Exit Interview

Because she has been deemed a suspicious person, I am uncomfortable using her real name. For the purposes of this tale, I will call her “Sara.”

She is a Canadian, and she had come to the Rio Grande Valley with eight other colleagues to see what she could learn about how our community cares for its children. She is a physician, and her life’s work is to care for others. In her case, she carries a special interest in the poor and to the little ones—those who are “other” in our health care system.

Sara is also a faithful Muslim woman, someone who each day wears a hijab, a veil, which covers her hair.

Last week, we traveled together to Austin, to participate in a march protesting Texas’ pending anti-immigrant legislation.

It was 4am when we hit the highway in Brownsville, aiming to join the march by noon.

“Ok,” I said, driving north, “I know nothing about Islam. Help me understand.”

“OK,” she echoed, and for the next five hours we talked about God and faith and community, about mercy and forgiveness, about hard choices and fundamentalists.

We covered prayer and fasting, the Muslim restrictions on interest (on loans) and its insistence on charity.

The conversation circled again and again to the basic tenet of religious faith—it is love in action that frees us from ourselves, and brings us peace.

After a couple of hours, it was Sara’s turn to drive. We had been discussing the notion of submission as the key virtue in Islam as she put the car into gear. She went from 0 to 70 miles an hour in fifteen feet, cutting off a tractor trailer, merrily skipping up the entrance ramp onto the expressway. “My mom is a driving instructor,” she noted, as the tires squealed, “but I never really got the hang of driving.”

I submitted myself, rather irreligiously, to total body fright, as she cut across two lanes of traffic and settled into the last part of the drive.

When I recovered my breath, I asked her about women’s role in Islam.

She smiled and said, “Let’s start with the veil—it is my choice to wear hijab, and to follow this commandment from God. It reminds me of my faith, it’s like the veil that nuns wear and orthodox Jews. With the veil, I can be an ambassador of Islam to those around me. And because women have become objects in this society—judged on their looks—the veil takes me away from the superficial realm and allows me to be judged based on my character, on my contributions to society and not on my appearance. It is a form of modesty in the midst of a world that seems to have lost its mind. It is not just my head that I cover—I take care not to put my body on display. It is a way to help me and others keep the right focus in life.”

I discovered that Sara talked the same way that she drove—quickly and daringly. Unlike her driving, which had made me think about whether or not my will was up to date, the conversation with her left me thinking about life and all of its possibilities.

We made it back to Brownsville; Sara and her colleagues finished up their work and their month-long coursework. They were impressed by the solidarity in the border communities, worried about children held in detention, overwhelmed by the need and the lack of resources. It seemed to me, as well, that they had fallen in love with this corner of the United States.

Sara was the last one to depart. As she approached airport security, she realized that she was going to have to submit to the indignity of the body scan machine. Like everyone else that was traveling that day, she was electronically strip searched. Sara’s one consolation was that she would, at least, be spared the shame of being patted down.

But no, her silken-polyester veil, although worn as an effort at modesty, and as a sign of respect for others, made her “other”, and, therefore, suspicious. She was pulled out of line. Her head was patted down, a silly, demeaning act, given that the scanner had already searched her entire body. There were no scanner-invisible weapons concealed under her scarf, and Sara was allowed to head home to Canada.

Sara called it her exit interview from the course on the Valley, for she had come to our home to discover what it was like to be outside systems of care, to be “other.” As she left, she was examined and judged to be, “other.”

The lessons of that experience would take hours to tell, and I pray one day to get to have that conversation with her.

This post was written by Michael Seifert, originally posted on his blog, Musings Alongside the Border.

Raising Hope featured on KNME's New Mexico in Focus

KNME, Albuquerque’s PBS station, released video of its recent show featuring Raising Hope: The Equal Voice Story. The episode aired on February 25, 2011 on the station’s public affairs show, New Mexico in Focus.

The show featured a panel of Equal Voice partners who discussed topics around the documentary and other policy issues in New Mexico. Panelists were: Diana Dorn-Jones of United South Broadway; Jeff Chalan, Equal Voice Participant; Marcela Diaz of Somos un Pueblo Unido; and Kathy Sanchez of TEWA Women United. The panel talked extensively about the 2008 Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign, the unity felt across organizations, races, and regions during the campaign, and the obstacles still facing New Mexico’s low-income families today.

New Mexico in Focus blog posts about Equal Voice:

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and The Equal Voice Story Tie-In

Watch the show in segments:

1. Commercial for upcoming show.

2. Clips of Raising Hope: The Equal Voice Story.

3. Panel Discussion about Raising Hope.

4. A story about United South Broadway’s Fair Lending Center.

5. Panel discussion about the Fair Lending Center with same panel as above.

6. A story about breaking the cycle of poverty through community schools.

7. Panel talks about financing work on issues concerning working families.

State Groups Tackle Tax Fairness

This column appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly.

It’s July 2010, and organizers from 10 state-level grassroots groups have traveled to Washington, D.C. Rob Brown of Opportunity Maine is at the front of the room addressing the crowd. “Firefighters and other local law enforcement are key allies in property tax-cap campaigns,” Brown says, as listeners scribble in notebooks and clack on laptops. “Their perspective tends to be universally appealing to even the staunchest skeptic.”

At the event, Brown shared best practices and lessons from Maine’s successful campaign to defeat a property tax-cap ballot initiative with leaders of grassroots state tax-fairness organizations from across the country. All groups are members of the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative (TFOC), a coalition of 28 grassroots groups in 24 states working to promote progressive-tax reform. Progressive taxes, such as the federal income tax, require upper-income people to pay more of their income in taxes than those with lower-incomes. This is different from a flat tax, such as a sales tax, which applies the same tax rate to all individuals regardless of income level. Thus, flat taxes take a higher portion of income from low-income people than from high-income people.

The TFOC is a project of United for a Fair Economy, a national economic-justice advocacy organization. The TFOC operates in stark contrast to the brassy, anti-tax, antigovernment Tea Party. The TFOC believes that government enhances quality of life and that collecting government revenue through taxes is a necessity that should be done fairly, responsibly, and through policies that reflect our society’s values.

In some communities, organizing work to promote tax fairness has taken place for decades. But in early 2000, the movement came to a head, following the bursting of the technology bubble and waning government support for public services. As more people felt the effects of severe budget cuts and imbalanced tax policies, the movement gained momentum. By 2004 the TFOC launched to strengthen state-level efforts and facilitate connectivity across state lines. The TFOC has filled an important role in the progressive movement by providing a national infrastructure for tax-fairness organizers to collaborate, share best practices, problem-solve, and learn the latest in communications from pollsters and researchers. Through the TFOC, grassroots leaders regularly convene in affinity groups to tackle common issues, such as no-income-tax states, conservative states where taxes are limited, and states fighting corporate tax loopholes. The emphasis on grassroots organizing distinguishes the TFOC from other progressive tax-policy organizations and networks.

In the states, the tax fairness movement is firmly in place. And the work is more important than ever. From New York to Nevada, grassroots organizations have led the fight for progressive and adequate revenue to support the schools, bridges, parks, and other public resources that keep our communities strong. To a large extent, these organizations are part of coalitions that include teachers, seniors, human-service associations, community organizations, unions, faith-based organizations, and various nonprofit advocacy groups. A snapshot of the work taking place in states across the country paints a hopeful picture:

• Washington. Washington Community Action Network has led the field campaign to pass I-1098, a November 2010 statewide ballot initiative to cut property taxes and taxes on small businesses to benefit the middle class and establish a high-earners income tax for the wealthiest 1.2 percent of households (that is, families earning more than $400,000 annually, or individuals earning more than $200,000 a year).

• Alabama. Alabama Arise has worked to remove the state sales tax from grocery purchases and to pay for it by eliminating the state tax deduction for federal taxes paid, which benefits primarily the wealthy.

• Colorado. The Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC) has co-led the fight to defeat three measures on the ballot in November 2010 that would cut state and local taxes, fines, and fees and prevent the funding of long-term infrastructure projects. CPC plays an integral part in the campaign to defeat these initiatives by running the fieldwork operation, coordinat- ing messaging throughout the state, and providing community-level education.

• Tennessee. Tennesseans for Fair Taxation’s overarching goal is to modern- ize the state’s tax system. This includes working to reduce the general sales tax, eliminate the tax on food, and implement a personal income tax with generous exemptions for low-income families.

• Nevada. The Silver State has been hit hard by the recession, unemployment, and the foreclosure crisis, particularly because of its long-standing reliance on gaming taxes and regressive sales taxes. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada advocates creating new sources of revenue to support critical public services, including extraction taxes on the state’s gold-mining industry.

In communities across the country, great grassroots work is happening, but the challenges remain acute. As more families are having trouble making ends meet, countering the anti-tax rhetoric is particularly challenging. But we all have a vested interest in our government’s tax system, since fair and adequate revenue is critical for our communities to thrive. And through the tax fairness movement, state-level grassroots organizations and their allies are working to rebuild—from the bottom up—a more progressive tax system that reflects values of fairness, responsibility, and sustainability.

Karen Kraut is a coordinator at the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative. Shannon Moriarty is the TFOC’s communications director.

Don't Mess With Texas

Two weeks ago, the Texas Legislature began its session in Austin, the state capitol. The state is in big trouble.

Thanks to a series of foolish tax cuts set in place a couple of years ago, as well as the generally poor national economy, the state now faces a $27 billion deficit.

As the session opened, instead of focusing on this pending disaster a dozen legislators spent an enormous amount of time and energy in filing over 60 bills seeking to punish immigrants. Apart from insisting that local police do the federal government’s job of enforcing immigration law (without offering a penny in return for the costs that this would incur), the laws propose that teachers and principals investigate school children’s immigration status, and that the state tax any money being sent, for example, to a man’s hungry wife and children in Mexico.

The sheer number of the laws that were filed, along with the extraordinary nastiness of the language that followed their introduction, is alarming. Texas politics will always have a few ducks in the crowd, but the quacking has reached a deafening pitch.

The normal reaction to politicians and government waving big sticks is to duck and cover. We have learned, rather well, to be helpless in the face of undeclared wars and of macro-economic decisions.

This is particularly true for the “working poor” (as if a poor person living in Texas has any other option than to be working).

Last Saturday, however, more than a 100 folks braved a chilly, rainy morning to gather in a local Chamber of Commerce meeting room. They came to stand up and be counted in a rousing protest against the anti-immigrant legislation being filed.

There were the usual players there: the good guardians of the commonweal that are the churches and the community organizations. But on this morning there were also some less-typical voices.

“The Alamo Dollar Store denounces these laws!”

“El Gato Bakery formally protests the introduction of such legislation.”

“Papo’s Wrecker Service from Alton is against these laws.”

More than eighty small businesses joined in the protest against a series of laws that would cast suspicion over anyone who “seemed” to be of “foreign extraction.” They offered resolutions which were signed and delivered to our state legislators who came to meet with us, their constituents.

This was a week to the day that, in a similar gathering in Tucson, several people were shot while meeting with their government representative.Yet I found no fear in this room. What I did discover was outrage at the idea that someone would dare to mess with Texas.

Our Texas.

As I was leaving the meeting, I saw an older fellow that I knew from other protests. “How about them Cowboys?” I said to him, teasing him about the disaster of that football team.

“No te preocupes,” he said to me in Spanish, “¡Verémos el año que entra! Es el equipo nuestro--no se puede fallar!"

"That's our team," he had said, weirdly joining at least one part of his life to that of the East Texas legislator and long-time Cowboy fan who wants other Texans to fear this fellow.

The Spanish-speaking Cowboy fan said good bye to me, and walked out into the misty rain. He was smiling, his step confident. He had refused to follow the orders to "duck and cover."

It was a good day.

This post was written by Michael Seifert, a network weaver with Equal Voice in the Rio Grande Valley.

59% Hike? Thank You, Blue Shield Insurance

Insurer says the increases result from fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws. The move comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39%.

Another big California health insurer has stunned individual policyholders with huge rate increases — this time it's Blue Shield of California seeking cumulative hikes of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of customers March 1.

Blue Shield's action comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39% for about 700,000 California customers.

San Francisco-based Blue Shield said the increases were the result of fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws.

"We raise rates only when absolutely necessary to pay the accelerating cost of medical care for our members," the nonprofit insurer told customers last month.

In all, Blue Shield said, 193,000 policyholders would see increases averaging 30% to 35%, the result of three separate rate hikes since October.

Nearly 1 in 4 of the affected customers will see cumulative increases of more than 50% over five months.

While most policyholders received separate notices for the successive rate hikes, others were given the news all at once because they had contracts guaranteeing their rate for a year, Blue Shield spokesman Tom Epstein said.

Michael Fraser, a Blue Shield policyholder from San Diego, learned recently that his monthly bill would climb 59%, to $431 from $271.

"When I tell people, their jaws drop and their eyes bug out," said Fraser, 53, a freelance advertising writer. "The amount is stunning."

Like many people who hold individual policies, Fraser is self-employed. Others who carry such insurance include people who aren't covered by employer plans or who have been laid off.

The Blue Shield increases triggered complaints to new Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, and they could prove to be an early test of how the former Democratic state assemblyman deals with rate hikes and the insurance industry.

Anthem's attempt to raise rates by up to 39% led to national outrage and helped President Obama marshal support for his healthcare overhaul. The insurer was ultimately forced to back down, accepting maximum rate hikes of 20%.

Jones said the Blue Shield move underscored the need for the Legislature to give the insurance commissioner legal authority to regulate insurance rates the same way he does automobile coverage.

At present, the commissioner can block increases only if insurers spend less than 70% of premium income on claims. Jones' office said Blue Shield's March 1 increase was under review.

Photo: Dave Jones, CA Insurance Commissioner, says the Blue Shield move underscored the need for the Legislature to give the insurance commissioner legal authority to regulate insurance rates the same way he does automobile coverage.

Article By Duke Helfand

Copyright LA Times 2011

On Seeing

Gaspar is a tall, handsome young man who grew up amongst a large family in a crowded rental home in a tough neighborhood near Brownsville.

In middle school, he decided that he really, really wanted to play the clarinet, and so he joined the band class.

On the first day of class, the teacher apologized, telling him that there weren’t enough instruments to go around and that he, being amongst the youngest students, would have to come back next year.

The gleam in Gaspar’s eye, as well as his disappointment, allowed the teacher a creative moment. He told Gaspar, “Look, I don’t have an instrument you can play, but you can mark out time for us by tapping on your desk.”

Gaspar eventually got to borrow a clarinet from the school.

He went on to receive a full scholarship to the university, and, later, won the offer of a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.

Gaspar turned down the Julliard offer, opting instead to teach high school band.

“Just returning a favor,” was his take on a courageously unselfish career move.

Tradition considers Gaspar (“Caspar”, in English) to be the name of one of the three wise men who, searching the skies for a sign of Divine Intention, came upon the infant Jesus. Gaspar, the wise man, saw something in this child born into a crowded stable. In an unselfish gesture, Gaspar gave the newborn a gift of gold.

Tradition does not tell us what the poor family did with this gold. Perhaps they paid for a couple of nights in a local hotel. Perhaps they put the money away against troubled times.

I quietly hope that they invested in clarinets.

This post was written by Michael Seifert from his blog, Musings From Alongside the Border.

Every time you use the word ‘illegal,’ Jan Brewer wins

By: Suphatra Laviolette

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can get me deported…”

That’s how that rhyme goes, right?

Words are playing a major role in America’s immigration debate. The “I” word – I mean the word “illegal” – has framed the conversation on what to do with the thousands of people that come to America every year without appropriate documentation. Their lives hang in the balance as America debates what to do about them. While some states clearly disapprove of the undocumented – such as Arizona with its SB 1070 law allowing local and state police to act as federal agents and question folks about their immigration status – some cities, like Los Angeles, are boycotting Arizona on the grounds that SB 1070 encourages racial profiling.

PHOTO: Jan Brewer is governor of Arizona, the state with the toughest immigration policy in America.

Whichever way you lean, one thing is clear: there is an overriding tone to this conversation, and the word “illegal” sums it up. That word labels a myriad of complex situations and puts them into one box, one context, one verdict: Illegal.

How can we have an honest conversation seeking a sensible and just resolution if we’ve so nicknamed our defendants Mr. Guilty and Ms. Wrong right off the bat? If you really want to see immigration reformed, let’s at least frame our discussion without the verbal mousetraps.

So I ask you, consider the “I” word. Consider dropping it.

http://colorlines.com/droptheiword/

Employed But Struggling: 1 in 3 Working Families Near Poverty

Michelle Feliz, a single mother living in Boston, can't afford day care for her one-year-old son. She can't afford new clothes for her teenage daughter. Late last year, she applied for food stamps.

Unlike many Americans increasingly seeking public assistance, Feliz, 35, is employed. Yet what she earns in her job as a secretary does not cover even her most basic needs, leaving her scrambling to keep food on her table.

In the aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the Depression, much attention has been focused on the 15 million people who are officially out of work, yet even among those who have jobs, livelihoods and living standards have been substantially downgraded. Growing numbers of employed people live in near poverty, struggling to make ends meet.

Almost a third of America's working families are now considered low-income, earning less than twice the official poverty threshold, according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project. The recession, which has incited layoffs and wage cuts, reversed a period of improvement: Between 2007 and 2009, as the recession set in, the percentage of U.S. working families classified as low-income grew from 28 percent to more than 30 percent.

Workers who once focused on career advancement now live paycheck to paycheck. The American middle class, in effect, is eroding.

"They're no longer working actively, with a chance to advance and gain more experience and skills," said Brandon Roberts, manager of the Working Poor Families Project and a co-author of the report. "They're just putting pieces together to stay afloat, to meet basic needs."

Last year, 45 million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income households, according to the report. As breadwinners lost jobs or suffered pay cuts, the report notes, the number of low-income families grew to 10 million last year, an increase of almost a quarter-million from 2008. The problem is worse among minorities: 43 percent of America's working families with a minority parent are low-income, the report finds, compared to 22 percent of white working families.

Feliz, who is Latina, has a job. But she's barely scraping by.

"I had to take this job because it was the only thing I could find," Feliz said. "I was making more money than I'm making now."

Once an officer manager at Oficina Hispana, an English language education program, Feliz was laid off in 2007 when her employer didn't get a crucial grant. She collected unemployment insurance for half a year, she said. The week before the benefits expired, she got her current job as a secretary at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Her annual salary dropped from $42,000 to $37,000. And her dream of opening a shelter for female victims of domestic violence was deferred.

"Career-wise, that set me back a lot," she said.

She now struggles just to put food on the table. She applied for food stamps in November of last year, she said, but was denied because her salary was just above the cutoff. So she began clipping coupons. When her son came down with a bad fever recently, she feared she would have to make a difficult choice: stay home and risk losing her job, or take him to prohibitively expensive day care. Fortunately, her parents, who also live in Boston, were able to look after him.

"I'm afraid to stay home," Feliz said. "If I take too many days off, I could lose my job."

Feliz, who has an associate's degree from Roxbury Community College, is taking classes in human services and management at UMass Boston, and her employer agreed to help foot the bill. She hasn't given up on her dream, but her focus right now is on preserving her income.

"I'm doing at least three people's jobs," she said. "It's hard."

Her son's father, who pays child support, is similarly struggling to keep two part-time jobs, Feliz said.

The crisis extends beyond the struggling breadwinners. Children in low-income families suffer from diminished educational opportunities and compromised health care, according to the new report. Nationwide, 35 percent of children in working families are living in low-income households, the report finds, and childhood poverty tends to persist into adulthood.

"That has serious implications for children, not only today, but as they look to the future," Roberts said. "The odds are being stacked against them."

Living in a low-income family can take a psychological as well as financial toll. Feliz has striven to raise her children's spirits, pushing her daughter to do well in school.

"I want her to be able to get a good job," she said, "to have things I'm not able to give her."

This article was written by William Alden and appeared on the Huffington Post. All Rights Reserved to Huffington Post.