a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
Archive for August, 2009
August 26, 2009 at 7:48 am · Filed under the stories of immigrants outside of their home countries
They go away promising to come back. They go away and send money. They visit, some of them. But many never return. And that is a tragedy and blessing. They continue sending money and building what once was their home. But their loss is felt. It is felt in terms of broken families, shattered families, talents that no longer are available.
This could be the story today of many places around the world. It is a story that many here in Chicago could write about or tell on the radio or television. It is a story that is compelling because it is human, because it changes constantly with the global economy and flow of workers and because it links back to the roots of many who can never ever forget where they came from before they arrived here.
Here is the story from the Los Angeles Times. How can we add to this?
http://tinyurl.com/m5yfn9
A farm worker in a Philippine town where 10 percent of the residents live overseas – from the Los Angeles Times
August 23, 2009 at 11:39 am · Filed under Covering the Census
http://preview.tinyurl.com/kqtzbb
Say the government wants to give you some money. No strings attached. The only problem is the government has to know you exist. If you are not on its books, you don’t get the money.
It goes elsewhere. Even if you need it badly.
That is the simple reason why the Census is so important, why it is a tragedy that immigrant and minority communities have suffered by counts that passed over them and why the news media that serves immigrant and minority communities needs to tell this story.
It is also the reason why the ethnic news media has to be on top of this story not only explaining why the Census matters, but how the government is carrying out the Census. Oscar Avila, writing in the Chicago Tribune, again sums up good reasons why the ethnic news media needs to make the census a number one target for the next few months.
Who can’t use more money?
He writes:
“Nationwide, 65 percent of Hispanic residents and 60 percent of black residents returned census forms in 2000, compared with 78 percent of white residents, according to the General Accounting Office, ultimately leading to higher rates of being undercounted.
The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that Cook County ultimately will lose about $200 million this decade because of undercounts in the 2000 census. Researchers estimated that Illinois will lose about $12,000 in federal funds over the next decade for each uncounted person.”
August 19, 2009 at 10:52 am · Filed under making the news local
In an issue of admirable resource and analysis, the Chicago Reporter looks at the state of nursing homes in the Chicago area. It’s piece on troubled nursing homes that serve elderly black residents deserves attention and follow-up from the newspapers, radio stations and online publications that reach Chicago’s black community.
Here is a summary from the Reporter:
The Chicago Reporter investigated the quality and quantity of
nursing homes where the majority of residents are black in
Chicago, Illinois and the United States, compared with facilities
where most of the residents are white. The Reporter found
racial disparities on multiple fronts:
Illinois has the highest number of poorly rated black nursing
homes nationwide. There is just one excellent-rated black
nursing home in the state, in south suburban Dolton.
In Chicago, nearly 30 percent of nursing homes where the
majority of residents are white were deemed excellent by the
federal government. None of the city’s black nursing homes
earned that mark.
A statistical analysis shows that poverty did not explain the
disparities in Chicago.
The Chicago Reporter investigated the quality and quantity of
nursing homes where the majority of residents are black in
Chicago, Illinois and the United States, compared with facilities
where most of the residents are white. The Reporter found
racial disparities on multiple fronts:
Illinois has the highest number of poorly rated black nursing
homes nationwide. There is just one excellent-rated black
nursing home in the state, in south suburban Dolton.
In Chicago, nearly 30 percent of nursing homes where the
majority of residents are white were deemed excellent by the
federal government. None of the city’s black nursing homes
earned that mark.
http://www.chicagoreporter.com/issue/index.php
August 12, 2009 at 1:58 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters, on immigration as a public policy issue
Here is a story by Fabiola Pomareda of La Raza that takes a news event and puts it into a bigger context, that brings forward news resources to give the story a larger meaning and uses good writing and a sense of humanity to make it so readable and compelling
CHICAGO, Ill. — Time seemed endless for Luis León Ortega, who spent nearly seven months in various Illinois detention centers after being caught by immigration officials and scheduled for deportation hearings.
The shadowy world of immigration detention has been in the spotlight lately with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials being forced to make public a series of reports about conditions at numerous detention centers throughout the country. The reports tell the stories.
Luis León Ortega has the pictures. “I used to draw to pass the time,” says León, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico. “There was a Hispanic guard who always had pencils, so I asked her to lend me one and she did.”
León’s drawings are simple, yet provocative. One traces the very symbols often used to highlight this country’s greatest attributes: an august bald eagle, the prominent Statue of Liberty, a bold Sears Tower, the nation’s stately capitol dome.
But these images are ominously juxtaposed against a symbolic wall — the U.S.-Mexican border wall — that twists into a serpent bearing its sharp jaws, mouth wide open and ready to strike. In the drawing the serpent is poised to devour a man trapped in its mouth, presumably the artist.
Images of Stability
There are 35 sketches in all. Some of them depict innocent childhood subjects like Disney characters, a dog with a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. Others are more conceptual, like the one depicting a tree whose vine-like branches covered in spines twist around a heart – a common image in Mexican culture that could either reflect a loss of faith in God, or suffering of the heart. There is also the famous crime-fighter Batman – one of his son’s favorite drawings — and an eerily simple depiction of his own isolation in jail cell number 115.
To add a bit of color to his drawings, León purchased Kool-Aid packets and mixed in a little water.
Six Months, Five Transfers
León’s journey through the murky world of U.S. immigration detention centers began on a normal Chicago winter day, back in February 2008. He was pulled over by police and charged with driving without a valid driver’s license. Authorities quickly discovered his undocumented status, and he would spend the next 30 weeks rotating between five different Illinois correctional centers. He only remembers the names of two – the McHenry County Adult Correctional Facility and the Pontiac Correctional Center.
Every day, officers would try to get him to sign a voluntary deportation order.
“The first thing they do when you go to breakfast is try to convince you to sign your deportation papers. They did this every single day,” León recalls.
“We weren’t allowed to have anything in our cells. Masked guards armed with large, rubber-bullet guns would search our cells. They swarmed in as if they were the SWAT team. If they found even a packet of sugar, we were confined to our cells for 15 consecutive days,” he says.
His cell was just large enough for two beds, a shared toilet and a sink.
During meals, detainees were forbidden from speaking, so León would look forward to the little time he could talk on the telephone with his wife and children. But even that was complicated, as phone calls were limited to 20 minutes each day and phone cards were costly. A $20 card yielded only three calls.
“Once they told me a lawyer was coming to meet with us. But there wasn’t enough time. There was only one lawyer for 300 people. He managed to speak with only 10 people, and I wasn’t one of them.”
If access to legal help was nearly impossible, so too was León’s ability to turn to religion for comfort. In order to visit the chapel, detainees had to add their names to a list two or three days in advance. They were forbidden from having religious items in their cells, except for a Bible. A prayer card sent by his wife was intercepted and confiscated. The chaplains who did visit detainees spoke only English.
“Once a week they would allow us to see our families for 30 minutes. But we didn’t get to see them in person. We had to look at each other projected on a screen and we had to speak to each other on a telephone. I would go to a room where the telephone was, and my family would be in another room below me,” León said.
After six months, he was released on bond. The six-foot-tall, 43-year-old had lost a significant amount of weight. Pictures of León before his arrest show a much heavier and healthier man. Today, his hands sweat when he recalls those months spent behind bars, where he was isolated from his wife and two children who lived at the family’s Southside Chicago home.
Authorities have begun the deportation process against León. His two U.S.-born children wonder if they’ll have to live in a country they know little about, or face living without a father at home. León’s next hearing isn’t until 2011, perhaps enough time, he hopes, for something to be done by President Barack Obama, who as a candidate promised swift immigration reform.
In the meantime, León holds down a job and provides for his family by working six days a week at a local supermarket.
Pulling Back the Veil
For years, ICE officials fought to keep the treatment of immigration detainees a secret. Last month, a three-year legal battle ended with an order for ICE officials to make public a series of reports that documented inspections at numerous detention centers throughout the country. On August 6, ICE Director John Morton announced that one center, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, which held up to 400 detainees, would no longer be used for detaining families.
The reports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and lawsuits brought by rights groups, confirm many of León’s allegations of ill treatment at the hands of authorities.
In Illinois, a report by delegates from the American Bar Association, who visited the DuPage County Jail in 2003 and the McHenry County Correctional Facility in 2006 (one of the centers where León was held), found that detainees could not speak to legal assistants without an attorney present; could not see a doctor without a judge’s order; were denied dental care; and in at least one incident suffered physical abuse. The report also confirmed León’s allegation that detainees were unable to freely practice their religion.
Mary Meg McCarthy, director of the National Immigration Justice Center – one of the groups that successfully sued ICE for public access to documents describing detainee conditions — says she is happy the documents were finally made public. But she recognizes that many conditions detainees face remain unchanged.
“When the telephones don’t work properly and visiting time is strictly limited, the individual rights of detainees continue to be violated,” McCarthy says.
According to Gail Montenegro, regional spokesperson for ICE in Chicago, in 2007 ICE contracted the private companies Creative Corrections and the Nakamoto Group to inspect the centers where detainees were held.
Creative Corrections issued reports annually through June 2009 before being replaced by another company, MGT of America. According to Montenegro, Nakamoto continues functioning as an “on-site” monitor of conditions to guarantee that detainees’ rights are not violated.
ICE stopped sending detainees to DuPage County Jail in August 2004, but ICE officials say the decision was unrelated to the 2003 inspection by the American Bar Association delegation.
In a statement, Montenegro wrote that ICE officials learned of the attorneys’ delegation report on McHenry County Jail in early 2007 and quickly began addressing the report’s criticisms of detainee treatment.
“(McHenry County Jail) currently complies with ICE detention standards and was recently rated ‘Good’ by Creative Corrections in its most recent 2008 annual inspection,” Montenegro wrote.
One key issue left unresolved, however, is whether Congress and the Obama administration are willing to pass laws that protect detainees’ rights. Advocacy groups representing former detainees are lobbying for these laws, and at least two bills are under discussion in Senate committees.
But Homeland Security authorities acknowledged that a complete overhaul of the U.S. immigration detention system could take years. In the meantime, tens of thousand of undocumented immigrants remain in detention, their fates as uncertain as León’s.
August 12, 2009 at 10:57 am · Filed under Reporting on ethnic communities
al Jazeera visits Postville, Iowa
click here for the PBS video:
The story of two villages in Guatemala and Iowa
Here’s a compelling PBS video that brings home the power and brilliance of reporting across borders and the indelible links that exist between immigrant communities in the U.S. and the places where they have come from.
What more, I wonder, can be written about this from Chicago? What similar stories are waiting to be told?
August 11, 2009 at 2:47 pm · Filed under immigrants and healthcare
What is it that immigrants desire once they arrive here, and what is it that they are lacking? In many cases, it is health care.
In its recent survey of immigrant women, New America Media found that 30 percent of all immigrant women and 40 percent of all Latinas did not have any form of health care coverage.
This is a story that the ethnic news media cannot run out of imagination to explain what is happening.
In an excellent piece today on the health dilemmas facing immigrant children here illegally, Chicago Tribune reporter Antonio Olivo touched on one angle.
But there are others.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-immigrant-health-transplantaug11,0,3342811.story
As states and communities cut back, how have immigrants and refugees suffered?
How have communities dealt with the health issues of refugees who have lived for years in desperate conditions in camps awaiting their chances to come here?
How do working-poor immigrants cope with unemployment, no health care and their health care bills? Do they live off of underground doctors and uncontrolled, underground medicines? Do they work sick and get so sick they cannot work?
Do elderly immigrants get the health care they are entitled to?
Do immigrants crowed into Chicago’s weary and much used housing get sick more often and more seriously, and from what?
So many stories to tell and so many who would benefit from hearing them.
Here is a link to a website that offers tips, resources and good story examples on reporting on health:
http://reportingonhealth.org/
And from my colleague Curtis Black, I’d like to point out this:
Latino Women Organize as “Health Promoters”
Newstip Date: 10-17-2002
In addition to barriers of language and income, new immigrants are often denied access to health services on the basis of legal status. Five years ago a group of Latino women in South Chicago began organizing to marshal resources to meet their community’s health needs. They went on to found the Centro Communitario Juan Diego, where a grassroots “health promoters” program continues to bring free services and train women in health issues — and develop leadership skills. For two years the health promoters have been part of the center’s HIV program.
“They are an amazing group of women,” said Oswaldo Lopez, a volunteer with American Red Cross who works on HIV outreach to Latinos. “They’ve faced so many barriers working in the Latino community, and they’ve overcome them all.” Coordinator Rosio Nazimek says “a lot of taboos are broken” talking about safe sex and handing out free condoms. In addition to HIV issues, the six-week health promoters training covers breast cancer, asthma and diabetes, as well as domestic violence and human rights; advanced trainings are also offered. Graduates “become HIV activists,” Nazimek said, working at clinics or hospitals or with the center doing outreach to at-risk youth.
A graduation ceremony for the current health promoters class will be held in mid-November; a health fair is planned for Nov. 22 at St. Kevin’s Church, 10509 S. Torrence. Centro Communitario Juan Diego is dedicated to serving “the poorest of the poor” and promoting social change, with trainings in human rights and immigration rights, and tutoring and after-school programs, especially for Spanish-speaking children in English-language schools.
More Info:
- Rosio Nazimek at Centro Communitario Juan Diego, 773-731-0109 ext 26
- Oswaldo Lopez at American Red Cross of Greater Chicago, 773-383-4695
August 9, 2009 at 8:51 pm · Filed under community reporting that matters, immigrant journeys
How do we tell stories about immigrants that are new and that still touch us? We tell them as humanely as possible. We tell them so that they reach deep down to values that cement our eyes and souls to what we are reading and hearing.
This is THE story for the news media today that speaks to today’s immigrants and it has always been the story.
I was thinking about this when I paused and read over the beginning to a wonderful piece by Margaret Ramirez in today’s Chicago Tribune about two elderly nuns and their dedication to immigrants facing deportation here in the Chicago area.
As I read on, I was struck by the humanity, by the massing of information about changes in the way that immigrant detainees are being treated and the story’s moving journey in words and images through the meaning of these two nuns.
It is a wonderful example of how to tell a story that matters again and again and this is what the ethnic news media does well when it works at it.
Here is a link to the story:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-sisters-immigration-aug09,0,6741430.story
August 6, 2009 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It’s hard to find another city with as many good stories to tell as Chicago, stories about our communities that sprawl for miles, about where people came from and where they find their roots, about the languages we speak and music we hear in our heads and tales we pass on to generations to come, all of them stories about what makes this flat Heartland place on a big blue lake a big part of the world beyond.
To help Chicago’s ethnic news media tell these stories, the Community Media Workshop has begun an internship program. So far, the interns have produced stories for Nuevo Siglo, La Raza, the Final Call and the North Lawndale Community News. These are stories that matter for the communities served by the newspapers. Glance over several columns and then down to the page that says Our Ethnic News Interns and you can see more of these stories, stories like the one above that was written by Jessica Rosenberg for La Raza
