LIBRE

Frida state of mind #frida #kahlo #Mexican #artist #icon...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 18:02:25 -0400

Frida state of mind #frida #kahlo #Mexican #artist #icon #feminist #colorful #flower (Taken with Instagram)

#mothernature #beauty #sunset #godsglory #iphoneography #clouds ...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:33:25 -0400

#mothernature #beauty #sunset #godsglory #iphoneography #clouds (Taken with Instagram)

"We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that government..."

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:15:00 -0400

“We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.”

- President Barack Obama during his speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention

Taken with Instagram

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:08:00 -0400

Taken with Instagram

humanrightswatch: A woman cries as she speaks of her fear that...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:27:15 -0400

humanrightswatch:

A woman cries as she speaks of her fear that her ex-boyfriend will kill their children. A member of one of the successor groups to the paramilitaries, he wounded her in a knife attack after she left him. She is afraid of walking outside because members of his group control many neighborhoods, and if they see her they may report back to him. She is in hiding in a safe house in Barrancabermeja, Santander.

Sexual violence against women and girls has been called a habitual practice in Colombia’s five decades of warfare between the military, guerrillas, and paramilitaries. But in interviewing these displaced women and girls, I realized that the terror and violence does not end for them when they flee armed groups. Leaving their villages and moving to cities only exacerbates the economic, social, and cultural vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to violence.

Read the rest after the jump.

Photo © 2008 Stephen Ferry

Pool Daze

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:46:00 -0400

Pool Daze

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Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:39:29 -0400

humanrightswatch: The Ethiopian government is forcibly...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 02:44:39 -0400

humanrightswatch:

The Ethiopian government is forcibly displacing indigenous pastoral communities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo valley without adequate consultation or compensation to make way for state-run sugar plantations.

A South Omo resident describes: “Our great, great, great grandmothers and grandfathers lived in this land. Our fathers lived here and me I live here… The men take a fish hook and go to the river and catch a fish and bring it to me to eat. They also go and hunt to bring food for the children. Whose land is this? It belongs to me.”

© Photo 2007 Brent Stirton/Reportage by Getty Images

humanrightswatch: The US must stop sexual violence against...

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:25:31 -0400

humanrightswatch:

The US must stop sexual violence against immigrant farmworkers.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrant farmworker women and girls in the United States face a high risk of sexual violence and sexual harassment in their workplaces because US authorities and employers fail to protect them adequately.

In a new 95-page report, Human Rights Watch documents rape, stalking, unwanted touching, exhibitionism, or vulgar and obscene language by supervisors, employers, and others in positions of power. Most farmworkers interviewed said they had experienced such treatment or knew others who had. And most said they had not reported these or other workplace abuses, fearing reprisals. Those who had filed sexual harassment claims or reported sexual assault to the police had done so with the encouragement and assistance of survivor advocates or attorneys in the face of difficult challenges.

Farmworkers described experiences such as the following:

A woman in California reported that a supervisor at a lettuce company raped her and later told her that she “should remember it’s because of him that [she has] this job.”

A woman in New York said that a supervisor, when she picked potatoes and onions, would touch women’s breasts and buttocks. If they tried to resist, he would threaten to call immigration or fire them.

Four women who had worked together packing cauliflower in California said a supervisor would regularly expose himself and make comments like, “[That woman] needs to be fucked!” When they tried to defend one young woman whom he singled out for particular abuse, he fired all of them.

© 2011 AP Photo

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Tue, 08 May 2012 13:57:25 -0400

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Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:36:43 -0400

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Sun, 08 Apr 2012 17:15:00 -0400

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Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:06:27 -0400

LAT Article about Race and The Oscars

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:50:00 -0500

LAT Article about Race and The Oscars:

The article discusses a UCLA/UC Berkeley/Earl Warren Institute Report titled “Not Quite a Breakthrough: The Oscars and Actors of Color, 2002-2012.”

Highlights include:

• All lead actress winners since 2002 have been white.

• No winner in any acting category during the last 10 years has been Latino, Asian

American or Native American.

• Oscar winners and nominees of color make fewer movies per year after their
nominations than their white peers do.

• Oscar winners and nominees of color are more likely than their white peers to
work in television, which is considered lower-status work.

• Oscar winners and nominees of color are less likely than their white peers to
receive subsequent nominations.

(via LA Times)

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Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:44:00 -0500

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Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:42:34 -0500

Just sorting through Cesar Chavez’s handwritten notes #nbd...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:44:00 -0500

Just sorting through Cesar Chavez’s handwritten notes #nbd #livingthedream (Taken with Instagram at UFW Salinas Office)

Point Lobos 2.12.12

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:16:09 -0500

Point Lobos 2.12.12

GIRL POWER

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:55:00 -0500

GIRL POWER

Prosecutorial discretion = human rights?

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:42:00 -0500

Prosecutorial discretion = human rights?:

This NYT article touches upon the deep divide in the immigration debate happening on the ground. The union for ICE agents has prevented 7,000 of their members from partaking in a new federal Immigration training course. This course, only half a day, trains immigration officers on prosecutorial discretion and the use of more fair tactics when working with undocumented migrants. At the end of last year, ICE and Obama released a memo explaining that they would now enforce prosecutorial discretion measures (only arresting undocumented migrants with criminal records, outside of unlawful crossings, and halting deportations of those with clean records). Some argue that this was Obama’s olive branch to the Latino and pro-immigrant communities who have suffered through the “Secure Communities” program that has deported nearly 400,000 undocumented migrants, including: military officers, parents of US citizens, the elderly and students. Also, there have been widespread reports of human rights abuses by federal ICE agents.

I wonder, why would agents refuse a half a day worth of trainings on how to better implement a program that has obviously allowed for human rights abuses!? In my opinion, these trainings should be at least a week long rather than half a day, but it is a start. Programs like secure communities and the federal 287 g allow for ICE agent’s biases against immigrants to affect the way they work. With both programs, the lines that should not be crossed are not made plainly clear to the agents, and I think that enforcing trainings that go over proper implementation is necessary in order to ensure fair and just enforcement. Remember…”No human is illegal”