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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (May 21, 2014)
May 21, 2014 Çortlanh (Observer Page 7 Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Fighting for Immigrant Families All colors deserve dignity and fairness by B enjamin T odd J ealous I am fighting for my father. He is undocu mented. I am fighting for all of the children who don't have their mothers and fathers and brothers and sis ters." T h at w as the speech I heard last month from Yahir Servin, an 11 -year-old who partici pated in a civil disobedience on Capitol Hill with the Fair Immigra tion Reform Movement. Yahir was one of seven kids be tween the ages of 11 and 17 who joined 20 adults in a jail cell all after noon to draw attention to the need for immigration reform. As rain poured down, the protestors sat resolutely in the middle of the street outside Capitol Hill while police handcuffed them one by one. A few blocks away, the U.S. House of Representatives was in session but immigration reform was not on the agenda. Even though every day of inaction means that more immigrants are evicted and more families broken up, the House has still not taken up the comprehensive reform bill that passed in the Senate, or of fered an alternative of its own. Meanwhile, although President Obama has been an outspoken supporter of reform, deporta tions have risen significantly over the course of his presidency. Immediately before the protest, a 16-year-old named Talia Gonzalez told a heartbreaking story about her family's situation. Her father had returned to Mexico in order to get the necessary documentation to become a citizen. The U.S. officials at the Mexican border told him that he could not return. For the past four years, Talia and her father have only seen each other a handful of times, a mountain of paperwork separating father and daughter. She is not alone. According to a 2012 report by the Center for Ameri can Progress, one out of three U.S. citizen children of immigrants live in mixed-status families, and tens of thousands of parents are deported each year. This has a devastating impact on families, forcing children into foster care or leaving single mothers who struggle to make ends meet. I stood with the protesters be cause I believe that immigrants of all colors deserve to be treated with dignity and faimess.This has been a priority for the civil rights commu nity for a very long time. It was a priority for Frederick Douglass when he opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in the years after the Civil War, arguing in effect that he did not intend to watch the government brutally exploit work ers in the Southwest just after end ing slavery in the Southeast. It was a priority for civil rights leaders in the 1960's, when, immediately after passing the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, Congress pushed through w hat historian T aylor Branch has called through the "third pillar" of the civil rights revolution - ending the racist Europe-only pref erence for immigrants in this coun try. As Douglass, Ella Baker and Roy Wilkins understood, our communi ties are strongest when we are will ing to stand up for our neighbors' families with the same passion that we fight for our own. There is reason for optimism. A number of Republican lawmakers have spoken out recently, urging their colleagues to take a vote on immigration reform. The pressure on these intransigent legislators will only increase as more people, young and old, stand up to make their voices heard on the issue. By going to jail for their cause, Yahir and the other young protest ors took a page from the Birming ham Children's Crusade of 1963. We all know the iconic images of children locking hands, marching in step and singing "We Shall Over come" as Bull Connor's deputies blasted them with fire hoses. Fewer may remember that some o f the ch ild ren 's parents had second thoughts about letting their little ones out in the charged Birmingham streets. In a speech that week, Dr. King was able to put the situation in per spective, in words that called to mind the actions of Yahir, Talia and the other young activists half a cen tury later. "Don't worry about your chil dren," he said, "They are going to be alright. Don't hold them back if they want to go to jail, for they are not only doing a job for themselves, but for all of America and for all of mankind." Ben Jealous is the former presi dent and chief executive officer of the NAACP. #BringBackOurGirls: Why We Should Care A real war on women by M arc H. M orial A real war on women, marked by murder, rape and slavery is raging in too many parts of the world. In fact and un fortunately, human traf ficking is now thought to be among the fastest-growing illegal enter prises globally. The latest and most grotesque example is the April 14 kidnapping of more than 200 girls from their Nigerian school by a terrorist group known as Boko Haram. The group violently opposes any activity associated with Western society and for the past several years has been waging a bloody cam paign to prevent the education of Nigeria’s girls. Yet, I have been asked by several people in the past few weeks why we should continue to care about events happening so far from our borders. The answer is simple: we cannot ignore the fact that attitudes that deny, question or compromise the value of women anywhere are harm ful to women everywhere - no mat ter where they occur. In many parts of the world and some cultures, outdated, patriarchal and inhumane ideas such as forced marriages, sanctioned wife beatings and even female genital mutilations continue to keep women subservient and from con tributing to society and achieving their full poten tial. Preventing girls from get ting an education is also another unacceptable tactic but girls reading books.” In addition to the issue of educa tion for girls, this latest tragedy in Nigeria also highlights the deplor able crime of human trafficking - not just around the world, but also here at home. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center reports that from 2008-2012, it received more than We cannot ignore the fact that attitudes that deny, question or compromise the value of women anywhere are harmful to women everywhere - no matter where they occur. ' i used to continually oppress women around the world. As First Lady Michelle Obama pointed out in the White House weekly address in honor of M other’s Day, “more than 65 million girls worldwide are not in school.” In his Sunday New York Times colum n on M ay 11, N icholas K ristof asked, “W hat’s So Scary A bout Sm art G irls?” Sim ply put, noth in g th rea te n s o p p ressiv e, m ale-dom inated societies more than educated girls who are likely to have few er children, become productive w orkers and boost their econom ies. As K ristof puts it, “The greatest threat to extrem ism isn’t drones firing missiles, 65,000 calls to its hotline and re ceived reports of more than 9,000 unique cases of human trafficking. Of these, 41 percent of sex traffick ing cases referenced U.S. citizens as victims, and women were referenced as victims in 85 percent of sex traf ficking cases. As distressing as these num bers are, they still do not repre sent the entirety of the problem because this data is based on re ported incidents only. According to the human trafficking w atch dog group, with an estim ated 100,000 children in the sex trade in the United States each year, the total num ber of human trafficking victims in the U.S. reaches hun dreds o f thousands when esti mates o f both adults and minors and sex trafficking and labor traf ficking are combined. The awful drama unfolding in N igeria has touched the heart of the world, and it has also raised the consciousness of an interna tional com m unity about the con tinuing fight for the rights of girls and women. As the father o f two daughters, I cannot im agine the pain that the parents o f the m issing girls must be feeling. As a civil rights leader, it fuels my commitment to do what is within my pow er and influence to e n su re th a t we #BringBackOurGirls everywhere. W hile there is no scale or moral equivalence between what is hap pening in N igeria and the treat m ent o f g irls and w om en in Am erica today, we cannot ignore our own responsibility to fully educate and em pow er girls in this country, to cham pion equal pay, to end violence against women, and to stop the human trafficking of hundreds of thousands o f ch il dren, girls and women each year. Marc H. Morial is president and chief executive officer of the Na tional Urban League. THE LAW OFFICES OF Patrick John Sweeney, P C Patrick John Sweeney Attorney at Law 1549 SE Ladd, Portland, Oregon Portland: (503) 244-2080 Hillsoboro: (503) 244-2081 Facsimile: (503) 244-2084 Email: Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com
