Guatemala Day Laborer’s Dream of Being Announcer Comes True – Latin American Herald Tribune

LOS ANGELES – The voice of Luis Gonzalez is heard Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Radio Centro Laboral, a Los Angeles-based online station over which this Guatemalan day laborer broadcasts a message of hope. Listening to him speak and hearing his tone of voice, story his cadence and diction, it sounds like his natural destiny in life was to be an announcer – but getting there took him 50 years. “I’m 52 years old and all my life I admired the great radio announcers, I dreamed of being one, but thought it was too hard because I only studied up to the sixth grade and I’ve always had to work hard to earn a living,” Gonzalez told Efe in an interview. He came to the United States in the year 2000 looking for a better life, and eventually came upon one of the day-laborer centers of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, where immigrants from different countries gather every day hoping for contractors to show up and give them work.

S-Comm system: End it, not mend it – The Asheville Citizen-Times

Any day now the Department of Homeland Security will announce a second round of “reforms” to the disgraced S-Comm, order or “Se Communities, see ” program. The harsh reality is that S-Comm is too broken to be fixed. Opponents have long charged that the program, which requires state and local jails to run immigration background checks on any person booked into custody — regardless of the seriousness or ultimate disposition of their charges — is undermining community safety and jeopardizing civil rights. Hundreds of thousands of family members have been deported, and public safety has been damaged by making witnesses and victims of crimes fear contact with police. North Carolina ranks No. 5 in states that deport the most number of people because of S-Comm.

Panel opposes Se Communities – Yale Daily News

Community activists convened in Sudler Hall Wednesday night to oppose Se Communities, the federal government’s new program intended to deport criminals living in the country illegally. The panel was jointly hosted by the Yale College Democrats, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de Yale and the University’s chapter of Amnesty International. Mayor John DeStefano Jr., order Yale Law School professor Michael Wishnie, Armando Ghinaglia of Connecticut Students for a DREAM, Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro and Latricia Kelly, the director of development and programs for Junta for Progressive Action, along with around 30 students, gathered to discuss their concerns about the program and future steps as it is executed nationwide.

Travis County Sheriff’s Race Focuses on S-Comm – The Austin Chronicle

On its face, the S-Comm program appears to be functioning as designed – creating a way to identify and remove criminal immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But it has not been without controversy both nationally and locally, particularly after a study released in 2010 charged that 26% of all deportations were of noncriminals. More explosive in Austin was the conclusion by advocates who compiled the study – including the Center for Constitutional Rights and National Day Laborer Organiz­ing Network – that Travis County, at 82%, led all jurisdictions in the deportation of noncriminal immigrants. The county’s role in the program is now assuming central importance in the Demo­cratic primary race for Travis County sheriff, where retired Austin Police Depart­ment Lt. John Sisson is mounting a campaign to unseat incumbent Sheriff Greg Hamil­ton as the county’s top cop.

Se Communities: End it, Don’t Mend it

for Century, order Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; border-style: none; padding: 0px;”>Any day now Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will announce a second round of “reforms” to the disgraced “Se Communities” deportation program, S-Comm. And once again, it appears that ICE is more interested in spin than substance. The timing of the announcement–immediately before the DHS Office of Inspector General Report–seems primarily designed to take the pressure off of ICE rather than an honest attempt to address the fundamental flaws of the program.

Out of the Shadows & Into the Streets, to Stop Arpaio!!

 

 

There are so many indescribable words that can portray yesterdays [March 20th2012] act of bravery and resistance by six undocumented students.  These six students stepped up to the plate, without anyone telling them to. Why? Because they believed it was time to take matters into their own hands. Tired of not seeing any progress, and wanting to empower their communities, they did what many of us would not expect six undocumented (not to mention two minor aged) students to do. They mobilized and faced the Phoenix Police Department challenging to have Arpaio to come and get them.