By Preeti Mangala Shekar and Tram Nguyen
Last year, the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, with a miniscule staff and budget, worked relentlessly to pass the Green Jobs Act in Congress—a bill that if authorized will direct $125 million to green the nation’s workforce and train 35,000 people each year for “green-collar jobs.” That summer, Ella Baker Center and the Oakland Alliance also secured $250,000 from the city to build the Oakland Green Jobs Corp, a training program that promises to explicitly serve what is probably the most underutilized resource of Oakland: young working-class men and women of color.
In these efforts lay a hopeful vision—that the crises-ridden worlds of economics and environmentalism would converge to address the other huge crisis—racism in the United States. It is what some of its advocates call a potential paradigm shift that, necessitated by the earth’s climate crisis, can point the way out of “gray capitalism” and into a green, more equitable economy. The engine of this model is driven by the young and proactive leadership of people of color who intend to build a different solution for communities of color.
Van Jones, president of the newly formed Green for All campaign, talks about how earlier waves of economic flourishes didn’t much impact Black communities. “When the dotcom boom went bust, you didn’t see no Black man lose his shirt,” he points out, only half joking. “Black people were the least invested in it.”
read complete article at:
http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=276
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Gonzales Proposes Plan to Bring Fresher Foods into Local Schools: Plan will allow schools to purchase more food from local farmers
LANSING – State Representative Lee Gonzales (D-Flint Township) today introduced House Bill 5967, a bill that would make it easier for school districts to purchase food from local farmers for school lunch programs, bringing more fresh fruits and vegetables into our cafeterias and boosting the local economy.
"It's important to give our schools the ability to bring the freshest and healthiest food possible into our school cafeterias," Gonzales said. "When our children fuel up on healthy foods they are able to focus on their school work and prepare themselves for the good-paying jobs of the 21st century. This plan will help our schools provide the best possible food for our students at lunchtime."
Gonzales' plan would streamline the bidding process for school food administrators by increasing schools' small purchase threshold (SPT) for food procurement to $100,000, up from $19,650. The SPT is the dollar value above which competitive, formal bids must be obtained for purchases. Purchases below the SPT may be obtained through a simple informal bidding process in which schools may accept bids or quotes in writing or by phone, typically from at least three vendors.
Michigan's current SPT has proven to be a barrier for school food authorities who want to increase fresh and local food because it makes the bidding process more onerous, which often prevents schools from purchasing food from local farmers.
Purchasing locally grown food from local farmers for school meal programs – known as "farm to school" – has other benefits. It can provide schoolchildren with greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables, hands-on educational opportunities about local agriculture and food systems, expanded market opportunities for Michigan farmers and economic development opportunities.
"By implementing the higher threshold in Michigan, children will have greater access to fresh and locally grown food," Gonzales said. "This not only helps them develop healthier lifestyles and a taste for nutritious foods, but will help to expand market opportunities for Michigan farmers and keep more dollars in our state."
###
"It's important to give our schools the ability to bring the freshest and healthiest food possible into our school cafeterias," Gonzales said. "When our children fuel up on healthy foods they are able to focus on their school work and prepare themselves for the good-paying jobs of the 21st century. This plan will help our schools provide the best possible food for our students at lunchtime."
Gonzales' plan would streamline the bidding process for school food administrators by increasing schools' small purchase threshold (SPT) for food procurement to $100,000, up from $19,650. The SPT is the dollar value above which competitive, formal bids must be obtained for purchases. Purchases below the SPT may be obtained through a simple informal bidding process in which schools may accept bids or quotes in writing or by phone, typically from at least three vendors.
Michigan's current SPT has proven to be a barrier for school food authorities who want to increase fresh and local food because it makes the bidding process more onerous, which often prevents schools from purchasing food from local farmers.
Purchasing locally grown food from local farmers for school meal programs – known as "farm to school" – has other benefits. It can provide schoolchildren with greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables, hands-on educational opportunities about local agriculture and food systems, expanded market opportunities for Michigan farmers and economic development opportunities.
"By implementing the higher threshold in Michigan, children will have greater access to fresh and locally grown food," Gonzales said. "This not only helps them develop healthier lifestyles and a taste for nutritious foods, but will help to expand market opportunities for Michigan farmers and keep more dollars in our state."
###
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Bolivians fight soccer ban in highlands
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: June 17, 2007
BOLIVIA’S president, Evo Morales, donned a green jersey the other day, watched a llama sacrifice for good luck and flew to a snowy spot nearly four miles above sea level, where he scored the winning goal in a brief match pitting him and his aides against a group of mountain climbers.
It was a textbook lesson in Andean political theater, and the perils a globalized sport can meet when it comes up against a small country’s nationalist passions.
On the surface, Bolivia’s president was simply staging an amusing stunt to fight a ban on international soccer games at altitudes above 2,500 meters, or 8,200 feet.
It’s well known that Mr. Morales will play soccer against virtually anyone, from the foreign press corps to local squads in the hinterlands, to let off steam, and recently broke his nose doing so. But in fact, the ban, enacted last month by soccer bureaucrats in Switzerland, played right to Mr. Morales’ trademark populism, and gave him an opportunity to act as a unifier of his otherwise fractious country.
“Bolivia’s dedication to soccer cuts across the deep dividing lines in the country, which are economic, racial, regional and ideological,” said Jim Shultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. “Fighting the ban is great domestic politics.”
Mr. Morales was relying on an old Latin American tradition of mixing political intrigue with the “beautiful game.” The classic example involved a poisonous set of land and trade disputes between El Salvador and Honduras that boiled over into war in 1969 only after tensions rose over World Cup qualifying matches that year.
This time, the argument is ostensibly about altitude. The Federation of International Football Associations contends that soccer at great heights is medically challenging (nose accidents aside), because the air is thinner.
That position is contested by some experts. Robert C. Roach, assistant director at the University of Colorado’s Center for Altitude Medicine and Physiology, said it was hard to see any evidence of an advantage for Bolivia, since the country is not a powerhouse in world soccer. And if Bolivians gain something from playing regularly in the thin air of the mountains, they may suffer from being less accustomed to playing in the heat at sea level, he suggested.
“Heat is far more challenging for athletes than altitude,” he said.
In Cochabamba, where a hometown team with the fanciful name of Club Jorge Wilstermann is affected by the ban, the president’s struggle against FIFA drew support even from Gov. Manfred Reyes Villa, one of Mr. Morales’s fiercest critics.
Restricting competitions to stadiums closer to sea level is a special affront to a landlocked, mountainous country that has never been able to accept the loss of its coastline to Chile in a 19th-century war. Each March, Bolivia officially bemoans the loss in a Day of the Sea; marching in a place of honor are units from the Bolivian Navy, which is restricted these days to patrolling rivers and lakes.
The ban has helped bolster Mr. Morales, a former organizer of the coca growers’ union, a one-time llama herder and a self-proclaimed advocate for the indigenous people who live high in the mountains and champion the use of coca tea to counteract light-headedness there.
Those affiliations had made him a divisive figure, raising talk of secession and demands for greater political autonomy in the eastern lowlands. Now, the fight for high-altitude soccer is seen as a national cause.
The issue has even rallied other political leaders in the Andes, since the ban also affects Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Alan García, Peru’s president, called the ban “Europeanist and insolent,” but that does not reflect the full range and complexity of national passions involved. Much of the support for the ban, in fact, comes from neighboring Brazil, the region’s economic and soccer supremo.
After visiting Bolivia to play in Potosí last February in freezing rain at about 13,120 feet, Flamengo, one of Brazil’s most eminent teams, reportedly pushed FIFA into its decision by lodging a formal complaint. “The only thing I don’t understand is why it took so long to make the decision,” Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the Brazilian soccer legend better known as Pelé, told reporters.
Bolivians chafe at such comments from a big neighbor, and that only gives the fight against the ban even more of a nationalist tinge that plays to Mr. Morales’ advantage. He had already shocked Brasília by asserting greater control over the energy industry, a move that disrupted large investments in Bolivia by Petrobrás, Brazil’s state-controlled energy company.
Within Bolivia, the most pointed criticism of Mr. Morales, who is of Aymara heritage and is often portrayed as the country’s first indigenous president, tends to come from Santa Cruz, a relatively prosperous business-oriented city in the east where secessionist feeling has been running high and explicitly racist anti-Morales graffiti covers the walls.
But even there — a low-lying city where FIFA would allow games to be held — some see in Mr. Morales’s battle a position they can admire.
Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political scientist at Florida International University, said Cruceños could sympathize with the highlanders since many of the top players at clubs in high-altitude cities affected by the ban come from the eastern lowlands. “FIFA has done Evo a big favor,” Mr. Gamarra said.
One commentator in El Deber, the main daily newspaper in Santa Cruz, called the ban “segregationist, shameful and ridiculous.” Another accused Joseph Blatter, the Swiss president of FIFA, of being “calculating and evasive.”
To Bolivians, it is a fair charge. A quote from Mr. Blatter, who was once considered a defender of Bolivia’s exceptionalism, is still engraved on a wall outside Hernando Siles Stadium in La Paz. It reads: “I was born among the mountains. My village is opposite the highest mountains in Europe. Heights don’t scare me.”
Published: June 17, 2007
BOLIVIA’S president, Evo Morales, donned a green jersey the other day, watched a llama sacrifice for good luck and flew to a snowy spot nearly four miles above sea level, where he scored the winning goal in a brief match pitting him and his aides against a group of mountain climbers.
It was a textbook lesson in Andean political theater, and the perils a globalized sport can meet when it comes up against a small country’s nationalist passions.
On the surface, Bolivia’s president was simply staging an amusing stunt to fight a ban on international soccer games at altitudes above 2,500 meters, or 8,200 feet.
It’s well known that Mr. Morales will play soccer against virtually anyone, from the foreign press corps to local squads in the hinterlands, to let off steam, and recently broke his nose doing so. But in fact, the ban, enacted last month by soccer bureaucrats in Switzerland, played right to Mr. Morales’ trademark populism, and gave him an opportunity to act as a unifier of his otherwise fractious country.
“Bolivia’s dedication to soccer cuts across the deep dividing lines in the country, which are economic, racial, regional and ideological,” said Jim Shultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. “Fighting the ban is great domestic politics.”
Mr. Morales was relying on an old Latin American tradition of mixing political intrigue with the “beautiful game.” The classic example involved a poisonous set of land and trade disputes between El Salvador and Honduras that boiled over into war in 1969 only after tensions rose over World Cup qualifying matches that year.
This time, the argument is ostensibly about altitude. The Federation of International Football Associations contends that soccer at great heights is medically challenging (nose accidents aside), because the air is thinner.
That position is contested by some experts. Robert C. Roach, assistant director at the University of Colorado’s Center for Altitude Medicine and Physiology, said it was hard to see any evidence of an advantage for Bolivia, since the country is not a powerhouse in world soccer. And if Bolivians gain something from playing regularly in the thin air of the mountains, they may suffer from being less accustomed to playing in the heat at sea level, he suggested.
“Heat is far more challenging for athletes than altitude,” he said.
In Cochabamba, where a hometown team with the fanciful name of Club Jorge Wilstermann is affected by the ban, the president’s struggle against FIFA drew support even from Gov. Manfred Reyes Villa, one of Mr. Morales’s fiercest critics.
Restricting competitions to stadiums closer to sea level is a special affront to a landlocked, mountainous country that has never been able to accept the loss of its coastline to Chile in a 19th-century war. Each March, Bolivia officially bemoans the loss in a Day of the Sea; marching in a place of honor are units from the Bolivian Navy, which is restricted these days to patrolling rivers and lakes.
The ban has helped bolster Mr. Morales, a former organizer of the coca growers’ union, a one-time llama herder and a self-proclaimed advocate for the indigenous people who live high in the mountains and champion the use of coca tea to counteract light-headedness there.
Those affiliations had made him a divisive figure, raising talk of secession and demands for greater political autonomy in the eastern lowlands. Now, the fight for high-altitude soccer is seen as a national cause.
The issue has even rallied other political leaders in the Andes, since the ban also affects Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Alan García, Peru’s president, called the ban “Europeanist and insolent,” but that does not reflect the full range and complexity of national passions involved. Much of the support for the ban, in fact, comes from neighboring Brazil, the region’s economic and soccer supremo.
After visiting Bolivia to play in Potosí last February in freezing rain at about 13,120 feet, Flamengo, one of Brazil’s most eminent teams, reportedly pushed FIFA into its decision by lodging a formal complaint. “The only thing I don’t understand is why it took so long to make the decision,” Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the Brazilian soccer legend better known as Pelé, told reporters.
Bolivians chafe at such comments from a big neighbor, and that only gives the fight against the ban even more of a nationalist tinge that plays to Mr. Morales’ advantage. He had already shocked Brasília by asserting greater control over the energy industry, a move that disrupted large investments in Bolivia by Petrobrás, Brazil’s state-controlled energy company.
Within Bolivia, the most pointed criticism of Mr. Morales, who is of Aymara heritage and is often portrayed as the country’s first indigenous president, tends to come from Santa Cruz, a relatively prosperous business-oriented city in the east where secessionist feeling has been running high and explicitly racist anti-Morales graffiti covers the walls.
But even there — a low-lying city where FIFA would allow games to be held — some see in Mr. Morales’s battle a position they can admire.
Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political scientist at Florida International University, said Cruceños could sympathize with the highlanders since many of the top players at clubs in high-altitude cities affected by the ban come from the eastern lowlands. “FIFA has done Evo a big favor,” Mr. Gamarra said.
One commentator in El Deber, the main daily newspaper in Santa Cruz, called the ban “segregationist, shameful and ridiculous.” Another accused Joseph Blatter, the Swiss president of FIFA, of being “calculating and evasive.”
To Bolivians, it is a fair charge. A quote from Mr. Blatter, who was once considered a defender of Bolivia’s exceptionalism, is still engraved on a wall outside Hernando Siles Stadium in La Paz. It reads: “I was born among the mountains. My village is opposite the highest mountains in Europe. Heights don’t scare me.”
Friday, May 25, 2007
We Gave Them Our Hearts, They Gave Him A Blank Check
By David Sirota
It is a dark day in our nation's history. That sounds melodramatic - but it is true. Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history.
The numbers are not pretty. First, 216 House Democrats cast the key vote to send a blank check Iraq War funding bill over to the Senate. As I reported at the beginning of the day and as the Associated Press now confirms, the vote on the rule was the vote that made it happen. As the AP said: "In a highly unusual maneuver, House Democratic leaders crafted a procedure that allowed their rank and file to oppose money for the war, then step aside so Republicans could advance it." Nauseating.
In the Senate, we saw lots of promises and tough talk from senators telling us they were going to do everything they could to stop the blank check. Some of them bragged that they were going to vote against the bill - as if that was the ultimate sign of heroics. Then, not a single senator found the backbone to stand up to filibuster the bill a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. To quote the Big Lebowski, "These men are cowards," because apparently, Senate club etiquette comes even before the lives of our troops.
The blank check sailed through the upper chamber on a vote of 80-14 with 38 Democrats (the majority of the party) voting yes. In all, at a time when 82 percent of Americans tell pollsters they want Congress to either approve funds for the war with strict conditions or cut off all funding immediately, 90 percent of House and Senate Democrats combined voted to give George W. Bush a blank check.
The worst part of it all was the overt efforts to deceive the public - as if we're all just a bunch of morons. House Democrats have the nerve to continue to insist the blank check they helped ram through the House was all the Republicans doing, and that a sham vote on a GOP amendment today - which most Democrats opposed for show - was the real vote for the war. But, again, as the AP reported, it was their parliamentary motion - passed so quickly and under the devious pretenses of mundane procedural necessity - that showed their calculated complicity. Now, tonight, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actually sending out fundraising emails, claiming: the House just passed legislation that will go to the White House that includes critical issues Democrats have been fighting for including canceling the President's blank check in Iraq." Beyond nauseating.
I'm not a purist nor am I a "pox on both their houses" kind of guy. I have worked to elect Democratic politicians and I supported Democratic leaders when they pushed an Iraq funding bill that included binding language to end the war. But what happened today was perhaps the most stunning travesty I've seen in a decade working in Democratic politics. A Democratic Party that six months ago was elected on a promise to end the war first tried to hide their complicity in continuing the war in the House, and then gave a few token speeches as the blank check sailed through the Senate club. And it all happened, as the New York Times reported today, because these Democrats believed criticism from President Bush - the man who polls show is the most unpopular president in three decades - "seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left."
Democratic politicians, Capitol Hill staff, political consultants and all their lobbyist friends sitting comfortably tonight in their Northwest Washington homes believe the public thinks Democrats are "weak" because they don't more strongly support leaving American troops to be killed or maimed in the middle of a bloody civil war in a country half way around the globe that had no WMD and had nothing to do with 9/11. What they seem unable - or unwilling - to realize is that the public has believed Democrats are weak not because some in the party have opposed the war, but because many in the party refuse to wield the power the public entrusts them with on all sorts of issues. At least on Iraq - the biggest issue of the day - the public's perception has proven right. As I wrote to one congressional lawmaker in an e-mail correspondence we had today: "The spoils go to those who use the power they are entrusted with, while infamy goes to those who squander it."
In the movie "Say Anything," John Cusack famously laments after being dumped that "I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen." The American people gave Democrats their heart in November 2006. In return, Democrats gave George Bush a blank check in May 2007. We gave them our heart, they gave him a blank check. That will make May 24, 2007 a dark day generations to come will look back on - a day when Democrats in Washington not only continued a war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government's role is to ignore the will of the American people.
It is a dark day in our nation's history. That sounds melodramatic - but it is true. Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history.
The numbers are not pretty. First, 216 House Democrats cast the key vote to send a blank check Iraq War funding bill over to the Senate. As I reported at the beginning of the day and as the Associated Press now confirms, the vote on the rule was the vote that made it happen. As the AP said: "In a highly unusual maneuver, House Democratic leaders crafted a procedure that allowed their rank and file to oppose money for the war, then step aside so Republicans could advance it." Nauseating.
In the Senate, we saw lots of promises and tough talk from senators telling us they were going to do everything they could to stop the blank check. Some of them bragged that they were going to vote against the bill - as if that was the ultimate sign of heroics. Then, not a single senator found the backbone to stand up to filibuster the bill a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. To quote the Big Lebowski, "These men are cowards," because apparently, Senate club etiquette comes even before the lives of our troops.
The blank check sailed through the upper chamber on a vote of 80-14 with 38 Democrats (the majority of the party) voting yes. In all, at a time when 82 percent of Americans tell pollsters they want Congress to either approve funds for the war with strict conditions or cut off all funding immediately, 90 percent of House and Senate Democrats combined voted to give George W. Bush a blank check.
The worst part of it all was the overt efforts to deceive the public - as if we're all just a bunch of morons. House Democrats have the nerve to continue to insist the blank check they helped ram through the House was all the Republicans doing, and that a sham vote on a GOP amendment today - which most Democrats opposed for show - was the real vote for the war. But, again, as the AP reported, it was their parliamentary motion - passed so quickly and under the devious pretenses of mundane procedural necessity - that showed their calculated complicity. Now, tonight, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actually sending out fundraising emails, claiming: the House just passed legislation that will go to the White House that includes critical issues Democrats have been fighting for including canceling the President's blank check in Iraq." Beyond nauseating.
I'm not a purist nor am I a "pox on both their houses" kind of guy. I have worked to elect Democratic politicians and I supported Democratic leaders when they pushed an Iraq funding bill that included binding language to end the war. But what happened today was perhaps the most stunning travesty I've seen in a decade working in Democratic politics. A Democratic Party that six months ago was elected on a promise to end the war first tried to hide their complicity in continuing the war in the House, and then gave a few token speeches as the blank check sailed through the Senate club. And it all happened, as the New York Times reported today, because these Democrats believed criticism from President Bush - the man who polls show is the most unpopular president in three decades - "seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left."
Democratic politicians, Capitol Hill staff, political consultants and all their lobbyist friends sitting comfortably tonight in their Northwest Washington homes believe the public thinks Democrats are "weak" because they don't more strongly support leaving American troops to be killed or maimed in the middle of a bloody civil war in a country half way around the globe that had no WMD and had nothing to do with 9/11. What they seem unable - or unwilling - to realize is that the public has believed Democrats are weak not because some in the party have opposed the war, but because many in the party refuse to wield the power the public entrusts them with on all sorts of issues. At least on Iraq - the biggest issue of the day - the public's perception has proven right. As I wrote to one congressional lawmaker in an e-mail correspondence we had today: "The spoils go to those who use the power they are entrusted with, while infamy goes to those who squander it."
In the movie "Say Anything," John Cusack famously laments after being dumped that "I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen." The American people gave Democrats their heart in November 2006. In return, Democrats gave George Bush a blank check in May 2007. We gave them our heart, they gave him a blank check. That will make May 24, 2007 a dark day generations to come will look back on - a day when Democrats in Washington not only continued a war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government's role is to ignore the will of the American people.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
I'm Back...
So you can stop reading this lame-o account of my day-to-day activities galavanting around the Western Hemisphere.
I'll let you know when I have been inspired to reinvigorate the page.
I'll let you know when I have been inspired to reinvigorate the page.
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