Category: learning

Community Gardener Extraordinaire

Charlie Koiner is almost 90 years old, yet he has an amazing farm in downtown Silver Spring that supplies the whole neighborhood (and beyond) with an amazing variety of fruits and vegetables almost year-round. Below is a video I shot recently where we talk a bit about Montgomery County’s new initiative to promote community gardens. Although one site has been removed from consideration, the initiative is going strong and the county is on the lookout for appropriate locations. I am thinking of doing a documentary about Charlie. If you know him and/or have any ideas for the documentary, please let me know by adding a comment to this blogpost.

(wait for video to load and then click play)

superfund365.org

Superfund365, A Site-A-Day, is an online data visualization application with an accompanying RSS-feed and email alert system. Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 will visit one toxic site currently active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We begin the journey in the New York City area and work our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii. (We will need a beach vacation by then!) In the end, the archive will consist of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL). Along the way, we will write an email update with highlights and conduct video interviews.

Content changes frequently at Superfund365 (everyday to be exact) so be sure to visit often or use the subscribe tools to have content delivered to you.

superfund.jpg
CREDITS
WHAT EXACTLY IS SUPERFUND?

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H2B hunger strike update

I have been unable to follow the progress of the H2B workers from India. However, updates can be found at these sites:

http://www.neworleansworkerjustice.org/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolaworkerscenter/

Very good video clip at:
http://newsproject.org/node/52

I believe the Indian H2B workers are on day 21 of their hunger strike.

So far, on Regulations.gov I see no comments yet
submitted on DOL’s recently published proposal to amend and streamline the H2B process which can be found here: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-11214.pdf.
The period for public comment will close July 7..

H-2B Workers Launch Hunger Strike

Workers allege they were lured to the U.S. under false pretenses.

From ImmigrationProf Blog

May 12, 2008

[Indian Guest Workers, Survivors of Labor Trafficking Launching
Hunger Strike in Front of White House to Demand Protection Under the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act]

On Wednesday, May 14th, a group of Indian guest workers
who broke an 18-month US-Indian labor trafficking chain earlier this
year launched a hunger strike to demand that the US government grant
them Continued Presence in the United States under the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act to participate in an ongoing Department of
Justice investigation into alleged labor trafficking by Northrop
Grumman subcontractor Signal International and US and Indian recruiters.

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More details at

http://www.mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=77948

A group of five Indian workers have launched a hunger strike in
front of the White House demanding a US Congressional investigation
into their “exploitation” by American companies.

The five workers who began the “water only” protest at Lafayette
Park opposite the US presidential mansion Wednesday were among more
than 500 Indian welders and pipe fitters who allegedly paid up to
$20,000 apiece for false promises of green cards and work-based
permanent residency in the US.

Seeking “justice from their former employer Signal International and
Indian and US recruiters”, the workers union claimed the support of the
American Federation of Labourers-Congress of Industrial Organizations
(AFL-CIO).

“The AFL-CIO and its 10 million members are proud to support the
hunger strike by these Signal workers, and their campaign to shed light
on the abuses of the US Government’s H2B guest worker programme,” Jon
Hiatt, general counsel for the AFL-CIO, was quoted as saying.

“We know the US is a powerful country, and we know that Signal is a
powerful company. That is why we are asking the Indian government to
support us as we stand here with our lives shattered,” said hunger
striker Muruganantham Kandhasami.

The protesters will move to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in front of
the Indian Embassy here Saturday. On May 21, 15 more hunger strikers
will join the fast, followed by another 15 on May 28, the organisers
said.

“If we, the workers of India, can have the courage to talk to US
Congressmen and US federal authorities, then surely the Indian
government can do the same so that no other Indian worker suffers as we
did,” the workers’ statement said.

“The Indian government needs to show the kind of courage with the US
that it showed in labour talks with Malaysia and Bahrain,” said Sony
Sulekha, who is on hunger strike. “If we could sit down and talk with
the US Congressmen, we believe our leaders can too.”

“This hunger strike is a last resort,” said Saket Soni, a worker’s
advocate who directs the New Orleans Workers’ Centre for Racial Justice.

The workers are demanding that Indian parliamentarians press their
US counterparts for a Congressional investigation into abuses in the US
guest worker visa programme.

They also want the ministries of foreign affairs and overseas Indian
affairs to press the US State Department to secure the workers’ right
to participate in a human trafficking investigation into Signal
International and its American and Indian recruiters.

“Indian envoy to the US Ronen Sen offered the workers only symbolic
reassurances and apologies for protocol. Now they are risking their
lives in the hope that the Indian government will find the courage to
pressure the US government to grant them dignity, and protect future
workers,” Soni said referring to a meeting with the envoy in March.

They had among other things demanded a Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) probe into their case. Sen gave the workers a
patient hearing and promised to take up their grievances but only
though appropriate and established channels.

Coming to Washington, after a nine-day satyagraha, or “journey for
justice” from New Orleans, the workers had in March taken their protest
to the White House where they raised slogans and tore up photocopies of
their H-2B visas in a symbolic rejection of the guest worker programme.

IANS

Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America (new book)

Asylum Denied is the gripping story of political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney’s harrowing odyssey through the world of immigration processing in the United States. Kenney, while living in his native Kenya, led a boycott to protest his government’s treatment of his fellow farmers. He was subsequently arrested and taken into the forest to be executed. This book, told by Kenney and his lawyer Philip G. Schrag from Kenney’s own perspective, tells of his near-murder, imprisonment, and torture in Kenya; his remarkable escape to the United States; and the obstacle course of ordeals and proceedings he faced as U.S. government agencies sought to deport him to Kenya. A story of courage, love, perseverance, and legal strategy, Asylum Denied brings to life the human costs associated with our immigration laws and suggests reforms that are desperately needed to help other victims of human rights violations.

Webcast — Panel Discussion Celebrating the Publication of “Asylum Denied”

Amazing POV documentary about asylum

See also TRAC study on grant rate

An extensive analysis of how hundreds of thousands of requests for asylum in the United States have been handled has documented a great disparity in the rate at which individual immigration judges declined the applications.

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A Tale of Two Jobseekers (video)

For wider screen video playback (without obstruction) click here!

Video (dramatization) response to U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) policy and rule changes. More information below: In a nutshell DOL is mandating that the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) not refer farmworkers to jobs without doing employment eligibility verification screening. SWAs are revolting against this requirement, because it requires them to single out predominantly Hispanic customers for added scrutiny. Other job seekers are not treated this way and SWAs do not have the resources or the desire to do this. DOL is threatening to withhold appropriations due to the SWAs if they do not cooperate.

Disclaimer: I created this work on my own time in my individual capacity and it does not represent the opinion of anyone other than myself.

The E-Verify tentative non-confirmation in the dramatization should not have caused a delay in the referral, but such delays will probably occur if there is not adequate training (so I inserted a practical lesson regarding what not to do), but in reality there are so many steps in the process that could cause substantial delay and inconvenience to farmworkers that I decided not to re-shoot that part and left it as a teachable moment. I should have made the two week delay occur when the job seeker was sent away the first time. Perhaps he could have come back with a receipt for a replacement SS card and/or LPR card, and Mr. Smith could have told him that SWAs can not accept
receipts and that he needed to come back when he received a replacement SS card or LPR card. Then if the new regulations were in effect (and the 50% rule was no more), the farmer would have been able to refuse the referral as occurring after the start date.

This dramatization highlights only a few of the many changes that DOL is proposing to the H-2A regulations that will have a negative impact on MSFWs. Click Here for more detailed comments I submitted to DOL in opposition to the proposed rule.

Comments on the U.S. Department of Labor’s proposed rule changes on the H-2A program are due by April 14, 2008.

Add your own comments & See comments already submitted:
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=ETA-2008-0001

See also:
From Farmwoker Justice Website:

http://www.fwjustice.org/Immigration_Labor/h2anews.htm#F

Bellwether Prize for Socially Responsible Fiction

From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88195380

Morning Edition, March 14, 2008 · Hillary Jordan’s first novel, Mudbound, is a story of racism and well-kept secrets. Set on a desolate farm in the Mississippi Delta at the end of World War II, the novel explores the complex relations between two families: the owners of the land, and the sharecroppers who live and work on it.

mudbound_200.jpg The novel earned Jordan the Bellwether Prize for fiction, an award founded by author Barbara Kingsolver to promote literature of social responsibility. The cash prize and publishing contract is awarded bi-annually to an unpublished author.

Kingsolver says Mudbound is a beautifully written novel that examines the roots of racism through the distinct voices of its characters.

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