Sexual Assault on Campus

This is the link to an investigative journalism project of the Center for Public Integrity. Excellent resource for people working on stories about campus sexual assault, date rape, etc. "According to a report funded by the Department of Justice, roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. But official data from the schools themselves doesn’t begin to reflect the scope of the problem. And student victims face a depressing litany of barriers that often either assure their silence or leave them feeling victimized a second time, according to a nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity."

Latino Organizations in Big Sugar's Pocket

LULAC and the National Hispanic Medical Association support the efforts of the Americans Against Food Taxes--a front group funded by the beverage industry (see PR Watch and Source Watch)--to derail a proposal in Congress for new taxes on sodas to help with the health cost of diabetes and other diseases associated with high calorie intake. See stories posted on the Center for Public Integrity and the Los Angeles Times about this topic.

Latino men have no excuse for IPV

It's not too much of a shock to read that multiple studies indicate that Latino men are arguably the highest culprits of battering their significant other. I find it disgusting that my ethnic demographic is quite possibly the most frequent batterer of Latina women. Of course, the legacy of machismo and male dominance towards female submissiveness still lingers in our demographic - but it does not make it any easier to accept or tolerate. The heart of the issue is not traditional male dominance in Latino households, but rather a severe problem of alcohol/substance abuse, and the deep ties to gang-member mentality. Latinos are arguably the most prodominant populators of street gangs, therefore, how can we expect them to completely change their violent ways just because they join a partner or have children in a certain union.

Tutorial J498: Spring 2010

This a blog for your tutorial JOUR 498 Latino Journalism. You'll be able to post your entries, edit them, and even delete them, but you won't be able to access somebody else's work—you can comment it f you want. The blog will facilitate our conversation about the coverage of Latino communities. You will use the books we are going to read as the basis for your blog entries. You should include links you would like to suggest so you can expand our collective knowledge on the subject. Welcome,

De Colores Means All of Us

When I was younger I asked my mom if I was Mexican-American she said yes but when I asked her if I was a Chicana she said no. I didn’t understand at the time but to her it was something very important in her struggle for acceptance. In all reality there is still no set definition to what exactly a Chicano is other than a Mexican-American. To her it meant a struggle of being accepted by the United States Anglo-dominated society. Her definition is that to be a Chicano you had to be part of the Chicano movement of the 1960s. My mother is a strong advocate for the United Farm Workers and La Causa and she struggled during the 1960s and 1970s to help Mexican-Americans in the civil rights movement. The cultural aspects that contributed to the Chicano movement were the literature, arts and musical movements. Elizabeth Martinez like my mother is a product of that time. She guides the reader to a path of a revolutionary based compassion for equality and justice. For me the book was not just for women or minorities but also for all people in general. This book gives all people including the Anglo community a chance to walk in the shoes of a revolutionary struggle for justice. I am glad people of all socio-economic statures can read this book and find something even the slightest thing to relate to. I found an interesting article from 1991 that shows how underrepresented Latinos and Chicanos are on the Stanford University campus http://news.stanford.edu/pr/91/910429Arc1429.html

Nickel and Dimed

This book uncovers a part of life that has been masked by members of the upper-middle class and beyond. It is an eye opener to the struggles people, including college students, are having to deal with everyday and the way they cope. Although Ehrenreich was fortunate to have a safety net, the people she was trying to understand didn’t. It did bother me a little the way she gave herself allowances. I did find it a little offensive and exploitive because she always knew what she had to go back to. At times I felt like she was using the less fortunate situation for her own benefit. People rely on public transportation everyday, she made it seem like only poor people use public transportation as if it was so terrible. Though she does empathize with the people around her like her co-workers who can’t afford rent and live in hotels or trailers. Ehrenreich did an excellent job in showing that without basic shelter and standard of living everything else in their lives are effected and therefore can never move up the ladder, somewhat like a feudal system. Everything from time and cost of commute to sleep to lack of stove or refrigerator sometimes leads to starvation. I may not agree with how she went about this book but the story is great and it is a real eye opener to what working class America is really like. My first year transferring I decided to go to Arizona State University with no help financially. I worked full time, went to school full time all with no car in the Arizona summer. I got a huge dose of reality that semester and I didn’t want to live on the edge. I was constantly worrying about something whether it was rent, bills, food or out of state tuition. I decided to move back with my parents in California where I didn’t have to live as the working class citizen and just as a student. I found an article related to college students at the University of Washington that are using food banks because they just can’t afford to buy food with the near 5 percent increase in the price of groceries in the past year. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5451082

De Colores Means All of Us

Elizabeth Martinez is very opinionated in her book, De Colores Means All of Us. I like how the reader can tell that she’s very passionate about human rights and the fight for equality. Chapter 10, “Levi’s, Button your fly – your greed is showing!” talks about how women working in maquiladoras struggled for human rights. The union, Fuerza Unida, asked for support from the public by cutting off all Levi’s tags/labels and mail them to the company headquarters. This brought me back to high school because a student did the same thing, but with a different company, Forever 21. Around 2002, 2003 there was a huge campaign about Forever 21 not paying its workers the proper wage or making them in harsh conditions. My friend asked all of the girls to cut off their Forever 21 tags and give them to her because she was going to add them to their even bigger collection that to include a letter and pictures of workers. The Garment Worker Center fought on behalf of the maquiladora workers and stated their facts, which are on this link:
http://www.garmentworkercenter.org/media/f21/Fact_Sheet_on_Forever_21%20.pdf