May 21, 2014
Çortlanh (Observer
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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
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Email: Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com