Students, Community Members March for Trayvon Martin (YDN)

BY SARAH MASLIN

CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Monday, April 2, 2012

On Saturday afternoon, Yalies and New Haven residents donned hooded sweatshirts and marched from Dixwell Avenue to City Hall to protest the fatal shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin.

The march, which was organized by the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY) and co-sponsored by other activist groups from Yale, New Haven and elsewhere in the state, aimed to raise awareness about racial profiling and the need for unity among local groups taking steps to combat it. Called "Hoodies Up New Haven," the march and subsequent rally at City Hall commemorated Martin, a 17-year-old high school student who was shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 while walking home from a convenience store wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Echoing nationwide demands for Zimmerman's arrest and "an end to racial profiling," Saturday's march hoped to promote an additional message: that Yale and New Haven must join forces to address local problems of discrimination.

PHOTO BY JAMES LU

"This is not a problem just for the black community," said Nia Holston '14, political chair of BSAY and an organizer of the march. "[Racial profiling] is something that affects all of us."

Holston said the tragedy in Florida has prompted BSAY to work toward calling attention to racial profiling in New Haven and become more involved in social causes within the city. Holston said she came up with the idea for a march and rally after a BSAY-hosted discussion about Trayvon Martin's death and racial profiling last Tuesday. BSAY worked with numerous other activist groups both from Yale and beyond, including several NAACP chapters, to plan the march. Holston also enlisted the support of local community organizers such as Rev. Scott Marks, who led marchers from the Q House in Dixwell to the New Haven Green, and Barbara Fair, who introduced each speaker at the ensuing rally on the steps of City Hall.

Holston said organizers chose to gather at the Q House, a former community center, rather than an on-campus location, to ensure that Saturday's event was "a New Haven march, not a Yale march."

PHOTO BY BRIANNE BOWEN

In total, over 400 people attended the rally, Holston said, of which only a quarter were Yale students. A small group of Washington, D.C., natives, including T-shirt vendor Thaddeus Jackson, who had attended another march for Trayvon Martin earlier that morning in Hartford, said they have been "following the Trayvon Movement" across the country for the past few weeks.

Still, Yale's presence at the protest was prominent, and several student groups used public excitement about the event as an opportunity for advocacy.

The Yale College Democrats and MEChA de Yale, a student group that seeks to "promote Chicano empowerment" through education and political activism, teamed up to collect signatures for a petition demanding that the city "take an active stance against racial profiling." The petition called for an increase in police officer walking beats, "more curricula about racial profiling and community relations" in police training programs and ongoing discussion about relations between the community and the New Haven Police Department. By the end of the day, MEChA moderator Diana Enriquez '13 said, the petition had 264 signatures. Enriquez added that although calling attention to racial profiling with a march is important, "it should never end there."

PHOTO BY BRIANNE BOWEN

Dems President Zak Newman '13 agreed, and cited the importance of local events like Saturday's protest in initiating conversations about race among people with different backgrounds.

Will McPherson '15, one of 40 "volunteer marshals" at the events, said he attended the march because, "as a white male who's not profiled," he felt the need to "support my friends who shouldn't have to live through this." In his speech at the rally, BSAY President Joshua Penny '13 addressed those who assume that college students are "bandwagoners, quick to repost a status on Facebook" but unwilling to take real action.

"Do not underestimate my generation," he told the diverse crowd gathered on the steps of City Hall. "Don't underestimate our strategy, and don't underestimate our tools," Penny continued, looking out over scores of painted signs.

Marks, who is also a co-founder of the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a progressive social policy advocacy organization, commended BSAY organizers and Yalies who attended the protest.

"[The Yale administration] would like [students] to stay inside of the ivory towers, but they're in this community fighting," he said in his speech.

A Florida grand jury is scheduled to review the Trayvon Martin case on April 10.

Inclusive Activism

ENRIQUEZ: For more inclusive activism

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BY DIANA ENRIQUEZ

Monday, April 2, 2012

I like to think I'm making a difference. Many of us activists do. We get up every morning, scan the headlines for topics that interest us, read articles that people send us and talk to people who have the same interests. Friends outside our interest groups also notice things for us, and for me, this means several copies of the same articles on immigration, Mexican cartels and Latin America when I get up each morning.

I am an activist because I am frustrated. There are things I love about my communities and things that I would change about them. But unfortunately, the language that each of our social justice groups use often prevent us from engaging with our communities at large.

Simply put, we are self-selecting, and we prefer to spend time with like-minded people. We find and surround ourselves with people who agree with us, who appreciate and understand our passions and interests. We don't need to worry about being defensive or explaining our entire background that way. It's more comfortable. For me, immigration is a really sensitive topic. I came here as an immigrant and I study here with the perspective of someone who doesn't fit well into either of my worlds.

It is easier for me to spend time with people from La Casa Cultural when I discuss immigration issues because they just get it. I don't have to dredge out painful details from my past and lay them out for the world to scrutinize. But it also means that it took me a lot longer to present my mission in a way that was broadly understandable and brought more people into the conversations I was having every day.

In the smaller circles of the Social Justice Network, a branch of Dwight Hall, activists at Yale learn how to talk to each other about these issues. I may read something in the morning, send it to the rest of my group and fume about it for the rest of the day while others from the same group agree with me. In this context, I don't have to defend myself. I can express myself through art and imagery of the violence in my home country, and I can use rhetoric that pulls Spanish and English phrases together, but I lose sight of my target audience in these ways. We lose sight of the people who do not hear these stories in their daily routines.

Activists, we need to go beyond talking to our groups if we want to get anywhere. We need to learn to communicate in a language that goes beyond our experiences and makes a point. The presentation of our missions isn't effective if we only see the same faces at every event, discussion and march. We need to bring in the rest of the community if we want to see change.

And we are lucky, because the resources are all around us. As many of us were told before we came to Yale, we are our own teachers. The best part of our time at Yale would be the community of students and the people that we would meet along the way.

So go! Leave your groups and have conversations that make you uncomfortable, defend your views and consider them from someone else's point of view. If you won't reach out and do it yourself, who will?

I have lost friends by compromising, but I've also made many others who teach me and challenge me in ways that I had never been before. In those moments, when I have realized that I'm having a conversation about immigration with someone who doesn't feel connected to the topic in any way, I learn to see myself and others like me through the eyes of someone else. And they leave the conversation knowing a little more about why I get up every morning.

I have learned the most from holding my convictions up for other people to scrutinize. I've learned to defend them and explain them in different ways. I've learned to compromise in ways that meant bringing others into the conversation without sacrificing the heart of what I want to do.

We can't hide behind our art and symbols and prose. For the change we seek to occur, understanding needs to be widespread, and we can't do that from within our own carefully guarded communities.

Diana Enriquez is a junior in Saybrook College. Contact her at diana.enriquez@yale.edu .

Packing a Political Punch: 2012 Elections and MEChA

From: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/23/packing-political-punch/

Packing a Political Punch

Politics, the specialist way

Yale students may not be queuing around the block to sign up for positions on campaigns, but they are, it seems, going into 2012 with clear priorities about what they care about. If Yalies aren’t working to elect public officials, they certainly wish to inject their values into national policy debate.

One clear example of this were the 30+ comments in the News survey that mentioned women’s reproductive rights as the respondent's top political priority, and the recent flurry of Republican comments and legislation concerning similar legislation. Other individuals interviewed are determined to make their issues matter on the national stage this election year, even if they are not currently hot-button issues.

“My time on campus has introduced me to others who pursue their causes with a similar level of passion to my own — these elections mean a lot of different things to people, and I am constantly impressed with the level of commitment to issues that I see in other students here,” said Diana Enriquez ’13, who is involved with the campus Chicano advocacy group MEChA de Yale. “The stakes are high for many of us.”

Enriquez believes that the recently proposed DREAM Act, and state legislation such as Arizona’s SB 1070 helped reignite interest in the immigration debate. She added that she hopes to get her fellow students more interested in issues such as racial profiling, and the image of immigration even beyond the Latino community.

“I collect stories. I share stories about my family, the communities we've worked with in New Haven and people I worked with at home. We talk about students like us who face uncertain futures because their immigration status puts them or their families at risk of deportation,” Enriquez said. “The human interest story is always a powerful one, and my role as a student activist is to remind other students how real these issues are for the people around them.”

Getting discussions going, she added, is a vital first step. Recent issues surrounding the implementation of the Secure Communities program, which has been attacked for the precarious position in which it places illegal immigrants, will help stimulate continued interest, Enriquez said.

YDN backs MEChA's position on SCOMM

NEWS' VIEW: Secure Communities has met resistance in New Haven — and rightly so.

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BY THE YALE DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Secure Communities program that took effect in Connecticut last week has met overwhelming resistance from citizens, scholars and city officials. The program — under which the FBI must share fingerprints of anyone arrested with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for review, and ICE may in turn request that local prisons detain suspects — has prompted a number of concerns. Governor Dannel Malloy, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and the Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigration Rights Advocacy Clinic have joined immigration activists in questioning the program on constitutional and practical grounds. They are right to be concerned.

New Haven has a turbulent history of federal immigration enforcement. A 2007 ICE raid in Fair Haven increased fear among the city’s Hispanic population. Citizens know that New Haven police do not often deport illegal immigrants. Enforcing Secure Communities may drive a wedge between citizens and police, threatening the community policing new NHPD Chief Dean Esserman has promised to return to the city.

Secure Communities is supposed to be used to deport dangerous criminals. Instead, as a September 2011 Department of Homeland Security report acknowledged, immigrants targeted by ICE through the program have thus far mostly been arrested for minor crimes, if any. Although most deported immigrants indeed live in the country illegally, Secure Communities may lead to undue detention. Moreover, deporting people who have committed no additional offenses is a misguided use of funds and resources.

Still more worrisome is that some police departments have checked fingerprints against an outdated list, leading to deportation of naturalized citizens. If the feds are going to tell the New Haven Police Department how to handle immigration enforcement, they ought to have a handle on how immigrants interact with New Haven officials. But in a telling gaffe, ICE recently sent an email about the program to former police chief Frank Limon, who hasn’t been in office — or in town — since October. A program so potentially damaging to police relations would be better handled by an agency more in touch with the city.

States have some power to control the program’s execution. New York, Illinois and Massachusetts have refused to enforce the federal mandate, which does not provide states with funds to enforce ICE detention. Connecticut could follow in their footsteps.

Malloy said he will handle enforcement of Secure Communities on a case-by-case basis. We applaud that decision. In some cases, the program may remove criminals from New Haven. In others, though, it may do little but undermine tenuous relationships between police officers and the communities they serve.

DeStefano has called Secure Communities “flawed and in need of correction” because it fails to target repeat offenders. Because the program is executed by the state, DeStefano can do little on his own to keep it out of New Haven. But if New Haven is forced into the program, at least DeStefano has shown he cares about his constituents.

The Law School clinic filed a class action lawsuit earlier this month to challenge Secure Communities’ constitutionality. We’re glad to see a murky program subject to scrutiny. Local lawyers’ engagement with the federal policy is a step towards reasserting local control.

Last week, New Haveners of all stripes banded together in objection to Secure Communities. At this point, perhaps that sort of clear — if cautious — united action is the best way to secure a community.

Panel opposes Secure Communities

BY CYNTHIA HUA

STAFF REPORTER

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Community activists convened in Sudler Hall Wednesday night to oppose Secure Communities, the federal government’s new program intended to deport criminals living in the country illegally.

The panel was jointly hosted by the Yale College Democrats, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de Yale and the University’s chapter of Amnesty International. Mayor John DeStefano Jr., Yale Law School professor Michael Wishnie, Armando Ghinaglia of Connecticut Students for a DREAM, Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro and Latricia Kelly, the director of development and programs for Junta for Progressive Action, along with around 30 students, gathered to discuss their concerns about the program and future steps as it is executed nationwide.

While the program has been advertised as a narrowly targeted program focusing on violent offenders, its long-term implications may be broader, Wishnie said, describing the Secure Communities Act as the “latest effort by U.S. Immigration and Customs [Enforcement] to arrest and deport lots of people.” Under Secure Communities, criminal suspects’ information is run through ICE’s database following incidents as small as a routine traffic stop. If ICE’s information identifies the suspect as likely to be undocumented, the agency can issue a request to a state that it hold the suspect for up to 48 hours. Panelists expressed concerns that these detainment requests were issued too broadly. Less than a third of the people detained are actually dangerous criminals, Wishnie said.

“Your main goal is to target individuals with violent records, but you’re opening a Pandora’s box of ills to come into this state,” said Castro, whose neighborhood contains the city’s highest proportion of Latino immigrants.

Panelists also stressed that the program leads to insecurity in immigrant neighborhoods. In communities such as East Haven, which has a large Ecuadorian population, Kelly said, “there is a great sense of fear — people don’t want to go out, and don’t want to report crimes.” Lack of public understanding has created rumors that police are pulling people to check immigration papers, she said, adding that this has contributed to “the fear of being profiled … because you are a Latino or a person of color.”

Castro agreed with this assessment, and suggested that a public awareness campaign might be helpful in explaining the program to city residents.

DeStefano also highlighted New Haven’s track record of immigrant-friendly policies, which he said are under threat by the ICE program. The New Haven Police Department, DeStefano said, is not concerned with residents’ immigration statuses unless they have committed a crime, a result of an executive order he issued in 2006. He added that effective policing depends upon trust between a city’s residents and its police department. Without trust, he said, residents refrain from reporting crimes and are less cooperative with law enforcement officials.

Though he was critical of Secure Communities, Wishnie reminded attendees that ICE’s requests for detainment are not legally binding mandates. While a warrant undergoes a constitutionally mandated review from a judge, detainment requests are issued by ICE agents, and therefore it is up to states to comply with them or not, Wishnie said.

Gov. Dannel Malloy’s office clarified its stance toward Secure Communities on Tuesday, releasing a new policy which would result in the state’s compliance with most, but not all, detainment requests. Such a policy is promising, Wishnie said, because it demonstrates Malloy’s understanding that detainers are not binding. Wishnie said he believes Malloy is the first governor who has publicly decided not to honor all detainment requests.

Panelists called for students in attendance to get involved with community-based organizations, sign petitions and speak with representatives to oppose the program.

“The Secure Communities would turn the police into de facto agents of deportation, which would erode faith in police, and this is very risky,” said Sohara Shachi ’12, who attended the event. “That is a huge argument against it, especially in New Haven, where crime rates are high.”

Secure Communities is scheduled to be implemented nationwide by 2013.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/29/panel-opposes-secure-communities/

I Am a Yale Latino. Get Over It. (I have).

A little background to begin: My father is of Mexican descent. My mother is, like most white Americans, a mix of Irish and German heritages. As a testament to the feeble foundations on which things like race and ethnicity stand, I have been asked, at various times in my life, if I am Jewish, Peruvian, Greek, and Argentinean. I respond to those questions with a smile, and a correction that usually goes something like, "No, actually my dad's Mexican and my mom's white." But that says very little about me. It begins to say who my parents are, inasmuch as two adjectives can describe entire human beings. But what about Ryan Albert Mendías? I'll give a more complete answer here: I'm Latino (or Chicano, or Hispanic, or Mexican-American). I'm white (or caucasian). And--here's where the confusion kicks in--I consider myself a person of color. That last qualification definitely gives some people pause. How can you be both white and of color? We'll set aside the fact that interraciality is actually a thing, and we'll ignore that asking such a question drives an unnecessary wedge between two important parts of myself (you know, parts like my mother and father...). What I'll do is say a little bit about what those two markers of identity, Latino and white, mean to me.

Like most people of mixed heritage, my life has been one long lesson in multiculturalism. Moving in and out of different worlds, families, languages, and religions, difference is nothing new. Add to the mix that my parents have been divorced and that moving between those worlds involved, literally, relocating to a new physical and cultural space, and it becomes very clear that I was constantly aware of the disparate threads of identity that came together in me. The extent to which I've embraced either thread has shifted throughout my twenty years of life. Jealous of friends whose families came from Asia or Africa, I threw myself into my Irish heritage. Ireland--Europe, really--seemed so foreign, so far away, so, for lack of a better word, historical. I had read about the Irish Famine, I had learned about Ellis Island; forcing my grandfather to tell me everything he knew about his grandparents' voyage to the 'New World' was a way of making myself part of something larger than myself. Mexico, in comparison, seemed so close, so banal, so pedestrian. So many of my elementary school friends and classmates had parents who'd come across the border at some point in the recent past or were themselves born in Mexico. Spending significant portions of my childhood in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, surrounded (whenever I was with my father) by Latino people, that part of myself seemed familiar to a fault. Of course, my tumultuous relationship with my dad and step-family coupled with an embarrassment about their (I suppose, our) poverty meant that my Latino heritage was something unforeign, unexciting, and unwanted.

But over time, things changed. Spending more and more time with my white, upper middle class friends made me realize just how important being a Chicano really was. I had long since abandoned my shame about falling into the category of 'poor Mexican family' every time I went out with my dad and step-sisters (who were browner than me). Whenever those friends spoke about the 'ghetto parts' of the city (often, places where I had lived), I both bristled with annoyance and swelled with pride--even if I didn't 'look Latino,' I had access to knowledge which they were so completely unaware of. In almost a complete turnaround, I started to feel deeply uncomfortable with the color of my skin; I felt like a fraud in so many ways: whenever someone assumed I was white and, paradoxically, whenever I told someone I was Latino. I couldn't win, as far as I was concerned. In grappling with this identity and dealing with the privilege that 'looking white' conferred upon me, any discussion of race or ethnicity struck me with a profound discomfort. That discomfort flared in my senior year of high school; every time I checked "Latino"--even when I checked "white" (which I always did)--on a college application, I felt like I was lying. Months later, the joy and relief of my college acceptance letters were always tempered by a deep sense of guilt.

But, ironically, it wasn't until I actually got to college that that guilt began to subside. It wasn't until I joined a community of Chicanos, Latinos, and other people of color who came in all shades that I really knew what my identity meant. I learned that being simultaneously white and brown was an integral part of my existence, that the contradictions embedded within that identity present their own sets of challenges and privileges, that upholding both halves of my heritage doesn't make me a fraud, it doesn’t make me anything other than myself: a person with all the knowledge and experiences that a life spread out across two cultures has to offer.

Ryan Mendías, BR'13