Proud to be an anchor baby

...All this talk about anchor babies made us think:
Who do we know that's an anchor baby,
and what would they say about all of this? 
Tell your story.

As anti-immigrant rhetoric heated up this summer, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, questioned the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which grants the right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

Mr. Graham, speaking on Fox News, said it was “a mistake” to allow American-born children of illegal immigrants to become citizens automatically, a practice known as birthright citizenship. He said that along with a plan to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, he would also amend the 14th Amendment as a way of discouraging future unauthorized immigration.

Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, one of those pushing for Congressional action on the issue, stirred controversy when he suggested that children born in the United States to illegal immigrants should be deported with their parents until the birthright citizenship policy was changed.

YES! Magazine gets it right—strong families are happy families

By Maria Nakae

The other day, I was taking a mid-day coffee break with a friend, and she told me she’d just read an article in YES! Magazine about the changing face of families in the U.S. She handed me the article, which she had printed out. “The entire issue is all about families,” she said. “It reminds me a lot of what you all are doing at ACRJ.”

She was talking about our Strong Families initiative. So naturally, I was intrigued. Once I got back to the office I took a quick minute to read “Freer, Messier, Happier” by Jeremy Adam Smith. He talks about how gender roles in his family have change dramatically over three generations, how diverse family structures are now becoming the norm, and how the economy is playing a big role in shaping family. He recounts how he, while taking care of his son one year while his wife worked, would visit playgrounds with his son and meet other stay-at-home dads, queer parents, single parents, and multiracial and immigrant families.

The right-wing 'family values' movement has painted these trends as a crisis, but no one I know experiences them that way. Instead, we seem to share a positive (if often unarticulated) vision of the family as diverse, egalitarian, voluntary, interdependent, flexible, and improvisational. Many people hold these ideals without necessarily being conscious of their political and economic implications—and they’re not making politically motivated choices…They almost always framed their work and care decisions as a practical matter, a response to brutally competitive labor and childcare markets.

Trust Black Women--and take down the billboards

By Janette Robinson Flint

Ashton Logan plays with the Frederick
Douglass Academy Elementary School
Drum Squad in the LA MLK Parade.
Photo by Anne Cusack/
The Los Angeles Times

Black Women for Wellness joined with others nationally and locally this week to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a holiday that marks an important milestone in our African American experience. While we are encouraged by the strides that have been made to unify and heal our communities, we must point out a racist and divisive campaign that objectifies Black children, charges Black women with genocide and utilizes Black men as pawns in a political play for power.

Along King Boulevard and the parade route, where our community—politicians, elected officials, grassroots leadership and everyday regular folk—gathered to celebrate the life of Rev. King, were billboards with the message “Black Children Are An Endangered Species,"  with the face of a beautiful African American child accompanying this ugly message.

This message, brought to us by The Radiance Foundation and Issue4life, is dangerous because it belies its true purpose: their aim is to gather anti-abortion support from the African American community. Los Angeles is the latest stop in this campaign; billboards have been posted in Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida and Illinois.

First SAFIRE alumni meeting

By Ngoc-Y Mai, SAFIRE Alumni Intern

You know the feeling of rediscovering something that you once knew and had, but somehow misplaced, then many years pass, you stumble upon it, and it elicits this incredible feeling of happiness, like a yummy ice cream on a hot summer day? That was exactly how I felt on the night of December 16th, 2010, at the SAFIRE Alumni Network's first ever general meeting. It was a mix feeling of joy, exciting, and “ohmigosh, I haven’t seen you since FOREVER”.

With today's technologies, we can keep in touch via text, e-mail, and the newly popularize networking giant, Facebook; however, none of those things compare to meeting with someone in person, especially, after not seeing the individual(s) for half a decade.

The future's story

By Malkia Cyril

[Thanks to Malkia for her thought-provoking and inspiring words.  We loved this piece.  It spoke to us because of her shout out to risk-takers, and her insistence on the importance of the stories we tell.  Inspired and humbled by her words, we are honored to share them here. --The Editors]

In the aftermath of the Arizona shooting which killed 6 people and wounded 14 including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, I find myself thinking a lot about the stories we tell, or fail to tell, about the future. How, in the midst of so much suffering, against the constant reverberation of deliberate hate and institutional violence echoing from our television sets, can we begin to imagine a liberation strategy that can free us all?

I'm thinking about the power of stories to steer the course of that strategy. The ones we tell ourselves about what the world is like, about who Justice Movements are made of, about the might of the conservative Right.

Earlier this evening I commented to a friend that the trajectory of our lives feels somewhat like a pinball machine—one ball hits another, or something else, and we find ourselves spinning out in a new direction we could hardly have imagined before. As I sit with my own fears and hopes for my future, I realize how true this is. Yet, unlike things that bump into each other at random, there are institutions and systems of oppression that shape and force our direction. Within the meta-physics of structural oppression, there is choice—but those choices only go so far as our imaginations allow. Our stories set the limits of our imagination.

Sharing the love: thank you, Exhale!

By Lisa Russ

Markai Durham, whose story is told on MTV's "No Easy Decision"

Reality TV may not change the world, but it can be a good way to notice that it is changing.

I sat down to watch the "No Easy Decision" episode of 16 and Pregnant this morning like just another part of my job.  I loved what Exhale had done to support the young women who told their abortion stories on the show, and I figured I should actually watch the episode so I could let Exhale know how much I appreciate their work.

Tea cup nearby, cell phone at the ready in case anything more interesting wanted to distract me, and my to do list looming by my elbow, I settled in with half an eye on the clock.  Four tissues and 30 minutes later, I feel like the world is a little bit different.

Marching in Cancún--Ellen Choy on being inside and out

By Ellen Choy

As UN security guards ripped accreditation badges off of the necks of 3 of my comrades during a staged march out from the UN climate negotiations, I was fueled with both frustration and determination. It was a reminder: when our voices matter the most, they are silenced. That moment defined the atmosphere of oppression and inequality that I, and many others, experienced at the UN climate negotiations in Cancún this past month.

At a march on Dec 7 in Cancún, led by La Via Campesina.

Two weeks ago, I was blessed with the opportunity to travel to Cancún to attend the 16^th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (an unnecessarily long name for the annual UN negotiations on climate change). I went as a representative of Youth for Climate Justice – a national network of young environmental justice organizers who come from communities disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. We were there in alliance with a delegation led by Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and the Indigenous Environmental Network. As grassroots organizers from the US, we were there to both influence interests inside the negotiations as well as outside in the streets and through media to push communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis around the world to the forefront of the issue.  We were there to amplify the voice of the voiceless, and demand the protection of our rights to survive and the protection of the Rights of Mother Earth.