Tag: ethnic media

The Year in Review: New York Ethnic Press Gains Influence And Politicians Pay Attention

In a city where 36% of the population is foreign-born, not reaching out to some 300 ethnic newspapers and magazines seems like an oddly missed opportunity. But recently this has started to change.

Courting Immigrant Journalists: FI2W’s Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska on The New York Times

Nowy Dziennik/Polish Daily News reporter and Feet in 2 Worlds contributor Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska had a story this week on The New York Times’ City Room blog, about city comptroller-elect John Liu’s outreach to local ethnic media.

Guest Columnist: The Scars Left by Typhoon Ketsana/Ondoy on My Family in the Philippines

By Odette Keeley, New America Media news anchor and producer

Residents of a flooded village cope with a fifth day under water after typhoon Ketsana swept Bulacan province in the Philippines. (Photo: Catholic Relief Services/flickr)

Residents of a flooded village cope with a fifth day under water after typhoon Ketsana swept Bulacan province in the Philippines. (Photo: Catholic Relief Services/flickr)

As Tropical Storm Ketsana’s –“Ondoy” in the Philippines– destruction made headlines all over the world on Monday, Sept. 28th, I could not reach my family in the Philippines. Power and phone lines were down in Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces where my family lives, and cell lines were clogged.

My sister in Los Angeles, “Ate” Reby, had only gotten a text message from my mother the night before: “Reby, pinasukan ng baha yung bahay. Lubog yung kotse. Kami ng daddy na-stranded sa bubong…” [Floods entered the house. Our car is submerged. Your father and I were stranded up on the roof].

Reby and I thought it unimaginable that they would be trapped on our own roof, which tops a two-story house on the highest point of the subdivision. Finally I reached my sister Jocelyn and in subsequent conversations with my mother, both of us often breaking down in tears, we were able to piece together their terrifying tales. For the first time since any typhoons hitting the Philippines, my family found themselves in Ground Zero, as if they were in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

My mom and dad, both 77, live in Park Place Executive Village, Cainta City in Rizal province, east of Manila. My eldest brother Angelo lives with them, my other brother, Pio Jr., lives a street away, and my sister, “Ate” [a Filipino term for elder] Jocelyn, lives with her family in the next town, Brookside. These towns were two of the most heavily flooded areas after Ketsana.

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Looking for Reelection, Mayor Bloomberg Courts Ethnic Press and Immigrant Voters

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, Polish Daily News and FI2W reporter
Bloomberg promised to talk more to the citys ethnic media if hes reelected. (Photo: Aleksandra Slabisz)
Bloomberg promised to talk more to the city’s ethnic media if he’s reelected. (Photos: Aleksandra Slabisz)

With less than a month to go before the election that will decide whether he remains in office for a third term, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a plan to support New York’s immigrants, to be implemented if he is reelected.

Standing at the podium with a sign that read “City of Immigrants, Mike Bloomberg NYC” at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan, the mayor reminded a crowd consisting mostly of ethnic media reporters of his previous initiatives for the city’s immigrants and went on to praise their role in the city.

“Immigrants are why New York City became America’s economic engine,” Bloomberg stated. “In these tough times our city needs more immigrants, not fewer.”

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Stories

Queen of ‘Jazzipino’ Charmaine Clamor Breaks Ground in America

This is an excerpt from a story on New America Media. Reproduced with permission.
By New America Now TV. Anchor & Producer: Odette Keeley. Videographer & Master Editor: Mike Siv. Editor: Jeremiah Ysip.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Many jazz artists and aficionados consider jazz as the immigrant’s music — embracing and absorbing into a big pot, the many styles, elements and talents coming from musicians from all over the globe.

Charmaine Clamor, recently hailed as America’s leading Filipina jazz and world music vocalist, believes the “Filipino spice” may have found its renaissance in this pot in recent years, through the hybrid genre she created, “Jazzipino”. It’s a blend of the soul and swing of American jazz with Filipino music, languages and instruments. It’s the perfect pairing of her two great loves, Clamor says – of jazz and her Filipino soul, and it has catapulted her into the American jazz stratosphere.

Multi-Awarded Filipina Artist Breaks New Ground With “Jazzipino’ from New America Media on Vimeo.

Now living in Los Angeles, Clamor was born in the Philippine town of Subic-Zambales, and her mother, a soprano singer inculcated in her a deep love for the Great American Songbook and Filipino music. Clamor relates that growing up, their home was filled with jazz and opera, alongside Philippine kundimans (torch songs), harana songs (serenades) and folk music.

In 2007, Clamor’s second album, “Flippin’ Out,” made the Top 5 on both JazzWeek’s World and Traditional Jazz radio charts simultaneously. And in 2008, her third album, “My Harana: A Filipino Serenade” made the Top 10 in the world music charts, making her the first Filipino to place two consecutive albums in the Top 10 world music radio charts.

She has been featured in several Filipino-American and mainstream media, including ABS-CBN International – The Filipino Channel, Asian Journal, NPR, BBC, the Los Angeles Times, L.A. 18, and has become one of the Philippines’ newest singing icons.

Clamor has also received numerous prestigious awards here and in the Philippines including as the “Philippines Pride – Best Jazz Singer” from FAMAS – the Philippine equivalent to the Oscars, as well as a 2009 Asian Heritage Award in the Performing Arts, organized by ASIA Magazine.

Visit New America Media to read the complete story.

AudioStories

Reporter’s Notebook: Conn. Priest Shows How to Earn the Trust of an Immigrant Community

FI2W reporter Aswini Anburajan produced a radio piece for NPR’s Latino USA on Father James Manship, a Roman Catholic priest in New Haven, Conn., who teaches his immigrant parishioners how to stand up for their civil rights, and who has been in the news in the past for being arrested in a confrontation with local police officers. Here, Aswini narrates how she managed to produce the piece, which aired on Latino USA and which you can listen to below.

[audio:http://latinousa.kut.org/wp-content/lusaaudio/856seg01.mp3]
By Aswini Anburajan, FI2W contributor

If you think that ethnic reporting isn’t critical to knowing a community, read on. This is the first piece I’ve done for Feet in 2 Worlds that hasn’t been on Indian Americans. The basis of FI2W is to get reporters to write about their own communities, but even I didn’t realize why this is so important until I delved into a project for Latino USA.

My piece was originally supposed to be on the economic life of a day laborer or someone new to the country, undocumented and trying to establish a life in the U.S. That piece remains undone. Being an Indian American with some high school Spanish under my belt, I thought it would be a cake walk. Call some social service agencies, reach out to immigrant coalitions, and I could “break in.”

Manship in 2008 visited with family and friends of his Connecticut parishioners, in the province of Morena Santiago, in the rainforest regions of Ecuador. (Photo: Courtesy J. Manship)

Manship in 2008 visited with family and friends of his Connecticut parishioners, in the province of Morena Santiago, in the rainforest regions of Ecuador. (Photo: Courtesy J. Manship - Click for more images)

Four months later, I had to think again. Without truly knowing a community, or having cultural or language associations with them, I found it impossible to get through and talk to individuals who were undocumented. It wasn’t that every door I knock on was slammed in my face. Most of the time, people pretended they weren’t home. This ranged from individuals I knew with ties to the Latino community to social service agencies.

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Obama's Focus on Employers Causes Massive Firings, California Immigrant Activists Say

A month ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent letters to 652 businesses across the country to let them know their hiring records would be audited “to determine whether or not they are complying with employment eligibility verification laws and regulations.” The goal was to check whether those companies have been making sure they are not hiring people not authorized to work in the U.S., a.k.a. undocumented immigrants.

Workers protest firings at Overhill Farms - Illustration: Southern California Immigration Coalition

Workers protest firings at Overhill Farms - Illustration: Southern California Immigration Coalition

The initiative apparently has led to firings at some of those companies. Last Saturday, pro-immigration activists and workers demonstrated in Los Angeles to demand that President Obama stop the audits as well as the use of e-Verify, an employee ID verification system widely criticized by immigrant advocates.

ICE’s increased vigilance over employers –it said the number of letters it sent in July exceeds the numbers sent during the entire previous fiscal year– follows Obama’s promises that his approach to enforcing immigration laws would focus more on the labor demand side rather than on the supply, i.e. the undocumented workers who’ve been the target of raids and deportations in the last few years.

But L.A. activists said this particular measure has swollen the ranks of the unemployed in the midst of the economic crisis.

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New Massachusetts State Budget Eliminates Health Coverage for 28,000 Legal Immigrants

Hispanic News Briefs From New England Newspapers

By Pedro Pizano, FI2W contributor
Siglo 21 Massachusetts newspaper

Siglo 21 newspaper

BOSTON, Mass. — The state Senate is seeking $130 million in savings by kicking “aliens with special status” out of Commonwealth Care, a subsidized insurance program for low-income residents, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis. The program will save an additional $63 million by no longer automatically enrolling new low-income residents.

The “aliens with special status” are 28,000 documented immigrants who have had a green card for less than five years. They will be left without health coverage from Commonwealth Care after August 1.

The Massachusetts Hospital Association says the $130 million cut will bring additional costs to the hospitals that provide free care to people with low incomes. They say those hospitals would need to spend an additional $87 million in 2009 to treat those who lose their coverage, according to the NCPA.

Although Gov. Deval Patrick approved the budget cut for the 2010 fiscal year on July 1st, he also submitted separate legislation to restore $70 million to Commonwealth Care. This program is central to the nearly universal health care law enacted here in 2006 that achieved the nation’s lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 2.6 percent compared to a national average of 15 percent.

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Ready to Celebrate: Nuyoricans, Hispanic Media Look to Sonia Sotomayor's Confirmation to the Supreme Court

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Bronxites are getting ready to celebrate Sotomayors confirmation - Photo: peterkreder/Flickr

Bronxites are getting ready to celebrate Sotomayor's confirmation. (Photo: peterkreder/Flickr)

With the end of Senate hearings Thursday, Spanish-language media are taking Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court as a given — and Puerto Ricans in New York and elsewhere are getting ready to celebrate.

“This has been bigger than when Menudo came to New York,” Bronx State Assemblyman José Rivera told New York newspaper El Diario/La Prensa. He promised to organize a parade through the borough’s streets when the judge, who grew up there, is confirmed to the nation’s highest court.

The Bronx was abandoned, but Sotomayor is rescuing it,” he said.

“Now the whole world understands what we already know — that the days when buildings were burning are in the past,” Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. told the newspaper.

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In Boston, Jews and Latinos Unite Against Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, Hate Crimes

News Briefs From New England Hispanic Newspapers

By Pedro Pizano, FI2W contributor

BOSTON, Massachusetts – Hispanic and Jewish groups have launched a joint campaign to stop “hate crimes targeting Latinos and the anti-immigrant rhetoric entering the mainstream.”

The Anti-Defamation League , representing the Jewish community, together with Latino Professional Network (LPN) recently organized a public event to announce the initiative.

Diego Portillo, the president of LPN who has lived in Boston for the past 10 years said, in an interview with El Planeta, that he has seen discrimination against Hispanic Immigrants increase in the past few years.

El Mundo reports that organizers claimed that hate mongers have rallied around situations such as the Swine Flu outbreak and the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, to demonize and scapegoat Latinos and other groups.

There will be periodical Latino/Jewish roundtables, starting in August, to advance partnerships between the Latino and Jewish communities. A “Declaration of Partnership” will be published next week, in both Spanish and English, in El Mundo .


New program from Children’s Hospital Boston aimed at the Latino Community

BOSTON, Massachusetts. Children’s Hospital Boston recently launched Milagros Para Niños (Miracles for Children) , the hospital’s first-ever fundraising campaign specifically aimed at the Latino community.

“This pioneering initiative aims to raise money and awareness to support Children’s clinical care and research for its increasingly diverse patient population,“ according to a news release from the hospital.

Out of 500,000 children that use the Hospital every year, 100,000 (20%) are Latino. At the Martha Eliot Health Center in Jamaica Plain, which is owned and operated by Children’s Hospital, 65% of the patients are Latino, according to El Mundo.

“The Latino community is very important for Children’s and we are proud to serve all families in need of our services,” said Sandra Fenwick, the hospital’s president and chief operating officer.

The fund-raising campaign will culminate with Children’s serving as the first-ever charitable partner for the Comcast Latino Family Festival at Fenway Park, which will be hosted by El Mundo Newspaper and the Boston Red Sox Foundation on Sunday, August 2nd, from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.


8th Massachusetts congressman to sponsor DREAM Act.

LYNN, Massachusetts. – Members of the Student Immigrant Movement met with Congressman John Tierney last Monday to discuss the DREAM Act. After the meeting Tierney agreed to co-sponsor the bill, according to Boston weekly Siglo21.

Tierney’s commitment brings to eight the number of Massachusetts congressional representatives sponsoring the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act . The act would provide a path to citizenship to about 65,000 undocumented young adults that have been in the U.S. for 5 years, have graduated from high school, and want to go to college or enlist for military service. They must also show proof of “good moral character.” (click to see USCIS (formerly INS) questionnaire to determine “moral character”). Additionally the DREAM Act would also return to states the authority to determine whether to grant in-state tuition to state residents regardless of immigration status.