Causa Justa :: Just Cause

 

Video by Francisco Barradas
 

 

 

This May Day join us as we march for a Just Reform, an end to the Deportations and Justice for our communities!
May Day March, Wednesday, May 1. March with CJJC
Date:   Wednesday, May 1
Time:   2:30PM

We will all be meeting at our CJJC offices on 2300 Mission Street #201.
We will meet at CJJC and march to join our friends at 24th Street & Mission together!

KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER
Alameda County is one step closer to Keeping Families together and restoring due process

We want to also thank the more than 200 people who took time off from their busy lives to join CJJC and ACUDIR last Tuesday at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors chamber to witness the historic vote calling for an end to holding immigrants for ICE in Alameda County. The passage of this non-binding resolution sends a clear message to the Alameda County Sheriff to change his practice and stop holding people for ICE. This is a big first step and we will continue to call on you to show up to hearings and at community meetings.
We’re have a town hall soon with Sheriff Ahern in Cherryland, with the place to be determined to continue raising our voices until we have put an end to the collaboration between ICE and Police. Will you join us?! To stay informed please rsvp to the event here____ to stay updated on the campaign follow us at on facebook, on our website, www.cjjc.org and ACUDIR website at www.acudirca.org

Following a spirited rally this morning led by community and faith groups and passionate testimony from scores of community members, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution calling on Sheriff Greg Ahern to stop the constitutionally dubious practice of holding people for extra time, beyond the point they would otherwise be released, just so they can be picked up for deportation. The Board approved today's resolution by a vote of 3-1.

With immigration reform on the horizon, the continued deportation of community members who could soon be on the road to citizenship is generating increasing controversy across the nation. A broad coalition of Alameda County community, labor and faith groups, organized by the ACUDIR coalition,  is calling on the County to take national leadership by enacting a policy that ends cruel and costly ICE "holds" in the county.

If implemented by the Sheriff, "This policy will uphold key values of equality and fairness, keep families together, and strengthen relationships between communities and law enforcement," said Ariana Gil Nafarrate of Mujeres Unidas y Activas.

Said Cinthya Muñoz, of Causa Justa :: Just Cause: "Today is an important one. Many people took time off work, school, and even bringing their families here to share how important this is and to encourage the passage of this resolution. It is one small step in the right direction to ensure that communities will be treated fairly."

The resolution comes in response to extended detentions of community members in local jails, which have led to more than 2,000 deportations in the county since 2010.

The deportations have shattered families and eroded trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. Immigration officials often take people before they have even had their day in court, and even victims and witnesses to crimes have been swept up in deportation proceedings.

At the heart of the problem are Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "holds" or "detainer" requests, frequently triggered by the controversial "Secure Communities" deportation program. Through the requests, ICE asks officials like Sheriff Ahern to hold people for extra time, at taxpayer expense, when they would otherwise be released. Throughout California, holds have led to needless prolonged detention of immigrant domestic violence victims, street vendors arrested only for selling food without a permit, and even U.S. citizens. 

As California's Attorney General confirmed late last year, these controversial requests are entirely optional. In fact, Santa Clara County, and Cook County in Illinois, have already stopped responding to the constitutionally questionable requests.

"Alameda County should take immediate leadership by enacting the strongest policy possible, since every ICE hold is a lawsuit and a constitutional crisis waiting to happen," said Muñoz of Causa Justa::Just Cause.

Efforts are also underway to limit ICE holds with statewide legislation - as California's TRUST Act advances, it has been copied in several states.  Advocates believe that leadership in Alameda county could advance statewide and even national efforts to curb deportations. 

 

 (poster Jesús Barraza)

                                          Join ACUDIR on Monday, April 22nd for a COUNTYWIDE CALL-IN DAY to put an end to S-Comm (“Secure Communities”) in Alameda County.    Call each of the following Board Members:   Keith Carson – District 5    (510) 272-6695   Nate Miley – District 4       (510) 272-6694 Scott Haggerty – District 1  (510) 272-6691 Wilma Chan – District 3     (510) 272-6693   Sample Script:

“My name is ______, I’m calling you today to urge you to do everything in your power to end "Secure Communities" or S-Comm in the County. S-Comm is separating families, denying immigrants due process and leaving our communities vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. S-Comm deepens mistrust of law enforcement and drains county resources. We urge your vote in support of the resolution to end S-Comm at this Tuesday’s hearing and ask that you continue to work with our communities to end this cruel and costly program in Alameda County. Thank you.”

 

 

 

En Español:

 

Acompañe a ACUDIR Lunes 22 de Abril llamando a los supervisores del condado pidiendo un fin al programa de S-Comm (“Comunidades Seguras”) en el condado de Alameda.

“Mi nombre es _______ , le llamo hoy día para pedirle que haga todo en su poder para poner un fin al programa de "Comunidades Seguras", o S-Comm en el condado. S-Comm separa familias, niega el proceso debido y justo a los inmigrantes y deja a nuestras comunidades vulnerables al abuso y la explotación. S-Comm profundiza la falta de confianza hacia la policía y gasta recursos del condado innecesariamente. Le pedimos que vote a favor de la resolución para poner un fin a S-Comm en la audiencia este martes y que continue trabajando con nuestras comunidades para terminar con este programa cruel y costoso en el condado de Alameda. Gracias"   2. Join us for the Board Supervisors hearing in support of the Resolution!   Join us Tuesday April 23rd at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in Support of a resolution to Keep Families Together, Restore Due Process and Put an End to S-Comm in the County!    Tuesday April 23rd  Board Supervisors Hearing 1221 oak st. Oakland (5th floor)   We will gather to share food at 10:00am, will have a press conference/rally at 11am and at 12 Noon we will head inside to the 5th floor to give testimony in support of a resolution that the Board of Supervisors will be voting on calling for an end to S-Comm in the County. Join us, together we can "Keep Families Together, Restore Due Process and Put an End to S-comm in the County"!   For more information contact Cinthya@cjjc.org or call 510.318.7398 please rsvp here: Facebook invitation
3. Sign the petition!   Please take some time to sign our petition:    Keep Families Together, Restore Due Process and Put an End to Scomm in the County!  http://org.credoaction.com/petitions/alameda-county-get-out-of-the-immigrant-detention-deportation-business

 

 

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.

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 with gay and lesbian. And most recently, the disability rights community has been pressing us all to stop using the r-word.

Ours is not the first generation to debate the i-word. In the 1980s, the “No Human Being is Illegal” campaign, which was named by Nobel prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and led by immigrants through the Sanctuary movement, helped humanize immigrants and mobilize support for the 1986 reform. Wiesel’s phrase has been the unofficial tagline for many people supporting this campaign.

Many people contributed to this moment. It would take pages to name them all, but you can see the early adopters here. The tireless staff of the Applied Research Center and Colorlines.com, especially Coordinator Monica Novoa, has lost sleep over this campaign. Roberto Lovato provided critical encouragement and was key to the early campaign strategy.

Before us, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists called for journalists to reevaluate use of the term and the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities challenged local outlets, including the Boston Globe, to make the change. Presente.org and the National Hispanic Media Coalition were stellar partners and Jose Antonio Vargas drove the project home with his impassioned plea to journalists last fall. Linguists, journalists, attorneys and public officials made it clear that they could not use the word in good conscience.

There’s more coming. The New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, who notes her own conversion to dropping the word but has nothing to do with their style guide, writes that a robust discussion is going on at the Times, but they aren’t likely to make such a sweeping change. Perhaps we could offer a broom? Conservatives like John McCain have pledged not to drop the word, but it’s only a matter of time now before even his own people recognize the last gasp of a dying strategy to divide American communities.

Finally, thanks to the ARC and Colorlines community for your relentless attention to this question of language. Your stories of what it’s like to live under the shadow of that word, your tweets, your petitions, your voices made all the difference. Immigrants, myself included, have had a bit of our humanity restored today, and we are most grateful.

Link to original article:

Five Arrested For Protesting DeMarco at House Financial Services Hearing

Shirley from @CVHaction repping #homes4all demanding principal reduction

Washington, DC—A group of 15 Americans in need of affordable housing crashed a Financial Services hearing on the Hill today, where FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco was speaking, to protest the Bush appointee’s failed policies and demand an end to his tenure. Five were arrested after the protesters interrupted DeMarco’s speech with signs reading “Dump DeMarco” and stood up one at a time to demand President Obama dump DeMarco and nominate a permanent direct who will implement national principal reduction-- resetting mortgages to fair market value—at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Despite protests of ranking member Maxine Waters, (D, CA), even quiet members of the group were removed from the hearing and arrested. The hearing was one of the first opportunities critics have had to be in the same room as DeMarco. It was organized as part of the New Bottom Line’s “Dump DeMarco” campaign in association with Right to the City’s “Homes for All” campaign, which is demanding a national plan on affordable housing from the President. 

See photos of the interrupted House Finance Committee Meeting here: http://bit.ly/DeMarcoHearing

"DeMarco is kicking my family out of my home. Dump DeMarco! Principal Reduction now!" chanted Ramon Suero, a homeowner facing foreclosure, as he interrupted DeMarco’s speech.  “Ed DeMarco’s policies are putting my three kids, my wife, and I out on the street. If the President doesn’t get rid of him, he’s responsible for putting millions of Americans just like me on street as well.” Suero was one of the five people arrested.

See a copy of Suero’s petition to Pres. Obama to stop DeMarco from kicking him out of his house:http://signon.org/sign/ed-demarco-dont-kick 

“DeMarco’s actions are driving millions of Americans into foreclosure and record debt,” said Tracy Van Slyke, Executive Director of The New Bottom Line. “We are fed up, and it is time for President Obama to act on his promises to America’s middle class by dumping DeMarco and nominating a permanent director who will move principal reduction at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and stand with all homeowners and taxpayers.” 

DeMarco opposes principal reduction even though it has been documented by both Fannie and Freddie as a good policy for both homeowners and taxpayers.

“Americans are hurting,” said Right to the City’s Executive Director Rachel Laforest. “They are homeless in record numbers, stuck in decaying apartment buildings owned by DeMarco’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac banks, and struggling to pay the rent. Ed DeMarco is the single biggest block to affordable and secure housing for millions of Americans.  Obama can and must remove him now to allow principal reduction for homeowners to stay in their homes and contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund to create affordable rentals.”

The campaign to Dump DeMarco, which is being run by New Bottom Line, has been heating up for months. On Friday, Senator Stabenow (D-MI) joined 45 Members of Congress in urging the Obama Administration to dump DeMarco.  Monday, eight Attorney Generals, including New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sent a letter to President Obama asking him to dump DeMarco.

 

Article was originally published the San Francisco Chronicle

Saying that housing is a basic human right, about 75 protesters gathered in downtown Oakland Wednesday as part of the new Homes for All campaign. The grassroots movement, launched with similar events in 11 cities nationwide, asks President Obama and other elected leaders to develop a plan to expand and protect affordable housing.

Oakland resident Alma Blackwell laid out some of the advocates' demands as she stood in front of a bright red cardboard model "home" the size of a child's playhouse on Frank Ogawa Plaza, where many of the protesters recalled having gathered for Occupy protests.

"We want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to turn 100,000 bank-owned foreclosures over to nonprofits to convert to deeply affordable housing for low-income people," she said to chants of "Si se puede/Yes we can."

"We want Fannie and Freddie to contribute $5 billion toward a national housing trust," Blackwell told the crowd. "We want principal reductions for all underwater homeowners with Fannie and Freddie loans. We want to see Edward DeMarco replaced," she said, referring to the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who opposes reducing mortgage principals to make them more affordable.

The nonprofit groups in the Homes for All campaign ( www.homesforall.org), which include Cause Justa, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Tenants Together, also want to see $5 billion allocated for the National Housing Trust Fund, HUD and Section 8.

An array of speakers discussed problems with either apartments they rented or homes they owned that led to eviction or the threat of it. The protesters then marched across Broadway to hold a rally outside a Chase bank branch, symbolizing their displeasure with how big banks have responded to the foreclosure crisis.

"After my parents died, I took out a loan to fix up the house we've had for 40 years," said Minnie Galloway, 74, of Oakland. "I didn't realize it was a predatory, interest-only loan that would keep changing and changing higher." Her pension from the Veterans Administration medical center where she was a nurse's assistant couldn't keep up. A year in arrears, she's now seeking a loan modification. "I'm just trying to keep the old body and soul together," she said.

Ana Gutierrez, 66, also faces losing her longtime home in San Francisco - to an Ellis Act eviction in which landlords state they no longer want to rent their property. Gutierrez lives in a four-bedroom apartment in the Mission with her two sons and a friend. Their $905 monthly rent - kept low by a rent-control ordinance - wouldn't begin to cover even the cost of a studio in a city where housing costs have skyrocketed.

The protest came two days after the National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual report on housing affordability, called "Out of Reach." The group said that California is the nation's second-most-expensive state (after Hawaii) for renters. A minimum-wage worker must work about 130 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom rental, it said. San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin and Santa Clara counties were among those singled out as particularly expensive.

The rally highlighted a specific source of funding to help bolster housing. DeAnn McEwen, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, spoke on behalf of the "Robin Hood Tax," which would be levied on Wall Street trades to generate $350 billion a year for social services, including housing, health care, environmental issues and other causes.

"Small change for the banks will mean big change for people right here in Oakland and all across America," she said. Backed by an array of progressive groups, the legislation is sponsored by Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., as the Inclusive Prosperity Act, HR6411.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid

On February 12 & 13, staff and members of Causa Justa :: Just Cause and allies from around the country are headed to Washington DC to call attention to the need for a real and fair plan for immigration reform. Four people representing CJJC include two staff members and two member leaders: Mai-stella Khantouche and Maria Hernandez.