LatinaLista — Economic inequality. Class inequality. Discrimination. Gender inequality. The list goes on and for veteran activist and organizer Marshall Ganz these issues are the focal points for social movements trying to effect meaningful social change.

Sitting down with journalist Bill Moyers, Ganz shares his personal history of being an organizer, breaking down social movements into their parts that must work together to create the long-lasting change organizers strive for in attaining justice. He explains the difference between social movements and interest groups and why social movements last longer because they are built on a key element — the narrative.

It was a narrative that Ganz saw in action when he marched with Cesar Chavez and during the 1960s Civil Rights movement that transformed him from being an eyewitness to these historic struggles but an active and willing participant.

“Doing the kind of work that movements do requires risk-taking, uncertainty, going up against the odds. And that takes a lot of hope,” Ganz tells Bill. “And so where do you go for hopefulness? Where do you go for courage? You go to those moral resources that are found within narratives and within identity work and within traditions.”

LatinaLista — If Republicans didn’t care about getting Latinos, gays and the poor mad because of their politics, let’s see how they do with the wrath of women voters. Today, the Senate Republicans refused to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (Md.), center, spoke about the Paycheck Fairness Act during a Capitol Hill news conference in late May. (Chip Somodevilla - Getty Images)

The bill was meant to close the wage gap between men and women. Nationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. African-American women earn 62 cents on the dollar and Latina women average only 54 cents on that dollar. Also, the bill “would have barred companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay disparities and permit employees to sue for punitive damages if they find evidence of broad differences in compensation between male and female workers.”

The bill needed 60 votes to pass; it received 52. Not one Republican passed it. Why?

Senate Republicans voted en masse against the measure, believing that it could adversely affect businesses if employees attempt to file pay-related lawsuits.

To not pass a bill that recognized women’s work was of equal value to men’s certainly appears to be political suicide for a party, whose extremist politics is seen by more people as not only being out of touch, but not changing well with the times and becoming increasingly irrelevant as a party.

As soon as news broke that Senate Republicans had once again acted to obstruct passage of a bill that Obama wanted, the criticism of the GOP by various women’s groups was harsh, unrelenting and promised retribution at the polls.

One women’s group whose track record for mobilizing their members into impressive action is MomsRising. When word hit their organization that the bill didn’t pass, a mass email went out declaring that the organization was fighting back.

The Equal Pay Act was passed on June 10, 1963 – almost 50 years ago this coming Sunday and we are still nowhere near equal pay. Women in 2012, and moms in particular, are still paid less than men for doing the same job. The U.S. Census found that women who worked full-time, year-round on average still made 23 cents less for every dollar earned by men.[4] The wage gap for women of color is even more staggering. Black and hispanic women who work full-time, year-round, make only 64 and 56 cents, respectively, for every dollar their white, non-hispanic male counterparts earn. [5]

We are not done fighting. We are just getting started! It’s time for us to put a stop to this discrimination and hold our leaders accountable. We must remind Congress that they represent us and that Congress needs to take real action to close the wage gap before more families are thrust into poverty.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also slammed the GOP for their action:

“Pay equity affects each of our lives, and the lives of all our families. It is shameful that many senators today turned their backs on the economic security of American women and their families — this includes lesbian, bisexual and transgender women, particularly women of color, who are vulnerable to inequity.

“The obstructionists in Congress who toy with women’s lives do so at their own peril. This is something many women will not forget, especially when they’re cutting that next round of checks to pay the bills — and especially when they cast their next ballot.”

The National Women’s Law Center issued a statement condemning the vote — The stakes right now are just too high for women and their families (to stop fighting).

And these responses are just the tip of the iceberg. No doubt more groups will issue their statements tomorrow and more women will be Facebooking and Tweeting their disappointment with these Senate Republicans until they understand one thing — women are entitled to equal pay!

LatinaLista — Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistic’s employment report was not good news for Latinos. The report showed that the unemployment rate among Latinos edged up in May to now stand at 11 percent.

Texas job fair attracts hundreds of job seekers.

Though the unemployment rate among Latinos, compared to blacks, is lower, that it went up at all is troubling. In fact, it was only among adult men and Latinos that the rates went up. Everyone else, adult women (7.4 percent),
teenagers (24.6 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and blacks (13.6 percent) had little or no change.

We know that the major industry that lost jobs — construction — is one of the biggest employers of Latino workers. Hand-in-hand with construction is housing, which also employs many Latino workers.

As to be expected, the Romney campaign pounced on the data to reiterate his position that he, instead of Obama, can turn this economy around. Yet, the question has to be asked, For whom and how?

Romney has made it clear that he’s on the side of big business but it’s these very businesses that are laying off their employees. I have to question how Romney will get businesses to hire when he refuses to even tell Donald Trump to stop talking about the Obama birther issue on the campaign trail because, as he told CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla in a morning interview: “…I don’t go around telling my supporters what they should think or what they should say.”

If he can’t tell the people who are supposed to be the closest to him to listen to him then what are the chances that he would tell businesses to forget their hesitation about the economy and start hiring?

The loss of Latinos in the workforce extends beyond just blue-collar, service-type work. It’s throughout corporate America, city governments, newspaper newsrooms across the nation, academic professionals and the list goes on.

In an ironic twist on a headline that was getting a lot of attention earlier in the month — The Browning of America, the same, it seems, can’t be said of the labor force.

What that means for the country is anyone’s guess.

LatinaLista — The main thesis of a new paper about immigration titled Rationalizing U.S. Immigration Policy: Reforms for Simplicity, Fairness, and Economic Growth revolves around this simple assertion:

The economic consensus is that, taken as a whole, immigrants raise living standards for American workers by boosting demand and increasing productivity, contributing to innovation, and lowering prices — while also improving their own wellbeing and that of their families.

Any immigration policy has to walk the fine line between protecting the rights of immigrant workers while helping US employers fill demand. What has resulted thus far is the creation of an underground economy, the flagrant abuse of immigrant labor by some employers and a divided perception as to which immigrant labor is of more value to US society.

The report, by Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis and published as part of the Brookings Institution’s economic policy initiative The Hamilton Project lays out a series of reforms that would create a market-based immigration system in the United States.

Professor Peri proposes revamping immigration policy to achieve three key components: family unity, humanitarianism and economic opportunity. For starters, Peri would like to the allotment of visas better meet US labor demands. That would include a retooling of the whole immigration process entailing updating visa categories with easier application processes, new rules and revised quotas. Peri contends the current immigration policy is what leads to inordinate wait times, no clear path for citizenship, for those who want to stay at an economic loss to the country.

In addition to addressing legal immigrant workers, Peri also outlines how to handle the sensitive issue of undocumented immigration.

First, a path to earned legal residence could be created for current undocumented workers who have lived and worked for at least three years in the United States. These workers would be required to pay a fee, demonstrate work history in the United States for at least three years, and pay back taxes. Workers successfully able to comply would be given an NC visa and could be subject to lengthened provisional periods before being granted legal residence. All other undocumented workers would face severely restricted opportunities for employment, due to increased enforcement and decreased incentives for companies to hire undocumented workers.

Peri also stresses that the federal government should patrol more vigorously the employment of undocumented workers through use of new technologies such as E-Verify, an Internet-based system that allows an employer to determine the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. In addition, he advocates that the Department of Homeland Security perform frequent audits and that employers face significant fines and sanctions for noncompliance.

There is no doubt that people from both sides of the aisle on this debate will find fault with Professor Peri’s plan but it’s a beginning. And for any solution to be reached, it must start with a plan and people talking — to one another.

LatinaLista — Anyone who has ever spent time outside pulling weeds knows how hard it is — on the back, hands, knees, etc. But what about picking tomatoes from sunrise to sunset? Being stooped over all day at the mercy of the elements Mother Nature throws your way coupled with your boss’ temperament makes an already unbearable situation really unbearable.

On top of that, having to hoist your 32-pound bucket full of just-picked tomatoes to a central collection point just adds to the backbreaking misery. For these workers, their only compensation is that they receive 50 cents per bucket — a rate that hasn’t changed since 1980!

Overall, most of these workers earn around $10,000 a year, get no overtime pay, receive no health insurance, no sick leave, no paid vacation and they don’t even have the right to organize themselves to demand change. Yet what others have been doing on their behalf is seeing that the major corporate food buyers do what’s only fair and join the Campaign for Fair Food.

The workers are Florida tomato pickers and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a community-based organization primarily comprised of Mexican, Mayan and Haitian immigrant workers — are currently on a hunger strike to convince one of the largest corporate food clients, the Florida-based Publix grocery store chain, to agree to pay an extra penny per pound for each bucket of tomatoes picked. The idea is growers pass the penny on to farm workers. “A major reason for farm workers’ low wages is that companies such as Publix do high-volume, low-cost purchasing.”

Since the start of the Campaign for Fair Food, many high-profile companies have signed onto it: Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, Whole Foods, Subway and Trader Joe’s became the tenth corporation to join last month. Yet, Publix refuses to join.

It’s a sad commentary since Publix sits in the backyard of these pickers. Publix has issued a reason for not joining the campaign but it makes little sense, especially when so many other high-profile companies have joined it.

Publix intends to hold out against paying the very workers who keep the company in the business of selling tomatoes — and it’s not right morally or ethically.

Because it is such an injustice, 70 workers are staging a hunger strike at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lakeland, FL. On Saturday, they plan to present to the CEO of Publix their message that Publix join the campaign and help them.

Along with their message, the workers are presenting a signed petition — still accepting signatures — showing Publix executives that it’s not just them asking Publix to join — it’s everyone who believes all people deserve to be treated justly.

LatinaLista — On a day when most people are feeling warm and fuzzy towards one another, it’s worth noting that in those states that passed legislation targeting undocumented immigrants and labeling them as “burdens” on their state coffers, the feeling among most of these legislators should be turning from smug satisfaction to outright regret and dread.

The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice held a rally at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery today, Feb. 14, 2012. The protest was aimed at the Alabama immigration law known as HB56. Protesters took Valentines into the Statehouse to deliver to their representatives urging them to repeal the law. (Natalie Wade, al.com)

Reports have come in that legislators from Oklahoma and Arizona have had second thoughts about their actions and now it’s Alabama’s turn.

Dr. Samuel Addy, an economist and director of the Center for Business & Economic Research at the University of Alabama, has done the first “economic cost-benefit analysis” of the state’s harsh immigration law — and the findings are enough to break every conservative’s heart.

According to Dr. Addy, the immigration bill, known as HB56, will annually shrink Alabama’s economy by at least $2.3 billion and will cost the state not less than 70,000 jobs.

As a result, Addy estimates, the state’s gross domestic product will decline by $2.3 billion to $10.8 billion for every year the law is in effect and will cost $56.7 million to $264.5 million in tax revenue.

Not good news but what’s even worse is that all those jobs left behind by undocumented immigrants — in construction, agriculture, food service and hospitality — now employ far fewer people than they did before and Alabamians aren’t just not applying for those jobs but totally ignoring the pleas of Alabama employers to fill those empty slots.

What’s even sadder, in a state with an average 8 percent rate of unemployment, there are just some jobs that Americans won’t do — even if it means less food on the table, barely making the rent/mortgage and having a lower quality of life.

I think it’s safe to say that these days Alabama legislators aren’t feeling the kind of love they expected to feel when they passed HB56.

LatinaLista — It wasn’t that long ago when every GOP candidate for President, and those in Congress, would scold Obama for creating a “class” war by calling attention to the 1 percent vs 99 percent. Yet, in recent debate rhetoric, two candidates, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are being called out by the Catholic Church for doing the exact same thing.

In the last couple of debates, both men, who happen to share in the Catholic faith, have called attention to the less fortunate in the nation by blaming them for their own plight.

Newt Gingrich has frequently blasted President Obama as a “food stamp president” and implied that some African Americans are more content to collect welfare benefits than work. Rick Santorum attracted scrutiny for telling Iowa voters he doesn’t want “to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

As a result of the racist rhetoric, more than 40 national Catholic leaders and prominent theologians at universities across the country issued a strongly worded open letter today urging “our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”

An Associated Press (AP) story published today profiles current food stamp recipients and highlights the fact that hard times don’t recognize color or ethnicity, though in separate data it’s been acknowledged that both Blacks and Latinos have suffered disproportionately in job losses since the start of the recession.

Yet, when it comes to collecting food stamps, unlike what Gingrich and Santorum would have voters believe, Blacks and Latinos are not the first in line.

In 2011, more than 45 million people – about one in seven Americans – received benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the most ever. Fewer than 31 million people collected the benefits about three years earlier.

Forty-nine percent of recipients are white, 26 percent are black and 20 percent are Hispanic, according to Census data.

While Santorum and Gingrich should be challenged for their remarks, they should also be asked an important question: Why do you think minorities receive more in public assistance when it’s obviously not the case?

It will be obvious just how embedded are discrimination and prejudice among the Anglo populace. It’s so embedded that even someone aspiring to lead a richly diverse nation already holds in contempt certain groups of people based on nothing more than assumptions, and wrong ones at that.

As voters, we should ask ourselves if we want a leader who deals with facts or assumptions.

The last time we had a President that acted on assumptions proved to be a nightmare for the country.

LatinaLista — There’s no denying that the housing fiasco played a big role in the overall crisis that threatened our country’s financial system. Yet, what should be challenged is how communities of color should be the scapegoats of the housing crisis. Because so many black and Latino families were victimized by predatory lenders, it was these families who were disproportionately affected when the crisis in housing occurred.

In 2008, Julio Angulo of suburban Virginia faced foreclosure on his home.

Predictably, the federal response to the housing crisis has been more reactionary than solution-oriented. In their quest to keep anything like this from crippling our economy again, regulators want to mandate new down-payment regulations. The only problem is it threatens to exclude low-income blacks and Latinos from ever having the opportunity to own a home.

A new report titled “Balancing Risk and Access: Underwriting Standards for Qualified Residential Mortgages,” published by the UNC Center for Community Capital and the Center for Responsible Lending, found that if federal regulators set down-payment standards on new mortgages at 20 percent, it would have a profound impact on Latino and black borrowers.

The results are particularly striking for African-American and Latino home buyers. A mandatory 20 percent down-payment requirement would exclude about 75 percent of African-American and 70 percent of Latino borrowers who could be successful homeowners from obtaining fairly priced mortgages.

The paper’s authors say that such a high down-payment would, in essence, create a dual mortgage market that “disadvantages historically underserved borrowers.” They argue that criteria already in place, like credit scores and down-payment requirements, limit access to home ownership for low-income and minority households.

The authors argue that the best course of action is to require a small downpayment. It still would have the desired outcome of guarding against a default and it allows for more people to have access to fair mortgage loans.

Nobody wants to lose their home. For the low-income and black and Latino homeowners, their homes are seen as less of an investment as a form of security for them and their families. Owning a home means never having to worry about being homeless when a job disappears or salaries are slashed.

Owning a home means having a place to have extended family gather and/or room for elderly parents to share.

Owning a home brings a peace of mind that in a changing world is, most times, the only constant.

LatinaLista — On the third Monday of every January, the nation observes Martin Luther King Day. Both in history and folklore, Dr. King is remembered as someone who fought for racial equality in this country. However, 48 years after delivering his inspirational “I have a dream” speech, after the nation has elected its first African American President, and after the crown for “Queen of Talk” was bestowed on an African American woman by the name of Oprah, the assumption would be that racism no longer exists in this country.

Unfortunately, racism is as much a part of our lives today as it was during the Civil Rights Movement and before then.

United for a Fair Economy released a new report today titled “State of the Dream: 2012 The Emerging Majority” detailing what more needs to be done to achieve Dr. King’s dream. The authors report that though the country will be majority-minority by 2042, conditions for people of color won’t be any better, and may get worse, if present-day trends continue along the same path.

Although there have been many social and economic gains made for all races, people of color continue to be left behind. Vast racial disparities still exist in wealth and income, education, employment, poverty, incarceration, and health. Extreme inequality continues to entrench racial disparities and further shrink the broad middle class that has been the foundation of a strong American economy and a cohesive society.

The authors cite that the only way to stem the doomsday predictions for communities of color is for everyone to have the same opportunities for political influence which means reducing the money in politics and protecting and restoring the voting rights of all Americans.

Somewhere along the way, it has become acceptable in this nation to have a large underclass — undereducated and underpaid. It’s a class that is supposed to be OK with low-wage jobs, live in substandard housing or poorly serviced parts of the city, send their children to poorly maintained and staffed public schools, live in neighborhoods classified as “food deserts,” accept wage disparities and tolerate the insults and stereotypical rhetoric of politicians.

According to the report:

Vast racial disparities continue to exist across nearly all economic indicators more than 40 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. The current racial economic divide is born of the ideology of White supremacy. The policies that tolerate or worsen the divide and perpetuate our national history of racial oppression are many, and include recent examples. The role of racism in public policy was perhaps most vividly dramatized by the official preparations for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when New Orleans officials decided that shoring up the levees that would have prevented the loss of lives and property in the heavily Black Lower Ninth Ward was a waste of time and resources.

The recent recession has only highlighted the disparities among racial groups that were always present but hidden just beneath the fabric of our economy. When things exploded in the economy — housing crisis, unemployment, rising food prices — the nation saw just how vulnerable the most vulnerable in the nation really were.

Some organizations and community leaders have tried to help affected Black and Latino families while some politicians have called for cutting all “entitlement” programs that serve as a lifeline for these families and the low-income in these times. Yet, with a call to cut spending on helping these families in need, there’s no talk about reforming the current trends.

Without reform, the report’s authors say:

• By 2042, nearly 5 percent of the total Black population and close to 2 percent of the Latino population will be in prison if the trend in incarceration since 1980 continues.
• The racial gaps in unemployment will persist well past 2042 if the trend since 1980 continues. Black unemployment will have decreased only slightly relative to White unemployment by 2042, to 1.8 times White unemployment. Latino unemployment will still be roughly one-and-a-half times White unemployment if the current trend continues.
• Without a dramatic change in the overall course of education policy specifically geared toward improving the quality of education available to people of color, the racial education gap will still be with us when the majority of the country is non- White. In 2042, the Black college graduation rate will still be only 76 percent of the White graduation rate, if the trend since 1980 continues. Latino college students, meanwhile, will fall even further behind their White counterparts. In 2042, if current trends continue, the Latino graduation rate will decline to just 37 percent of the White rate.53 Unless immediate steps are taken to address the rising costs of a college education and the increasing segregation of schools, the racial education gap will actually be worse in 2042 than it is now.
• Unless the country makes a dramatic change in course, the wealth gap by 2042 will look very much like it does today, with families of color holding pennies for each dollar of White wealth. If the trend from 1989 to 2007 continued to 2042, Black families would have on average just 19 cents for each dollar of net worth held by White families, and Latinos would have on average 25 cents for each dollar of White net worth.46 Incorporating the wealth-destroying effects of the collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing economic crisis would present an even worse picture of the future racial economic divide. Even though Whites will comprise a smaller and smaller share of the country’s population, if current trends continue, they will continue to hold a vastly disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth and all of the benefits that wealth confers.

LatinaLista — How many immigrants live within each state? How do Latinos and Asians contribute to a state’s economy? How many of any state’s immigrants are eligible to vote?

All of these questions and others are answered in the Immigration Policy Center‘s re-released set of fact sheets for each of the 50 states. The fact sheets were updated with the most recent government and academic data. To make it even easier, infographics, highlighting the top data points of each state, are also available for those who want quick answers without wading through a lot of text.

Arizona state infographic shows highlights of data about immigrants, Latinos and Asians' impact on the state.

The fact sheets and infographics are a synthesis of current government and academic data which highlight the growing economic and political power of immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in each of the 50 states.

Among some of the state facts are:

Alabama: 84.6% of children with immigrant parents were U.S. citizens in 2009, according to the Urban Institute.

Florida: If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Florida, the state would lose $43.9 billion in economic activity, $19.5 billion in gross state product, and approximately 262,436 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the Perryman Group.

Idaho: The Latino share of the population grew from 5.3% in 1990, to 7.9% in 2000, to 11.3% (or 177,574 people) in 2010. The Asian share of the population grew from 0.8% in 1990, to 0.9% in 2000, to 1.2% (or 18,857 people) in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Ohio: Latinos comprised 1.3% (or 74,000) of voters in the 2008 elections, and Asians just under 1% (or 51,000), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Although the numbers of Latino and Asian voters were relatively small, they were equivalent to nearly half of the narrow margin of victory (258,897 votes) by which Barack Obama won this key battleground state.

Massachusetts: Immigrants accounted for 16% of total economic output in the Boston metropolitan area as of 2007, according to a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Utah: Mexican immigrants “own property valued at $984 million,” have more than $1.0 billion in purchasing power, and paid more than $67 million in state and local taxes in 2000, according to a report by the Institute of Public and International Affairs at the University of Utah, including:
$7.5 million in income tax;
$52.2 million in sales tax; and
$7.6 million in property tax.