Show me your papers…

Racial profiling…

Mass exodus…

Children kept home from school…

Agricultural production crippled…

Just when you didn’t think it was possible for life to get any harderfor immigrants and Latinos in Alabama. Last week, after Gov. Robert Bentley signaled that he had serious concerns with H.B. 658 and wanted the legislature to correct it’s mistakes during a special legislative session.  He reversed his decision by pandering to the worst elements of the legislature and made the worst anti-immigrant law in America even worse by signing the bill into law.

Here’s how it makes things worse:

• H.B. 658 was passed as a “reform” bill, but it fails to address the humanitarian, legal, and moral crisis in Alabama caused by HB56.
• H.B. 658 allows school officials to ask schoolchildren to verify their immigration status and their parents’ status.
• H.B. 658 continues to void contracts like leases and work agreements with undocumented immigrants.
• H.B. 658 requires officers to check the immigration status of anyone arrested whom they suspect may be in the country illegally, and prolongs the limit of how long they can hold someone in jail from 24 hours to 48 hours.
• H.B. 658 requires the Alabama Department of Homeland Security to post on its website the names and counties of every “unlawfully present person” who appears in court for any violation of state law.  This new “scarlet letter” provision could fuel vigilante violence against immigrants and their families.

Southern Poverty Law Center Legal Director Mary Bauer had this to say about the passage of H.B. 658:

“Today is an incredibly dark day for Alabama. Despite the fact that our state has suffered incredibly over the past year as a result of H.B. 56, the Alabama legislature and Governor Bentley have chosen to double down by passing and signing into law an even more extreme measure. While other states have abandoned similar measures and even recalled the sponsors of such measures, Alabama has once again made a name for itself as the worst of the worst.”

For more information, check out this fact sheet: http://www.acij.net/sites/default/files/HB658%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

And check out this video that illustrates just how horrible Bentley’s decision to sign these bills into law are:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly support and advocate for stop-and-frisk policing, a strategy that authorizes police officers to randomly stop and frisk pedestrians without probable cause – despite concerns that the practice can lead to racial profiling.

In 2011, New York City police officers stopped a record 685,724 civilians. A report published by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) found that 87 percent of those stopped were African American and Latino. Arguably the most disturbing part of the NYCLU report was that NYPD officers stopped 168,126 Black men between the ages of 14 and 24, exceeding the total population of young Black men (158,406) living in New York City.

In addition to a disproportionate number of stops, the NYCLU report also found racial disparity in who police choose to search after stopping someone. More than 57 percent of those stopped and frisked by police were Black and Latino, compared to 44.2 percent for Whites. The report also revealed that a smaller percentage of Black and Latino stopped-and-frisked resulted in weapons charges than Whites.

Bloomberg and Kelly defend the controversial policy by pointing to New York’s declining murder and crime rates. However, there is little data has been provided as to how the stop-and-frisk strategy actually affects crime. The mayor and police commissioner commit a logical fallacy by asserting an unsupported correlation as a causal relationship.

Although sometimes very helpful for analyzing statistics and data, correlations don’t explain how, why, or if one event causes another. For example, ice cream sales increase as incidents of drowning increase. If someone only examined this correlation, it would lead to the comical conclusion that eating ice cream causes people to drown. The correlation misses that something else- in this case, weather- causes both of the events. Oftentimes no relationship exists in a correlation other than the events occurring at the same time.

Bloomberg and Kelly defend stop and frisk based solely on receding crime rates. I would venture to say that if crime rates rose, they would explain stop and frisk as an important strategy to keep crime rates from climbing even higher. Crime rates and stop and frisks could have nothing, something, or everything to do with one another. But it’s not sound policy-making to assert that there’s a causal relationship based solely on a correlation.

Crime is an extremely difficult topic to evaluate that all too often evades an easy answer. New York City public officials should be trying to find out what’s happening with crime instead of making blanket statements defending stop and frisks without offering any proof.

•  Alarmingly high rates of harassment and discrimination while in grades K-12: harassment (78%), physical assault (35%) and sexual assault (12%).
• Direct housing discrimination – 19 percent reported having been refused a home or apartment and 11 percent reported being evicted because of their gender identity/expression.
• Harassment, mistreatment or discrimination: 90 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment, mistreatment or discrimination on the job or took actions like hiding who they are to avoid it.
• Double the rate of unemployment: survey respondents experienced unemployment at twice the rate of the general population at the time of the survey, with rates for people of color up to four times the national unemployment rate.

Since then, the Task Force has released a series of factsheets designed to specifically shine a light on the experiences of transgender people of color.  While discrimination was pervasive for all respondents who took the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, the combination of anti-transgender bias with racism and anti-immigrant prejudice was especially devastating for Blacks and Latinos.

• Transgender people of color disproportionately live in extreme poverty, with 34 percent of Blacks and 28 percent of Latinos reporting an annual household income of less than $10,000. The rate for transgender people of all races is 15 percent and the general U.S. population rate is 4 percent.
• Black and Latino/a transgender people are affected by HIV in devastating numbers. More than one in five Black respondents and one in twelve Latino/a respondents were HIV-positive. This compares to rates of 2.64 percent for transgender respondents of all races and 0.6 percent of the general U.S. population.
• Forty-six percent of Black transgender people were harassed, 15 percent were physically assaulted, and 13 percent were sexually assaulted at work.
• Fifty-four percent of Latino/a transgender people were harassed, 16 percent were physically assaulted, and 14 percent were sexually assaulted at work.
• Nearly half of Black (49%) and Latino/a (47%) respondents reported having attempted suicide.

This is a serious issue that must be addressed publicly. On Tuesday, May 22, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D. Ore., a lead sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, is holding a briefing on the prevalence of discrimination against transgender people. The briefing will feature:

• Jaime M. Grant, Ph.D., Executive Director, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, Kalamazoo College, MI
• Mara Keisling, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality
• Jack Harrison, Policy Analyst, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
• Alex Nelson, a Maryland resident who experienced discrimination on the basis of his gender identity.

With the passing of Nicholas deB. Katzenbach on May 9, this country lost a remarkable man who helped shape the foundation of this nation’s commitment to civil rights.  As a Senior Advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, U.S. Attorney General, and Deputy Attorney General, he played a major role in the critical events of the 1960s that spurred this country to overcome the legacy of Jim Crow and segregation.  In one of the iconic images of that era, he personally faced down Alabama Governor George Wallace in the legendary “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” which resulted in the peaceful registration of the first two African Americans to attend the University of Alabama.  Among his many other contributions to furthering the cause of civil rights, he helped frame and led the efforts to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and oversaw the initial enforcement of these and other civil rights statutes.

To those coming of age today, Nick Katzenbach’s name may not be readily familiar, possibly known primarily as a party in long ago cases cited in law school textbooks.  To students of history and those of us who were fortunate enough to have known him, however, Nick was a man of rare talent and intellect who combined a bedrock devotion to principle with a belief that government could and should act in concert with the nation’s highest ideals.

As Attorney General, he challenged J. Edgar Hoover’s harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by going to President Johnson in an attempt to stop the surreptitious media campaign being waged against Dr. King.  Following his government service, Nick continued his prominent professional roles as General Counsel to IBM and in private practice. At the same time, he also maintained his commitment to the public interest, testifying on behalf of President Clinton during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings, co-chairing the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, and serving—in the capacity where I was enormously honored to come to know him—as the founding Board Chair of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

For all of Nick’s remarkable accomplishments and activities, he was a straightforward and down-to-earth man with a wry sense of humor as reflected in the title of his memoir:  Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ.  He was also a remarkable mentor to many, including younger attorneys such as myself with whom he shared his ample wisdom.  His willingness to share his experiences, ranging from the more than two years he spent as a prisoner of war during World War II to the lessons he learned about how to advance social justice amidst challenging political circumstances, served as unforgettable lessons to many.

Nick was born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, where he returned after his government service and where he lived when he passed away at age 90.  Nick’s long and well-lived life is an inspiration to all of us who share his belief in the power of government to further opportunity for all.

Kenneth Zimmerman is a Member of the Lowenstein Sandler Litigation Group and Chair of the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest. He was the founding Executive Director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a Newark-based urban advocacy and research organization.

The Leadership Conference sends its condolences to the family and friends of Nicholas Katzenbach and joins them in celebrating him and his many accomplishments and activities, which continue to inspire our ongoing work to bring equal opportunity to all.

But while the bipartisan Senate bill passed a few weeks ago protects Native American victims, immigrant victims, LGBT victims and victims from other marginalized communities, H.R. 4970 actually rolls back protections for victims of violence.

How can this happen? Shouldn’t a bill about domestic and sexual violence expand protections for all victims?

It can certainly happen when one of the top lobbyists on this issue id reported to have a major conflict of interest. Natasha Spivack is an official at an anti-domestic violence advocacy group called Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) … and is also the founder of a ‘mail-order bride’ company, Encounters International.

Guess who has been encouraging representatives to roll back protections for immigrant victims in order to curb ‘false accusations’ of domestic abuse?

VAWA’s provisions for abused immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens enable victims to escape violent marriages without fear of automatic deportation. Under the current system, allegations of abuse are rigorously reviewed and a VAWA application is only approved after a strenuous review process by specially-trained lawyers.

It turns out that Spivack has a personal bone to pick with VAWA’s immigration provision. In 2004, a federal jury awarded $430,500 to Ukrainian-born Nataliya Fox in a unanimous verdict. The Tahirih Justice Center brought the lawsuit against Spivack’s company “in response to Spivack’s pattern of repeatedly pairing abusers with foreign women whose English was limited, who did not know American laws and who lacked resources to get help.”

Fox was viciously abused by the husband to whom she had been introduced by Spivack. He beat her repeatedly, withheld food from her, held a gun to her head and used their infant child and threats of deportation as tools of control.

This is one woman’s horrifying story. With a weakened VAWA, there is no telling how many more victims will be left alone, far from home with nowhere to turn, as they face abuse, fear, violence, pain, and death.

Eliminating the ACS would severely undermine the collection of data vitally important to civil rights and human advocates, schools, businesses, lawmakers, and others who rely on its detailed information to help make critical decisions affecting millions of U.S. residents.

“No one can deny that we are a data-driven society,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “The public sector depends on these data to understand the people it is tasked with serving.  By the same token, no business would make important decisions without objective, accurate data as guideposts.  Why would some members of Congress want to run the government without the most accurate information available to guide their decisions?”

Since 2005, the ACS has functioned as a companion to the national census conducted every 10 years. While the census asks only a few basic questions, the ACS is a longer-form survey that asks a smaller sample of the population more detailed questions about their demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics. These detailed questions allow public and private decisionmakers and advocates to gain a more accurate understanding of the needs and challenges facing a diverse range of communities.

Target uses statistical information on housing, home value, income, and other demographics in order to better understand and serve their customers.

Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund Arturo Vargas also described what’s at stake in a Huffington Post op-ed:

“For the sake of the safety of communities that depend on federal funding for police and fire departments; for the families whose chance at economic mobility rests on availability of vocational education, Head Start programs, and improvement of failing public schools; for the citizens who participate in elections because they believe that each person has an equal vote and voice, Congress must give the Census Bureau the resources it needs to sustain the American Community Survey and to plan for and conduct an accurate, efficient 2020 count.”

Making calls from prison are expensive and up to 60 percent of what prisoner’s families pay to speak to their loved ones behind bars have nothing to do with the cost of the phone service provided. The high rates of prison phone calls are the result of contracts between prisons and telephone companies that are awarded based on which company can provide the highest kickback to the prison and not who can provide the cheapest rates.

Tomorrow, Friday May 11th, the Prison Phone Justice Campaign is hosting a Mother’s Day of Action asking the Federal Communications Commission to use their power to address the high cost of prison phone calls. The campaign is collecting 1,000 stories from people speaking up for the rights of prisoners and families to stay connected.

Share your story. Fill out this online postcard and we’ll submit your story to the Federal Communications Commission.
http://bit.ly/K9iPux  (If you would rather record your story call 877-518-0606)
After you’ve shared your story, help us reach the goal of 1,000 stories by sharing the postcard through social media.  #phonejustice

This week the U.S. House of Representatives is voting on $36 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance programs in a budget procedure called “reconciliation,” which would kick 2 million people off of food aid, cut benefits for 44 million more, and drop 280,000 low-income children from the free school lunch program. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, (formerly known as food stamps) is the cornerstone of the nutrition safety net. The program helps put food on the table for nearly 45 million low-income participants each month—the majority of whom are children, elderly, disabled, or working poor. In 2010 alone SNAP lifted more than 5 million Americans above the poverty line.

The mock trailer below splices scenes from the Hunger Games movie with some of our nation’s key players on the issues of poverty, prosperity, and deficit reduction. It is absolutely riveting and fantastic to watch. Don’t miss it!

Tell more people that it’s time to get into the game and join the fight against poverty and hunger in America.  Share “The REAL Hunger Games” trailer on Twitter and Facebook.  #realhungergames

Check it out: