restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets.
No more Googling "cinnamon twist calorie information" 15 minutes after I've swallowed the freshly deep-fried and sugar sprinkled sticks to see just what the damage was. No more asking the chick behind the counter if they have one of those calorie booklets so I can gauge from the largest size of onion rings how far my next run will have to be. No more borrowing a pal's iPhone calorie counter app at lunch to estimate how many calories I have left for dinner. No more excuses when I go for the hot fudge sundae (with nuts) that I couldn't quite remember whether the ice-cream was actually low-fat yogurt -- or not.
I adore an old-fashioned doughnut -- or two -- in the morning, several beef soft tacos with a sidecar of sour cream for lunch, and scoops of rocky road and vanilla ice cream on a plain cone for dessert after dinner. Even more, I love the fact that all those calorie counts will soon be out in full view for me to confront as I prepare to order.
Why? Like every other Hispanic in the United States, I'm at high risk for Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Type 2 would only be more prevalent in my immediate and extended family if any of our various Chihuahuas were diagnosed with it (and judging from the size of some of them, that's not out of the question).
So what do I do about it? I exercise a bare minimum of 30 minutes every single day of my life and really watch what I eat closely. Very, very closely. Every day is a balancing act: lone eggs in the morning so I can have the tiramisu at lunch, or salmon salad midday when I know the evening promises a large slice of birthday cake. I eat whatever I want -- just never all on one day.
Forget complaints about "The Evil Nanny State." I couldn't be happier about restaurants being loud and proud -- or getting that way -- about how much energy you'll get in exchange for your cash. If, as a side benefit, a few million people stop for a second to consider what they're about to shovel into their faces, well, that's just the cherry on top.
Teach kids to love learning, not just to learn how to earn
March 22, 2010
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist
Whether straining to Leave No Child Behind or Race to the Top, there's no question that this country's leadership is zeroing in on education from kindergarten through college. Most specifically, they're working on the academic gap between the haves and have-nots domestically and on the gap between the United States and other affluent countries.
The Obama administration's new blueprint for overhauling the way our nation educates children is blessedly less focused on just reading and math and more inclusive of art, science and social studies.
There's no question that the overriding concern of the new policy -- getting every state to adopt "college- and career-ready academic standards" -- reflects the White House's belief that higher education is a fundamental driver of future economic stability for this country.
That couldn't be more true, and this renewed commitment is nothing short of wonderful. But still, the former teacher in me laments, why in all this talk of training good teachers and closing student achievement gaps do I rarely hear discussion about learning for learning's sake?
What's constantly missing in this conversation is how to capitalize on the joy of learning, the celebration of a child's (and a teacher's) innate intellectual curiosity, of personal edification.
Actual learning has been replaced by an emphasis on "achievement."
If you had visited a teacher training program in the late '90s, you would have heard conversations about educational philosophies based completely on the goal of harnessing all of the above to create lifelong learners.
But by the time I stood at the front of my own classroom and was finishing up my master's in education in the early 2000s, it seemed the overriding educational goal of policymakers, administrators and not a few teachers was to create lifelong achievers. And not necessarily high achievers mind you, but kids who could sit quietly and do well enough on standardized tests to achieve adequate yearly progress.
With that hurdle jumped, the second burning goal was to get kids through high school and in and out of college for the sole purpose of moving them on to gainful employment.
Nothing wrong with that -- we all gotta eat, and I happen to love work way more than the next guy. But this does not nurture educated masses who value learning so much that they do it for a lifetime and pass it on to their own children; it creates a nation of lifelong earners, not learners.
That's weird to me. I don't think of higher education as just job training.
Let's look at the mission statements of my alma maters.
Roosevelt University, which trained me as a teacher, says it is "dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit." Its aim is to prepare "diverse graduates for responsible citizenship in a global society."
Southern Illinois University, where I was an undergraduate, says that it "supports intellectual exploration at advanced levels in traditional disciplines and in numerous specialized research undertakings" to "help solve social, economic, educational, scientific, and technological problems, and thereby to improve the well-being of" basically, the world.
Those are the kinds of aspirations that will create new jobs in the future. They'll be created by innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs who can conceive new businesses, products and services the whole world will be dying to get from the United States This innovative class will do it not only because they want to get rich, but because creating something new using what you've learned -- and learning something new in the process -- is ridiculous fun.
Applause to the White House for putting education at center stage. Now if they truly want U.S. schools from kindergarten through grad school to make it in that race to the top, they need to keep their eyes on the prize:
Coffee or Tea party? Whatever your cup, roll up your sleeves
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist
March 8, 2010
I remember my first Tea Party invitation. The "hosts" were a group of loosely federated regional anti-illegal immigration groups, the occasion was Tax Day, and the call to action was to "protest to demand the end of taxation without representation."
The particular bone of contention was Gov. Quinn's then-proposed tax increase, described thusly: "Governor Quinn says he must raise your income tax because he doesn't have enough money to pay for all the social welfare benefits demanded by the illegal alien invaders."
Fast-forward nearly a year and the Tea Partiers are going strong -- strong enough to have stumped some and horrified others. I've read big, epic pieces in several different publications alternately describing the Tea Party Movement as being one big quasi-Ku Klux Klan hate group, or the representative conglomeration of an America so fed up with our government they're ready to bear arms against it, or a young, dynamic collection of diverse individuals -- from liberal, nose-ring sporting actresses to frustrated middle-class professionals -- simply exercising their rights to free speech and peaceable assembly in support of controlling their own destinies. Pick yer favorite.
That's the thing that makes the Tea Party movement so fascinating -- and scary to some -- it isn't monolithic, it isn't easy to sort into a neat category and it isn't easy to dismiss out of hand, especially if your perfectly rational neighbor or friend can say they agree with a lot of what they stand for -- mainly an end to government's fiscal irresponsibility.
Might there be an alternative for those sick and tired of the mess that decades of waste and corruption hath wrought but who aren't anti-government?
Enter the Coffee Party movement. According to the New York Times, it is a burgeoning national movement for those hoping to work the system rather than eliminate it. Taking a quick Facebook jaunt over to the "Join Coffee Party Movement Chicago" page, I found their official mission statement: "We recognize that the Federal Government is NOT the enemy of the People, but the expression of our collective wills. As voters and volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them."
By Thursday night, they had picked up an additional 95 fans on top of the 627 present and accounted for a mere 20 hours earlier when I first checked. Not bad for a group that had been alive for about the blink of an eye.
It's still in the infancy stage, and the postings on its discussion page have, so far, ranged from micro-narratives of hustling the local coffee shop for meeting space, complaints about meetups not being near enough to home, joyous woo-hoos, suggestions for tangible goals and long tracts wondering if they've bitten off more than they can chew.
About what you'd expect from grass trying to lay down roots.
Will the Coffee Party Movement grow into the populist political force the Tea Party groups are trying to become, or will the cups-o-joe get bitter after they've been around a while? I don't care either way -- it's all good.
Though the snarky among us would say, if nothing else, that President Obama can be credited with uniting people in their hatred of him, that's too cynical for me. I'd rather look at the bright side of the discontent and frustration boiling over across almost all economic classes, in cities, suburbs and on farms, among people of all ages, races and colors -- the muscular rise of a mass of civically engaged people.
Enraged, yes -- but primarily engaged.
Coffee or Tea, both movements are engaged, passionate, energetic and willing to roll the old sleeves up and put in the time and work toward reshaping their country in a way they think will serve their self-interests -- and their country -- best.
It's a beautiful thing, this season of hot and tasty parties. So much passion, so much energy, so much desire to just "do good."
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."
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
Over the years, I've known many people whom I considered less advanced in mental, physical or social development than is usual for their age. Faced with such a person frustrating me, I never came out and called them "retarded," though that's the very definition of the term. I'm persnickety about words and, frankly, I've chosen more colorful language.
Oh, that Rahm Emanuel had done the same and relied on his panoply of "f-word" conjugations.
In case you haven't heard, President Obama's notoriously foul-mouthed chief of staff bowed to pressure and apologized to Tim Shriver, the CEO of the Special Olympics, after it came out in the Wall Street Journal that Emanuel had used the term "retard" to describe fellow Democrats who weren't playing ball on supporting a particular version of the health-care reform bill.
Next thing you know, Sarah Palin is waving around her Down syndrome baby Trig to shame one of the highest-profile actors in the Obama administration in the name of common decency toward those with developmental disabilities.
The entire indignation rests on the popular notion that other people are responsible for one's own self-esteem and is fueled by the human ability to seek insult -- and find it -- at every turn.
Don't get me wrong. If it were up to me, everyone would be perfect, and we'd all love each other and co-exist in a state of loving, utopian harmony; but that isn't the case, is it?
But let's specifically get back to developmental disabilities.
Developmental disabilities exist and are even more prevalent today than ever before because of better awareness and more diagnosis. As I earned a master's degree in special education, I got to study, teach and hang out with students living happily and unhappily with behavioral and emotional disorders, autism, cognitive and physical disabilities of every stripe in kindergarden to high school classrooms.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that among the "kids who ride the short bus," the word "retard" is used in the exact same connotation as Emanuel used it -- without regard to a specific disability, not as a slur against those with medically documentable limitations, but as a razz.
Let me be 100 percent clear: I am not saying it's OK to use the word "retard" as an insult -- it's not nice. And if special education advocates want to use this incident as a platform upon which to spread awareness of how one word damages a particular segment of the disabled population, that's great. The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, formerly the American Association of Mental Retardation, is already doing work in this area.
What I am saying is that a person -- or group of people -- can spend a lifetime looking for insult and finding it. This " 'retard' as a slur" thing is a minor kerfuffle that will now take on a life of its own not because a concerned mother feels the need to advocate for a group of people but because she wants to tear someone else down.
I guess you could say I was lucky that most of my teaching years were spent in primarily Spanish-language classrooms. It cut down on the number of times I had to hear someone use the word "retard" or its descriptive form, "retarded." But there were other slurs, there always are. In any language, in groups of any ethnic makeup or age, people say insulting things; it's human nature.
But even the kids who ride the short bus know to shrug stuff like that off. Or respond viciously with the kind of foul language that would make Emanuel's face burn. That's human nature, too.
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.
"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:
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
My favorite Martin Luther King Jr. Day memory: Each year, the spring semester at my beloved alma mater, Southern Illinois University, began on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And each year, I played out the same ritual of leaving home.
On the morning of MLK Day, I'd finish packing my tan '84 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with a healthy supply of clean laundry and junk food, kiss Mama and Papa Cepeda goodbye, and take off on a six-hour odyssey down Interstate 57 back to school in Carbondale.
As the Kankakee exits blew by on this particular MLK Day in 1993, I was in a car full of fellow simultaneously reluctant and excited back-to-schoolers. Having switched from driver to navigator, my chief duty was to kill an hour by entertaining the driver with tales from the newspaper.
I lovingly orated the full speech, reprinted in that day's Sun-Times, being sure to inhale before "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends" so that the phrase would be properly articulated. I moved gingerly through the "I have a dream" sections so as not to caricature King's iconic delivery, bit back the overwhelming desire to sing the snippet of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" he quotes, and ended the "Free at last" proclamation in a near whisper as if in prayer, given that the federal holiday was as much a commemoration of his violent death as it was a celebration of his peace-inspiring life.
The memory of reading those words aloud still gives me the chills!
That was almost 16 years to the day before the first black president would be inaugurated.
Back then, I was a marvelously innocent 18-year-old who had never even given consideration to the idea that King's national civil rights push was every bit as much for me -- a female, ethnic minority -- as for the descendents of slavery.
All those connections were yet to be made during subsequent college courses, but let's just say I got a firsthand inkling of the very real oppression blacks experienced in this country during King's time when that next summer, at a fair in a tiny town even deeper in southern Illinois, I came across my first glimpse of white supremacists.
A vendor sitting at a table next to the corn-dog shack was hawking Ku Klux Klan lapel pins, Nazi swastika ball caps and T-shirts with racist epithets too crass to repeat here. Seeing him in all his army-helmeted, skull-tattooed glory made me wonder -- in a typical fit of naivete -- if there were other people in the world who didn't like people who were not white. I'd never met any before that time, so how could I have known they actually existed outside of dusty history books?
Fast-forward to 2010, an African American is the leader of the same U.S. of A. that imported slaves to help build the country, yet first lady Michelle Obama still has to explicitly explain to people -- reacting to this latest Harry Reid racial comment dustup -- that the existence of a black president would not heal all our race-related ills. Who could have blamed us for hoping so?
It doesn't matter. King gave us 21st century advice good for a post-racial, peace-filled, poverty-cured world we haven't quite attained -- yet. Advice aimed at "black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics" that was never guaranteed to be easy or fun, but necessary:
"As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."
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."
I was flying back to Chicago from the Dominican Republic two days before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up U.S.-bound Flight 253 on Christmas Day, chuckling about how easy it would have been for some nutball to hijack my plane.
To begin with, my family and I waltzed through the last security checkpoint clad in bulky Chicago-weather-appropriate hoodies and were never asked to take off our shoes. Realizing that in the shuffle I'd forgotten to take my laptop and camera out of my carry-on bag -- and thinking I was about to get in trouble -- I informed the security person that there were electronics about to go through the machine, but he waved it off with a "no problem" and a smile
Even as I type this, I'm marveling that no one blinked about the 20-inch souvenir wooden machete that one of us took aboard the plane.
The laxity of security at that particular airport underscores a critical weakness in our air travel security system -- we must rely on other countries to hold up their end of the screening and security conundrum. Under rules established by the International Convention on Civil Aviation, each country is responsible for the safety and security oversight of its own air carriers. Although other countries can conduct certain specified surveillance activities -- principally involving the inspection of required documents and the physical condition of aircraft -- our Federal Aviation Administration is not permitted to evaluate a foreign carrier within its own sovereign state.
That's not so odd. I can't imagine that anyone here would be thrilled about some other country's designated government agents being posted at our airports to inspect U.S. aircraft bound for their countries. It is true that nobody from the United States has attempted a terrorist attack against any other country, but you see the stickiness of the issue.
Our conciliator president must approach air travel safety not solely as a domestic issue, but as one that requires even greater international cooperation.
In the days after the Christmas Day attack that thankfully never was, President Obama rightly railed about all the missed signals and unconnected dots that allowed Abdulmutallab to board an American-bound plane, calling it a "systemic failure" of our nation's intelligence apparatus. But something more is needed -- a conversation about how the entire international community can put aside political posturing and act as one to improve security.
Terror threats and the measures we take to counter those threats -- including ever greater security screening at airports -- already make air travel a punishing gauntlet for business and pleasure travelers. This can only hurt countries around the world that are still struggling to rebound from the global recession.
It galls me that our knee-jerk response to terrorist threats will be to harass millions of completely innocent, nonviolent people, from all over the world, by imposing extremely personal security checks -- even monitoring their toilet time while in the air -- rather than approach the problem with pragmatism and greater international cooperation. Governments need to work together better to share information and establish baseline safety standards.
I sure hope that if I were to go through the Dominican Republic's airport today it would be a much, much different scene: my shoes and hoodie would come off and more attention would be given to all the electronics and potential weapons in my carry-on.
But how long will it be before the predictable "day after" hyper-attention to security fades, given the daily grind of moving millions of people around the globe?
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."
What’s far scarier than the thought of Guantanamo Bay terrorist suspects cooling their heels behind maximum security bars in Thomson, Illinois?
Fear-mongered people – already stretched to the limits due to the ravages the economy has inflicted – acting out against anyone who looks like a foreigner because the TV and newspaper headlines are hyperventilating about terrorists living among us.
There is no doubt that the recent Fort Hood Massacre left the country wondering where they can feel safe from terrorism. If the young men and women who have pledged to protect the good old U-S-of-A can’t be kept from being slain in the name of Islam on a military base filled with their peers, the dark thought goes, then what level of safety can the average Joe hope for?
I won’t deny that the concern does give one pause, but honestly, I’m less scared of the possibility of an armed Islamic radical coming into my life than I am about the everyday bigots.
Take Valerie Kenney, resident of Tinley Park which was just named by BusinessWeek Magazine the "Best Place in America to Raise Kids." She is accused of yanking off a Muslim woman’s headscarf at the checkout counter of the neighborhood Jewel.
Two days after the Fort Hood shootings Kenney, 54, allegedly walked up to a woman in a hijab – who was almost certainly loading sugary all-American kiddie cereal and milk onto the conveyor belt to take home to her four young daughters – and shouted "That guy that did the Texas shooting, he wasn’t American, and he was from the Middle East." Nidal Malik Hasan was born in the U.S., in Virginia, to Palestinian parents.
Gee, I wonder how those four daughters – or the other families who have reported derogatory terrorist-related terms graffitied on their Tinley Park property – feel about Tinley being the "Best Place in America to Raise Kids."
Speaking as someone who has actually been slurred a terrorist in public – dark skin, hair and eyes makes for a great many terrorist suspects – I can tell you that the shame and humiliation of the words alone are painful enough, I can’t imagine how devastated the young woman was to be violated publicly in such a religiously-offensive way. Just think about someone ripping a shirt off a nun and you might get how serious that is.
So we were already on "high" for terror alert when the Thomson, Illinois situation reared its head. Last Saturday the White House floated the idea of holding terrorist suspects who are currently in Guantanamo Bay in rural Western Illinois. Never mind the Thomson facility is a maximum security prison and the prisoners in question would be held to military detention standards which precludes all but the essential legal or enforcement visitors. Still, the fear mongers would have us believe that – I’ll quote running-for-Senate U.S. Repesentative Mark Kirk – "If we transfer al-Quaida terrorists to Illinois, the Chicago area will receive increased attention from the jihadist world. As home to America’s tallest building and her busiest airport, this is not a risk we should impose on Illinois families."
Really? Kirk wants to run for Senate to represent all of Illinois in Washington and the best he can do to whip up votes is dissuade potential economic development for a rural area – and state –
that badly needs it is because otherwise, scary terrorists will have never heard of the Willis-formerly-Sears Tower and O’Hare?
Please! That’s crazy talk coming from someone who should just know better for all sorts of different reasons. And it puts Kirk in the same class as Valerie Kenney: frustrated, scared, and just plain wrong about credible terrorist threats to Illinois’ residents.
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 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."
We like to think we live in a free country. Sure there are taxes to pay, seat belts to click, but for the most part, you're pretty much free to do whatever tickles your fancy.
Unless you're Rush Limbaugh, that is.
If you hadn't heard, the fiery radio star was one of several investors in a group that is considering buying the St. Louis Rams football team. After a tempest in a teapot that included bystanders citing top 10 lists of Limbaugh's most racist comments, and the outrage of the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson tag team, the investor group dumped him to make a potential offer work.
Limbaugh has become a toxic asset, a way bigger liability than his good old American greenbacks are worth, a victim of his popularity among the crowd that embraces his hard right -- some say racist and sexist -- ideology.
Now that Limbaugh's detractors have proved him financially rich but too morally impoverished to buy a piece of a struggling NFC West team, they're gleeful that he'll have no part of the mostly family-friendly National Football League. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is surely relieved he dodged the "What did Limbaugh say now?!" bullet and won't have to start dreading his PR staff's calls to his cell phone.
But really, doesn't it all seem like a bit much? It is incredible to me how people despise Rush Limbaugh. You can probably find places where he's burned in effigy on Friday nights just for laughs.
You have to wonder: Why do otherwise rational people expend so much of their precious energy on hating a hater? Limbaugh has free-speech rights just like the rest of us. And if he uses those rights to talk smack about people, then there's only one good way to deal with his vitriol: just ignore it. Really, stop giving him so much power.
This goes for the Lou Dobbs' and the Glenn Becks and the Ann Coulters of the world. And if you're a conservative, it goes for your liberal archenemies such as Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann and Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas Zuniga, too -- if you don't like what they're all frothed up about, turn the channel or surf away. It's easy.
In the end, the NFL players who felt troubled about a potential Limbaugh ownership stake made their own fuss and were heard. The football league and the investor group tallied the threats and opportunities and said goodbye to Rush.
Though apparently effective, the take-away lesson from this is not that the best strategy to complain about a media personality's content is to enlist career civil rights activists to derail a financial sports transaction.
It is not -- Rush Limbaugh lives on in all his glory. This has scored him tons of publicity and he has been freshly armed with new fodder for his endless complaints about the liberal activists' hold on the mainstream media.
Now he's some sort of football investor angel martyr to his breathless fans. And exactly how does that help the people who think Limbaugh's views are hurting them or their way of life?
And yet the St. Louis Rams are still looking for a buyer with a loaded checkbook.
That's just plain silly. If Limbaugh wanted to put his cash into a football team, it should not have been derailed by those offended by the legal, First Amendment-protected methods Limbaugh uses to earn his living.
Money is money. It's all green, it's all dirty, and it all pays the bills.
Instead of stopping Limbaugh from spending his money as he pleases, his detractors should focus on finding a way to keep it from getting into his pockets to begin with.
Regular Joe and Jo-ettes don’t spend enough time thinking about how federal policy shapes their lives on a day-to-day basis. Even in good times, most people are just too busy trying to keep their heads above water and makin’ a wave when they can – and these times are far from being Dyn-o-mite.
And if you can connect those dots you might see how I could end up at a high-end conservative activist Tea Party at Chicago’s Fairmont hotel during an Executive’s Club of Chicago panel discussion on "The Impact of Washington's Decisions on the U.S. Economy."
Usually Executive’s Club events are moderate affairs – clubby, business-focused and a little tepid – but Wednesday afternoon there was fiery, anti-government passion on display. And in the audience – more than a few jaws hanging open.
For instance David Chavern, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the US Chamber of Commerce, declared that 2008 had been the slowest legislative year in decades but 2009 had immediately launched us into the most pressing core-issue debates of our time where "business is the problem and government is the solution." He went on to predict that 2010 will be "the mother of all tax years."
Chavern handed the mic off to Norman Bobins, Chairman of The Private Bank & PrivateBancorp who ripped the government’s post-Lehman Bros.-failure efforts to avert another Great Recession. "I do not believe we need more regulation or legislative oversight from Congress," he said struggling with his prepared notes. "We don’t need that level of micromanagement – too much regulation will only drive people out of the system, not make things better and it’ll lead to another meltdown."
Bobins was downright meek compared to William Doyle, fertilizer giant PotashCorp’s President & Chief Executive Officer. Doyle offered that "Washington can’t see a cornfield and has lost sight of how a truly efficient organization operates," and that "the current presidential administration is too focused on special interests to prioritize the country’s urgent needs."
The rest of the discussion – with the exception of Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson’s thoughtfully moderate comments – pretty much went on in that same "we’re not going to name names, but you know who’s screwing our way of life" fashion.
It was suggested that the 2009 economic stimulus plans were not successful because they didn’t drive retail sales as well as the previous administration’s tax rebates had. The proposed Waxman-Markey climate change legislation was panned. China was lauded for investing 80% of their economic stimulus on infrastructure in contrast to the 80% the U.S. spent on "social welfare" programs. Downfall via devilish details and economic demise from inflation was predicted.
After about 20 minutes, people got up and started leaving in droves – both because the hour had grown late and because the angry froth was starting to wear on those in the crowd who generally don’t consider unemployment benefits for peons who aren’t still making seven-figure salaries "social welfare."
My take-away: if these are the type of business people at the top who think they’re going to lead "the American people" out of the gloom and into economic prosperity, I’m afraid us Regular Joe and Jo-ettes are screwed.
It’s not that there wasn’t truth in some of their complaints. It’s not that you don’t go to a business networking event expecting to hear captains of industry defend their turf at the expense of federal leadership that’s been at the helm for all of seven and a half months.
It’s that to say there was no hope on the stage is a tremendous understatement.
"This administration" needs to realize that no matter how hard it tries to be conciliatory, collaborative, and responsive to the needs of some parts of the business community, a lot of big businesses are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.
None of them really talked about profits or share. No one talked about people in any sense – not as employees, or as consumers, or even as shareholders – it was just whining and finger-pointing about all that’s wrong with, only our current fiscal, economic, and monetary policy and the political leadership helming it. No innovative suggestions for how to "right this ship."
These are the doldrums, Joe and Jo-ette, and it’s simply no wonder why you don’t give a rat’s ass about Washington D.C.’s impact on the U.S. – or Chicago – economy. Even the people who do care don’t have you in mind.
If three representatives comprise any sort of worthwhile sample at all, then what we can glean is that Big Business is not as interested in making big plans or big money with big ideas as they are in blaming Washington D.C. for all that ultimately ails you.
Ain’t we lucky we got ‘em?
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
I have a three-parter for you: first my FOX business channel interview about today's announcement, which aired at 3:40 pm CST. Then the White House's official announcement, and if you keep scrolling, the White House Q & A.
Following Posted at 7:38am Sept 28, 2009
I just got the official word from the White House, folks, President Obama will be travelling to Copenhagen. Here’s the release from the White House, sent out at 7:18am this morning:
President Barack Obama to Travel to Copenhagen
President will join the First Lady to Support Chicago’s Bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games
WASHINGTON – Today, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games at the 121st International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session. On Friday, October 2nd, IOC members will elect the host city for the 2016 Summer Games.
President Obama will join First Lady Michelle Obama, who will be leading the United States delegation to Copenhagen. Mrs. Obama will arrive in Copenhagen on Wednesday, September 30, along with Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and head of the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport.
President Obama will depart Washington on the evening of Thursday, October 1 and arrive in Copenhagen on the morning of October 2 local time, just prior to Chicago’s presentation to the voting members of the IOC. He will arrive back in Washington on Friday afternoon.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will both make presentations to the IOC during Friday’s session. They will discuss why Chicago is best to host the 2016 Summer Games, and how the United States is eager to bring the world together to celebrate the ideals of the Olympic movement.
While in Denmark, the President and First Lady will meet with Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort. President Obama will also meet with Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
What does it mean in layman’s terms? The President is coming in to seal the deal after national attention was put on whether this squeaker of a contest would be lost because the U.S. rock star president didn’t show up to schmooze ala Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin.
As late as Sunday night, aroundtherings.com was scoring the U.S. bid at an 82 – one point behind Rio but this political calculus might be changed now that the President’s presence is official.
UPDATE: (Here are portions from today's briefing specifically referencing today's announcement)
September 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm EST
PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
Q Thanks, Robert. Why does the President think a trip to Copenhagen is going to make that much difference? And what does he hope his appearance there will help?
MR. GIBBS: Well, obviously, I think he hopes that he can make a strong case for Chicago and America's bid for the Olympics in 2016. Obviously any Olympics showcases the country that those Olympics are in and there's a tangible economic benefit to those Games being here. And the President wants to help out America's bid.
Q Did he get a hint that an appearance would help America's bid?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I certainly hope that an appearance wouldn't hurt it. But we have gotten no intelligence on it.
Q Robert, what can you tell us about the lobbying effort behind the scenes that the President has already started with the IOC?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I don't know that it's much behind the scenes if you're asking me about it. I think it's -- obviously the President has mentioned this in meetings when we were at the U.N. and at the G20. He's going to continue to talk to people, including in person in Copenhagen, in an effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to the United States.
Q What's his best pitch? What is he telling them?
MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I think, having spent some time in Chicago, I think it is a -- it's a perfect place to hold the Olympics. It is -- it offers a great place for the world to see. It offers all the amenities that one would want in the Olympics. And I think, far and away, it's the strongest bid of the four that are out there.
Q What if he goes and he doesn't get it?
MR. GIBBS: Well, we'll -- you can call Tommy on Saturday -- (laughter.)
Q The President said, I would make the case in Copenhagen-hagen personally if I weren't so firmly committed to making real the promise of quality affordable health care for every American. He sounded pretty clear that 12 days ago he was not going to go. What changed in the meantime? Is it health care that changed? Does it look like it's in better shape, or is it that this is in worse shape?
MR. GIBBS: I think the President believes health care is in better shape. I believe he felt strongly and personally that he should go and make the case for the United States, and that's what he's going to do.
Q And he's not worried about health care, as he seemed to be just 12 days ago, suffering if he went?
MR. GIBBS: I think he believes he can do this and get back in time.
Q Right. I wanted to ask, you know, when you look at the sort of picture here, you have a planeload of, you know, top level officials, the President himself, Mrs. Obama. The risks are obviously huge if he doesn't bring home the Games for Chicago --
MR. GIBBS: Call Tommy. (Laughter.)
Q But to what degree --
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate getting into what happens on Saturday, but I don't even know what I'm going to have for dinner tonight.
Q I understand. Okay, let's go forward then. So what degree is this pre-cooked in any way? Are there any assurances, anything --
MR. GIBBS: I think I looked back and addressed this not long ago.
Q It just seems you folks are too savvy to do this with it being totally up in the air.
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate that. Thank you. (Laughter.)
Q Is the Chicago Host Committee paying any of the costs for President Obama or Mrs. Obama to go to Copenhagen?
MR. GIBBS: I can check but I don't know the answer to that. I assume this is being handled as all presidential travel would be.
Q Are you saying that the reason that he wasn't going to go to Copenhagen and now is, is that health care is in better shape?
MR. GIBBS: Well, no, I don't -- as I understand it, Chip asked me, that was one of the reasons that the President stated --
Q It was the reason.
MR. GIBBS: -- and that while I believe that health care is in a better place, and I think he believes health care is in a better place, he also believes it's important for him to go and personally try to persuade the International Olympic Committee to pick the United States in 2016.
Q I'm just trying to close the logic loop here. (Laughter.) So did anything else change --
MR. GIBBS: I thought I did with Chip, but go ahead.
Q Okay. But did any -- so, are you -- so it's okay for us to infer, then, even though you're not going to say that's the difference between last week and this week?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I acknowledged to Major that -- and I acknowledged to Chip and I think to at least one other -- that I thought health care was -- so we can -- I'll go on background as a senior administration official -- (laughter) -- with intimate knowledge of the press secretary's thinking and say, yes, we think health care is in a better place.
Q And how does he see going to Copenhagen as part of his core mission as President?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think everybody is proud of the Olympics. I think everybody is proud of the Olympics when they're in their country. It provides a wonderful opportunity to showcase the United States. It's, as I said earlier, a big economic benefit. Surely it's within the purview of the President to root for America, but maybe I'm wrong.
Q Yes, but is there a fear that the delegation that was going was not going to be on par with the heads of state from the other countries going?
MR. GIBBS: No, I've said this many times in the past five years, and I think the President would agree that Michelle and Michelle alone is a powerful presence and will be a powerful voice for the Olympics coming to America. The President simply wanted to lend his voice, too.
Q Then why do you need Oprah going, too? (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Ask the Olympic Committee. (Laughter.)
Q This is all about Tommy. (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Right, Tommy on Saturday. (Laughter.)
Q The First Family's Chicago ties, are they a factor in the decision to have both the First Lady and the President make this trip? And is there a feeling in the administration that it's a proper role for them to make this pitch than, for example, if it had been another city where they didn't have the same kind of long-standing ties?
MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I don't think that there's any doubt that the President is enormously proud of Chicago and would be enormously proud of the city hosting the bid. I think it's somewhat silly if it had been Los Angeles, I think the notion that the President would have done less because it was a different U.S. city just doesn't hold water.
Q But, I mean, I'm just saying did they have, by virtue of being from Chicago do you think that they have maybe a special message that they can carry?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think there's no doubt. I think you'll hear directly from both the First Lady and the President about what they think the Olympic Games mean and how Chicago hosting those Games fits with what we all believe the Olympics mean.
Q On Copenhagen, is this more official or personal for the President, this trip?
MR. GIBBS: This is official, as the President of the United States representing the bid of the United States to host the 2016 Olympics.
Q So is it more about the United States versus Chicago?
MR. GIBBS: Yes, it's about the American bid which is Chicago.
Q Chicago doesn't have a great record, especially recently, of spending public money. Is the President convinced that there are safeguards in place to make sure that money that goes to the Olympic bid will not be misspent? I mean, the City Council, for instance, has a pretty big oversight role in the way it's been --
MR. GIBBS: And I think obviously the onus is on the city to ensure that whatever money is used is spent wisely and efficiently. The President is going to make the case for the American host city -- for the American city of Chicago, which is the bid that this country put forward -- is going to go advocate in front of the International Olympic Committee for that bid.
Q I just want to make sure, he's sure that the city is up to that task?
MR. GIBBS: Not only is he, but as is the U.S. Olympic Committee that picked Chicago over other cities.
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
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 26thand 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
There really shouldn’t be much suspense here – I heard the man say it plain-as-day during Wednesday’s White House rah-rah for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid: "I would make the case in Copenhagen personally, if I weren't so firmly committed to making -- making real the promise of quality, affordable health care for every American." President Obama said. "But the good news is I'm sending a more compelling superstar to represent the city and country we love, and that is our First Lady, Michelle Obama."
"I promise you, we are fired up about this," he said, making it obvious that he needed to make that particular point crystal clear to his audience.
The guy has several no-win situations:
A) He’s a deadbeat for ignoring health care reform and the war in Afghanistan to go schmooze the International Olympic Committee on vote day, October 2, in Copenhagen if Chicago gets it.
B) If instead the bid goes elsewhere, Obama looks like a total loser if he went through all the trouble of going there to kiss the Olympic committee’s ring for naught.
C) He looks bad if he doesn’t go "represent" his fellow Chicagoans and his absence is blamed for a loss.
The only way he looks good is if Chicago gets it without him there, which is not likely according to at least one guy who oughta know, but I’ll come back to that.
I spent almost three full days this week immersed in the minutiae of the 2016 proposal during DePaul University’s 2016 Olympics Specialized Reporting Institute and picked up a bunch of interesting tidbits I’ll just list for your reading enjoyment:
· Charlie Besser, a sport television media specialist, estimates that a U.S. 2016 Olympic games would bring in $400- $500 million more U.S. dollars in sponsorship revenue than a Rio, Madrid or Tokyo games. He said that if you aggregated media rights revenues from all of Europe, it would come out to be about a third of the estimated $2-billion-plus the U.S. summer-winter package would bring in - and he made it clear the IOC knows this.
· Misty Johanson, a Hospitality Leadership professor who was immersed in Atlanta’s 1996 summer games, said their games revitalized downtown Atlanta and had an estimated $5 billion economic impact from over 2 million visitors during the Olympic and Paralympic games. Give the lady her honesty points: she was clear that people were displaced in the process and that all these years later, there are lingering issues over the loss of a key housing project.
· I’ll credit this quote to Rita Athas, the executive director of World Business Chicago, though nearly every expert who addressed the press corps during the conference said exactly the same thing: "No summer games in the United States has ever lost money." Sure, breaking even is a far cry from the $22.5 billion she said the bid expects to bring to Chicago, but still.
· Over at Washington Park, home to the proposed Olympic Stadium, a Bid representative said that although opponents are complaining about the crowds, even the largest estimated number of people clogging the area during the games wouldn’t compare to the number of kiddies, bands, and grannies that choke the place up every year during the annual Bud Billiken Parade.
· Also over in Washington Park, Cecilia Butler, an outspoken neighborhood activist, responded thusly when I told her about all the people who contact me daily to say how pathetic the 2016 Olympics committee’s outreach has been and how dearly they want Chicago to lose the bid: "We’ve had close to 50 meetings here, this has been in the minds of people for a long time. The very fact that we’re here talking is a good thing." Butler said, "And a lot of those people who are against this – they’ve never lived here."
Some thoughts from Richard Pound, a voting member of the International Olympic Committee:
· "One of the problems Chicago has is that not as many [evaluation committee members] have been to Chicago as have been to Madrid, Rio, or Tokyo."
· "Who wins is not necessarily based on which is the best bid, but which has the least risk associated and you don’t want to make a mistake."
· "I don’t think the International Olympic Committee pays attention to opinion polls they figure if the city gets the bid, public opinion will come around. I think that’s a very minor part of it – besides, if you had 98% of the people in Chicago in favor of it, I’d be really worried."
· "It’s very hard to tell [who the favorite is], if you’re in my position you kind of follow the media. There’s not the slightest doubt that Tokyo would put on a good games, that Madrid would build on Barcelona…no one has any doubts Chicago can organize a games. To say they’re all good – that’s a waste of time."
Now, getting back to this Obama business…nearly every single expert was asked about the Obama Factor. And all of them said that hands-down, the President not showing up would certainly not bode well for the bid and his presence could make the big difference.
Mayor Daley had, earlier in the week, said he had a "glimmer of hope" that the President would change his mind and be in Copenhagen for the big day, but chose not to press the President on the South Lawn of the White House Wednesday. He instead expressed gratitude that First Lady Michelle Obama is going.
That’s gotta hurt, but don’t count Obama out yet…those who know him say hope is still alive.
"I’ve been following Obama since he went to Springfield, I know him pretty well, and I think he’s going to go," long time political reporting star Andy Shaw, now Executive Director of the Better Government Association, told us during a breakout session. "He’s going to carry the day – he does some things on gut, he believes in giving things his best shot."
Richard Pound, who himself will be casting a vote, said it loud and clear: "I think it’s pretty important for the President to go to Copenhagen for the vote, if he doesn’t, you’re not maximizing the chances of winning. If you can twist the Presidential arm to go…it could make a huge difference."
If Obama shows up in Copenhagen in October, I don’t think anyone will have to wonder who did the twisting.
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
Not on Twitter? Who can blame you, I’m sick and tired of hearing about it too, but, it’s soooo cool.
For instance, I was privileged to be one of a few journalists selected to attend DePaul University’s College of Communications 2016 Olympics Specialized Reporting Institute (which was generously supported by the McCormick Foundation) from Sunday September 13 to Tuesday September 15.
We had full access to elite Olympians, internationally-recognized Olympics experts, and even a voting member of the International Olympic Committee. (Read the column I wrote about it HERE)
If you had been following me on Twitter @ejc600words , you would have seen tidbits – quotes, pictures, and video – from the conference posted in real time. Those of you who keep up with me on www.600words.com could have seen the updates scrolling up the left hand side of the screen, also in real time.
Even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can check out my Twitter stream at http://www.twitter.com/ejc600words and click on anything you like without even having to join.
But if you’re like Mama Cepeda – who will follow me on Twitter when hell freezes over – I understand, so here’s my Twitter stream for you.
Read from the bottom up (or just know that the whole thing is in backwards chronological order) and don’t forget to click on the photos and videos, they’re fun!
Enjoy!
RT @Brooke22, after hearing IOC's Pound talk about voting process last night I'm less confident but it is 100% up in the air2:01 PM Sep 15th from web
If we don't get the Olympics? Lori Healy says:"The answer to that question is that we're focused only on 2016, it is the right place/time."9:44 AM Sep 15th from TwitterBerry
IOC’s Pound says no one's worried about who will be Chicago's mayor in 2016, "[Daley]'s the mayor now, that's really all that matters".7:13 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
IOC's Pound says IOC not paying attention to local opinion polls of community support. "A very minor part of it."7:10 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
"I think pretty important" for pres Obama to go to Copenhagen for deciding bid...if not, not maximizing chances of winning" says IOC Pound7:05 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
IOC's Dick Pound says picking: "not necessarily which city is the BEST, but which has the least risk? You don't want to make a mistake."6:40 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Richard Pound, voting member of the Int'l Olympic Comm. tonight, Lori Healy tomorrow am, then documentarian Ken Burns after lunch whew!4:25 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
The answer to #1 question is "no development east of Lake Shore Drive" because they are protected parklands says a 2016 rep.2:12 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
2016 will require development contracts to be awarded 30% for minority/disadvantaged and 10% women - higher than City of Chgo requires1:01 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Redevelopment RFPs have already been written for M. Reese site: 1 for if we get games and 1 for if we don't12:59 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
One 2016 representative says the Michael Reese facility will very definitely been demolished if Chgo gets the games (as planned)12:54 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Jimmy DeCastro is sitting across the table from me telling me he has the inside scoop - says we're definitely getting the 2016 Olympics8:43 AM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
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 were you one year ago today, on that mild Sunday when the world seemed to go off its axis? Seems like a long, long time ago, doesn't it?
Had you heard the breathless news about some East Coast fancy pants finance house called Lehman Brothers filing the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the United States -- to the crazy Monopoly money tune of $639 billion?
Though two weeks earlier, the federal government had taken over mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- putting about 5 trillion bucks worth of debt onto U.S. taxpayers -- most people hadn't really turned away from the historic presidential race and Madonna's 50th birthday long enough to realize that Wall Street was swirling into the toilet and Main Street was getting sucked down with it.
Giants -- AIG, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Countrywide, Bear Stearns -- toppled one after the other like dominoes. The stock market tanked, with the Dow losing a cool 777.7, posting its largest one-day point drop in history -- whoosh!
Then came panic and fear: People scanned the high-rises for suits throwing themselves out of windows to end it all (horribly, some did). Books on the Great Depression were dusted off. Any sort of financial catastrophe seemed entirely possible.
Companies slashed jobs to the bone marrow, houses stopped selling, workers were out on the streets and the Feds talked about trillion-dollar bailout packages. For a while there, it seemed like we'd never see the sun again.
Fast-forward a year:
Last week, Christy Romer of the President's Council of Economic Advisers presented the first official quarterly report on the street-level impact of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 and pretty much declared it a success: "1.1 million jobs were added in the 3rd quarter as result of the Recovery Act," Romer chirped on a conference call with reporters.
Twenty-one thousand Oprah fans swarmed the Magnificent Mile to worship her and stimulate the economy along the way. Steve Jobs wooed us all with the new iPod, complete with video camera and radio tuner. Electronics retailers licked their chops about sales of the new Beatles video game.
Are we all better?
"One year ago, there was a real moment of panic, but we realized it was not the end of the world," Adolfo Laurenti, deputy chief economist and managing director of Mesirow Financial, told me. "You see people still buying homes and cars, and going shopping. Maybe not as much as before -- there's more a sense of people knowing they need to have some real money in their pocket before they spend it -- but where they may no longer be buying a McMansion or a gas-guzzling SUV, they're also not walking away from the latest iPhone."
That's certainly the case for some. For others, the worst is yet to come. The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 9.7 percent last month, the highest since 1983.
"Nationally, there's talk of the green shoots of an economic recovery, but we know that in a three-year cycle, the pain of 2009 will prove to have been the easiest," said Terry Mazany, president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Community Trust, which tracks the city's vital signs -- unemployment, food stamp demand, foreclosure rates. "While some of us can indulge in Oprah-mania and think the worst is behind us, really, with state budget cuts that are closing health and human services and shedding workers, and the accumulated impact of it all, we're still in danger of experiencing a lost decade like Japan's in the '90s."
As the entire country works through a return to a "new normal," Mazany suggested, nobody should be dazzled by news stories trumpeting the return of consumption. Rather, he said, we should develop a mind-set of contribution -- to sustain those still very much in danger of a catastrophic financial collapse.
Good advice . . . if only those of us who have been lucky so far can remember those dark, dark days, oh so long ago.
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
Parents: Stay on top of your kids as school begins
ESTHER J. CEPEDA
September 7, 2009
Mama Cepeda likes to tell the story of my first day of school. There she was: a tearful heap of insecurity, worried about the consequences of unleashing me onto an unsuspecting world. And me? As the legend goes, I tore away from her so eager to burst into my classroom that I barely turned to half-heartedly wave goodbye.
Yep, the first day of school is really tough . . . on parents.
And tomorrow -- the first day of classes in the Chicago Public Schools -- is the big one for moms, dads, aunties and grandmas all over the city. It's the culmination of about a month's worth of whining about earlier bedtimes, battles about what clothes to buy and mad scrambles to get every item on a seemingly endless list of school supplies.
And that's the easy stuff.
For too many parents, it's tough enough to actually pay for all those school supplies and tangle with red tape to ensure their school's free lunch program has the paperwork necessary to get little Tanesa or little Eduardo fed every day. Then there are legitimate fears about whether their child will get grazed by gun violence at school or whether the H1N1 flu virus will strike, sending tenuous family schedules into the tizzy of finding adequate medical and child care.
When I was a teacher, it was never lost on me how that first week of school -- with its inevitable missed school bus connections, forgotten snacks and surprise missing textbook fees from the previous year -- caused more sleep-depriving angst for families than for kids.
Take heart, parents. It isn't always easy to be the beacon of positivity on the night before the dreaded first day of school, but it's a task well worth the effort. Here are some words of wisdom from folks in the trenches, so you can start the new year off right.
"Keep positive so they won't be that nervous," advised Esthela Jacquez, a second-grade teacher at Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez Elementary School in Little Village. "Talk to your kids and let them know everything's going to be OK."
Jacquez said the key is to maintain close contact with the teacher, no matter how busy or how many jobs you're juggling.
"Meeting your child's teacher is critical," she said. "Come out to open houses, and if you can't, call us and we'll do whatever it takes to meet you when you can talk. We have phones, e-mail, and we'll send notes back and forth."
The early grades are a bit different than high school -- the little ones are usually so eager to return. The upper grades are trickier -- what with the hormones, cliques, temperaments and hectic family lives that aren't conducive to sitting together at the kitchen table until all homework is done.
"Don't let them slip down a slippery slope -- it's easier to keep up than to catch up," said John Stowers, a business teacher at Mundelein High School.
Stowers, who teaches college preparedness classes, warned parents to be ultra vigilant.
"Do not let kids fall into a missed homework hole," he said. "Be on top of them from the very first day, don't let them take it easy those first weeks or they'll have to work twice as hard at digging out right off the bat."
Finally, for a benediction for all parents struggling with this back-to-school season, I called upon the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina on the South Side to put it all into perspective.
"Show all the students in your life how important this new school year is to you," Pfleger said. "Just as you mark physical growth in a doorway, a new academic year is an important mark of another step in the road on the journey of life."
There is nothing wrong with making money. Lots of money. Crazy money.
Take computer products maker HP’s CEO, Mark V. Hurd. His total compensation last year was $42.5 million, after a three-year package that paid out last year, according to BusinessWeek magazine’s story "CEO Pay: Is it Still Out of Sync?"
That same piece started off thusly: "It has been a tough year for the American worker, with unemployment hovering near 10% and cuts in pay or benefits for many of those who still have their jobs" before it told how total compensation for the average CEO at an S&P 500 company declined last year by 7.5%, or $700,000. Yes, none of us will shed a tear over that one.
Let me be clear that I’m not talking about bailout cash for the CEO clunkers who led the big financial firms and then us into the Great Recession – that’s a whole other ball of wax – I’m talking strictly about professionals who do big jobs, like the executive officers of business organizations.
They make a lot of money for doing a lot of hard work. And if you had that kind of responsibility – and the talent or education, leadership, and charisma to do it, and do it well – you could make that kind of money, too. I certainly intend to – all dynamic and ambitious business men and women want to make big, sinful gobs money, and you wouldn’t want to hire one who didn’t.
Yesterday, ace City Hall reporter
Fran Spielman wrote a news storyabout the pay of the people running the Olympics Bid – a team you’d want to assemble hungry super-stars to run, IF you wanted to win the bid, that is.
Spielman noted that Lori Healey, the bid’s president, makes $250,000 a year. And "Chief Bid Officer John Murray ($250,000); Doug Arnot, venue and operations ($250,000); Chief Financial Officer Rick Ludwig ($200,000); and Chief Governance Officer Kevann Cooke ($200,000). Others are Valerie Waller, marketing and communications ($190,000); Cassandra Francis, Olympic Village planning ($175,000); international relations specialist Deb Fiddelke ($150,000) and Patricia Rios, administration ($135,000)."
Folks, I’ve got news for you: by the measure of mid-to-large size corporations, these are not fantastic salaries.
Oh sure, they would be for you and me, but last time I checked, we don’t know how to run the critical operations of a multi-billion dollar international enterprise.
So why is Mayor Daley breaking bad on his boy Pat Ryan’s Chicago Olympic 2016 Bid team’s salaries?
On Tuesday, Mayor Daley was quotedas saying "Some [bid employee salaries] are unacceptable. You know that. But like anything else, they were put together with private money. They compete [with] the private sector."
Unacceptable? C’mon. The Olympics is a business, and you need good, expensive business people to run it if you want them run right because in business, you get what you pay for.
Well, yeah, if you’re Da Mayer you can get along with a paltry $215,950in exchange for having all the clout in the world, but the rest of us mortgage our entire existences on life-long student loans and hope for the best.
It’s not like complaining about salary inequities is anything new under the sun – just for the record an eighth-year CPS teacher makes about 60 to 80 grand, compared to the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano who makes $18,750,000 on his eight years of MLB experience –but that’s beside my point.
For a guy who would, by my reckoning, chop off his own left arm to land the 2016 Olympics, – "I just want to win. . . . This is very important in regards to jobs, economic development. This has a lot of vision in it," Daley said, according to Spielman’s story – it seems bad form to complain about the pay of the privately financed people who are toiling to make it happen.
I’m not weighing in on whether the Olympics are or are not "good for Chicago," but by my account, if we’re in this thing – and in it to win – Da Mayer out to just be grateful there’s a professional team in place willing to work for pennies on the corporate dollar to bring the bid home.
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
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.
