Category Archives: Uncategorized

In talking and teaching about citizen journalism, people frequently emphasize the contribution of the internet and “new media,” including tools such as texting, Tweeting, blogs, video, etc. Though they disagree on whether citizen journalism is the path to perdition through the destruction of standards of accuracy and ethics or the road to salvation as old journalistic structures crumble and fall, they generally agree that citizen journalism is something new. Continue reading →

“Immigrants and their children represent an important component of the state’s current and future workforce, and are vital contributors to our state’s educational, cultural, and civic life,” affirms the new Minnesota Compass research project on immigration in Minnesota. The continuing research collects information from multiple sources and offers hard data to dispel myths and preconceptions about immigrants. Continue reading →

Increase in client needs, United Way survey

More clients, more issues, more stress, and more “intense” issues, with less resources, lower budgets and no prospects for better days – that’s the report from a sample of 89 Minnesota social service agencies, according to a survey released today by the Greater Twin Cities United Way. Overall, 74 percent of the agencies said they saw more clients in 2009 than in 2008. In a similar survey in 2009, 63 percent of agencies reported an increased number of clients during the past year.

Who are the clients?

Agencies most commonly said they are seeing more unemployed clients (73%). More than 4 in 10 agencies indicated they are seeing more clients who are unfamiliar with the social service sector (48%), more clients without healthcare insurance (47%), more middle class clients (46%), more immigrants (44%), and more families (42%).

More intense issues mean that staff must spend more time with each client, and more clients means that the individual caseloads are increasing. At the same time, agencies are losing resources. Four out of five agencies reported losing revenue from at least one source in 2009. While some made up lost revenue with federal stimulus dollars, fully 40 percent of the agencies reported a smaller budget in 2010 than in 2009.

As the agencies are trying to meet increased client needs with decreasing resources, they are asking the same of staff. According to the report, here’s how they dealt with decreasing resources:

In 2009, agencies most frequently implemented salary freezes (53%), layoffs (40%), and hiring freezes (30%) to balance their budget. In addition, reduced staff hours (28%) or eliminated some programs or services (26%). (United Way survey, p. 8)

A December 2009 survey of 639 organizations by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits found similar numbers, with 32 percent of organizations reporting layoffs, 52 percent reporting hiring or salary freezes, and 25 percent reducing employee benefits.

According to Elizabeth Peterson, who is in charge of research and planning at United Way, most of the agencies in the United Way survey provide services such as

food shelves, meal programs, homeless shelters, job-training programs, domestic violence shelters and services, dental services for low-income children, health screening for children (e.g., vision, hearing, asthma), community clinics, home chore services for elders, assistance for children and adults with disabilities, childcare and preschool services, home-visiting programs for parents of young children, tutoring programs to help kids read at grade level, and out-of-school-time programs.

The survey covered a wide range of agencies. Responding to an email question, Peterson said the budgets ranged from less than a million dollars annually to $52 million.

The majority (59%) have budgets between $1 million and $10 million. Nearly one-quarter (23%) have budgets over $10 million, and 18% have budgets less than $1 million.

The only bright spot in the survey is an increase in volunteers, reported by 61 percent of the agencies responding to the United Way survey. Only four percent saw fewer volunteers, with the rest remaining about the same. The Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration also reported an increase in the number of people volunteering. There’s a downside to the increase in volunteers.

The increase seems to be primarily driven by unemployed people who became interested in volunteering; 72% of respondents indicated that is a reason inquires were up. … The change in who is volunteering was cited as both a challenge and an opportunity. The opportunity is volunteers with increased capabilities; the challenge is in designing new positions and shorter-term volunteer opportunities. One person commented, “The volunteers want less of a commitment because they are unsure how their life will be changing.” (MAVA report, p. 4)

While more volunteers can mean more help in maintaining programs and meeting the increased needs of clients, sometimes that is not enough.

Comments reflected the severity of some situations.  One person reported, “No money, no staff. No staff, no steering the ship or accountability. No accountability = confusion and dropping the ball. Volunteers leave. Program dies.”  Another person said, “I can’t keep up.  I feel like I’m neglecting people.  It makes me feel real lousy and inefficient.  This isn’t just burnout, it often feels more like just plain failure.  I’ve done this for years now and I feel I should be doing better but I can’t keep up.” (MAVA report, p. 8)

(courtesy of Rini Templeton)

I wish I could be in Washington today, with the immigrant March for America – just as I wished I could be there in 1963, for the first grand March on Washington in my lifetime. The 1963 march was Dr. Martin Luther King’s march, with 250,000 people from all over the country spilling out from the Lincoln Memorial down the Mall. Organizers called it the “March for Jobs and Freedom,” a name now almost buried in the history books. The 1963 march had been preceded by a smaller, 25,000-person march in 1958, called the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

Today’s march is called the “March for America,” a march by immigrants and allies asking for change in the broken immigration system. Many Minnesotans are among the marchers, including the busloads of people who set out from El Colegio about 6 a.m. on Saturday. Among the specific changes advocated by the marchers:

• improving the economic situation of all workers in the United States;
• legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States;
• reforming visa programs to keep families together, protecting workers’ rights, and ensuring that future immigration is regulated and controlled rather than illegal and chaotic;
• implementing smart, effective enforcement measures targeted at the worst violators of immigration and labor laws;
• prioritizing immigrant integration into our communities and country; and
• respecting the due process rights of all in the United States.

Marching on Washington is a long U.S. tradition. Washington is the seat of political power, the place to go for redress of grievances or for help in times of trouble.

Coxey’s Army marched on Washington in 1894, an army of unemployed workers seeking help during a severe four-year depression that began with the bank failures and Panic of 1893. Populist Jacob Coxey organized a second march in 1914, and, in 1932, Father James Renshaw Cox organized 25,000 unemployed workers to march, demanding a public works program, during the Great Depression.

During the same year, 20,000 World War I vets and family members organized as the Bonus Army, and marched on Washington demanding that the Hoover administration give them early payment of the bonuses they had earned. Police opened fire, killing some of the marchers, and President Hoover ordered the army to drive the rest from the city at bayonet-point.

Women marched on Washington in 1913, demanding the right to vote

In 1925, the Ku Klux Klan marched on Washington, 35,000 strong.

In 1943, rabbis marched, demanding action to stop Hitler’s genocidal destruction of Europe’s Jews.

Marchers opposed the Vietnam war in April and November of 1965, and in the larger 1967 March on the Pentagon, as well as the 1968 Jeanette Rankin brigade march, and the 200,000-person Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam on October 15, 1969, followed by the 600,000-person National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Moratorium one month later.

Since then, marches have become much more frequent, with causes that vary widely – from anti-war and anti-racism protests to Tractorcade (1979-opposing U.S. farm policy) to the Million Man March (1995-to “convey to the world a vastly different picture of the Black male”) to ProjectMARCH (2006-for colon cancer screening) to the Over 9000 Anonymous March (2008-protesting the Church of Scientology.)

Last year saw three Tea Party events, of varying sizes. Yesterday (March 20) protesters marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And today, as health care reform goes to a vote in the House of Representatives, immigrants and allies are marching for their turn, marching for reform, marching for what may be an even tougher fight than health care.

President Obama has pledged his support – repeatedly. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is the point person on immigration reform. He introduced a bill in December, which is the starting point for work on immigration reform. The acronym for his bill, HR 4321, is CIR ASAP, which stands for both the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act for America’s Security and Prosperity and Comprehensive Immigration Reform As  Soon As Possible. In his press release about the introduction of the bill, Gutierrez said:

We have given.  And we have waited.  And we have compromised.  But there are some fundamentals that simply cannot be negotiated away and cannot be waited for one minute longer:

The ability of a mother to stay with her son.  For an honest person to work hard.  For all families in our country to be safe.

Our families.  Our jobs.  Our security.

Three simple principles.  Three American principles.  Not just for immigrants, but for all of us.   Every American will benefit from this bill, from the heightened national security, from the commitment to family unity, from the common-sense approach to jobs and our economy.

Families. Jobs. Security. Today’s March for America is one more step on that road.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeldarosenthal/ / CC BY 2.0

In the midst of the still-unfolding tragedy in Haiti, the latest in a long history of tragedies, we are reminded of the connections that link people around the world. Here in Minnesota, the Haiti Justice Committee has maintained strong connections with Haiti over the years, organizing for both changes in U.S. policy and material support and aid to the Haitian people. (They’ll be meeting at MayDay Books at 2 p.m. on Saturday – open to any who want to join them.)

Dick Bernard, a long-time member of the Haiti Justice Committee, publishes a blog which often focuses on Haiti. Most recently, he wrote about last Sunday’s visit to St. Paul by a priest from Haiti, who returned just before the earthquake.

The sidebar includes a list of good organizations working in Haiti. It’s not an exhaustive list — just a few that I think are among the best. I agree with Brian Concannon’s advice to give to organizations that “have a long term vision for combating inequality and exploitation in Haiti.” The earthquake is only the latest disaster, piled on top of a string of human-made and political disasters. For more historical context, see Tracy Kidder’s New York Times column or James Ridgeway’s article in Mother Jones.

Haiti’s tortured history has nothing in common with Pat Robertson’s crazy talk. I’ve written extensively about it in the past, but would recommend Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying (and her novels) and Kidder’s Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World to readers wanting to better understand today’s Haiti.

For those interested in looking beyond immediate disaster relief, Brian Concannon has concrete directions:

I have little to add to the descriptions of devastation that we are all reading and watching. I am not hearing much from our friends on the ground, I can rarely reach anyone. I expect we will start receiving the bad news about friends, collaborators and clients soon enough, and we will share some of those stories on our website.

In the meantime it’s hard to watch such suffering and not be able to help directly – because I am 3,200 miles away, and because a law degree can’t set broken bones or lift concrete. But there are things we can all do, even if their impact will take some time to be felt.

First, we can act as citizens of our countries. In the U.S., we have been campaigning for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians since the 2008 hurricanes. Haiti was fully qualified for this status, which allows visitors from countries suffering from political or environmental stress to stay in the U.S. and work, before the earthquakes, but even now the U.S. Administration is only saying it will consider TPS, which it has already been considering since February. Please do the good, and easy action alert that our friends at TransAfrica Forum have posted, urging more resolute action.

Second, we can shape the debate about emergency relief that we are having, once again. We may not be able to prevent earthquakes and hurricanes, but we can limit Haiti’s extreme vulnerability to environmental stresses. The majority of the deaths from this earthquake will be suffered in the poor neighborhoods of poorly built houses crowded together on the precarious hills above Port-au-Prince and the ravines in the city. The people living in those houses knew the dangers, but they could not afford safer housing for their families, and the government lacked the will or the resources to enforce its building codes. We need to insist that the international community’s response to the earthquake includes long-term assistance to make Haiti less vulnerable to the next natural disaster. See good articles on this byTracy Kidder and Peter Hallward. I’ve raised the issue today in interviews with Air America, and Talk Radio News, and expect to do so Thursday on Democracy Now! . On Thursday, IJDH and several other human rights organizations will issue an advisory on Integrating Human Rights Into Disaster Response (check our website later).

Photo of collapsed Presidential Palace from http://www.haitifeed.com/2010/01/12/palais-national-down/

Haiti was hit by an earthquake measuring between 7.0 and 7.3 on the Richter scale and two aftershocks of magnitude 5.3 and 5.9 on the Richter scale on January 12, with dust from collapsed buildings filling the air for hours afterward. The Presidential Palace and a major hospital have collapsed, together with innumerable other buildings in Port-au-Prince, people’s homes are reported sliding down mountainsides, thousands are believed dead and tens of thousands homeless. Haiti, already the poorest nation in the hemisphere, is devastated.

Where to find news:

• Haitain writer, human rights attorney and activist Ezili Danto reports on the earthquake in her blog, with frequent updates. I think her reporting is reliable.

• Democracy Now interviewed journalist Kim Ives and author Edwidge Danticat on the earthquake and its context.

• Daniel Morel has an incredible Twitter photo feed from Haiti at his Twitter account, photomorel

• Fairly continuous coverage comes from a variety of sources (NOT filtered or verified) from www.twitter.com/haitifeed and HaitiFeed.com

Where to send aid:

From the San Francisco Chronicle, these suggestions for relief donations:

American Red Cross (Reportedly has contributed $200,000 to Haiti relief.)

AmeriCares Help For Haiti. Goes to their International Disaster Relief Fund.

Doctors without Borders – not a Haiti Specific page as of this writing.

HaitiArise – HaitiArise has provided education and relief for the past six years. It’s a registered Canadian charity and reports that 100 percent of donated funds go directly to Haiti.

Haiti Emergency Relief Fund – by Vanguard Public Foundation in San Francisco. Established for Haiti before the Earthquake.

Mercy Corps – Mercy Corps’ website is devoted to the Haiti Earthquake Disaster; they’re deploying a team bound for Haiti now.

Partners In Heath – You can use the drop-down menu to specify donations to Haiti.

Yele Haiti – Wyclef Jean’s Haiti initiative to assist his native Haiti.

UNICEF – UNICEF has set up a special page for donations for the children of Haiti. In an email, UNICEF’s Alissa Pinck reports: “UNICEF’s country office in Haiti and the regional office located in Panama is on the ground and have already deployed emergency teams to assess the situation and determine what the additional emergency needs are for the people of Haiti.”

Look for fewer blog posts in the next three months – I’m teaching a writing course at Metropolitan State University, and have a new writing assignment on lessons learned from the recession, in addition to my regular work editing the TC Daily Planet. So … I expect to have very little time for blogging. I will continue to follow the news, of course, and may be unable to resist writing about some of it from time to time, but won’t be posting daily.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deks/ / CC BY 2.0

UPDATE: Yesterday’s city council hearing on increasing taxes on businesses along St. Paul’s University Avenue/Central Corridor featured lots of testimony from business owners about the devastating effects of adding increased taxes to the burdens the Central Corridor is already imposing on them, and a decision to postpone a decision – for two weeks. (Pioneer Press)

Today’s headlines include a renewed push for a foreclosure mediation bill in MN (vetoed last year by T-Paw) and, sadly, escalating war news from Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. Good news from Wisconsin, though – deerhunters shot fewer buildings this year.

I’m trying to carve out some time for a few longer posts, but no luck yet – and with heavy-duty family time (Avatar, here we come!), today doesn’t look promising either. So – read on for the headlines.  Continue reading →