“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
No spoofing?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianteutsch/ / CC BY 2.0
Your caller ID shows the name of your bank, and you answer the phone. An official-sounding voice explains that the bank is concerned that “a suspicious person” has attempted to cash a $1,200 check on your account, and asks if you have issued the check. Thoroughly alarmed, you say that you haven’t. You tell the bank officer that you do not want them to cash the check and thank him for their vigilance. He says that he will not allow payment, but needs to verify that he is talking to the account holder – will you please give him your account number and the last four digits of your social security number? Continue reading
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Globalization and immigration: What future for Minnesota?
From the development of the computer to the refinement of bypass surgery by a Mexican immigrant to the creation of Google, immigrants leave a deep imprint on our society, Dr. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco told the Hendrickson Ethical Leadership Forum on April 28. Continue reading
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Turning around failing schools – a recipe that works
Turning around failing schools is not rocket science, John Simmons told an overflow crowd in the basement of University Lutheran Church of Hope on April 16. Nor, he said, is it necessary to fire principals and teachers to turn around schools. He believes – and his organization’s record shows – that it’s possible to turn around school performance by empowering the teachers and principals, and the students and parents, who are already there. Continue reading
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Minnesota social service agencies trying to do more with less
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)
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Minnesota homelessness increasing
Homelessness in Minnesota increased dramatically over the past three years, according to the October 2009 Wilder Research study. Wilder has conducted the study every three years since 1991, and found that homelessness stayed fairly constant from 2000-2006, with a low of 7,696 and a high of 7,854. In 2009, however, volunteers counted 9,452 homeless Minnesotans.
The 22 percent increase included 1,670 families with 3,251 children, whose average age was six and one-half years old. An additional 1,207 youth were homeless and on their own, up from 867 in 2006.
Greg Owens, the study director, characterized the results as “troubling, but not surprising.” More people are becoming homeless because of economic conditions, Wilder reported:
• 39% percent of homeless adults left their last permanent housing because of eviction, foreclosure, or failure to have their lease renewed; up from 32 percent in 2006.
• 40% of homeless adults reported a job loss or reduction in hours was a reason for the loss of their last housing; up from 31 percent in 2006
• 20% percent of homeless adults reported current employment, full or part-time, down from about 28 percent in 2006, while average hours of employment per week also dropped to 26 from 30 in 2006.
• 44% of homeless adults are on a waiting list for some form of public housing (up from 34% in 2006).
The Wilder study was conducted by more than 1,000 volunteers who interviewed people across Minnesota in shelters, transitional housing programs, drop-in service locations and other locations such as abandoned buildings or places where homeless people camp. Wilder survey included only those people who were actually located and interviewed. Later reports will include estimates of the number of people who were missed.
Looking just at Hennepin and Ramsey counties, the Minnesota Housing Partnership’s “2 x 4” report for the fourth quarter of 2009, released March 31, found mixed figures on homelessness in December:
• For the 4th quarter, an average of 260 families per month occupied Hennepin County contracted shelters. This number is 12% higher than the 4th quarter of 2008, and 66% higher than the 4th quarter of 2006.
• However, there was a dramatic fall in family homelessness within the quarter itself in Hennepin County. In December, the family homeless number eased markedly to 201 families, likely due to the homeless prevention program discussed above.
• The Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools identified 4,700 homeless youth through December of the school year, 8% higher than last year and 22% higher than the year before.
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Once more, with feeling – marching on Washington for immigration reform
(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.
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Factory farms: Too big to regulate?
A thousand animal units. The feds call it a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO.) That means 2,500 pigs over 55 pounds or 10,000 pigs under 55 pounds. 1,000 head of cattle or 700 dairy cows. 55,000 turkeys. All on one farm.
The feds used to require CAFOs to get a permit under the National Discharge Pollution Elimination System (NDPES). The oversized feedlot operations had to describe their plans – for manure management, for air emissions and odor management, for emergencies, for disposing of dead animals, for regular operations. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency administers the NPDES application and permit program.
In 2008, the Bush administration changed the rules, said no permit was needed, so long as the big farms don’t intend to discharge animal waste into the water system. With a thousand animal units all eating and pooping and peeing in the strictly confined area of a factory farm, intention seems like a strange standard to use. If you live near one of these CAFOs, careful plans for manure management and for air emissions and odor management mean more than good intentions.
Minnesota rules stayed the same, still requiring the giant farms to show their plans and get permits. Now State Rep. Al Juhnke (D-Willmar) and State Sen. Steve Dille (R-Dassel) have introduced legislation to weaken Minnesota’s standards.
The Land Stewardship Project points out that feedlots make up only four percent of the total farms in Minnesota, but pose a large pollution threat because of their multi-million gallon liquid manure lagoons. The Land Stewardship Project opposes the Juhnke-Dille legislation.
I talked to Jim Falk, a fifth generation family farmer in Swift County, at the Land Stewardship Family Farm Breakfast on March 2. Falk said he agrees with the Land Stewardship Project position on NPDES. “Permits provide some parameters that make certain people are playing by the rules and that they are good actors,” Falk said, adding that changing the rules would make it harder to enforce compliance with management practices.
Falk cited the ValAdCo hog operation near Renville and the notorious Excel Dairy in Marshall County as examples showing that larger operators have the potential for larger problems. The Minnesota Health Department found serious air pollution and public health concerns at ValAdCo in 2002 and at Excel Dairy in 2008.
Falk talked about the need to protect Minnesota’s water. “Until we fully understand how we are going to address the problems with our water,” he said, “it would be shortsighted to loosen our standards.
The federal action to lower standards for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations makes it possible for Minnesota to lower its standards as well. It’s possible – but not necessary and not smart.
We don’t need lower standards. Ask the people who lived near ValAdCo and, as reported by MPR, “said the fumes from the lagoons were a health threat and made the area practically unlivable.” Ask the people who lived near Excel Dairy, and were told by the Minnesota Department of Health to evacuate their homes when MDH concluded that “Excel Dairy is a public health hazard.”
If you think Minnesota should keep on regulating the CAFOs, check out the Land Stewardship Project’s call to action – and call your legislator.
House File 2659 is online at: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/revisor/pages/search_status/status_detail.php?b=House&f=HF2659&ssn=0&y=2009
Senate File 2734 is online at: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/revisor/pages/search_status/status_detail.php?b=Senate&f=SF2734&ssn=0&y=0&ls=86
GAMC – What just happened?
The poorest Minnesotans – more than 20,000 people, an estimated 80 percent struggling with mental illness or chemical dependency – were the target of Governor Pawlenty’s budget cutting last year. Under his plan, they were to lose General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) coverage on March 31, leaving them without a way to pay for medical care or for desperately-needed prescriptions.
Now they will continue to be covered, thanks in large part to the two representatives who, according to the Strib’s Lori Sturdevant, worked tirelessly to engineer some kind of agreement that could pass. They are DFL Representative Erin Murphy and Republican Representative Matt Dean.
The GAMC deal will continue coverage through the 2012-2013 budget year, but the compromise looks like an awkward beast designed by a committee. Here are the sketchy, and often ugly, details, as reported by Politics in Minnesota and by Minnesota Public Radio:
• GAMC will continue through May 2010, funded with $28 million from the Health Care Access Fund.
• Provider payments (to hospitals, clinics, doctors, dentists) will be cut by about 75 percent.
• Prescription drug payments will be capped at $45 million for the remainder of the 2010-2011 biennium, and $83 million for 2012-2013.
• After May, some the state’s largest hospitals will be forced into “coordinated care organizations” and paid with block grants for providing coverage to the poor. The number of hospitals in the CCOs is not clear, but probably somewhere between 17 and 24.
• As the Pioneer Press points out, “any of Minnesota’s other 131 hospitals still must treat indigents who show up in emergency rooms.” The PiPress says they will be paid from a pool of $20 million for six months – and after that, there’s no plan.
This solution leaves a lot of questions, such as how urban or rural hospitals can continue to provide care at 25 percent of what they now receive for GAMC patients – when the current GAMC payments are already considered low. One likely, if partial, answer: they’ll charge insured patients more, in order to make up their deficit.
The cost of care provided through the “coordinated care organizations” will add $116 million to the state budget through the end of 2011, increasing the budget deficit to $1.1 billion. Pawlenty proposes to pay by cutting other health and human services programs – as if they had not already been cut to the bone and beyond.
The good news:
• There is a plan to continue medical care for the indigent.
• The governor will not be allowed to rob the Health Care Assistance Fund, which was set up to help pay for MinnesotaCare. Only $28 million will be transferred from HCAF to the general fund to pay for the new plan.
• The governor will have to drop his proposal to eliminate MinnesotaCare eligibility for all single adults making more than $8,000 per year.
The bad news:
• There’s just not enough money in the plan to pay for medical care and prescriptions.
• Already-struggling hospitals will have to deliver care for way-below-cost payments.
• The governor promises to use this as a reason to slash other health and human services programs even further.
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Haiti/Minnesota: Connections and contributions
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.
| Helping Haiti
Brian Concannon, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, recommends three Haitian groups for donations: “There are many groups doing excellent disaster relief on the ground already, but if past is prologue some groups will not spend their donations well. So make sure that you give donations to organizations that have a strong track record and are accountable, and have a long term vision for combating inequality and exploitation in Haiti. I will personally recommend three IJDH collaborators, Partners in Health, the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund and the What If? Foundation, but there are many more organizations worthy of support.” Many international groups, including Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders, are also among the organizations seeking funds for relief efforts. |
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).
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Mary Turck