ACLU Day of Action & Librarians at the USSF in Atlanta. No. 473.

Last week was the American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. As a librarian who supported the
Resolution Against the Use of Torture as a Violation of Our Basic Values as Librarians I decided to attend the ACLU Day of Action on 6/26/07.
The next day I went to Atlanta for the US Social Forum .
Librarians met at Mary Mac's Tea Room to plan the Librarian Program presentation. The program was held at the Auburn Avenue African-American Research Library. My part of the program what what librarians can do to help immigrants. Mikael Book, an activist from Finland, has a report here.

Gone a Bit.

COMMUNITIES WITHOUT BORDERS. No. 472.

COMMUNITIES WITHOUT BORDERS
Images and Voices from the World of Migration
David Bacon; Carlos Muñoz Jr.
(Foreword); Douglas Harper (Foreword)
Cornell University Press.
$29.95t paper
2006, 248 pages, 8 1/2 x 11, 149 duotones
ISBN: 978-0-8014-7307-4 Quantity


In his stunning work of photojournalism and oral history, David Bacon documents the new reality of migrant experience: the creation of transnational communities. Today's indigenous migrants don't simply move from one point to another but create new communities all along the northern road from Guatemala through Mexico into the United States, connected by common culture and history. Drawing on his experience as a photographer and a journalist and also as a former labor organizer, Bacon portrays the lives of the people who migrate between Guatemala and Mexico and the United States. He takes us inside these communities and illuminates the ties that bind them together, the influence of their working conditions on their families and health, and their struggle for better lives.

Bacon portrays in photographs and their own words Mixtec and Triqui migrants in Oaxaca, Baja California, and California; Guatemalan migrants in Huehuetenango and Nebraska; miners and indigenous communities in Sonora and Arizona; and veterans of the bracero program of the 1940s and 1950s. Bacon's interviews with this first wave of guest workers are especially relevant in light of the current political focus on guest-worker programs as a model for reforming immigration, an approach with which Bacon strongly disagrees.

Throughout Communities without Borders, Bacon emphasizes the social movements migrants organize to improve their own working conditions and the well-being of their enclaves. U.S. border policy treats undocumented immigrants as an aggregation of individuals, ignoring the social pressures that force whole communities to move and the networks of families and hometowns that sustain them on their journeys. Communities without Borders makes an urgent appeal for understanding the human reality that should inform our national debate over immigration.

Homeless People and the Public Library; OneVote '08. No. 471.

Kind of an odd article in USAToday.
"Public libraries, long a daytime sanctuary for homeless people, increasingly are offering services targeted to them."

"The broader mission of the library is a very welcoming one," says Jane Salisbury, supervisor of library outreach services at Multnomah County Library in Portland, Ore.

Libraries are shelters from cold and heat, she says, but homeless people also go there because "people are there to serve them."

Whenever I see articles like this I like to remind of the extensive website of the Hunger, Homelessness and Poverty Task Force of the Social Responsibilities RoundTable.

Connected. One Vote 08: an unprecedented, bi-partisan campaign to make global health and extreme poverty foreign policy priorities in the 2008 presidential election.
The next president will take office in a time of great hope: there are effective and affordable solutions that save lives. AIDS drugs can now cost as little as $1 a day. A $5 bed net can keep a child from dying from a mosquito bite. With the force of more than millions of members from all 50 states and a coalition of more than 100 non-profit, religious and charitable groups, ONE Vote '08 will educate and mobilize voters to ensure that the next American president is committed to using "strategic" power to end global poverty and keep America strong.

ONE Vote '08 is part of ONE, a broad and growing movement of Americans from every state and walk of life. More than millions of people have added their voices to ONE by visiting ONE.org.

See ONEVote'08.

Kurt Vonnegut and Hans Koning . No. 470.

Two defining contemporary literary figures with long associations with Monthly Review died in April:Kurt Vonnegut, on the 11th, aged eighty-four and Hans Koning (born Koningsberger) on the 13th, at eighty-five...

When asked for a comment for the jacket of Hans Koning’s Columbus: His Enterprise (1976) Vonnegut wrote “I think your book on Christopher Columbus is important. I’m more grateful for that book than any other book I have read in the last couple of years.”

The Poverty Business. No. 469.

The Poverty Business [BusinessWeek].
Inside U.S. companies' audacious drive to extract more profits from the nation's working poor.

The Vile Business Of Preying On the Poor, an essay by Froma Harrop, notes:

Corporate America has decided there's gold in draining the low-income masses of what little they have. Loan sharks and con artists once dominated this territory, but big businesses have moved in and are proving to be far smoother than the mugs who break legs. Their legal fine print can trap the uneducated in outrageous debt contracts without rousing the authorities.

The Economics of the Poverty Business
Researchers are digging deeper to learn more about the high cost of being poor, and its impact on the overall economy.

• A new study by The Brookings Institution in Washington uses Federal Reserve data and an analysis of more than 12 million credit reports to illustrate how the supply of credit in lower-income markets has dramatically increased in recent decades. The effect: rising indebtedness among lower-income households, and a growing struggle among those borrowers to pay bills.
• A 2006 study by Brookings documents the higher costs paid by lower-income families across a broad range of goods and services—from auto insurance to appliances. The report argues that reducing the cost of living for lower-income families by 1% could add $6.5 billion in new spending power to the economy.
• In The State of Working America, 2006/2007, researchers from The Economic Policy Institute in Washington present an exhaustive analysis of the nation's working families. Among the study's key findings: stagnant wages among lower-income workers despite rising productivity, growing income inequality, and less upward mobility for workers on the bottom rungs of the economy.

Immigration Action Needed June 5. No. 468.

Here is more detailed information about amendments related to Senate Bill 1348. Every one of us should call our Senators This week and urge them support amendments that call for keeping families intact.

The guest worker provisions as currently outlined calls for a new wave of indentured servants, something that each and every American should decry as unacceptable.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATOR TODAY.
The following information comes from the U.S. Catholic Bishops'Justice for Immigrants campaign. This web site will be providing daily briefings this week on what has transpired and what new amendments are being offered. Their web site is:
www.justiceforimmigrants.org
**********************************************************************
************************* Support family amendments to S.1348 that
strengthen family unity. CONTACT YOUR SENATORS ASK THEM TO SUPPORT FAMILY AMENDMENTS AND OPPOSE RESTRICTIVE AMENDMENTS TO S. 1348, THE SECURE BORDERS, ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, AND IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007 Background. The U.S. Senate will again consider S. 1348 beginning Tuesday, June 5th. Several amendments will be offered to the legislation during the week.

Message: The simple message to Senators is to ask them to "support amendments which strengthen family unity and to oppose amendments that limit the number of persons eligible for the Z visa legalization program." Below is a list of possible amendments.

Action: Call your Senators at 202-224-3121 with the simple message and/or ask them to support or oppose the amendments listed below. You can also log onto the Justice for Immigrants website(www.justiceforimmigrants.org/action.html) and send the sample letter we have provided to your Senator. During the upcoming week, each morning
updates will be sent on possible amendments to the bill.

SUPPORT:
Menedez-Hagel (#1194): Would move the cut-off date for family backlog reduction from May 2005 to January 1, 2007. This would help
800,000 applications and strengthen family reunification.

Clinton-Hagel (#1183): Would move immediate relatives (spouses, minor children) of legal permanent residents (LPRs) from a capped
category to the uncapped immediate relative category, thereby eliminating backlogs in this category.

Obama-Menendez (#1202) : Would sunset merit-based "point" system after five years.

Dodd-Menendez (#1199): Would increase the number of green cards for parents of U.S. citizens to 90,000 from 40,000.

Kerry: Would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide access to state social service agencies and legal orientation
sessions for immigrants involved in enforcement raids. It also would allow for the release of vulnerable populations, including single mothers,
involved in a raid.

Lieberman (#1191): Would establish detention standards for asylum-seekers and allow for release on bond for asylum-seekers.

OPPOSE:
Cornyn (#1184 and #1250): Cornyn #1184 would limit eligibility for the "Z" legalization program by disqualifying those who committed document fraud, among other minor offenses. #1250 would restrict confidentiality protections (to protect against deportation) in the legalization program.

Grassley (#1166): Would limit judicial review of visa revocations.

Sessions (#1234 and #1235): Sessions #1234 would deny earned-income tax credit (EITC) to Z and Y visa holders and #1235 would deny EITC to legal immigrants in the country five years or less.

Ensign: Expected amendment would deny Social Security payments to Z visa holders based on earnings made while out of status.

Inhofe: Makes English the official language of the United States.
This could lead to discrimination against Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency.

Thank you very much,
The Justice for Immigrants Campaign

The Great Neighborhood Book. No. 467.

The Project for Public Spaces' new book, The Great Neighborhood Book, by Jay Walljasper, explains how struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there.

The Great Neighborhood Book

" The willful destruction of public life in America has been so stupendous that heroic efforts must now be mounted to restore it. This includes especially the actual places where public life might dwell and thrive. "The Great Neighborhood Book" is a superb manual for this campaign - to take back the places where our buildings meet the street."

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and the Geography of Nowhere