*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Subject: Board of Education Meeting Tuesday, March 24, 2009
From: Bonnie Weinstein
To: Richard Becker
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:22:11 AM
There was some confusion about the Board of Education meeting this evening. When I called to put names on the speaker's list, I was asked what issue I wanted to address. I said, JROTC.
The first two times I called on Monday, March 23, I called the number listed on the Board of Ed website, 415-241-6427, and got an answering machine. I left the message that Carole Seligman, Millie Phillips, Jon Previtali and Bonnie Weinstein would like to be on the speaker's list for that topic. I left two messages on Monday, March 23 and called another number, 415-241-6493 and spoke to a real person on Tuesday, March 24, the day of the meeting. I said I had left a message about getting on the speakers list to speak against JROTC. The woman asked our names and what topic we wished to speak on again, and I told her, JROTC. She said she, indeed, did get our message, and that we were on the speakers list.
However when we got to the meeting we realized--after about three hours--that we would only have a total of five minutes for speakers in favor and five minutes against the reinstatement of JROTC in our schools. We conferred (actually we were told by Riva) that the time should go to the students and Marko; and we thought that was the best thing and agreed. We did not get up to speak even though we had, of course, prepared our one-minute statements against reinstating JROTC in the San Francisco public schools.
So, the pro-JROTC forces had the first five minutes. Then the anti-war, anti-JROTC forces had their five minutes. All five of those minutes were taken up by the students that Marko brought to the meeting and they were great!!!
Jon Previtali had important information about the JROTC summer camps and their claim to be a great recruiting tool for the military and he had prepared copies of the articles and documentation that he wanted to distribute to the board members.
He soon found out the procedure for this is to make copies for each Board member and present them when you are at the microphone. So Jon stood in line behind Marko and the students to present the documents to the Board members. He had already tried to submit the material under every topic presented to the Board. So he tried again.
First, we should have been notified by the Board that there would be no open discussion on this matter because it was a "first reading" of the motion to reinstate JROTC. We should have been informed that there would only be a TOTAL of five minutes for each side of the debate BUT WE WERE NOT TOLD THIS AHEAD OF TIME BY ANYONE!!!!
Even the pro-JROTC forces were outraged by this; and the head of the NAACP in SF, speaking FOR JROTC, berated the Board of Education for not allowing BOTH sides the respect of hearing them out after waiting three hours to speak. He was outraged that these kids had to wait that long and then be prevented from speaking; and he made a point of saying that the opposition to JROTC should have been given the same respect from the Board of Education, which was principled, anyway.
We should be united in the demand that all voices be heard on this urgent issue!
There should be a Town Hall Meeting about this highly controversial issue and the members of the San Francisco Board of Education should be obligated to attend and listen intently until we are all finished speaking. We have certainly listened enough to them!!!!!
We need solidarity! Unity! Brotherhood! And, above all, kindness toward one another. We only have this one planet to share!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
WHAT FUTURE FOR PALESTINE AFTER GAZA 2009?
An evening with Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada
Wednesday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way, Berkeley
Ali Abunimah publishes news and riveting analysis about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the Electronic Intifada, which he co-founded. Author of the book "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," he is a frequent speaker and commentator, and contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets Or local bookstores*: Black Oak, Diesel, Pegasus/Shattuck, Pegasus/Solano, Walden Pond. *Bookstores have $15 tickets only. Benefit for MECA, no one turned away for lack of funds.
For info: events@mecaforpeace.org, 510-548-0542
Wheelchair accessible and ASL interpreted
Tickets $15 general, $10 for students/low-income
Ali Abunimah is one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on Palestine.
DON'T MISS HIM!
Ali will also be speaking in Palo Alto, Tuesday, March 24th 2009 7:30pm
Fellowship Hall, First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper Street
Contact: Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
SAVE THE DATE: May 20 in Berkeley-Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian on "Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians"
Barbara Lubin
Middle East Children's Alliance
email: meca@mecaforpeace.org
phone: 510-548-0542
web: http://www.mecaforpeace.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
URGENT BAY AREA ANTIWAR NEWS:
POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS!
POLICE BRUTALITY against 15 Arab American youth at San Francisco demonstration, called to protest the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.
Details about their arrests:
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
March 21, 2009
What started off as a peaceful demonstration on March 21st, 2009 ended in severe police brutality and arrests of innocent young Arab Americans in the streets of San Francisco. Young Arab Americans turned out in record numbers this year compared to the last 6 years of demonstrations against the war on Iraq. They marched along with the International League of People’s Struggles Contingent at the end of the demonstration and filled in the civic center. When an 8 year old Arab boy was grabbed by San Francisco police for allegedly carrying rocks in his backpack, young members of the Arab community intervened by first attempting to speak with police and retrieve the boy. After the police expressed an immense distaste for negotiating or discussing anything with the Arab American teenagers, a young Palestinian woman wrapped her arms around the boy to console him as he cried and to protect him from being taken by police.
The police agreed to allow the boy to go and the young woman and boy walked down the street. As I stared at the police, the young woman and the boy to ensure their security, I then saw a team of officers snatch the boy out of the young woman’s arms dropping her and another young woman immediately to the floor using batons and excessive force. As the crowd of young Arab Americans stared on an immediate sense of shock and urgency emerged in which members of the crowd tried to cross the barrier to pick up the two women off the floor and protect the young screaming child. As I ran in shock toward the child a police officer slammed the barrier with his baton about an inch away from my elbow. I then stared shocked and put my hands up as he jammed his baton across my mid section dropping me to the ground. From the ground I looked up only to find another officer slamming his baton onto the the previously broken arm of an Arab American boy. The Police were swinging batons excessively knocking down only who appeared to be of Arab descent to the ground. About ten Arab American youth were brutally attacked by police as they screamed ìback upî while they surrounded the crowd of activist by a mob of officers turning the screaming, angry and fearful crowd into an enclave of police brutality. The police officers pushed the barriers hard and fast jamming them into the stomachs of the youth at the front lines. Police arrested three and about an hour later sealed the entrances of the Civic Center Bart Station detaining six young Arab American men lining them up against a wall and later arresting them. Several youth went home injured or to the hospital in ambulances.
The Arab American community in the Bay Area is deeply saddened by this incident and is steadfast on holding those ac countable for police brutality against innocent civilians. However before we can embark on this pursuit of justice, it is our responsibility to protect the civil rights of our youth and make them feel supported and understand the value of community power. The youth are in jail right now and we need to post $250,000 to release them. The money will be put up as a bond so can therefore be returned to you. We are asking for every Arab American in the San Francisco Bay Area community to contribute at least what they would for their own children. As we chanted in the demonstration today "aint no power like the power of the youth because of the power of the youth don't stop." We are asking for you to believe in your community and support our youth in a much needed time. To loan these youth some money please contact Tev at 774-240-3403. We are trying to release them from jail this evening or tomorrow at the latest.
Note: The money given is a LOAN and will be returned after the people involved go to their scheduled court date.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Loubna Qutami
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Seeking Eyewitnesses & Video of Mar. 21 SFPD Attack;
Demand Release of Those Arrested
San Francisco police arrested 10 people and assaulted many more during and after a permitted March 21 rally in the Civic Center marking the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Dozens of people suffered bruises, cuts and other injuries in unprovoked attacks. The police particularly focused their attack on young Palestinians and other Arab Americans. As of this writing, eight of those arrested remain in jail, all but one facing felony charges, their average bail is set at $50,000. One of the women arrested remains hospitalized for a head injury inflicted by an SFPD officer. The ANSWER Coalition, which was one of the central organizers of the March 21 march and rally is calling upon everyone to take action. What follows are: 1) An appeal for anyone who has eyewitness testimony and/or video to call the National Lawyers Guild Hotline; and 2) An appeal from Arab American community organizations to make calls to the offices of the Mayor, District Attorney and SFPD demanding that charges against all those arrested at the March 21st rally be dropped and that they be immediately released.
Legal Update from the National Lawyers Guild on Mar. 21 Anti-War March in S.F.
There was a large amount of police violence at yesterday's anti-war rally and march. The SFPD arrested ten people. Five are being held on felony Lynching and Resisting charges after a skirmish with police in the Civic Center. Their bails are $53,000 each. At least one woman reportedly suffered a head injury during the arrests. During the same incident SFPD also reportedly seriously injured two women who were not arrested but were hospitalized with numerous injures including reports of head trauma and multiple broken bones. Another five people were arrested in the BART station as the rally was ending after an incident involving pepper spray. Police arrested five Arab youths who were reportedly the victims of the pepper spraying. Two of them who were under eighteen were released to their parents; the other three are being held on Battery and Conspiracy charges also with bails of $53,000 each.
The NLG and legal volunteers are keeping track of evidence concerning these arrests. If you witnessed the incidents or know anyone who did, please have them call the legal support hotline at 415-285-1011.
The NLG will also be looking for lawyers to help with arraignments anticipated for next week.
Immediate Action Alert from Arab American Community
You can use the following to call or email city officials about the March 21st arrests:
Hi my name is____________________________.
I am calling about the arrests of:
Mustafa Albouyha
Majdi Abu Hamdieh
Elizabeth Haskell
Mohammed Ibrahim
Nadeen Elshorafa
These individuals were wrongfully arrested while participating in a legal, peaceful march yesterday. We are demanding that the charges be dropped immediately and that they be released to their families.
Make your call immediately to all of the following:
SFPD Public Affairs
(415) 553-1651 (ph)
(415) 553-9229 (fax)
sfpd.online@sfgov.org
SF District Attorney
Bureau of Investigation: (415) 553-1030
Public Inquiries:
Erica Terry Derryck (415) 553-1167
Connie Chang (415) 553-9108
Mayor Gavin Newsom
(415) 554-6141
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
If you find out any update about these arrests during your calls, please let us know by calling (510) 534-7933.
Additional calls for action are to follow.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Celebrate the release of the new book by Mumia Abu-Jamal:
"Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the USA"
Friday, April 24th (Mumia's birthday!), 6:30 P.M.
Humanist Hall
411 - 28th Street, Oakland
$25.00 donation or what you can afford.
Featuring:
Angely Y. Davis
Mistah F.A.B.
Lynne Stewart
Tory Serra
Avotcja
Kiilu Nyasha
JR Minister of Information POCC
Ed Mead
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
Molotov Mouths
Prison Radio, 415-648-4505
www.prisonradio.org
www.mumia.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Donate to Courage to Resist
A message from Army Spc. Agustín Aguayo,
Iraq War veteran and war resister
Since the day I surrendered to military custody after refusing to return to Iraq, Courage to Resist has been there for me and my family as a constant fountain of support. This support has come in many forms, from a friendly call, to organizing a campaign to cover my legal expenses and basic needs. I believe only an organization with altruistic motives that truly cares would have done this. As someone who has felt the enormous relief of having a strong support group behind me, it is a privilege now as a member of Courage to Resist to help others as I have been helped.
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/26/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
STOP THE EVICTIONS
For your information, I just got this via email. This is a heart-breaking documentary of evictions being carried out against families. What kind of an insane society dumps families out into the street and leaves homes vacant to rot?:
Watch the video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#28303876
UPDATE:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#29684262
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Workers Protest Across France
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and DAVID JOLLY
March 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/europe/20france.html?ref=world
2) The Great Shame
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html
3) Young and Old Are Facing Off for Jobs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21age.html?ref=business
4) A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22immig.html?hp
5) Worries Voiced Over Global Economy
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/world/europe/22global.html?ref=world
6) A Religious War in Israel's Army
By ETHAN BRONNER
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?ref=world
7) Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools
By SAM DILLON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/education/22schools.html?ref=us
8) A Combative Trial in Colorado as a Controversial Ex-Professor Seeks to Win Back His Job
By DAN FROSCH
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22trial.html?ref=us
9) OUR TROOPS AND IRAQIS ARE STILL DYING
An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
http://ivaw.org/node/5003
http://ivaw.org/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Workers Protest Across France
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and DAVID JOLLY
March 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/europe/20france.html?ref=world
PARIS - France's airports, trains and utilities were hit by work stoppages on Thursday, as unions mobilized against President Nicolas Sarkozy's economic policies and his government's response to the global recession.
Protesters marched in the streets of France's biggest cities - Paris, Marseille and Lyon - in fine spring weather, in the second major strike in two months.
An estimated 2.6 million people joined 213 demonstrations across France, according to the Confédération Générale du Travail, one of the nation's largest unions. The national police, however, put the number of protesters at 1.2 million.
The largest unions said in a statement that Mr. Sarkozy's response to the financial crisis had been inadequate, and they called on the government to do more to safeguard jobs and to improve workers' purchasing power.
"Salaried workers won't any longer accept being the victims of this crisis, which they had nothing to do with," said Bernard Thibault, secretary of the workers' confederation, BFM Radio reported.
Mr. Sarkozy, who was in Brussels at a European Union meeting, did not comment on the demonstrations.
Although France has a long tradition of strikes and demonstrations by public unions, the protesters who marched on Thursday and during similar protests on Jan. 29 came from both the public and private sectors, union officials said. Some union leaders called the protests in late January, in which they said an estimated 2.5 million people had participated, the largest nationwide demonstrations in 20 years.
But some political analysts played down the potential effect of the strike. "I don't think it's going to have a concrete political impact," said Zaki Laïdi, a professor of political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris.
France faces mounting dissatisfaction amid rising unemployment. French companies shed the most jobs in 40 years during the fourth quarter of last year.
Faced with expectations that the economy will sharply contract this year, Mr. Sarkozy announced a $35 billion economic stimulus plan in December. But he has held back from proposing additional broad measures, apart from support for the auto industry and banks.
According to the Education Ministry, about 30 percent of France's teachers were on strike Thursday. Utilities, ports and refineries were also disrupted. Air France said most of its flights were operating normally from Charles de Gaulle Airport, while about one-third of its flights from Orly Airport had been canceled.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) The Great Shame
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html
I had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.
The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn't been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.
"They were talking about charging me with assault," she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. "I'm no longer in the Army," she added dryly.
Tia Christopher, a 27-year-old woman who lives in California and works with victims of sexual assault in the military, told me about the time that she was raped when she was in the Navy. She was attacked by another sailor who had come into her room in the barracks.
"He was very rough," she said. "The girls next door heard my head hitting the wall, and he made quite a mess. When he left, he told me that he'd pray for me and that he still thought I was pretty."
Ms. Christopher left the Navy. As she put it: "My military career ended. My assailant's didn't."
Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing.
New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the last fiscal year - 2,923 - and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them.
The truly chilling fact is that, as the Pentagon readily admits, the overwhelming majority of rapes that occur in the military go unreported, perhaps as many as 80 percent. And most of the men accused of attacking women receive little or no punishment. The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious.
Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York, said: "I know of women victims, women in the military, who said to me that the first response they would get if they tried to report a rape was, 'Oh, you don't want to ruin that young man's career, do you?' "
Ms. Slaughter has been trying for many years to get the military to really crack down on these crimes. "Very, very few cases result in court-martials," she said, "and there are not that many that are even adjudicated."
The Department of Defense has taken a peculiarly optimistic view of the increase in the number of reported sexual attacks. The most recent data is contained in the annual report that the department is required to submit to Congress. The report says that "the overall increase in reports of sexual assault in the military is encouraging," and goes on to explain:
"It should be noted that increased reports of sexual assault do not reflect a rise in annual incidents of sexual assault. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes in the United States. Estimates suggest that only a small percentage of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. The department suspects that the same is true for military society as well. An increase in the number of reported cases means that the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases occurring each year."
How's that for viewing hideous statistics through rose-colored glasses? If the number of reported cases of rape goes sky-high over the next fiscal year, that will mean that the military is doing an even better job!
The military is one of the most highly controlled environments imaginable. When there are rules that the Pentagon absolutely wants followed, they are rigidly enforced by the chain of command. Violations are not tolerated. The military could bring about a radical reduction in the number of rapes and other forms of sexual assault if it wanted to, and it could radically improve the overall treatment of women in the armed forces.
There is no real desire in the military to modify this aspect of its culture. It is an ultra-macho environment in which the overwhelming tendency has been to see all women - civilian and military, young and old, American and foreign - solely as sexual objects.
Real change, drastic change, will have to be imposed from outside the military. It will not come from within.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Young and Old Are Facing Off for Jobs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21age.html?ref=business
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - This city has become a front line in a generational battle for jobs, as older workers increasingly compete against applicants in their 20s for positions at supermarkets, McDonald's and dozens of other places. And older workers seem to be winning.
With unemployment at a 26-year high and many older workers chasing entry-level jobs like those they held a half-century ago, 70 has become the new 20, as one economist put it.
Millions of older Americans have delayed retirement because of plummeting 401(k)s, soaring health costs, a sense that Social Security benefits alone are too little to live on or all of the above. This delay, economists say, has made it harder for millions of young workers to climb onto the first rung or two of the career ladder, especially since many employers favor hiring applicants with a track record.
"The boomers are staying in the system longer, and that's clogging the system," said Mason Jackson, president of Workforce One, a federally funded agency that helps Broward County's unemployed. "Many want to retire, but they can't."
He characterized the dominant attitude among employers now as: "In with the old and out with the new."
Along the ocean beaches and the Intracoastal Waterway here, retirees in condominiums have long coexisted with a much younger generation, but in the depressed job market, tensions have swelled as each group complains that employers improperly favor the other.
Since losing his job as a carpenter 13 months ago, Arnold Stone has applied, without success, for jobs as diverse as grocery bagger and construction worker. In his mobile home one recent morning, Mr. Stone, 69, tanned and vigorous, displayed hundreds of résumés.
"I'm sure age comes into play," he said. "The problem is with seniors, nobody wants to hire them."
That same week, Farah Titus, 25, crisscrossed Broward County in her 11-year-old Toyota on her daily job search. She pointed out a J. C. Penney store, a Macy's and a Wal-Mart where she has applied to no avail.
"It's hard to break in," said Ms. Titus, a part-time nursing student who said she hated asking her father for money. "If you have experience, they put you on the top of the pile."
The latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics buttress her view. The number of employed workers ages 16 to 24 has fallen by two million over the last two years, to 18.3 million, while the number of Americans 65 and over who are working has risen by 700,000, to 6 million.
"In a bad labor market, different groups perceive that they're being discriminated against when the real problem is they're being mistreated by the overall economy," said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School of Social Research and author of "When I'm Sixty-Four."
The proportion of older Americans who hold jobs has also risen strongly - 16 percent of Americans 65 and over had jobs last month, up from 11 percent 10 years earlier. But for workers age 16 to 24 the percentage with jobs has fallen to 49 percent, from 59 percent a decade ago. As for Americans age 25 to 29, 74 percent now have jobs, down from 81 percent a decade ago.
"Younger people are taking an extreme pounding," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "It's worrisome because they're not developing the experience and the soft skills that they'll need and the nation's economy will need."
The greatest employment losses, he said, are for young males with little or no college. Many found jobs when the economy was robust, but they were often laid off first in the downturn, and they are having an especially hard time landing jobs now.
"I'm applying for low-wage jobs, and anyone should be O.K. for them, but I'm not getting to first base," Jose Nieves, 19, said of the restaurant jobs he has applied for.
But many older workers say they suffer age discrimination, too. Mr. Stone is convinced that employers favor the young because they want to make sure their investments in training pay off for years to come.
Mr. Stone said he wishes he could retire but his retirement savings have nearly disappeared. He invested heavily in Enron before it went bankrupt, and his wife has had sizable medical bills.
"I need a job because at the end of the month, I'm lucky if we have $450 left," said Mr. Stone, who worked 20 years as a carpenter and once even owned a construction company.
"People say there is no work to be had," he added. "But if you're over 50, you really have a problem, and if you're 70, it's especially hard."
Eva Coffey, 60, from Springfield, Va., said that when she applied for a job as a bookkeeper and receptionist for an auto dealer, her interviewer showed no interest. The next person to be interviewed, she said, was an attractive woman in her 20s, and the interviewer was keenly interested.
"I'm not some young thing," Ms. Coffey said. "When you go for an interview now, you're always trying to come across younger because they're concerned about your age. It's a hard obstacle to overcome."
Federico Barker, 76, a former real estate developer, has applied for so many jobs unsuccessfully that his friends urged him to lie about his age and change dates on his résumé. They are certain that employers favor younger workers.
Mahalia Joseph, 21, disagrees. She lost her job at a check-cashing company four months ago and has been rejected repeatedly for jobs in customer service and at hospitals.
"With the economy the way it is, they don't want to hire people they have to train," said Ms. Joseph, who plans to take courses to be trained as a hospital assistant. "They want people who are hands-on right away."
Every day, young and old job seekers swarm to Mr. Jackson's Workforce One offices, searching computer databases for jobs. Employers see strengths and weaknesses in each group, he said.
"Many businesses prefer older workers," Mr. Jackson said. "They know they're dependable, reliable. They show up, and somewhere along the line, developed customer service skills. Older workers take less sick days. Most sick days have nothing to do with being sick. Many nice days people call in sick to go to the beach."
One category where young people have an advantage is technology jobs, he said. "If it's a technology job, young people take to it as fish to water," he said.
One of his assistants, Kelly Allen, chimed in that young people were used to communicating electronically - she held up an imaginary Blackberry and maneuvered her thumbs wildly. "Employers like that older workers are used to dealing with people face to face," she said.
Maria Brous, communications director for Publix, one of Florida's largest supermarket chains, said older workers had important expertise, but younger workers had technical skills and were creative problem-solvers. Publix hires both young and old employees, she said, because they complement each other.
Wendy Smith, 23, says she has seen yet another type of discrimination in applying for administrative jobs. Potential employers tell her she needs three or four years of experience.
"They don't want you to be too young, and they don't want you to be too old," she said. "They want you to be just right."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22immig.html?hp
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. - The faithful stand and hold their hands high, raising a crescendo of prayer for abundance and grace. In the evangelical church where they are gathered, the folding chairs are filled with immigrants from Latin America.
Balbino López Hernández, who came here illegally from Mexico, closes his eyes to join the hallelujahs. But after the service Mr. López, 28, a factory worker who has been unemployed since June, shares his worries about jobs and immigration raids with other worshipers.
Like many places across the United States, this factory town in eastern Tennessee has been transformed in the last decade by the arrival of Hispanic immigrants, many of whom are in this country illegally. Thousands of workers like Mr. López settled in Morristown, taking the lowest-paying elbow-grease jobs, some hazardous, in chicken plants and furniture factories.
Now, with the economy spiraling downward and a crackdown continuing on illegal immigrants, many of them are learning how uncertain their foothold is in the work force in the United States.
The economic troubles are widening the gap between illegal immigrants and Americans as they navigate the job market. Many Americans who lost jobs are turning for help to the government's unemployment safety net, with job assistance and unemployment insurance. But immigrants without legal status, by law, do not have access to it. Instead, as the recession deepens, illegal immigrants who have settled into American towns are receding from community life. They are clinging to low-wage jobs, often working more hours for less money, and taking whatever work they can find, no matter the conditions.
Despite the mounting pressures, many of the illegal immigrants are resisting leaving the country. After years of working here, they say, they have homes and education for their children, while many no longer have a stake to return to in their home countries.
"Most of the things I got are right here," Mr. López said in English, which he taught himself to speak. "I got my family, my wife, my kids. Everything is here."
Americans who are struggling for jobs move in a different world. Here, it revolves around the federally financed, fluorescent-lighted career center on Andrew Johnson Highway, a one-stop market for unemployment insurance and job retraining.
One worker who frequents the center is Joe D. Goodson Jr., 46, who was laid off more than a year ago from his job at a nearby auto parts plant. Born and raised in Morristown, Mr. Goodson said his savings had run low but his spirits were holding up, so far.
Through the career center, Mr. Goodson enrolled in retraining at a technology college. He believes that the government aid system, though inefficient and overwhelmed, will give him just enough support to survive the economic storm.
"I just try to look on the positive side always," Mr. Goodson said. "Work hard. Things get bad? Work harder."
What help there is for illegal immigrants in Morristown comes mainly from churches, like Centro Cristiano Betel Internacional, where Mr. López connects with a word-of-mouth network to find odd jobs.
Nationwide, Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, saw greater job loss in 2008 than did Hispanics born in the United States or black workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly half of foreign-born Hispanics are illegal immigrants, according to the center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.
Some illegal immigrants who lost jobs here, mostly workers with families back home, have left the country. Most are determined to stay. Employers, wary of immigration agents, now insist workers have valid Social Security numbers. Mr. López, who does not have one, said, "Without the number, you are nothing in this country."
Gaining a Foothold
In a paradox of globalization, immigrant workers moved from Mexico to Morristown just as many jobs were migrating from here to Mexico.
The influx here came as Hispanic immigrants were spreading across the United States, moving beyond traditional destinations in California and the Southwest to take jobs in the Northern Plains and deep into the South.
As recently as 2006 and 2007, more than 300,000 Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, were joining the United States labor force each year, drawn by jobs in meatpacking, construction and agriculture. They now make up nearly 8 percent of the work force.
In Morristown, a manufacturing city set among Appalachian farmland, the loss of jobs to Mexico and other countries with lower wages depressed local factory pay long before the immigrants appeared. But while the poorest American factory workers watched jobs leave, Americans with skills found new jobs in plants making auto parts, plastics and printing supplies.
The 1960 census did not record a single immigrant in Hamblen County, of which Morristown is the seat. By 2007, Hispanic immigrants and their families made up almost 10 percent of the county population of 61,829, having nearly doubled their numbers since 2000, census data show.
The immigrants started in tomato fields nearby, but by the late 1990s labor contractors were bringing migrant crews into town, to fill jobs in construction and at factories like two poultry plants belonging to Koch Foods, a company based in Illinois.
The result was a two-tier blue-collar work force. Hispanic immigrants - many hired through temporary staffing agencies that offered no vacation pay or health coverage - were on the bottom, in jobs where they faced little competition from Americans.
Prof. Chris Baker, a sociologist at Walters State Community College in Morristown, said many factories in the region had been able to hang on because of the immigrant workers. "The employers hire Latinos, and after that, they leave," he said. "It goes from white to black to Latino to - gone."
Some residents did not take kindly to the immigrants, especially the illegal ones. But their ire was not about jobs; it was mainly directed at the school board, for devoting tax money to an international center to help Spanish-speaking students learn English.
In the summer of 2006, one member of the Hamblen County Commission, Thomas E. Lowe, organized a demonstration against illegal immigrants in front of City Hall. It fizzled after the police, fearing disorder, turned out in a show of force.
Then the friction abated. The United Food and Commercial Workers won an organizing drive at Koch Foods by gaining the support of immigrants.
Mr. Lowe did not win re-election. The city chose a mayor, Barbara C. Barile, who describes herself as "an inclusive kind of person." She created a diversity task force and proposed an annual immigrant fiesta. In December, she sent police officers to accompany a midnight procession through downtown honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Mexican patroness.
But an immigration crackdown by state and federal authorities stirred the waters again.
A few years ago, even illegal immigrants in Tennessee could obtain driver's licenses, buy cars, open bank accounts and take out mortgages. In 2006, the state canceled a program that authorized immigrants who were not legal residents to drive.
Cooperation increased between state and local police and federal immigration agents. For illegal immigrants, minor traffic stops could escalate and end in deportation. After immigration raids in the region, employers and temporary agencies started to give closer scrutiny to identity documents.
An Immigrant's Life
One immigrant whose Morristown welcome ended abruptly was Balbino López Hernández.
After sneaking across the Arizona border at 17, he joined a brother who lived in Morristown. In 2004 he landed a job at Berkline, a furniture company known for reclining chairs whose headquarters are in town.
Mr. López earned a minimum of $8.85 an hour assembling heavy metal frames for chairs and sofas. But, like other immigrants here, he measured the job against pushing a plow in Mexico. By that standard, he said, it was a "blessing."
At Berkline, seasoned American employees tended to avoid the physically demanding position in which Mr. López was placed, at the head of an assembly line. Mr. López loved the job, and before long he was one of the more productive workers on the floor. The high productivity of new immigrant workers was one reason employers like those in Morristown were glad to hire them, economists said.
Mr. López's task was to swing metal bars into place, then use a noisy drill, over and over, to secure dozens of screws, nuts and washers. The bars had sharp edges, and his arms are covered with scars. Still, he was content because he set his own pace.
"Always," he said, "I go to work and do my job and come home, to make myself happy and make them happy too."
Though he is not a legal resident, Mr. López allowed his name and photograph to be published because his status is known to immigration authorities.
The assembly floor operated on an incentive system: the more frames Mr. López made, the more he earned. But his energy put pressure on others on the line, including some Americans who were not interested in doing more work without a raise.
Mr. López, shy and soft-spoken, did well at work but poorly in love. One girlfriend, an American, three weeks after giving birth to his son, Jacob, left Mr. López to raise the boy alone. Another took to drugs and was frequently in trouble with the police.
His luck changed when he met Brittany Martin, 18, a tall blonde with a level head. Last January, he decided to spruce up his cottage in preparation for marriage, so he picked up his speed at Berkline.
"I would get my sandwich and just eat there, eat and work," Mr. López said. "I never stopped for nothing." Soon he was producing three times his weekly quota of chair frames, sometimes making more than $1,000 a week, pay stubs show. Some Americans started to taunt him, calling him "money man."
"Why does that Mexican make so much money?" Mr. López said one worker asked within earshot.
Not long after, on June 11, a senior manager summoned Mr. López, saying Berkline had been alerted that he might be an illegal immigrant. He confessed and was fired.
Mr. López believes that someone, perhaps a co-worker, turned him in. Two days later, the Morristown police, citing the false Social Security number he had presented at Berkline, arrested him on charges of criminal impersonation. Although those charges were soon dismissed for lack of evidence, the police reported Mr. López to federal immigration agents.
Dennis Carper, senior vice president for human resources at Berkline, confirmed that Mr. López had been terminated because of his invalid Social Security number. He said Berkline did not report Mr. López to the police.
Mr. López is now fighting deportation. He and Ms. Martin married in July and are expecting a child in May. He was released from detention to care for his wife and son, but since he was ordered deported before the wedding, it is not certain he will be able to stay.
While his immigration case proceeds, he remains unauthorized to apply for a job. He is scrounging for bits of work, fixing cars and patching roofs, and praying at Centro Betel. It is bad, he said, but Mexico would be worse. "In my country," he said, "I'm just going to feed my family salt and tortillas."
The Shadows
In some ways, since Mr. López no longer has to hide, he has advantages over many immigrants in Morristown.
Enrique C., 48, and his wife, Rita, 38, both illegal immigrants from Mexico, learned how vulnerable their livelihood here was when both of them lost their jobs in recent months. The couple, neither of whom speaks English, asked that their full names and photographs not be published because they feared detection by immigration authorities.
During the long nights of winter, after their sons, 12 and 13, finished their homework, they turned off all the lights in the cottage they own except one bulb and gathered around a space heater. On some nights cockroaches emerged, seeking the heat.
Rita had held night-shift jobs in sweltering factories and on the chilly deboning line in a Koch chicken plant. Since she worked mainly through temporary agencies, when the crunch came she was one of the first to go.
Her husband worked from 2001 until last August at Hardwoods of Morristown, a wood-floor maker, earning $8.75 an hour splitting planks with a whirring saw. For years Enrique liked his job, and his bosses praised him, he said, for doing the work of two men.
But over time he had run-ins with supervisors, starting when they disagreed over the treatment of a wrist injury.
He complained that splinters tore his gloves. Bathrooms were filthy, he said, and the plant posted a rule limiting when workers could use them. He took photographs of clogged toilets and collected bagfuls of ragged gloves.
After seven years, Enrique, who admits he can be ornery, lost his temper one day and insulted the plant manager. The official separation notice states that he was fired for insubordination. Tim Elliott, a top executive at Hardwoods, wrote in an e-mail message that a worker who "refuses to do a task assigned to him" would disrupt the teamwork the company requires.
"They fired me because I started to make demands," Enrique said.
Once defiant, Enrique now lives looking over his shoulder and avoiding confrontation. Although his driver's license has expired, he drives a carpool with three other workers for an hour twice a day to a job he found through a temporary agency in a furniture factory for $7 an hour.
It is a job he cannot lose. He has a mortgage to pay, and he is determined to see his sons go to college. "We're going to go along very quietly," Enrique said. "We don't want to be deported."
The Americans
At the Five Rivers Regional Career Center, the cubicles of computers with free Internet are filled every day with anxious job seekers. For several weeks in January, phones the state set up to receive applications for unemployment insurance were inundated, often giving callers only busy signals. Career center staff members did their best to help, but more than one of them said they had taken a "cussing " from a desperate worker.
For Joe Goodson, however, the recession is old news. He was laid off in December 2007, along with 67 other workers, after 17 years at the Morristown plant of the Lear Corporation, which makes auto seats.
One day at the career center, Mr. Goodson, a welder and United Automobile Workers member, spoke with pride of his skills. He started out as a manual welder, but through retraining he learned how to operate the metal stamping press he was running, for $17.80 an hour, when the layoffs came.
Mr. Goodson said he watched the Lear work force shrink over the years, as the company installed robots and sent manual welding work to a plant in Mexico. These days, he said, managers are only "thinking about self."
"It's gone away from the team thing," he said.
Four months after being laid off, he took an offer for retraining at the Tennessee Technology Center in Morristown, where he is studying coils and coolants to become an air-conditioning technician.
Through the career center, he collects unemployment insurance and a gas allowance, and his tuition is paid by federal Trade Adjustment Assistance funds, which support workers laid off when jobs move overseas. He squeaks by on odd jobs he does for his parents, both retired.
"I've never seen a car that didn't have a seat," said Mr. Goodson, who still believes that Lear will one day call him back. If not, he is ready to put his new skills to use in another career.
Because of the government support and retraining, Mr. Goodson is not considering the low-paying manufacturing jobs that Morristown's immigrants hold.
"I'm not too good to do any job that another man would do," Mr. Goodson said. "But I've got many other skills."
Other Americans in tougher spots who visited the career center said those jobs were their last resort. Donnie Parker, 45, was laid off in September from his $14-an-hour job as a skilled machine mechanic at a Koch poultry plant.
Because of a bureaucratic snag, Mr. Parker has not been able to collect unemployment insurance. After paying a mortgage for 13 years, he missed three payments and lost his house in December. He and his teenage son moved in with his 72-year-old mother. He borrowed from his sister to buy gas to make the trip to the career center. He traded his new truck for an older one, then the old truck's transmission gave out.
His only defense against the calamity is a wry laugh.
Like Mr. Goodson, Mr. Parker sees a narrow path opening before him through the unemployment system: he recently received a retraining grant. With food stamps and his income tax refund, he might just make it.
While he is waiting for school to begin, Mr. Parker is adopting a new strategy. He decided last week to apply for a few minimum-wage factory jobs that were advertised at the center, after having avoided them until now.
"I didn't know it would get this bad and last this long," Mr. Parker said. "Seven dollars is better than no dollars."
Even in the recession, he said, it would not make financial sense for him to stay for long in that kind of job. "With my kid, I can't live on a minimum-wage job," Mr. Parker said. "There is no goal to reach. You're pretty much stuck."
Although Koch has hired more Americans this year for its poultry production lines, Mr. Parker is not thinking of going back there in a low-end job. "It's nasty and cold," he said.
Hanging On
As the recession worsens here - unemployment in this region was 11.2 percent in January, compared with 8.5 percent nationwide - Americans and immigrants are struggling, separately, to hold on to their gains. To date, tensions over jobs have not surfaced.
Melissa B. Reynolds, the coordinator for the career center, said Americans worried about receiving their benefits and getting help finding new jobs, not about competition from immigrants.
"We don't have anyone that has any beefs with the Latino population that I've seen come and go through here," Ms. Reynolds said.
If the slump is long, unemployment benefits run out and the safety net wears thin, that could change. Across the country, in an industry like construction with large numbers of Hispanic immigrants where job losses have been especially steep, the fight for jobs could produce conflict.
Demetrios G. Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research center, said that if Americans were forced to take jobs below their expectations for too long, competition - and animus - could increase.
"American people who are hurting economically for a long while may start to identify immigrants as the cause of that pain," Mr. Papademetriou said.
Mr. Parker, though he is hurting, said he did not look to place blame. "It's not Hispanics I'm competing with," he said. "It's everybody. I'm not angry at no one who's trying to find a job and work. They're doing the same thing I'm doing."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Worries Voiced Over Global Economy
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/world/europe/22global.html?ref=world
The global economy is on pace to shrink by 1 percent to 2 percent this year, the head of the World Bank said Saturday.
Speaking at the Brussels Forum on geopolitical problems, the bank's president, Robert B. Zoellick, said that 2009 would be a "dangerous year" as the global economy wrestles with its first recession in more than 60 years.
"We haven't seen a figure like that globally since World War II, which really means since the Great Depression," he said.
Global trade is set to slide the most in 80 years as demand dries up, with East Asia being the hardest-hit region. The World Bank has forecast a 2.1 percent decline in global exports this year, which would be the first such drop since 1982.
Mr. Zoellick's remarks came less than two weeks before heads of state from the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies are to gather in London to discuss a coordinated response to the economic slump. Mr. Zoellick urged G-20 leaders to use the meeting on April 2 to create a review process to determine whether further stimulus measures are needed.
"There is a legitimate debate about how the stimulus will be used," he said at the forum.
The European Union economy will shrink 3.2 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday, cutting a January forecast of a 2 percent contraction. Japan's economy is forecast to shrink by 5.8 percent, according to the fund, while the United States is seen contracting 2.6 percent.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) A Religious War in Israel's Army
By ETHAN BRONNER
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war. But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.
Several of the testimonies, published by an institute that runs a premilitary course and is affiliated with the left-leaning secular kibbutz movement, showed a distinct impatience with religious soldiers, portraying them as self-appointed holy warriors.
A soldier, identified by the pseudonym Ram, is quoted as saying that in Gaza, "the rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war."
Dany Zamir, the director of the one-year premilitary course who solicited the testimonies and then leaked them, leading to a promise by the military to investigate, is quoted in the transcripts as expressing anguish over the growing religious nationalist elements of the military.
"If clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum of the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population, what can we expect?" he said. "To whom do we complain?"
For the first four decades of Israel's existence, the army - like many of the country's institutions - was dominated by kibbutz members who saw themselves as secular, Western and educated. In the past decade or two, religious nationalists, including many from the settler movement in the West Bank, have moved into more and more positions of military responsibility. (In Israeli society, they are a growing force, distinct from, and more modern than, the black-garbed ultra-Orthodox, who are excused from military service.)
In many cases, the religious nationalists have ascended to command positions from precisely the kind of premilitary college course that Mr. Zamir runs - but theirs are run by the religious movements rather than his secular one, meaning that the competition between him and them is both ideological and careerist.
"The officer corps of the elite Golani Brigade is now heavily populated by religious right-wing graduates of the preparatory academies," noted Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor who co-wrote the military code of ethics and who is himself religiously observant but politically liberal. "The religious right is trying to have an impact on Israeli society through the army."
For Mr. Halbertal, like for the vast majority of Israelis, the army is an especially sensitive institution because it has always functioned as a social cauldron, throwing together people from all walks of life and scores of ethnic and national backgrounds, and helping form them into a cohesive society with social networks that carry on throughout their lives.
Those who oppose the religious right have been especially concerned about the influence of the military's chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, who is himself a West Bank settler and who was very active during the war, spending most of it in the company of the troops in the field.
He took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it into a slogan during the war: "He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful."
A controversy then arose when a booklet handed out to soldiers was found to contain a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy. The Defense Ministry reprimanded the rabbi.
At the time, in January, Avshalom Vilan, then a leftist member of Parliament, accused the rabbi of having "turned the Israeli military's activity from fighting out of necessity into a holy war."
Immediately after Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and then from several West Bank settlements, there was a call to disband certain religious programs in the army because some soldiers in them said they would refuse to obey future orders to disband settlements. After the rise of Hamas in Gaza and the increase in rocket attacks on Israel, that discussion died down.
But Yaron Ezrahi, a leftist political scientist at Hebrew University who has been lecturing to military commanders, said that the call to close those programs should now be revived because what was evident in Gaza was that the humanistic tradition from which a code of ethics is derived was not being sufficiently observed there.
The dispute over control of the army is not only ideological. It is also personal, as all politics is in this small, intimate country. Those who disagree with the chief rabbi have vilified him. Those who are unhappy with what Mr. Zamir did by leaking the transcript of the Gaza soldiers' testimonies last week have spread word that he is a leftist ideologue out to harm Israel.
In 1990, Mr. Zamir, then a parachute company commander in the reserves, was sentenced to prison for refusing to guard a ceremony involving religious Jews visiting the West Bank city of Nablus. For some, that refusal is a badge of honor; for others it is an act of insubordination and treason. A quiet campaign began on Thursday regarding Mr. Zamir's leftist sympathies, to discredit the transcript he publicized.
At the same time, Rabbi Rontzki's numerous sayings and writings have been making the rounds among leftist intellectuals. He has written, for example, that what others call "humanistic values" are simply subjective feelings that should be subordinate to following the law of the Torah.
He has also said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath, when work is prohibited but treating the sick and injured is expected, is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.
Mr. Halbertal, the Jewish philosopher who opposes the attitude of Rabbi Rontzki, said the divide that is growing in Israel is not only between religious and secular Jews but among the religious themselves. The debate is over three issues - the sanctity of land versus life; the relationship between messianism and Zionism; and the place of non-Jews in a sovereign Jewish state.
The religious left argues that the right has made a fetish of the land of Israel instead of letting life take precedence, he said. The religious left also rejects the messianic nature of the right's Zionist discourse, and it argues that Jewish tradition values all life, not primarily Jewish life.
"The right tends to make an equation between authenticity and brutality, as if the idea of humanism were a Western and alien implant to Judaism," he said. "They seem not to know that nationalism and fascism are also Western ideas and that hypernationalism is not Jewish at all."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools
By SAM DILLON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/education/22schools.html?ref=us
RANDOLPH, Utah - Dale Lamborn, the superintendent of a somewhat threadbare rural school district, feels the pain of Utah's economic crisis every day as he tinkers with his shrinking budget, struggling to avoid laying off teachers or cutting classes like welding or calculus.
Just across the border in Wyoming, a state awash in oil and gas money, James Bailey runs a wealthier district. It has a new elementary school and gives every child an Apple laptop.
But under the Obama administration's education stimulus package, Mr. Lamborn, who needs every penny he can get, will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than will Dr. Bailey, who says he does not need the extra money.
"For us, this is just a windfall," Dr. Bailey said.
In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.
As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.
Still, educators are accepting the disparities without challenge. Utah, which stands to get about $400 less per student than Wyoming, says it is grateful for the money and has no complaint. There is widespread recognition that the federal money is helping to avert what could have been an educational disaster in some places.
Democrats in Congress decided to use the formulas to save time, knowing that devising new ones tailored to current conditions could require months of negotiations.
"These formulas were the best vehicle for getting these emergency economic recovery funds out to school districts as quickly as possible, to help them immediately stave off layoffs," said Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
The education secretary, Arne Duncan, said that he, too, was aware of the disparities but that no formula was perfect. "In this case, people are just extraordinarily thankful for these unprecedented resources," Mr. Duncan said in an interview. "So I'm aware of these disparities, but we've received zero complaints."
Still, the occasional mismatch between educational needs and emergency financing can be striking.
Utah, where a $1.3 billion budget deficit has threatened deep school cuts, will get about $655 million in education stimulus money, or about $1,250 per student, according to the federal Department of Education. Wyoming, which has no deficit and has not cut school budgets in many years, will get about $1,684 per student.
North Dakota, which also has no budget problems, will receive $1,734 per student. California, which recently closed a $42 billion budget gap through July 2010 partly through deep spending cuts, will get $1,336 per student.
New York is a huge winner. With the nation's second-largest budget deficit, the state benefits from a formula that sends extra money to concentrations of poor students, as well as one that rewards states for their own school spending. New York will receive about $1,724 per student, the most of any large state and roughly $400 more per pupil that than Connecticut and New Jersey.
The money in question is part of $97 billion to be administered by the Education Department under the stimulus law.
Within weeks, states will begin receiving a large part of the roughly $80 billion to be distributed over two years. Most of the rest of the $97 billion will go toward college grants to low-income students.
About $50 billion, which Congress labeled a fiscal stabilization fund, will flow to states based on a formula that takes into account population, as well as the number of 5- to 24-year-olds. The states have some discretion, but part of the money must go toward avoiding or reversing cuts.
About $25 billion will be sent to the nation's 14,000 school districts for spending on poor and disabled students according to long-standing formulas. And Mr. Duncan will use $5 billion to reward states for exemplary systems.
Last month Mr. Duncan released state-by-state allocations of the education stimulus money. They were divided by Department of Education enrollment numbers to calculate the money on a per-student basis.
Washington, which is treated as a state under the stimulus, will get the highest allocation, $2,112 per student. Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor there, said spending could be tricky.
"We don't want to be in a position of bringing in this huge amount of money and then having to lay people off in two years after the money runs out," Ms. Rhee said.
In Maryland, Prince George's County, which borders Washington, appears likely to receive less than $1,500 per student. "I can tell you we're not complaining," said John White, a spokesman for the county schools. His district had been planning to cut 1,000 of its 17,000 employees and to furlough others to save money, he said, but the federal money will reduce the layoffs and make the furlough unnecessary.
Things are also working out better for Mr. Lamborn, whose district is in Rich County in northeastern Utah, where 450 children of coal miners and ranchers attend four austere rural schools. The Utah Legislature, facing a deficit of more than $1 billion, was preparing to cut school spending statewide by 17 percent. Last week, it reduced that cut to 5 percent.
Mr. Lamborn said a 17 percent cut in his district, where the starting pay for a teacher is $32,000, would have been devastating. "I didn't even want to think about it," he said.
Even a cut of 5 percent may result in the elimination of a teacher or two, Mr. Lamborn said. He snorted last week when he read a federal guidance letter that said, "Spend funds quickly to create and save jobs."
"We won't be creating any," he said. "We hope to save some."
Across the state line in Evanston, Wyo., where Dr. Bailey is superintendent, the Uinta County District 1 has enjoyed years of growing budgets. Students attend new or updated schools with plenty of computers; high-tech smart boards have replaced blackboards. The starting pay for a teacher is $41,500. Achievement is improving, especially in math, and a teacher training program is enriched by outside consultants.
In a meeting last week, some educators questioned whether the district could spend the $1.5 million in new federal money wisely, without losing focus on its goals, which include improving adolescent literacy skills.
"Out of the blue this money has dropped in, and it's kind of a distraction," Dr. Bailey said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) A Combative Trial in Colorado as a Controversial Ex-Professor Seeks to Win Back His Job
By DAN FROSCH
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22trial.html?ref=us
DENVER - A wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former professor against the University of Colorado has been unfolding in exciting fashion in a courtroom here.
The professor, Ward L. Churchill, was dismissed by the university in July 2007 on grounds that he plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans. But Mr. Churchill contends that he was fired in retaliation for an essay in which he described office workers killed in the World Trade Center attacks as "little Eichmanns."
Mr. Churchill, seeking to be reinstated to his tenured position, is expected to testify on Monday.
The civil trial, which has finished its second week in district court, has been as combative and colorful as Mr. Churchill.
His lawyer, David Lane, has sought to portray him as the victim of a "howling mob" of university administrators, conservative media and politicians who were "falling over themselves" to have him fired.
But Patrick O'Rourke, a lawyer for the university, said in his opening statement, "Ward Churchill was fired for one reason and one reason only: he engaged in the worst kind of academic fraud that you can."
Much of the testimony has focused on Mr. Churchill's extensive scholarship, including his theory that Capt. John Smith purposefully introduced smallpox among the Wampanoag Indians in the 17th century.
It was after the outrage over Mr. Churchill's "Eichmann" essay that other scholars came forward with claims of plagiarism. In May 2006, a faculty committee found that his academic work was seriously flawed. The committee further concluded that he had no factual basis for his smallpox theory.
Marianne Wesson, a University of Colorado law professor who led the committee, testified last week that Mr. Churchill had, in some of his work, cited writings of other scholars that he had actually ghostwritten, creating the illusion that there was a body of work supporting his theories.
Mr. Lane accused Ms. Wesson of bias, pointing to e-mail messages she wrote comparing backers of Mr. Churchill to the public support for O. J. Simpson, Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson.
"I really don't doubt that Professor Churchill was, to many students, a very inspiring teacher," Ms. Wesson testified. "I think he is a tragic figure, and it makes me sad that so much talent, so much promise has been wasted."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) OUR TROOPS AND IRAQIS ARE STILL DYING
An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
http://ivaw.org/node/5003
http://ivaw.org/
After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.
President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.
President Obama's plan will result in more casualties and suffering for U.S. troops, their families and Iraqis. To the American public facing hard times here at home, two and a half more years of occupation may not sound like that long -- but for our troops and their families it means two and a half more years of fear, pain, and separation in a war and occupation based on lies. Hundreds of the troops deployed in the next two and a half years will not come home alive. Many more will return forever scarred by deep wounds to their bodies, minds, and spirits. Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of this war -- many more will be killed as the occupation continues.
We cannot afford the cost of empire. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Yet our government continues to allow the occupation to drain $10 billion a month from our nation's coffers. Meanwhile, veterans and military families struggle to put food on the table and get decent housing and adequate medical care. Women and men who risked their lives for this country are often forced to fight tooth and nail to get health care from an underfunded and overburdened Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are homeless.
The occupation of Iraq is the source of the violence not the solution. Living under occupation the people of Iraq are held back from taking control of their own lives to determine their destiny. The continued U.S. military presence there is a cause of the violence they face, not its solution. U.S. continued interference contradicts the principles of democracy and self-determination our country was founded on.
IVAW, MFSO and VFP will continue to keep pressure on Congress and the President to bring all our troops home from Iraq NOW, ensure that veterans receive the care they need and deserve, and that the U.S. provides resources to rebuild a country we destroyed. But we cannot do that alone. We need your help to reach out to the vast majority of the American people who are completely isolated from the realities of this war. Please don't abandon this struggle or shift your position before the occupation is over and our veterans and the Iraqi people are on the path to healing.
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. From its inception, IVAW has called for: Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq; reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and dull benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women. IVAW's membership includes recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.
Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones who are currently in the military or who have served in the military since the buildup to the Iraq war in the fall of 2002. Formed by two families in November of 2002, MFSO now has over 4,000 member families. MFSO's national chapter, Gold Star Families Speak Out includes families whose loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq.
Founded in 1985, Veterans for Peace is a national organization of men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts cold or hot. It has chapters in nearly every state in the union and is headquartered in St. Louis, MO. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary. Veterans For Peace is an official Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the U.N.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment