Crossing the Border into the Promised Land

Andreas and Luis are two people that work in a typical bustling restaurant in Brooklyn, New York.  What makes their stories special is the hunger, dehydration, and fears they faced as they made their way on foot across the mountains and deserts of the U.S.-Mexico border to arrive in Brooklyn.

Luis and Andreas say there are two main reasons why people want to leave Mexico for the U.S. so badly: money and family.

Andreas came to be reunited with his father, and Luis came to the states in order to have a better life and earn a living wage for himself.  Just like them, hundreds attempt the same route each day to reach their dreams of minimum wage and freedom from Mexico’s ongoing socioeconomic depression.

When Andreas was 17-years-old he tried on three occasions to cross over the border into Arizona, but each time Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped him.  During one of the attempts an ICE officer told him, “If you move I’m not going to run, but this s**t is going to run after you [as he pointed towards his gun holster] and I’ll shoot you.”

On his fourth attempt, along with his younger brother and aunt, Andreas trekked the mountains and deserts of La Rumorosa, Mexico into Southern California until they were free from ICE vehicles, planes, and helicopters.  Andreas says they chose this area because there is less immigration enforcement and the land is free of walls.  The terrain is so rigid and rough that border walls are almost impossible to build.  Even so, the immigrants that cross through the area would rather bear the strenuous climbing rather than risk being seen by ICE.

I.C.E. Helicopter patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border

He says they were almost on the brink of starvation and dehydration, and the nights in the desert were extremely cold.  On one of the chilly desert nights Andreas says the coyote told them that ICE was circling an area they were heading towards.  The coyote told them that the safest thing to do was to wait on top of the mountain.  Andreas says that his cousin, aunt, and him waited for a few days shivering in the cold until the coyote came back for them.

When Andreas and his family reached Los Angeles, CA, he knew that he was finally going to see his father again.  His father immediately made a deal with a “coyote” (a guide that escorts immigrants over the border) to drive the family to New York.  Before they began this long journey across the country, they stopped in Las Vegas, NV for a shower and a place to rest their physically exhausted bodies.

Finally, after traveling for 20 days from Mexico City to New York City, Andreas was reunited with his father for the first time in years and culture shock was about to set in.

Luis’s experience was much different from Andreas’.

He says it wasn’t about the money the first time, but after meeting his wife and starting a family in Mexico years later he decided to come back to the States to earn a decent income in order to support them.

However, the first time Luis came to the U.S. in 1997 he wasn’t a husband or a father, but an adventurous and curious 16-year-old.  He wanted to experience America for himself instead of always listening to the stories his friends would tell him about their own travels.

When Luis was a teenager his friends began to talk about how great America was and how there he could accomplish any dream he ever had.  “My imagine was that they have a huge house, they walked on red carpet…and they have a lot more money than us,” he says.  “I wanted to see how the U.S.A was for myself.”

His journey from Mexico City to New York in 1997 was not as long or difficult as most of the immigrants he knew, but later on in 2006 when he decided to come for financial purposes he climbed up a mountain of cactus patches and paid $2400 for a guide he did not know.

He says that it only took him one night to cross the Arizona border the last time.  From 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. he and his legally blind cousin who followed closely behind holding Luis’s backpack trekked up the mountain which separated them from the U.S.  By the time they reached the other side they were covered in bleeding red polka dots from the pricks the cactus needles left behind.  They were relieved when they saw their driver waiting in a van to transport them to New York City.

Luis says that he is now here in the U.S. to make money.  He paid a coyote to help transport his wife to the states a few years ago, and now his entire family is here.  He doesn’t know if he will ever go back to Mexico because his life is so much better here for himself and his family.

“If you don’t know…everyone comes here to make money,” he says.  “Ninety percent come for the money.”

Currently, there are (an estimated) 2.9 million immigrants living in New York City.  One out of every sixof these immigrants are undocumented.  Luis

This photo was taken on April 9, 2006 by Claudia A. De La Garza

and Andreas’ story is the typical Mexican immigrant’s tale.  They brave through the agonizing landscape along the U.S.-Mexico border sometimes just to be robbed by their guides or placed in holding cells and deported by ICE.  Andreas and Luis happened to make it here safely, but that’s not always the case.  Andreas and Luis did not want to discuss the stories of the people they knew that didn’t make it because it’s too sensitive a subject, and they would rather keep it in the past.

Luis managed to transport his wife and his only daughter at the time to New York safely.  He paid a woman to make a false birth certificate for his daughter at 3-years-old so she would have no problems in the future living in the U.S. with her father and mother.  Luis wanted the best life for his family that he could possibly provide to them.

And Andreas just wanted to be close to his father with the ability to make an income for himself.

Why are these immigrants from Mexico so willing to risk losing everything they have just to come to the U.S.?  It’s an ideal we have forgotten.  An ideal that was established and founded on the purpose of being available to everyone around the globe no matter what sex, ethnicity, religion, or status…

The American dream.

So often a human life gets caught up in political agendas or political party platforms.  The right to live freely as a human being has been lost in the middle of Republicans and Democrats bickering selfishly over the issue of immigration and how to tighten our borders or crack down on “illegal aliens” more than ever before.  States like Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina are continuing to force their explicit xenophobia on the entire country while our president and the federal government sit back and do nothing about it.

Immigrant families are being destroyed.  Billions of dollars in taxpayer money has been spent on securing the border and placing immigrants in prison (just for being undocumented).  How do we solve this crisis?

Grant amnesty, open the borders, and treat human beings with the same dignity and freedoms we so often forget should extend universally.

Human life and the rights to that life should be respected. Period.

Bracing for the Flood Gates…

The region that will be affected by the Morganza Spillway

In about one hour the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza Spillway in the Atchafalay region of southern Louisiana to protect cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the rising waters of the Mississippi River.

What and who is at stake?  25,000 farmers, fisheries, and Creole communities vs. Millions of lives that dwell in the city.

The spillway has not been opened since the 1973 flooding that destroyed hundreds of communities at the time.

What the Atchafalaya Basin is about to experience is suspiciously similar to what happened to the 9th ward during Hurricane Katrina.  The lives of those in poverty and outside the confines of major businesses and corporations are being targeted to take the fall for the short comings of our government’s ability to prepare for these disastrous events.

But who or what is more to blame?  Global warming or Human fault?

The answer is both.

The U.S. has experienced abnormally high and record breaking snowfalls over the past winter and rainfalls over the spring.  The combination of this extreme weather and poor planning on the part of urban development has placed us in the conflict we’re now in.  The Mississippi River does not have enough room to expand or swell in these conditions due to building and reconstructing along its banks.

Most of the country seems to be in shock about the flooding that has occurred and the solutions that are weighing upon us to resolve this.

Photo taken by Kirk Sunley of Memphis, TN

There is an official policy in the Netherlands that land developers MUST leave space for the rivers to change and shift in its natural order.  “In the US, we’ve done the opposite,” says Len Shabman, an economist at Resources for the Future, a think tank in Washington DC.  “Then we’re horrified when the inevitable occurs.”

The future of our land and its inhabitants rests on the shoulders of the American people and government.  We destroy, rebuild, and destroy over and over again.  When we start to recognize that our actions affect our environment, we will discover how much it eventually impacts our own lives whether it be over a period of several years or just in a day’s time.

Photo taken by Kirk Sunley of Memphis, TN

The Truth Lies in Our History

The U.S. is no longer the great land of opportunity and prosperity that it used to boast about to foreign immigrants, more particularly Mexican immigrants.  Job incomes are still much higher in the U.S. than most of the towns and cities, but our borders are no longer as inviting to foreign workers.

When did this whole business of illegal immigration really start to tick off the U.S. government and why?  It’s a fact that truth can be found in past history, but sometimes that requires some digging of your own.

The history between the U.S. and Mexico is a long and sad story, but the relationship between the U.S. and Mexican immigrants can clearly be tied to the mid-19th century.  To give a brief overview, the Mexican-American War began in 1846 and finally ended with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.  After all was said and done, the U.S. had chipped away nearly 55% of what the country of Mexico once was.  The war had left Mexico’s economy in shambles, and it would continue to affect the quality of life for its people endlessly into the future.

After the war was over and the U.S. had gained massive amounts of land, the ranches and farms in the southwest began to expand dramatically causing a great need for employment and labor.  The U.S. turned to the Mexican people to come work as underpaid and mistreated workers on the land that just a few years before was their own.  Even though the work was cheaper than American wages and inhumane most of the time, the pay was still worth bearing the harsh conditions.

Between the years of 1850 to 1880, more than 55,000 Mexican immigrants were invited to come work for the United States’ own selfish dreams of expanding its railroads and agriculture.  By 1910, immigration had sped up to 50,000 each year.  This increase was more than welcomed by the U.S. government due to the start of World War I and the need for employment.

During World War I and after, sentiments began to change towards anyone “different” from conservative U.S. citizens.  People began to think that the Mexican workers were stealing their jobs and taking advantage of their privileges.  Eventually this led to the mass deportation of 2 million Mexican workers and their families in 1929.  Out of those 2 million, 1.2 million were U.S. born.

Just when the U.S. was starting to believe they would never need the help of the Mexican people again, World War II began.  In 1942, a project referred to as the Bracero Program was established to make up for the jobs the soldiers left behind.  It immediately welcomed more than 4 million Mexican immigrants into the country to work in almost every area of manual labor.  By the end of the program, 5 million “Braceros” had been legally hired for the U.S. workforce.

Courtesy of Michael L. Dorn, taken 3-10-2006

For the last 150 years, the U.S. has welcomed the Mexican people with open arms just to slam the door of opportunity in their face again.  The last move towards reconciliation by the U.S. took place during the Reagan administration when Reagan granted amnesty for over 3 million undocumented workers on the basis of human rights.

Right now there are around 7 million undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the U.S.  These immigrants have come to the U.S. on the hopes of either reuniting with family or finding a better paying job to provide for their families back home.  Recently the U.S. has decided to start cracking down on immigration more than ever before.  States like Arizona and Georgia are finding ways to make life harder for these people…these people who keep our agricultural development thriving and our lives easier for us because we don’t have to do the dirty work they do for us.  The U.S. government allows corporations and companies to exploit these workers, and at any given moment they change their minds only to raid the factories or warehouses where immigrant work is the bulk of the payroll.  Where do these individuals go?

Local and federal prisons, jails, or deporting stations near the borders.

Over the last few years our local jails have seen a 35% increase (55,000 currently) in foreign prisoners.                                                                              Mexican immigrants make up for 68% of these prisoners, and 65% of their crime is related to immigration statuses.

The result of these numbers is that 24,310 are being held in U.S. jails and prisons JUST because they came to America.  Why are these people, these HUMANS, being treated as criminals?   The foreign prison population costs U.S. taxpayers $1.6 billion each year.  Amnesty is and will be the only answer…for our economy and our reputation for human rights.  The Manifest Destiny craze ended in the 1800s.  Give these people the freedom to call America their home…again.

NYWHO?

If you’re a student at Brooklyn College, like me, you’ve probably heard of NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group) at some point throughout your attendance at the college.

NYPIRG has several different issues that they focus on.  The NYPIRG chapter of Brooklyn College is narrowed down to five different topics of interest: the straphangers campaign, homelessness research and outreach, fairness in higher education, environmental justice, and the consumer action project.  The straphangers campaign fights against fee hikes within the MTA, the homelessness program sets up soup kitchens in different areas of the city, environmental justice fights for alternative energy sources, the consumer action project runs a small claims court counseling center, and the higher education campaign focuses mainly on fairness and affordability for CUNY and SUNY college students.

I had the opportunity last year to join a handful of NYPIRG members to oppose the MTA fee hike.  It was one of their more humorous moments for the sake of Halloween.  We attended the MTA board of directors meeting to hand out fortune cookies to the members of the board.  The cookies contained several messages reiterating the public’s outrage against MTAs actions (click here for pictures).

That was last year, but what are they up to now?

Several students at Brooklyn College have attended several meetings and gatherings with the group including the recent demonstrations in Albany against Governor Cuomo’s budget cuts in March.  NYPIRG has fought continuously to make sure the students of the state are not left behind during the decision process.  Now that the budget cuts have passed NYPIRG wants to step up education for students on unnecessary fees in college and what refunds are available to them.  Last week they held a financial aid workshop.  “They cut all of this money out of the budget from CUNY, and school is about to get a lot more expensive” says Eric Eingold, coordinator for Brooklyn College’s NYPIRG.  “Student’s should be equipped with how to make school more affordable.”

NYPIRG is currently preparing for their next largest project at Brooklyn College called “The Progressive Push,” which will be held May 2-6.  “Hopefully this will translate into a stepping stone in the fall,” says Eingold.  The NYPIRG chapter at Brooklyn College is focused on defining democracy for students and showing how they can be a process in making decisions whether with corporations or politics.

The Frightened Minority, or Majority?

I have an end of the semester project due for the class I have been blogging for.  In my last blog post I talked about how I want to vocalize the struggles that “illegal” immigrants must endure in order to obtain citizenship in the United States.  After giving thought to the idea of focusing on the costs and paperwork of becoming an American, I have decided to shift the focus onto the personal impact of what it means to be “illegal” in America.

On April 23, 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill that includes some of the most controversial laws ever to be instated.  It gives law enforcement the right to ask anyone they come in conflict with about their immigration status.  The conflicts can range from code violations, littering, and anything else that gives police the “right” to make judgments.  Another portion of the bill penalizes businesses for hiring undocumented workers by either placing the business on probation or revoking their license to remain in operation.  Since Arizona has taken these drastic measures, several other states are beginning to follow suit.  Virginia, Georgia, and Utah have also begun talks in the house of what language to include in their bills.  Utah doesn’t seem to want the same harsh penalties in their bill as Arizona, but they’re continuing the talks.  Georgia is also still debating whether or not to enforce the probation of businesses for their undocumented employees.  The only problem is that those employees also make up for almost 50% of Georgia’s agriculture industry, which is what Georgia relies on to boost its economy.  And in Charlottesville, Virginia, they just recently passed a law in the house with the same measures to shut down or place on probation businesses that hire “illegal” immigrants.

This legislature is not what I would call “reform,” and the thing that troubles me the most is that the federal government is trying to mind its own business by not stepping in to halt what is blatantly racist actions.  This counts as just another ethnicity to the “need not apply” signs that our country experienced throughout the 20th century.  These laws are causing immigrants to lose their jobs that they rely on to provide for their families.  Individuals who had been working the same job for ten years in Arizona were fired under the new law leaving their families in a struggling position to make ends meet.

Undocumented individuals are also at a greater risk of disease.  Most do not understand that the medical care is not affiliated with the state, or at least in regards to the limits of law enforcement.  They prefer to either access health care through underground clinics with unlicensed doctors, or faith-based clinics.  They are also able to access medicine through certain pharmacies, but this can pose a potential health risk since they are not providing prescriptions or doctor given diagnosis.

Do we really want to be seen as a nation that places so many borders, boundaries, and limits on being a citizen that we’re taking away the right to live freely?  The largest population of the United States has always been immigrants.  Since the day the ships landed on the eastern shores, we have always been a country of immigrants trying to escape authoritarian rule or horrible living conditions.  America’s patriotism is beginning to affect human lives in devastating way.

Immigrant stories (listen!!)

Cook Those Books

Photo by Nick Allen

A tenant became angry when he accused his landlord of stealing his E-Z Pass card and fired eight bullets at NYPD officers in Bensonhurt, Brooklyn on March 2 of this year.

No one was hurt during the shooting rampage, and the officers arrested the man without harming themselves or him.  The most surprising aspect within the story is that the officers on the scene never once fired their weapons, even when the man’s gun was pointed straight at them.

The restraint the officers showed by not using violence throughout the ordeal have sparked debates on whether or not the NYPD has really tamed their tactics and strategies when making arrests.  A report came out this year that shows statistics that in 2010 the NYPD had the fewest amount of fatalities during civilian and officer conflicts. Out of 35,000 officers, only eight deaths occurred and 16 individuals were wounded because of a police officer.  Even though that is an extremely low number for the largest police department in the nation, those are not all the facts.

Since the formation of the New York Police Department, there have been several cases of corruption and crimes being swept under the rug.  The mafia has been linked to the NYPD several times over the last few decades.  Even recently the NYPD had to lock away two of their detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, for acts of racketeering.  In the 1960s there were several cases of police abuse and brutality.  The issue to focus on is not the crimes they have been connected to, but what crimes have they committed and/or not reported.

Just last year a Bed-Stuy NYPD police officer released several tapes to the Village Voice that contained over a year of recorded conversations between his superiors and fellow officers.  On the tapes you can hear superiors telling street officers to step up their stop-and-frisks so the department can meet their monthly quotas.  The tapes go on to expose how the 81st precinct has coerced victims into not reporting crimes, including their own officers.

If the officer at the 81st precinct in Bed-Stuy recorded that information in the matter of only a year, then how many other precincts in all five boroughs have been cooking their books?  This scandal is not the only issue the NYPD has against them.

© 2009 Steve Kelley

The NYPD is under several law suits at the moment, including Floyd v. City of New York, for upping their stop-and-frisk policy on Black and Latino New Yorkers.  In 2010, the NYPD actually broke the record for frisking civilians.  Altogether 601,055 New Yorkers were stopped by the NYPD and frisked for no other reason then what they call “crime prevention.”  That’s 4% higher than the previous year, which mean 25,000 more New Yorkers were patted down by a police officer last year.  Out of this number, 87% were Black or Latino.  Only .13% were carrying a firearm, and only 14% of these stops led to an arrest.  On February 23rd of this year, the NYPD released a statement saying “Stops save lives.”  It only takes basic skills in math to understand that these statistics aren’t saving lives, but profiling civilians based on their appearance and skin color.

The NYPD may look good on the books they show to the public, but in private there is something much bigger cooking on the stove.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and All of Their Assets.

Photo taken by Trevor Stone on 2008-08-28

We have all heard, at some point in our lives, the famous quote on which the Statue of Liberty stands,”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  These words were one of the first images the immigrants saw as they sailed into America’s harbors in the early 20th century.  America has always praised itself in paving the way for freedom and offering a better, more superior way of life.  Recently, Arizona has enacted laws to deny Mexican-American history in their schools, and the Dream Act, which would have allowed individuals to gain citizenship through attending college or enlisting in the military, was blocked last December by our senate.  Have we forgotten our ancestor’s history and the hardships they too encountered to obtain a better life?  The answer is **** yes we have.

The United States has become a lead actor of nationalism.  Over the last hundred years, our government as well as certain American populations have created this all-superior attitude that shines over the world.   A country creates bombs.  The U.S. creates bigger bombs.  A country refuses to abide by our standards and wishes.  The U.S. imposes devastating sanctions against them.  Albert Einstein once said “Nationalism is an infantile sickness.  It is the measles of the human race.” When a country has vowed to make their land better, their people smarter, and their economy more private from the rest of the world, it has led to disaster.  It doesn’t necessarily sound like an awful thing.  The negative impact develops when a country, with the help of a charismatic leader, decides that their standards, beliefs, and practices are especially better than any outside country and group of people.

I know, you think this article is all about nationalism, which in a way it is, but I am only giving a glimpse of a future article I will write in regards to what nationalism has done to our country and the people who work so hard to get here.  I want to voice the silent majority’s hopes and fears.  I want to share their experiences and why they came to the U.S.  If I use the term “illegal immigrant” it will be in quotations because I do not take the term seriously, and it is not a rational term.  Too often we forget the struggles that these “illegal immigrants” bear in order to reunite with their families, achieve a better life, or to escape human cruelty.  The U.S. makes this struggle even harsher by giving the I.C.E. full authority over the “problem of immigration,” upping the cost and laws to gaining citizenship, and giving federal and local law enforcement the right to profile an individual based on skin color or appearance.  As xenophobia is growing rapidly throughout the U.S., there needs to be a balance in place.  So often the stories are unheard from the other side of the fence.  In the near future I will post personal stories from “illegal immigrants” of the cost, fear, and racism they have/are experiencing to eventually become a citizen of the United States of America.

The Hatred Hearings

Peter King vowed that he would hold hearings on what he called the radicalization of American Muslims when he became chairperson of the House Homeland Security Committee in December 2010.  King’s personal goals for the hearings are to prove to the American public that Muslims do not cooperate with law enforcement, their leaders ignore extremism, and the religion is inappropriately growing within in the U.S.  So what is the point of these hearings?  What does he eventually want to convince the public of?  Should we halt the growth of Islam within the U.S.?  In my opinion the easier option would just be to eliminate the First Amendment completely.  Maybe only then, King will be completely satisfied with his hearings.

If King wanted to hold productive hearings on the development of Islamic radicalization within the U.S., he should have chosen factual and statistical evidence to back up his claim.  The witness list included two people of congress, two family members of fundamentalist Muslims, and a sheriff.  There was no one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation or national security forces to provide hard information.  King has stated that law enforcement officials have come to him saying that the Muslim community does not work with them in regards to Islamic extremism.  The only law officer that King had on the list of witnesses was Sheriff Lee Baca.  During the trial, Baca said that the Muslim community has been extremely cooperative with him and the Los Angeles Police Department. The difference in Baca’s experience with the Muslim community is that he has never singled them out as a particular group capable of more crime or terrorist acts then others.  Instead of educating the community on terrorism, he has held training classes in dealing with gang-related acts and behavior, domestic violence, and hate crimes.  All of which lead to education on nonviolent lifestyles for the Muslim community as well as throughout the L.A. area.

In whole the hearings seem to be an abused privilege that King has been given admission to use in response to his own personal feelings.  King has not always had sore relations with the Muslim community.  In fact, even as a member of congress for New York, King used to have very strong and close relationships with the local mosque of Westbury, also known as the Islamic Center of Long Island.  In the late 1980s and 1990s, King gave speeches at the mosque, took in members as interns, and even cut the ceremonial ribbon for their $3 million prayer hall.  A picture of King cutting the ribbon was placed above the entrance to the mosque to show their appreciation for him.  During the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, King became one of the only republicans to support U.S. intervention to help the Muslims in the area.  What changed King’s views towards the Muslim community after so many years of unity between the two?

Sadly, everything changed inside of King on the day of September 11, 2001.  His views, beliefs, and friendships with the Muslim community were severed by his own will.  Two leaders from the local mosque came out saying that they had suspicions that the acts of 9/11 were performed by enemies of the Arab people. They were of course insinuating that Israel’s government had launched a conspiracy attack on the U.S. to push the hatred and fear of Muslims and the Arab people.  The two leaders immediately retracted their statements and made every effort possible to make amends with the Jewish community as well as King himself.  King refused their apology.  Since the conflict, he has done everything in his power to push fear into the American people in order to focus national security on the Muslim community.

King is only progressing hatred and singling out a particular group strictly based on their ideology.  Even some law enforcement officials say that they would have preferred the focus not be specific to the Muslim community.  Sheriff Lee Baca stated that he would have supported the hearings more if it had covered a broader range of radicalization across the U.S. and not just a particular religious group.  King has failed to note other acts of terrorism through this whole process.  Acts that have taken more lives then the terrorism he speaks of such as gang related terrorism, racism, and homophobia.  According to the FBI’s website, in 2009 4,087 people experienced a hate crime for the color of their skin, 1,575 for their religious beliefs, and 1,482 for their sexual orientation.  This list does not even include acts of violence towards trans men and women during 2009.  Out of the number of offenders that caused these violent acts, 62.4% of them were white “homegrown” Americans.  King is blind to the bigger issue here.  Instead of focusing on a religious group for the “potential acts of terrorism” they may perform, we need to hold hearings on the extremely violent acts that have occurred in our country towards people because of their race, religion, and sexual identity and orientation.  America’s youth are dying and committing suicide because of these issues as our government turns a blind eye.

NYC’s Got the Cathie Black Blues.

Cathleen Black has continuously battled her way to the top through out her entire life.  No obstacle has ever seemed to hinder her ability to do her job.  In the 1960s and 1970s, women in the United States were beginning to hold male managers, bosses, and CEOs accountable for their blatant sexism on the job.  As a motivated and strong-appearing woman, Black ran into sexist men on the job through out this time period.  Every job she took from publishing companies to magazine companies presented a speed bump for her as a woman. Although the beginning of her career was extremely challenging for her, she eventually went on to become chairperson of Hearst Magazines, a board member of Coca-Cola and IBM, and publisher of USA Today.  She has shattered every glass ceiling placed on her, and the biggest one of all was becoming New York City’s first female Schools Chancellor.

I could continue this rant about how wonderful and powerful a woman Cathie Black is for breaking through the barriers of sexism, BUT that still will not win my approval (nor the majority of the city’s) for her newly acquired position as chancellor (besides, feminism is sooo yesterday, right?)

No where in the list of jobs Black has held throughout her life qualifies her as a conscious and proven advocate for the education system.  She never received anything past a four-year degree in college, which is required for the chancellor’s position.  She never stepped foot in a public school, and neither have her children.  In fact, she has even referred to her childhood and teenage years as “idyllic” when reminiscing about the days at the country club where she rode horses (which happened to exclude Jewish and Black members…).  She was completely sheltered, and nowhere have I seen her acknowledge the fact that she has ONLY surrounded herself with privilege her entire life.  She does not and will not ever know the needs, desires, and necessities of the education system, as well as the students.

Our school system faces the hardest crisis it has in years, and we need an advocate for every class of student families focusing first on the lower working class.  Cathie Black not only worked for a company (Coca-Cola) that has for decades preyed on the lower class, but she also directly oversaw policy changes related to obesity and Coke products within the public school system. Other members of the board, including Black herself, refuse to state what her position was in regards to dealing Coke to the public schools at a time when obesity was at an all time high and student health was(and still is) disregarded for profit.  Although Black resigned from the board of Coca-Cola when she accepted the chancellor position, she makes a bold statement every time she sits down with the Panel for Education Policy sipping her painfully obvious can of Coca-Cola.

No one seems to know exactly what Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s motivations or intentions were for his pick for Cathie Black as chancellor, but I can’t help but believe that profit is the main goal in transactions such as this.  Bloomberg went so far out of his way to make sure that Black made it as chancellor that he even disregarded a request that her waiver be denied by a state appointed panel.  The entire process was completely undemocratic, and most of New York City was completely unaware of the need for a new chancellor until the last minute.  The scariest warning we can receive is when a government politician begins to think that they know what’s best for the public while ignoring opinions and feedback.  The appointment of Cathleen Black as Schools Chancellor for New York City is a blunt display of the government’s ability to keep classes separated in public positions, and it also completely disregards the actual population that will be affected by this decision.

Dear Public: If you fund my education I promise I will make you proud.

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Photo by John Catalinotto on 2009-10-22

I know I’m not alone when I say that I’ve had problems paying and affording college in New York City.  I attend a CUNY school which is significantly more affordable than say NYU or Columbia University, but I also have never had parents that could provide financial assistance or the grades in High School to provide me an easier ride.  I guess you could also say that graduating with a high school diploma from homeschooling does not offer many opportunities in the liberal arts colleges.  That is, unless you enjoy the likes of Bob Jones or Liberty University.

In this day and age, paying for college is going to be tougher as an independent, whether it has to do with eligibility, in or out-of-state status, aid cuts on colleges from the state, or tuition hikes.

Eligibility can be affected depending on how much an individual’s income was the previous year and how much credit card or loan debt he or she has accrued.  If a person has been awarded a scholarship for attending a certain college, FAFSA will also compare that amount to tuition.

I personally have struggled my first year in New York City trying to make ends meet.  First of all, I am not used to the city’s rent, which I’ve been told is normal.  So that took some adjusting because it is $400 more a month then I have ever paid since the day I moved out of my family’s house.  Secondly, with the scholarship I received from CUNY plus a government Pell Grant, I am still unable to pay for my school books.  The only alternative I have is to work as many days a week as I can and schedule my classes around that time.  With recent tuition hikes at CUNY, it will only get worse for people like me and the others who go home exhausted at night from doing everything in their will to try to afford an education for themselves.

The CUNY colleges and Universities used to be strictly funded by the public until 1976.  This meant that all attending students received a free education.  Now, it is 2011, we’re in the worst recession we’ve seen in decades, and the state of New York has landed itself in a deficit so large that the small time college student is forced to take the blow.

Since 1994, CUNY tuition has increased by over $2000, and the trend will not be slowing down anytime soon with Andrew Cuomo as governor.  He has prepared a budget that cuts a total of $95.1 million from CUNY institutions, and the Tuition Assistance Program is not entirely out of the clear.  So in order for CUNY to makeup for the funding decrease it will need to continue raising tuition.

In the future, until New York, or more specifically Albany, can get its act together.  Students in the CUNY system as well as other colleges and universities will continue to see more and more classes being cut, faculty dropping, and tuition rising.