End S-Comm: Countywide Call-in Day April 22 to Alameda County Supervisors

 (poster Jesús Barraza)

Read more: End S-Comm: Countywide Call-in Day April 22 to Alameda County Supervisors

April 10: National Day Action for Immigration Reform

Major march in SF Urging Leaders to champion

inclusive immigration reform

 When and where: Wednesday, April 10

·      3:00 PM:  Program begins at 1 Post St.
·      3:30 PM:  March leaves 1 Post St. Route includes stops symbolizing need for reform to protect worker rights (4 Seasons Hotel), family unity (at 6th and Market), and to end painful deportations (fed. building).
·      5:00 PM:  Rally at old Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave.

Participants will carry hundreds of hand-made paper flowers, which symbolize the approximately 1,000 people deported from the US every day, and create an altar with the flowers in front of the federal building.

What: On a massive national day of action for immigration reform - with events from Washington, DC to Los Angeles - hundreds will march from the San Francisco Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein to the old Federal Building.
Who: Religious leaders will kick off the program with an interfaith prayer; workers, students, and community members will also address the crowd - including people currently facing unjust deportation. The Brass Liberation Orchestra will accompany the march.

Students, workers, and community leaders are calling for inclusive reform that upholds the principle that “all are created equal” by creating an immigration process that keeps all families together, protects workers rights, ends painful deportations, and ensures civil and human rights protections.

The action comes on the heels of the TRUST Act (AB-4-Ammiano) being approved by  the Public Safety Committee in Sacramento yesterday, and the Asian Law Caucus, one of the bill's sponsors,  filing a Freedom of Information lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for information as to whether ICE maneuvers last year helped defeat the TRUST Act veto Sept 12, by Gov. Brown. The bill would have limited entanglement between California law enforcement and immigration agencies. 

To date, 93,500 Californians have been deported under the discredited "Secure Communities" program - most with minor convictions or none at all.

One community member Teodora Aparicio, who shared her story at yesterday's Alameda County budget hearing to end ICE's hold on our communities, will speak at the rally today. Here is her story.

Today's action is organized by a broad coalition of groups including Asian Law Caucus, ASPIRE, ACLU, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Causa Justa:Just Cause, Educators for Fair Consideration, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Out for Immigration, SEIU Local 87, SEIU USWW, SEIU 1021, SF Labor Council, SFOP, Young Workers United, California Immigrant Policy Center, and many others.

Background: With unprecedented momentum and urgency for immigrant rights, Bay Area groups will join a national day of action April 10.  California, with the nation’s largest immigration population, has suffered the most from unjust detentions, deportations, and firings of aspiring citizens.

So students, workers, and community groups are calling on the state’s representatives in Washington, DC to champion policies that promote inclusion and participation over exclusion and division.

Alternative Condo Conversion Measure Would Favor Tenants

Supporters, join us on the steps of SF City Hall on Monday, April 22 @ noon for a speak out by tenants facing eviction and displacement, and then on to the 2nd Land Use committee hearing for an amended condo conversion measure (the Chiu-Yee alternative) which would curb speculation and protect tenants from evictions.

 (español sigue)

Our families and long-time residents are being forced into garages, overcrowded SROs, or completely out of the city. We have to do as much as possible to offer them protections.

Under an earlier and uglier version sponsored by Sup. Mark Farrell, apartments converted from rentals to “Tenancies In Common (TICs)” would be allowed to bypass the city’s annual cap on condo conversions by paying a fee. Tenant advocates say that the original legislation would lead to many thousands more evictions, because it sends a strong signal to real estate speculators that the city will no longer have meaningful restrictions on the number of condo conversions.

Community, labor, and environmental organizations criticize the Farrell plan for undermining long-standing protections of rent controlled housing in San Francisco. So stand with us on Monday, April 22 on the steps of city hall and then the Land Use Hearing and make YOUR voice heard. Let the SF Board of Supervisors know you’re watching them.

The legislation is an alternative to the Condo Conversion legislation, sponsored by Supervisor Mark Farell that has been pending for months before the Board. Under the Farrell plan, apartments that have been converted from rentals to “Tenancies In Common (TICs)” would be allowed to bypass the city’s annual cap on condo conversions by paying a fee.

The Farrell proposal has been criticized by community, labor, and environmental organizations for undermining long-standing protections of rent controlled housing in San Francisco. Tenant advocates say that the original legislation would lead to many thousands more evictions, because it sends a strong signal to real estate speculators that the city will no longer have meaningful restrictions on the number of condo conversions.

After failing to negotiate a compromise, President Chiu and Supervisor Norman Yee developed this alternative proposal. “This legislation will create a bridge between TiC owners who will be able to refinance their mortgages through the conversion to condo, and the cities rent-controlled tenants who need protections from real estate speculation. The alternative addresses people’s need without further rewarding the real estate industry that created the failed TiC model while evicting thousands of tenants,”  says Maria Zamudio, CJJC San Francisco Housing Organizer. 

Why we support the Chiu-Yee alternative:

•    The proposal will suspend future conversions and reduce the incentives for speculation.  Speculators are now in the process of evicting hundreds of existing tenants to sell off apartments as Tenancies-in-Common (TICs) -- assuring unsuspecting buyers that the city will allow their units to be converted in the future.  We need to show that assumption is unsustainable and unacceptable.

•     The City must keep its overall ceiling on condominium conversions: limiting conversions to 2000 units in a decade.  Thus...

Read more: Alternative Condo Conversion Measure Would Favor Tenants

Why the AP’s Choice to Drop the I-Word is Crucial Victory

by Rinku Sen-Colorlines-

Wednesday, April 3 2013, 8:29 AM EST

We applaud the Associated Press’s announcement that it is eliminating the phrase “illegal immigrant” from the 2013 style guide. The AP Blog quotes Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on the decision:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally…

Change is a part of AP Style because the English language is constantly evolving, enriched by new words, phrases and uses. Our goal always is to use the most precise and accurate words so that the meaning is clear to any reader anywhere.

The change reflects new practice in newsrooms across the nation, where editors have been replacing the word when they run AP stories on immigration.

This decision is a victory for immigrant communities. We took a word that has been normalized by anti-immigrant forces and revealed it as unfit to print because it is both inaccurate and dehumanizing. We started Drop the I-Word in 2010 because we could see the harm that it was doing to our readers and community. In the early days, many people told us it didn’t matter, that the policy was all-important. But the word itself has blocked any reasonable discussion of policy issues, and we have been unable to move forward as a nation while its use has remained common.

The AP’s new guidance is also a victory for journalists, who strive daily to be accurate and honest with their readers. News people have nothing if not our ability to dig underneath the labels, as the AP says, that provide convenient categories for complex people and problems. When communities also experience those categories as demeaning of their humanity, we have failed at our jobs. The AP just gave us a little more clarity about how to avoid that. They’d like to hear our reactions, so send them a little note.

For years, immigration restrictionists have been stopping all discussion cold with “what about illegal don’t you understand?” Well, we did understand—that the word hid severe problems in the policy, that it has been applied selectively to people of color (undocumented, green-card holding, and citizens alike), and that it fuels hateful action.

People have lost their lives behind this word. Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadoran immigrant was beaten to death on the streets of Brooklyn by men yelling that he was a “f__ illegal.” That state of affairs could not be allowed to continue and thousands of people just like you took a stand to bring it to an end.

[INVESTIGATION: HOW THE RIGHT MADE RACISM SOUND FAIR—AND CHANGED IMMIGRATION POLITICS]

This campaign is inspired and instructed by historic and contemporary struggles over language. The civil rights movement made us stop saying “colored” and worse. The women’s movement changed newspaper standards to use “Ms.” The LGBT community and GLAAD got “homosexual” replaced...

Read more: Why the AP’s Choice to Drop the I-Word is Crucial Victory