Behind the Veil: Our obsession with sexy

It all started when I went dress shopping. It was almost Mid-May, the days were getting hotter and I wanted some nice Summer dresses to wear to keep cool during the next couple of months. I headed to the mall to check out the usual women’s retail stores. I stepped into Forever 21 after seeing their bright colorful display and sign advertising summer attire.

Wearing a hijab sometimes makes it difficult to find clothing tailored to suit my needs. However I usually have no problem layering outfits to customize them to my taste.

After walking around the entire store for half an hour to no avail, I finally approached a sales rep for assistance, “Excuse me, can you help me find some longer dresses?” My inquiry was met with a chirpy, “Sure!” and she led me around the store, color coordinated section by color coordinated section searching for dresses.

Each time we came across a dress, she would pull it off the rack, hold it up to herself and ask for my approval. About 97% of the dresses we found barely covered mid-thigh. After 36 dresses—yes, I was counting—we found one that was knee-length, but still, not long enough for me. The sales clerk began to look a little exasperated. Finally, we located a small rack at the back end of the store that had four maxi-style dresses that were full length. The fact that they were in garish, gaudy colors and prints is besides the point. The more important issue is what the sales girl said to me while I was examining the horrid prints, “You could try this one” She said, while holding up a cheetah print mini, “it would go great with any type of accessories.”

“I’m sorry” I replied, “I don’t wear anything that isn’t full length.”

“But it’s so sexy!” She said with a smile, “It would look great on you!”

“But I don’t want to be sexy,” I responded without even thinking.

“Why..” She began, but then stopped mid-sentence. She shook her head as if she couldn’t grasp what was wrong with me.

There was an awkward pause between us, then she hung the dresses back on the rack, smiled at me, and left.

I stood there for a long while thinking about what had just happened.

I left the store without purchasing anything and thought about what I said to the sales rep on my drive back home. It was true, I did not want to be sexy, at least not for everyone else to see. I resented that I was made to feel weird for not wanting to be a sexual object, and what is our obsession with oozing sex appeal 24/7 anyway? Why must I look sexy for everyone? And why must one look sexy all the time? What is so wrong with looking modest, or decent, or presentable without the sex factor?

A few days later, I was waiting to pick up my brother in my car in front of his school. A parade of middle school children walked past my car to their rides. I had my windows rolled down and I was overhearing tons of conversation. One particular conversation caught my attention, four young girls were speaking animatedly describing outfits they had bought on their shopping trips over the weekend. One girl was gesturing while describing her purchases, “It’s a strapless and it’s cute and short, and I got a blue headband to match it,” she described, illustrating the dress with her hands for her friend. Her friends were all entranced with her description, “That sounds so sexy!” her friend chimed in.

I wondered for a moment, why her friend hadn’t chosen the world “pretty”, or “beautiful” to describe her friend’s dress. Since when did these words get replaced with a variation of the word sex? And of even greater concern, these girls were only in 6th or 7th grade, why were they concerned with sex appeal at age 11?

The girl smiled at her friends compliment, “Yeah, I know!” she said excitedly, and began describing the other things she had bought.

I thought about the dress she had described and it reminded me of my own shopping trip this past weekend. Her description matched all the dresses I had seen, and I understood why her friend chose to compliment with the word “sexy,” it’s because it matched the outfits perfectly. Those outfits were not designed to make a woman look beautiful, or pretty, or lovely, they were designed to make you exude sex appeal and leave little to the imagination.

The conversation taking place between the middle school girls was simply a reflection of our society. A mirror showing us what values we are teaching our future generations. We are teaching our daughters and younger sisters that it is important to be sexual at all times with everything they do, the way they act, the way the dress, and what they say. And it’s no surprise that they are picking up these ideals. Just take a look at the type of women we glorify in our society, Kim Kardashian, for example, whose only claim to fame was the release of her sex tape with an ex-boyfriend, or Paris Hilton, who surprisingly also had a sex tape with an ex-boyfriend. We plaster images of these women in magazines, or on Yahoo’s front page, forcing people to see what they are doing, and what they are wearing at all times. We give these women the limelight, it’s no wonder that the next generation of females is following in their footsteps.

Change comes one person at a time, and I am determined to break this “sexy” cycle by complimenting more women by telling them that they are “beautiful” or “pretty” instead of “hot” or “sexy.” I am starting a beautiful revolution. Justin Timberlake might have brought sexy back, but I’m bringing beautiful back.

Filipino veterans fight for equity, commemorate the Fall of the Bataan

Bataan Day, a Philippine holiday, marks the largest U.S. army surrender in history. More than 70,000 American and Filipino troops surrendered to Japanese forces after brutal fighting for over 3 months in 1942.

What followed was the gruesome 60-mile march from Bataan for the surrendering army. It was the trudge of battle-weary soldiers, bearing the pain, heat, and agony with little to no food to eat. A few soldiers escaped, but many died from starvation, dehydration, and disease. This became known in history as the Bataan Death March.

Justice for Filipino American Veterans (JFAV) commemorated the Fall of Bataan or Bataan Day on April 10 at the Filipino American Community of Los Angeles (FACLA).

I entered the small function room, modestly decorated with a banner on the center stage wall, framed by the American flag on stage left, the Philippine flag and a bust of Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero, on stage right. Plastic chairs in rows of five were set up with a small walkway through the middle, while draped tables with small plastic flowers as centerpieces are lined against the walls for the luncheon after the commemoration.

Arturo Garcia, National Coordinator for JFAV, spoke with me briefly at the event. He has a commanding presence, undoubtedly emanating from his passion for the cause, which becomes apparent within moments of speaking with him.

“We are commemorating the 68th fall of Bataan. Bataan Day, as it is called in the Philippines, is the fall of Bataan, when the main army of USAFFE (United States Armed Forces of the Far East) surrendered. That was the largest garrison of the US in the Far East,” he explained.

Garcia formed JFAV to continue the veteran fight for equity and rights as a campaign for People’s CORE (Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment). The group’s mission has been to bring the Filipino-American community together and fight for justice for all veterans.

“We are asking for the benefits rightly due to the veterans which where denied to them in 1946,” said Garcia. “The 250,000 veterans (who) served for the United States were not even recognized. That is why we are fighting for recognition. We are fighting for benefits. We are fighting for justice.”

As we spoke, several veterans stop by to say hello, shake his hand and look inquisitively at my notepad and recorder. They greeted me with a small hello, a wave or a nod. Garcia told them to grab a seat inside; the program will start soon. Donning their military uniforms and decorations, their medals clinked softly as they shuffled slowly to the function room.

A member of JFAV opened the event and the function room was buzzing with conversations and energy. Present in the commemoration were WWII Filipino veterans, veteran widows and special guests. Filipino-American groups from UCLA Gawad Kalinga, Samahang Pilipino, Kappa Psi Epsilon (Delta Chapter), and Theta Delta Beta (Gamma Chapter) presented the veterans and widows with certificates of recognition.

One by one, the veterans stood up to receive their certificate, though many of them were absent. A veteran sitting in my row carried a Priority Mail envelope with him when his name was called. He carefully placed his certificate inside to avoid wrinkling it. It was a humble reminder that for many veterans, this piece of paper is a small token of recognition for their sacrifice. A small “thank you” from the generation of young Filipinos who remember their historical contribution and significance.

“They (U.S.) want to forget it. We want to remember it. We want to show how the system is being unfair and how injustices are being perpetrated against our veterans,” he added, referring to the 1946 Rescission Act which stripped Filipino soldiers of benefits and veteran status.

Since then, Filipino veterans have been fighting for equity and recognition. It is a fight that JFAV wages along with many Fil-Am veteran groups across the nation.

“JFAV wants to highlight the historical contribution of the Filipino nation, the Filipino soldiers and the Filipino-American soldiers who fought in that war that the US wants to conveniently forget. We are fighting a war to remember,” Garcia said.

The ceremony closed and everyone grabbed their chairs to the tables. People lined up to get their share of pancit and other Filipino dishes. The veterans ate and talked. Each of them looking genuinely happy to be sitting among friends and fellow “kababayans” (countrymen). I sat down and spoke with some of the veterans, introducing myself as a journalism intern writing about the event. Their faces lit up and they told me their various stories (”I was only 16 years old when the Japanese came,” “I came here in 2003!”). One can sense immediately, that there are hundreds of stories waiting to be told and a multitude of voices fighting to be recognized.

Writer’s Note: The 2009 Stimulus Bill included the Filipino Veterans Equity legislation which gives Filipino-American and Filipino veterans a one-time lump sum payment. Today, only 18,000 WWII Fil-Am veterans are alive and living in the U.S. Though JFAV welcomes the compensation, JFAV joins the Migrant Heritage Commission in Washington, D.C. in filing a suit against the Department of Veterans Affairs for the denied claims. Read the press release here.

Small in number, local Moravian Church values modern beliefs

In the age of Christian megachurches, with the number of followers nearing tens of thousands, and with the continued growth of televised worship services that mobilize and expand ministries, a small congregation in Downey, Cali. is spreading Christ’s love in a different way: through personal relationships between members and pastor, community outreach, and fellowship.

On a Sunday evening, a handful of the Moravian Church members can be found gathered in a small, redecorated north chapel that feels more like a living room than a place of worship. This is the Back-Alley Gathering, an inter-generational worship experience quite unlike the usual Sunday service. This is where Rev. Christie Melby-Gibbons and her husband David, members of the Moravian church and guests gather and spend a couple of hours a week to contemplate and have a dialogue about life’s tough questions. In past meetings, the group has drawn prayers, listened to music as a contemplative piece, and viewed movies as activities.

The Back-Alley Gathering is one of the many ways the Moravian Church of Downey is opening its arms to the community, for all people of faiths and circumstance, fighting to stay relevant and active in sharing God’s love.

The beginnings of the church

The Moravian Church is the oldest Protestant denomination, established in 1457 in Moravia (now present-day Czech Republic), predating the Lutheran Church by more than 60 years. It grew from the revolt led by John Hus, a Czech priest, who disagreed with the Catholic Church’s practices. Driven underground in the 1600’s, a revival in the 1700’s in Germany by Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf took the Moravian church to other countries as centers of outreach.

In 1735, the Moravians arrived in Pennsylvania. From there, settlements in the eastern United States followed. By the end of the nineteenth century, Moravians had established settlements in Canada as well.

The Moravian church came to California after WWII, where only a mission had been established in 1890 in the Morongo Indian Reservation. In 1954, the church was built in Downey.

Melby-Gibbons describes the Moravian Church as a “middle-ground” faith, one that emphasizes relationships and love over doctrines and creeds (the church only has one official published doctrine). The church accepts that various Christian denominations achieve relationship with God differently, which only enriches the understanding and celebration of God’s love.

The church is greatly liberal in its embrace of worship and people. The church welcomes women in all leadership roles in the ministry and welcomes the gay and lesbian community as members and trustees.

Phil Voigt, 69, president of the Board of Trustees, was just a young boy when the Moravian church was built in Downey in June 1954. His parents hailed from West Salem, Illinois and belonged in the only Moravian congregation in the small farming town.

“I helped put the nails in this place,” he said, “and my parents had a lot to do with building the church, too.”

It was a fairly large congregation then. Today, the Downey Moravian church has about 100 members, according to Voigt, although attendance to Sunday worship, excluding religious holidays, tends to be slim.

“The Moravian church as a whole has been growing very slowly mainly because Moravians will not build a church that already has a Methodist or a Presbyterian, or some other Protestant church,” he said.

This means that Moravian churches in the U.S. are hard to come by and some Moravians would have to travel far to attend worship.

Shirley Louis, 52, from Simi Valley, travels once a week, sometimes more frequently, to Downey for Sunday worship and other church events.

Born and raised in Nicaragua, Louis grew up going to a Moravian church, where congregations of 200 to 300 members are typical.

“In Nicaragua, church is very important. Kids had to go to Sunday school–it wasn’t a choice. And you went to church every Sunday,” she says.

When she came to California in 1984, she searched for a Moravian church nearby. “I was living in Inglewood at the time, so it was easier then to come to church,” Louis says. Now, it takes her an hour to get to church.

Despite the travel, she goes to worship every Sunday morning, usually with her daughter and mother. And they’re not alone. A few other members from the same village in Nicaragua all drive to attend worship.

No distance is too far to be with their church family.

“I know the names of the people at church. You don’t get that at a big church.”

Though the Moravian Church has been around since the 1400’s, there are only slightly over 700,000 Moravians worldwide. Only 10 percent of Moravians reside in the United States and Canada. Half of the church population resides South Africa, the Caribbean, and Tanzania.

But Melby-Gibbons is realistic with what could happen to the institutional Moravian Church in North America. She knows that active membership has greatly diminished over the years in many congregations.

“Moravian congregations are closing at a rapid rate. It seems that the Moravian Church as an institution—like the institutional church throughout North America and beyond—is dying,” she admitted.

The Moravian church does not proselytize, which means membership over the years has been slow to grow without a regular addition of newly converts.

But membership in Downey hasn’t always been this low. Back in the 1950’s, membership was strong. Over the years, the city population grew, but with it, less people were identifying themselves as Moravians, making it harder to meet the church’s financial needs for maintenance and to pay provincial dues. Today, the majority of the congregation is over the age of 60, with only 20 to 40 younger members.

Emily Korn, 33, is the church’s Youth Leader and admitted that younger people in general are leaving churches.

“Those in their teens, I think, are looking maybe for something more visual[ly] stimulating. So, a traditional, mainline, protestant worship service is not what they are looking for, even though I think we offer a true family of faith at our church,” she said. “I know the names of the people at church. You don’t get that at a big church.”

But along with the sense of a tight-knit community, lies some pitfalls.

“The detriment of small congregations is that sometimes they can become like a social club and become inwardly focused. Most of those congregations will close,” Melby-Gibbons said. “We need to be really careful that we are being relevant and not just forgetting about people outside of our walls.”

Melby-Gibbons shared a provincial leader’s theory on the future of the Moravian Church in North America: “There’s this theory that out of the 35 congregations in the western district, in 10 years, 5 of those congregations will close. And it will keep going in that pattern.”

But this doesn’t deter the church from reaching out.

Although funds are limited, the church manages to donate money and materials to help support several local organizations and programs like Rio Hondo Temporary Home, which provides transitional housing and support services for homeless families. They also have various ministries to collect and provide clothing for the homeless in Skidrow in downtown Los Angeles, and assisting a neighboring congregation in collecting food for a local food bank.

New leadership, new energy

In all of these outreach efforts, Melby-Gibbons is there to guide and encourage her congregation. Since her installment in the church in September 2009, she has introduced new ideas and has brought new energy.

In addition to all the existing outreach efforts, she has also proposed a GAPS Community (Gardener, Artist, Psalmist, and Shopkeeper), a Christ-ian community that would allow people to follow or emulate the life of Jesus Christ and would be housed in the parsonage.

The church also holds “Open Table” every Thursday night where anyone who wants to attend can come and break bread with the Melby-Gibbons and fellow congregants. Melby-Gibbons has also started planning a small program called Moravians Anonymous, a “crash-course” into who the Moravians are and what their theology is. Efforts like these and the Back-Alley Gathering are aimed to remove or at least ease some of the distaste or disillusionment of people for organized religion, and hopefully interest them enough to become members.

In all of the struggles of a small congregation, Melby-Gibbons is finding true joy in her loving congregation.

“You can’t go into ordained ministry without a love for people,” she said.

She added, “I see my task as a pastoral leader in the Moravian realm as: to help the institution die gracefully, but also to look for signs of resurrection.”

Although membership may ultimately thin out and the institutional Moravian Church may fold, Melby-Gibbons believes in the church’s motto: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love.”

“I ask myself: What are those things about the church, which has been about people, which cannot die [and] glow as embers which promise to spark into new life? Those embers are the Moravians’ focus on: love in all things, relationship over doctrine, simplicity in life and theology, and an outward focus, like going out in mission and service to a world in need.”

Heroin addiction sweeping through Orange County

Jackee was 16 when she smoked it for the first time. It was the summer of her sophomore year and her boyfriend asked her if she wanted to get loaded with some other kids. She had already been smoking methamphetamine on-and-off for three years, so trying heroin didn’t seem like a big deal to her.

“I thought about it for like five seconds,” the 18-year-old Yorba Linda resident says. “And then I thought, ‘Eff it. Why not?’”

As she sat in her boyfriend’s car, Jackee watched one of the teens press the “sugar” to the foil. He lit a match beneath the foil and held it as Jackee sucked the smoke through a hollowed out pen.

She took five hits, drawing the smoke in deep each time, taking care not to waste any. When she was done, she lay back on the grass next to her boyfriend and stared at the sky. She felt invincible.

Those skies darkened quickly. Jackee began smoking heroin daily, using greater quantities as her tolerance increased. Within weeks she had developed a $200-a-day habit that she would go to any lengths to feed.

Jackee is not alone. Her story is becoming all too familiar in the tidy tracts and upscale enclaves of Orange County, where a wave of teen heroin use has left authorities and parents grappling for answers.

At Touchstones, an adolescent residential treatment facility in Orange, program director Patti Ochoa says three out of 16 clients are primary heroin users, a figure she calls “unusually high.”

At Twin Town Treatment Center, an adolescent outpatient treatment center in Los Alamitos, the figure is higher: two out of five of their 13 to 17-year-old clients now cite heroin addiction upon admission.

Primary counselor Chris Logan says heroin, “seems to be the thing to do right now.” These are not street kids, he stresses, but kids from middle-income families.

At Alternative Options, an intensive outpatient treatment facility in Placentia, administrators say they rarely had heroin addicts at their facility a year ago. Today, six out of ten clients are being admitted with heroin addiction. The majority are females between 15 and 18 years old.

Sean Hogan, assistant professor of social work at Cal State Fullerton, says figures like those are considerably high for any population, not just teens. According to government statistics, approximately 5 percent of adolescents are admitted to treatment with heroin dependence, with most admitted with a marijuana-use disorder.

“Even if you back out those reporting marijuana as their primary drug of choice at admission, you still only get about 10 percent of adolescents reporting heroin as their primary drug of choice,” Hogan says.

Experts say that low cost, availability and the high that smoking heroin produces are fueling this new wave of young users.

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials, the heroin being trafficked from Mexico to Orange County is primarily black tar heroin and, to a lesser extent, Mexican brown. The low cost and increased availability of high purity heroin that can be snorted or smoked rather than injected with a needle makes it attractive to teens.

At Alternative Options, most of their teen clients begin using drugs “right out of grandma’s medicine cabinet,” program coordinator Linda Bates says. They progress to heroin when their Vicodin or Percocet habit becomes too expensive. She notes that prescription drugs often run $20 a pill or more, whereas a bag of heroin is fairly cheap.

“Many of these kids save up their lunch money and money mom gives them to buy heroin,” Bates says. “Ten dollars at a time – that’s enough to buy a small amount. You can get more for your money with the heroin.”

She says what teens don’t realize is that with heroin, addiction can be almost instant – usually right after their first use.

When teen addict Jackee smoked heroin for the first time, she wanted to use again right away.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be what everyone’s addicted to. It wasn’t even that great – I got sick!’ But I stopped getting sick after a while and I liked the numb feeling it gave me,” she said.

It wasn’t long before Jackee was using heroin daily – about eight or nine balloons a day, she said, adding that a balloon costs about $25 in Yorba Linda. She started dating a dope dealer who brought her free heroin. She also had a part time job so she was able to buy balloons on her own.

Jackie began doing anything to get her dope.

“I was ditching school to get heroin. I would have heroin dealers bring me my dope at the campus because I would be kicking (having withdrawals) at school, lying in the bathroom stalls puking and shaking,” she said.

She stole money from her family and her employer. She volunteered for the snack shack at little league baseball games, stuffing twenties into her pockets when nobody was looking. She stole money and iPods from backpacks in the girls’ locker room at school.

“This one guy I knew had over $100,000 from his parents’ deaths,” Jackee recalled. “He was a heroin addict so I immediately became his friend and flirted with him and slept with him because he fed me heroin.”

When Jackee’s parents took her to a hospital detoxification unit six months after her first use, she weighed 98 pounds, her hair was falling out in clumps and she couldn’t last a day without heroin. Stories like hers are not unusual, according to Tammie Skonseng, a counselor at Alternative Options, who explained that heroin addicts will beg, borrow and steal to get their drugs.

“Even if they have to sell their body, they will do it. We don’t find that with someone who is drinking or someone who is doing meth, but (heroin addicts) have to have it because they will be so sick without it.”

The Orange County city of Placentia has been hit exceptionally hard by heroin use. There, police department officials say heroin arrests have shot up 150 percent in the past 12 months, primarily among 16 to 23-year-olds.

Police Sgt. Kelly Kenehan, who supervises the Special Enforcement Detail for gangs, vice and narcotics, has been involved in nearly two dozen heroin-related arrests involving teens and young adults in the past six months. In response to the growing problem, his unit has stepped up street enforcement, especially in the hard-hit north end of the city.

In September, law enforcement seized 100 pounds of Mexican brown heroin in adjacent Anaheim, believed to be one of the largest heroin seizures in California. But that has failed to stem the flow of the narcotic into Placentia.

“Some of the search warrants that we’ve done and arrests we’ve made show that people are driving up to LA anywhere from two to five days (a week) to pick up and distribute it within our city,” Kenehan said, noting that heroin is readily available outside the high schools and the streets that surround them.

In November, a 17-year-old Placentia boy nearly died from a heroin overdose. Since then, Kenehan’s department has fielded calls from anxious parents asking about symptoms and paraphernalia associated with heroin use.

“Parents are freaking out,” Alternative Options’ Bates agrees, adding that most find it hard to believe the drug their child is using is heroin.

“But addiction is addiction. It’s bad with any drug, but we just don’t think of heroin as something that’s available here in Orange County in the high schools,” she says.

She cautions parents to pay attention to what their teen is doing.

“I think awareness is a big thing right now,” Bates says. “I think the community needs to get together and be aware. And watch. Because there’s a big thing going on.”

–

This article originally appeared on The Daily Titan.

U.S. troop build-up on Guam faces opposition from locals

It has been ten months since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton re-signed an agreement with Japan officials to relocate Marine Corps Futenma air base. This agreement includes the relocation of 8,000 Marines from the U.S. military base in Japan to the small island of Guam, a U.S. territory.

The agreement was initially signed in 2006 to reduce U.S. military presence in Japan and lighten the load in the airbase which currently holds more than half of the 47,000 troops in Japan, according to news reports.

In a few months, the Marines will be greeted “Hafa Adai” or “Welcome”, as they set foot on Guam.

Recently, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) reported on the military build-up and the infrastructural stress such a high influx of people would put on the island’s already-stretched resources. An estimated 18,000 troops and families are set to arrive by 2014, but with a population already exceeding 150,000 residents, Guam’s 212 square miles of land seems barely enough.

Also, with an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent, Guam would need much more than what it is currently receiving from its main economic source, the tourism industry. Reports put an additional $100 million in tax revenue that Guam will receive from the relocation, bringing jobs and revenue to the island. This could generate much needed funding for crumbling infrastructures and for education, not only to support the current population, but the additional military personnel and families as well.

But the troop build-up should be more than just throwing money at the island to make the relocation smoother. Though President Obama has approved $738 million to spend on Guam, with reports of additional tax revenue in the first year, community outreach should also be on the table.

Opening lines of communication between local governments and the military is essential and includes discussions and agreements about land use and preservation, military borders, crime rates, military and local tensions that could arise, as well as further discussions about paying for the troop relocation. Without these, the troop buildup will not move beyond the concerns and issues of crime and safety (for both military and local communities) that were prominent issues in Japan, and could be exacerbated by disenfranchisement and resentment for the relocation.

But such frustrations over the military’s presence on Guam are nothing new.

During WWII, Guam served as a vital military base for U.S. troops in the Pacific and was the site of many battles during the war. Many Chamorros, the island’s indigenous people, fought against the Japanese invasion of the island, but many of their descendants are still fighting for war reparations. Several locals have voiced concern over the military’s continued presence and the tolls it is taking on the island–and that the U.S. have little concern over the people of the island.

Guam remains one of the 16 non-self-governing territories in the world, according to the United Nations, and elects one non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. So when changes are made around the island by the federal government, there’s an assumption that not much can be done.

Despite this, Guam maintains one of the highest recruitment rates for the military, according to the PBS report, and pride in the island remains high. The island’s relationship with the U.S. is a long and complex one, bound by history and continues to be shaped by the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But mostly, Guam’s contributions to the nation remain relatively unheard, unknown, and unrecognized, despite its strategic importance to the military.

The island’s cultural treasures remain a secret from the rest of the U.S. and its significance in U.S. history left unwritten in many books. Perhaps this time around, as the island prepares for the build-up to support the nation’s defense plans, Guam would be more than just a footnote in U.S. history.

Healthcare bill raises fear of denied coverage among legal immigrants

As Congress moves closer to passing legislation that will expand health insurance coverage to 30 million Americans, many immigrant rights advocates worry that proposed reforms will leave large numbers of legal immigrants without insurance.

At issue is whether Congress will retain a 1996 welfare reform law requiring legal, non-citizen immigrants to wait five years before they become eligible for federal benefits and extend it to a waiting period for subsidies as well. If retained, (as proposed in the Senate bill) it could affect more than one million legal immigrants, according to an October 2009 report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

Also worrisome are strict screening processes proposed in the House bill used to prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining benefits. Immigrant rights advocates question the effectiveness of these processes, which they say will force legal immigrants to “jump through hoops” to prove their eligibility and could delay critical medical services to those who need them most.

Francisco I. and his family emigrated from Chile seven years ago. As legal residents who are not yet citizens, they pay the same taxes as citizens and are subject to the same laws. Last year Francisco’s father, an engineer, lost his job and with it the family healthcare benefits. He has since found work but his employer does not offer insurance.

When Francisco recently became ill with a high fever, the family could not afford a doctor. After several days, his father found a doctor who agreed to treat Francisco for less than a normal office visit.

“We still ended up paying about $150 just to get somebody to see what was wrong with me and another $150 for medicine,” he says.

Now he worries about what would happen if something more serious were to happen.

“It’s not just getting sick - it’s accidents that worry me the most. Like if I fall and break an arm or get something like a concussion or get in a car crash.”

Current U.S. Census Bureau figures show that 24 million immigrants now live in this country. About 12 million are legal residents, like Francisco. Although most legal immigrants are employed, the MPI report found that 38 percent work at small firms of 25 employees or less. Only one out of three of these workers is insured compared with seven out of 10 U.S.-born workers in similar-sized firms.

While Congress will likely mandate employers to provide insurance for their workers, small firms will probably be exempted from these mandates.

Experts say this will force millions of immigrant workers, many who live below the federal poverty line, to purchase health insurance themselves or turn to already jammed emergency rooms and clinics for medical care.

“Let them buy their own healthcare,” Evelyn Miller, a spokesperson for the California Coalition for Immigration Reform argues. “Why should they go on public benefits?”

The CCIR, established in 1992, is a group who seeks to have current immigration laws enforced, borders secured and illegal aliens deported, Miller explains. She believes that the five-year waiting period should be retained and that only citizens should be eligible for federal healthcare benefits.

“When people come to this country legally to join a family member or they are sponsored by somebody who is a citizen, the sponsor signs an affidavit claiming that the legal immigrant will not be a drain on our public benefits,” Miller says. “So they’re not supposed to get public benefits.”

She says that legal immigrants get a lot of benefits that U.S. citizens do not.

“They go in and try to get food stamps or housing subsidies and all they have to do is show that they have no funds and no income and they get it right away. It’s really a travesty,” she says.

And what about those immigrants who can’t afford to purchase health insurance?

Some will turn to free clinics like the Lestonnac Free Clinic in Orange County, Calif., which sees more than 3,500 patients with about 14,000 visits a year, according to Executive Director Ed Gerber.

Founded in 1979 by a Catholic nun, Lestonnac is funded primarily by private foundations and community donations, with about five percent of the funding coming from the state. Medical services are donated by thirty physicians and fifteen dentists, whom Gerber calls “the backbone of the clinic.”

The clinic’s primary mission is to help the uninsured, whether they are in this country legally or not, Gerber says, so they never question a patient’s documentation.

“We’re not a government agency; we don’t care what their issue is,” he says.

He stresses the importance of providing medical treatment and testing to all immigrants.

“We don’t know who is in line in front of us in the grocery store. We don’t know if this person has tuberculosis or if this person has the swine flu, which is so prominent today,” he says. “We really need to try to take care of these people, especially the new population of immigrants coming in to California, so that we’re not spreading disease to everybody else.”

Fear is a daily part of life for illegal immigrants who fear deportation and for legal immigrants who fear legal entanglements with their citizenship process, so they seek medical care less often than citizens.

A 1997 study by The Kaiser Commission found that citizen children, on average, had over three times as many visits to the emergency room as non citizen children of non citizen parents.

Recently, Gerber has seen a proliferation of minority-run clinics that exploit the fear of newly-arrived immigrants by charging enormous prices for lab work, x-rays, ultra-sounds and other often unnecessary services.

“I find it deplorable that there are doctors out there that start clinics and they rip off their own people,” he says. “These people are afraid to come to community clinics like us because they’re illegal and they’re uncomfortable and they’re afraid we’re going to turn them in. To me, this is an enormous problem that’s happening here in Orange County. They’re just raping their own people and it needs to stop.”

Chilean immigrant Francisco knows people who have avoided going to the emergency room out of fear. They think that a border patrol agent is going to show up at the emergency room. And after they’re done getting their healthcare they’ll get kicked out,” he says.

His own fear of jeopardizing his pending citizenship is so strong that he refused to be identified for this article.

Recent government figures show that more than 20,000 people immigrated legally to Orange County last year, bringing the total foreign-born population to more than 900,000. To meet the growing demand for healthcare, Lestonnac has opened two new clinics – one in Santa Ana and another in Los Alamitos. Plans are underway to open two more in January 2010.

Despite the fact that President Obama’s goal of “healthcare for all Americans” may soon become a reality, Gerber is skeptical that the programs will impact the people he treats at his clinics.

“My hope is that it will make healthcare better. That’s all of our dreams – that whatever Congress does, it actually works,” he says. “As far as impacting us, I don’t particularly see how any of this funding is going to come to our facility. It’s not designated to come to free clinics-it’s going to hospitals and medical groups and FUHC clinics.”

So Gerber’s work providing healthcare to the uninsured will continue.

“Even if this passes there’s still going to be a large gap of people that are still gonna need help.”

Minority Businesses Shut Out of Stimulus Loans

Loans handed out to struggling small businesses as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package have largely shut out minority businesses — especially those owned by Blacks and Latinos — according to data provided by the federal government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) to New America Media (NAM).

On June 15, the SBA, using money from the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, launched the ARC program, America’s Recovery Capital, giving banks and credit unions 100 percent guarantees so they’re taking no risk when they make loans of up to $35,000 to previously successful, currently struggling small businesses to help them ride out the recession.

Under the program, the borrower pays no interest and makes no payments for 12 months, then has five years to repay the loan. SBA charges no fees and pays interest to the lender at prime - the rate of interest at which banks lend to favored customers - plus 2 percent.

The Obama Administration does not report the racial breakdown of who’s benefiting from these loans at Recovery.gov, but data obtained by NAM from the SBA found that of the 4,497 ARC loans where the race of the borrower was reported, 4,104 (over 91 percent) went to white-owned firms, 140, (3 percent) went to Hispanic-owned businesses, and 151 (3 percent) went to Asian- or Pacific Islander-owned businesses. Only 65, (1.5 percent) went to black-owned firms.

Overall, white-owned businesses received over $130 million in loans through the program, while Hispanic-owned businesses got $4 million and black-owned businesses less than $2 million.

In five states - Alabama, Arkansas, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Wyoming — every single firm that received an ARC loan was white-owned. In eight other states, including Louisiana and Nevada, all but one loan went to a white-owned firm.

Civil rights groups and representatives of the minority business communities reacted with anger when told of NAM’s findings.

“It’s just horrendous,” said Anthony Robinson, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Minority Business Legal Defense and Education Fund (MBELDEF). “During this economic recession, there is no recognition or sensitivity to the need to support and benefit people of color.”

“The data raises troubling questions” and should trigger an investigation,” says Oren Sellstrom of San Francisco’s Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. “This should be a red flag for the SBA and the banks. It gives us the indication that something may be amiss and further explanation is warranted.”

Census figures put black business ownership at 5 percent and Hispanic business ownership at about 7 percent — more than double the numbers getting these SBA-backed loans.

At the SBA in Washington, spokesman Jonathan Swain argued racial disparities in the ARC loan program don’t paint the full picture of the agency’s lending practices. Many of the SBA’s other loan products, he says, have large minority business participation. For example, he says, minority-owned businesses receive 29 percent of loans given through the SBA’s regular lending program and 37 percent of Microloans doled out by the agency.

“It’s hard to look at the ARC program by itself,” he told NAM. “It’s just one tool in the tool box, just one tool in the array to help small business in these tough economic times.”

One reason for the extremely low level of minority participation in the ARC loan program, he maintains, is that the Recovery Act specifically prohibits the agency from allowing an ARC loan to be used to refinance a regular SBA loan, which minority firms are more likely to have.

That explanation isn’t enough for minority business and civil rights groups, however.

Sellstrom of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights isn’t convinced by that argument. “You would think that minority owned firms could use $35,000 for a lot of uses other than paying down SBA loans.”

Sellstom said SBA’s response only underscores the need for further investigation. “It’s often the case that the first explanation leads to further questions,” he said.

Javier Palomarez, the president and chief executive officer of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says the ARC loan program was poorly designed and “destined to fail.”

When Congress was drafting the stimulus package, Palomarez said, his agency and other minority business groups argued the severity of America’s recession should have led to the government handing out loans to struggling small businesses directly - rather than simply backing up loans from the very banks that caused the country’s economic recession.

But the SBA and the banks lobbied against direct government financing of small business, he said, and so Congress devised a $35,000 loan program that requires a small business to wade through nearly the same paperwork needed to obtain one of SBA’s regular $2 million loans.

Because of the paperwork and the small sums involved, “most banks don’t want to participate in the loan program, and many of those that are participating are restricting applications only to long-term clients.”

And those long-term clients often exclude small, minority businesses, which banks see as “risky.”

“There’s been a dramatic rise in the risk profile of small businesses,” Palomarez said “and that is even more pronounced among minority entrepreneurs.

“African American and Hispanic entrepreneurs often self-financed their start-ups or expansions, meaning, that they tapped into their own net worth … taking out home equity loans or second mortgages to invest in their communities and create jobs.”

“These businesses did not get a bailout and, while the Administration has been generous with tax credits for struggling businesses, the banks that caused this problem are nowhere to be seen,” he said.

James Ballentine, senior vice president of the American Bankers Association, told New America Media the banks have nothing to do with the racial disparities apparent in the stimulus’ small business loans.

“When somebody comes to us, we don’t look at their race,” he said. “The can be red, white, brown, or green. The only thing we look at is their credit worthiness.”

The main problem, Balletine, said, is “there’s been a real lack of marketing and as a result, very few lenders have participated.” He noted that in the six months since the ARC Loan program was first announced, the SBA has been able to underwrite fewer than 5,000 loans.

But Sellstrom of the Lawyers Committee says the bankers’ analysis doesn’t address the question of the racial inequities. The fact that there’s been little marketing doesn’t mean that nobody is being told about the opportunities. It just means that it’s going on in less formal ways, and those informal channels are the ones that minority businesses are not privy to.”

“The breakdown is that people of color are not present at the banks,” added Anthony Robinson of MBELDEF.” And the government that’s pushing these benefits through are not sensitive to the fact that we are not involved in this distribution network.

“So to solve this problem we need to incorporate people of color into the distribution chain of banks, business, and government. Otherwise, the flaws of the system will only magnify the inequality that’s at the center of our recession.”

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This article originally appeared on New America Media. Aaron Glantz is NAM’s Stimulus Editor.

* Note on the sources: ARC loan statistics from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Demographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau. Population percentages 2008, Business Ownership percentages are from the Census’ 2002 Economic Census: Survey of Business Owners.

Wildlife Sanctuary battles silently amid city growth and development

With international talks about climate change dominating news cycles, focus has been on government action to mitigate the environmental problems worldwide. Issues of urban growth, habitat protection and preservation are often tasked to government entities, but other environmental battles are fought, often unknown, in smaller communities.

In Walnut, Calif., a city of 32,000 residents and a burgeoning community college population, a relatively hidden treasure has been silently battling to survive against budget cuts, relocation proposals and urban growth.

The Wildlife Sanctuary at Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) is a lush preserve that has been a part of the college and the city for over 40 years in an unassuming, yet busy street corner of Grand and Temple. Established in 1964, the Sanctuary is a ten-acre protected preserve for plants, shrubs, and animals of Walnut Valley, owned and funded by Mt. SAC and maintained by the college’s Biological Sciences faculty.

In July 2009, Walnut completed a $1.488 million road expansion project (PDF) on Grand Avenue, the main artery to and from Walnut and Mt. SAC, taking about an acre of the preserve where large oak trees and vegetation once stood, according to Craig Peterson, Wildlife Sanctuary Director. 

Relatively untouched and unchanged by developments in Walnut, it has become one of the few places in the San Gabriel Valley left undisturbed. But urban growth, among other factors, is a looming presence that habitat preservations like the Sanctuary faces.

Land with ‘nothing’ on it

Habitat preservations offer invaluable resources to the local community. The Wildlife Sanctuary supports six different ecosystems with wetlands rich in vegetation and wildlife, providing learning opportunities for students. Such opportunities are becoming harder to come by as housing, business plazas and transportation take up free land and lessons on the environment are relegated to textbook illustrations.

Craig Petersen, 62, has been the director since 1981. He has overseen the maintenance, cultivation and operations of the Sanctuary for over 20 years with passion and appreciation.

“Some people said this corner between Temple and Grand is now the most valuable piece of property in the whole city of Walnut because it has ‘nothing’ on it,” he said. “From my perspective, it’s full of native animals and wildlife and teaching opportunities that is extraordinary.”

For years, the Sanctuary has provided thousands of students from the college with onsite lessons on ecosystems and native plants of the region. But Petersen wanted to reach more students in nearby cities, not just the college.

“Many people see a bunch of weeds there,” he said. “They’re not familiar with it until there’s an article about it or until they’ve got a class, and there [are] many faculty that have been here many years that haven’t set foot in it.”

So in 2006, the Wildlife Sanctuary partnered up with Orange County Department of Education’s “Inside the Outdoors” (ITO) program. ITO provides science programs to students in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties through field trips to various nature centers. The field program at Mt. SAC offers programs for K-4 students with lessons on ecosystem exploration and local Native American lifestyle per California curriculum standards.

“It [partnership with Mt. SAC] has expanded our program to younger students, which has been traditionally more for fourth and fifth graders,” said Kelly Ellis, the project assistant with ITO. “It’s a great way for students to get out in nature. Especially students from low-income families, who may not have had a chance to see so many trees before.”

Mainly funded by grants, ITO has brought more than 8,000 students to the Sanctuary.

It has also brought the Sanctuary much-needed funds. A small student fee from ITO goes directly to the Sanctuary to pay for field naturalists, Ellis said.

In the recent years, the Sanctuary has received a $2,000 annual budget from the college for tools and maintenance. One year, the budget was barely enough to buy two bags of gravel, according to Petersen.

But funding and urban development are not the only battles the Sanctuary and other nature centers and parks around the country face. The survival of these local treasures depends heavily on community members to continue the work needed to safeguard natural habitats.

To do that, the community would need to see the value of the Sanctuary and other natural parks, especially as communities continue to expand and progress. That is what the Sanctuary’s partnership with ITO hopes to do.

“Someday I won’t be here and we don’t know who might be the next person to take charge or take the responsibility,” Petersen said. “Since I’ve been here 30 years, it has been a life-long love of mine to try and keep it going.”

A growing community

Walnut, a residential community ranked as one of the top cities to live in by Money Magazine, has a significant commuter population of college students. This year, Mt. SAC reported a 7 percent increase in enrollment.

Because of this and the city’s growth, Grand Avenue, the main road to the college, has been a cause for concern. Increased traffic over the years has frustrated Walnut residents and the City Council.

“The Grand Avenue intersection has been the most complained about intersection by Walnut residents,” said Mary Rooney, the community services director for Walnut. “It has been on the city’s Capital Improvement list for years.”

The original proposal to alleviate traffic was to use the existing road south of the Sanctuary, but Mt. SAC and the Sanctuary opposed it. Access to the existing road would put the preserve under heavier noise and air pollution, according to Petersen.

The approved project expanded the intersection with more right and left turn lanes to alleviate traffic. The expansion took a 40-foot wedge-shaped area from the Sanctuary.

To offset this loss, the Mt. SAC Board of Trustees agreed to give fifteen acres of land southwest of the preserve and $750,000 to re-vegetate and cultivate the land, as well as to remove the existing road.

But Petersen is realistic about what could come to fruition.

“The enlargement of the Sanctuary has been promised, but not much has moved forward because of the budgetary crisis,” he said.

The money for the Sanctuary is under a local bond, Bond Measure RR, which Mt. SAC hopes to sell soon, according to John Nixon, president of the college’s Board of Trustees.

“We have been promised $750,000 which is huge. But we don’t know if we’ll ever see it,” Petersen said. “If they hold up to their promises, the Wildlife Sanctuary will become mitigated land which will make it more difficult, just at a snap of a finger, to take over and do something with it.”

Nixon, on the other hand, is confident about the future of the Sanctuary.

“The Board of Trustees is committed to it [the Sanctuary], in fact we’re expanding it. There is no jeopardy for the Sanctuary.”

But even if its removal is not in the immediate future, ongoing developments in nearby cities could negatively impact the Sanctuary.

Nearby, the City of Industry plans to build an NFL stadium, which could require future improvements on Grand Avenue. Increased traffic, noise, light and air pollution would interrupt the ecosystems, which are migratory and breeding grounds for many animals.

Though no developments are being discussed yet, Petersen knows that it’s only a matter of time until they may have to face another hurdle.

“This has always been a battle,” he said.

When asked what future developments might mean to the Sanctuary, Petersen quoted environmentalist and author Dr. Richard Vogl, “A preservationist has to win many battles. A developer only has to win once.”

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For more information on Bond Measure RR, click here.

Despite State Subsidies, Class Sizes Begin to Rise Again in California Schools

Most of California’s largest school districts are increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, eroding the most expensive education reform in the state’s history.

California Watch surveyed the 30 largest K-12 school districts in the state and found that many schools are pushing class sizes to 24 in some or all of the early grades. Other districts have raised class sizes to 30 students – reverting to levels not seen in more than a decade.

The changes at more than two-thirds of the districts surveyed have parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer. California already ranks 48th in the nation in terms of student to teacher ratios.

And new measures are in place that will allow districts statewide to raise class sizes even higher and still receive more than $1 billion in state aid — money that was originally intended to reward schools that kept class sizes low.

The class-size reduction program was adopted 13 years ago with much fanfare. Its goal was to bring the state’s overcrowded K-3 classrooms down to a maximum of 20 students for every teacher in the lower grades. As an incentive to participate, Sacramento gave school districts a generous annual subsidy for every child – now $1,071 per child.

Carol Kocivar, California PTA’s president-elect, said that adding just four students more than the base level of 20 represents a significant increase.

“When you start inching up above 20, kids don’t get the individual attention they need,” she said.

The state has invested about $22 billion in direct subsidies into reducing class size, including $1.8 billion this school year. This is on top of billions more that individual school districts have had to pay to cover the full costs.

The program was rooted in research from other states that showed students in smaller classrooms were more successful academically.

Even though the state never implemented measurements to track the academic impact of class-size reduction, the program has been enormously popular among parents and teachers. Yet because of the state’s budget crisis, school officials are finding it harder than ever to sustain.

That’s the case in both the Mount Diablo Unified School District, in Contra Costa County, and the San Jose Unified School District. In Orange County’s Capistrano Unified School District, second and third grade classes have grown to an average of 30.5 students. In Los Angeles, which enrolls 10 percent of California’s students, K-3 class sizes are creeping up to 24 in many schools.

“In better times it is something that should be protected, but in the times we are in, it is not something we can afford to continue,” said Don Iglesias, San Jose’s superintendent, noting that raising class sizes to 30 will save his district $4 million this year alone.

At Oliveira Elementary School, in a quiet residential neighborhood of Fremont, kindergarten teacher Cheryl Accurso is adjusting to a 30-student classroom for the first time in her 11-year career.

“My worry is that with 30 kids in the class, I won’t be able to reach out and touch, and get to every child in my classroom,” she said. “When they come in the morning, I make sure I tap them on the shoulder or pat them on the head, and say their names, so that there is at least one time when I know I can get to all the children.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, who authored the class-size-reduction legislation when he was a state senator, said that it is no accident that elementary school students in recent years have achieved significant academic gains.

“That is now in jeopardy because we have so many school districts walking away from class-size reduction,” he said.

For most of the program’s existence, schools lost the entire subsidy if the average class size hit 21. That has proved to be a powerful incentive for schools to participate. All but about a dozen of the state’s 883 eligible districts have done so.

The state Legislature has designated lower class sizes as a top priority for education spending. The program was one of a handful that escaped the budget axe this year.

At the same time, however, lawmakers acted earlier this year to make it easier for schools to abandon the program. The move allows school districts to raise K-3 classes to as high as 31 students on average — at least for the next three years. Schools that raise the class size above 25 can still receive 70 percent of the subsidies they have received in the past. In past years, K-3 classes of 22 or more students would have been denied state funding through the program.

In theory, school districts could spend more than $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion set aside for the program on classes with 25 or more students.

Rick Simpson, deputy chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, and her chief adviser on education policy, said lawmakers are hoping the popularity of the program will force school districts to keep class sizes small, despite reducing the penalties for exceeding the 20-student cap. He said the goal was to give school districts more flexibility in how they spend class-size reduction funds, something they have sought for years.

But former Gov. Pete Wilson, who initiated class-size reduction when the state enjoyed a budget surplus in 1996, said the recent changes “totally defeat the purpose of the program. If you get 70 percent of the funds for doing nothing, where is that money going? It is not accomplishing the purpose for which the program was devised.”

One purpose was to bring California’s class sizes down — to get them in line with those of other states. That did happen in the elementary grades. But by 2007, California had larger student-teacher ratios than every state except Utah and Arizona across all 12 grades.

Larger K-3 class sizes now threaten to push California even further behind.

“Having the largest class size in America is a crime and a shame,” said Delaine Eastin, the former superintendent of public instruction who oversaw the implementation of the class-size-reduction initiative until 2002.

It is not only poor districts that are affected. In fact, in some cases, districts serving large numbers of low-income and minority students have benefited from the additional $1.25 billion in Title 1 stimulus funds California receives from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

And nearly 500 of the state’s lowest-performing schools are still receiving funds from the Quality Education Investment Act, passed by the Legislature in 2007. These funds have allowed school districts like Los Angeles to maintain some of their K-3 class sizes at previous levels. The Fremont Unified School District has so far been able to keep class sizes to 20 in the first, second and third grades. But in kindergarten, enrollments have risen to 30.

This year, at Oliveira Elementary, Accurso has her students sitting in groups of six, at five tables, instead of groups of four, at five tables, as in previous years. Across the yard, one of the bungalows brought to the school when the class-size reduction program began in 1996, now stands empty.

But Accurso isn’t nostalgic about the smaller class sizes.

“My focus is on the 30 kids I have in front of me and what I can do for each of them,” she said. “I can’t be thinking about what might have been. I can’t go there.”

She says she is managing with the extra kids – in part because she gets help from another teacher for about two hours, as well as parent volunteers. “We’re just worried that we won’t be able to get them where they need to be at the end of the year,” she said.

In Los Angeles, each of the district’s 524 elementary schools could choose between retaining all their teachers and keeping class sizes low – or laying off teachers and keeping support staff such as school nurses, math coaches and “intervention coordinators.” At Plummer Elementary in the San Fernando Valley, principal Angel Barrett, made the painful choice to let go seven of the school’s first and second year teachers, out of a teaching staff of 45. As in many schools across Los Angeles, her classrooms are more crowded this year.

“You guys are doing a great job at listening,” Norma Plascencia, a teacher with 22 years of classroom experience, told her 24 second-graders on a recent morning, before launching into a lesson about family trees.

“It doesn’t make it impossible to teach, it just makes it harder,” she said. Plascencia said she and other teachers are doing much more advance planning to take into account the extra students. “We are not mass-producing items; we’re not making shoes or pizza. We are dealing with human beings — so four extra bodies are not just four extra bodies — it is everything that comes with them, or doesn’t come with them.”

Will it affect how her students will do this year?

“It better not,” she said. “You have to assume they can reach for the stars. Are some going to fall by the wayside? We’ll find out this year. Is there a possibility? Yes, I think there is.’’

Her comment points to the controversy that has so far been waged mostly in academic circles – whether class-size reduction makes a difference in boosting student performance. Dominic Brewer, a USC professor, said there is no compelling research showing that class-size reduction results in improved academic performance in California. What research does exist has typically been done in other states and in classrooms with even smaller enrollments than in California.

“A class of 20 may be terrible for an ineffective teacher,” he said. “And a great teacher can do great things with 30.”

Some education leaders who have been lukewarm about the program are now making the case that the funds could be better used.

“I don’t think 20-to-1 is sacred,” said L.A. schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines. More important, he said, “is the kind of quality time you spend with your students, and how you divide your time in the classroom.” To tackle high drop-out rates, he believes the real need is for smaller classes in middle and high schools, where class sizes in his district have soared to 40 and higher in some schools.

San Jose’s Iglesias said that even if the state’s economy rebounds, he’s not sure he’d put money back into the class-size-reduction program. “I’d put it into longer school days or Saturday classes rather than this,” he said.

But California superintendent O’Connell doesn’t share any of these concerns. He said his experience as a teacher in Ventura County convinced him of the merits of smaller classes.

The same goes for Doug Wheeler, a veteran kindergarten teacher in San Pablo, just north of Richmond, who said that the larger the class, the more difficult it is for teachers to “deliver the goods.” This year he volunteered to take more students into his bilingual class rather than having some of them be cut from the program. He now has 27 students.

“Teaching is not just standing in front of the class and delivering a lesson,” he said. “It’s about working with kids who are in danger of falling far behind. To get really good results, it has to be one on two, or even one on one.”

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This story was edited by Editorial Director Mark Katches and copy edited by William Cooley.

This article is part of a new collaboration between New America Media and California Watch, a new nonprofit journalism project at the Center for Investigative Reporting. California Watch has multimedia material to accompany this article on its website.

Under the Radar: The Copenhagen Summit

Between health care reform news and the daily reports about the economy, it is no surprise that a climate change summit scheduled for December 7 in Denmark has passed under the radar in America.

The Copenhagen Summit is the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference and will run for two weeks. It is the 15th Conference of the Parties, officially COP15, where more than 60 leaders will negotiate and create a succeeding pact to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Protocol committed 37 industrialized countries and the European community to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent compared to the 1990 levels of each country. The U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol but never ratified it.

COP15 will also address the role of developing countries and what industrialized nations must do to put them on a “clean energy path,” said Yvo De Boer, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary.

The inclusion of many developing countries in the summit shows the growing importance of a global effort to address the rapidly increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It also calls for industrialized countries, like the United States, to ramp up commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

President Obama has announced the country’s climate target to reduce emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels based on the House of Representative bill passed earlier this year.

With recent reports of alarmingly high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the worsening impacts of warming since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, Obama’s attendance can change opinions about the country’s commitment to environmental issues.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as the UNFCCC, acknowledges that a legally-binding treaty with every detail finalized may not take place next month.

And public opinion in the U.S. seems to be shifting as well.

There has been a decline in the number of Americans who believe in global warming, according to a report released last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The number of Americans who believe that there is sound evidence that the earth is warming declined from 71 percent in April 2008 to only 57 percent in October. Fewer people also see global warming as a serious problem, declining from 44 percent to 35 percent.

Even Congress has stalled on climate change legislation. The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 but the Senate is yet to introduce a bill.

With an economy still struggling to recover from a recession and high unemployment rates that continue to plague states, Americans are quick to skip environmental issues when prioritizing. Not to mention a six-year war in Iraq and a possible increase in troop deployment in Afghanistan, environmental policies are slowly being eclipsed by health care reform and other pressing social issues.

There is also the matter of finances. A global treaty would need money to implement, restructure, adjust or accommodate any changes to our current environmental policies. Part of the summit’s focus would be to determine how funding would be managed to undertake such a treaty and what changes would be undertaken with the new treaty. Such changes, undoubtedly, will face fierce opposition and debate on what climate change policy would mean to consumers, energy and coal industries.

Though I have faith that COP15 will blaze the trail to a more inclusive climate change treaty, it will take a long time before any commitment will come to fruition. While I am hopeful, I will not be holding my breath.

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Get more information on the Copenhagen Summit here.

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Francesca Gacho holds a B.A. in English from Cal State Fullerton. She is an intern at Minority Dreams Magazine, where she hopes to spread her journalistic wings, explore and hone her writing ability, and gain insight into the myriad of issues in today’s soundbite-focused world. Her writing interests include human interest pieces that delve into culture, arts, current events, and community service.

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