A Year After the Earthquake, Haiti Still Needs Help

When the Enriquillo fault line shifted at 4:53 p.m. last Jan. 12, our bed was sent across the hotel room, the other side of the building collapsed and, as we would soon find out, Haiti was devastated. My 1-year-old son and I had accompanied my wife, an HIV educator for health-care workers, to Haiti only two days before the earthquake. In the immediate aftermath, the emergency medical technician who was a guest at our hotel formed a makeshift clinic in the circular driveway to attend to hundreds of badly injured Haitians. Read more »

From the IndyBlog

Study Challenges Controversial Policy to Deport Immigrant Prisoners

National

• Feds on ICE: Judge Orders Government to Release Secure Communities Documents
  By Renee Feltz, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  Is it possible to opt-out of the controversial Secure Communities program that shares local arrest data with immigration agents? The public may know as soon as January whether the program is mandatory or voluntary. (0 comments)
• Wiki Lockdown: From Thomas Jefferson to Julian Assange
  By Robert Scheer, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  All you need to know about Julian Assange’s value as a crusading journalist is that The New York Times and most of the world’s other leading newspapers have led daily with stories based on his WikiLeaks releases (0 comments)
• Back to Reagonomics: What Deficit Reduction and Tax Reform Really Mean for Working Americans
  By Eric Laursen, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  The press section was full when two far-right Republican senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Crapo of Idaho, took over a room on Capitol Hill on Dec. 2 to announce how they would vote as members of President Obama’s deficit commission. (0 comments)
• Back to the Poorhouse?
  By Arun Gupta, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  Any discussion of the global assault on pensions must begin with the three-year-long capitalist crisis, particularly the historical and geographical conditions. (0 comments)
• The Terrorist Factory
  By Nicholas Powers, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  He’s a manipulator. He’s a con artist. This is a damn bad motion picture,” said Alicia McWilliams-McCollum on an Oct. 6 episode of Democracy Now!. She shot a hard glare over her glasses. “They should be ashamed of theirself.” (1 comment)
• People’s Lawyer: Baiting the Trap
  By Ann Schneider, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  The growing list of cases in which the FBI and police manufacture patently unbelievable terror plots, only to make arrests in the nick of time — such as the Newburgh Four, the Fort Dix Five and the Albany Two — raises a fundamental question: Should the government be allowed to use its almost unlimited resources to induce people to commit crimes, and then turn around and prosecute them for taking the bait? (1 comment)
• Education Department Announcement Sparks Fears of ‘Clamp Down’ on Criticism of Israel
  By Alex Kane, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  Jewish organizations are hailing an Oct. 26 announcement from the U.S. Department of Education that will reportedly give greater protection against anti-semitism on college campuses. (1 comment)
• Activists Unafraid After FBI Crackdown
  By José Alcoff, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  Tom Burke began the morning of Sept. 24 like any other. His wife took their 5-year-old daughter to school before heading to work in their Michigan town. Then the phone rang, and he learned that FBI agents were raiding the homes of friends in Chicago. (0 comments)
• Midterm Elections Puncture Illusions: Liberals Are More Afraid of Mobilizing Their Own Base Than They Are of the Right
  By Stanley Aronowitz, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  The drubbing of Obama and the Democrats in the midterm elections offers many lessons. There are obvious ones, such as confirmation of the old saying, “All politics are local.” (0 comments)

Local

• Community Calendar, Dec.-Jan.
  By The Indypendent, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  (0 comments)
• Reader Comments
  By The Indypendent, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  (0 comments)
• Fighting for Essential Services
  By The Indypendent, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  Higher Education Committee Chair Ydanis Rodriguez (D-WFP-Washington Heights) speaks at a Dec. 8 rally on the steps of City Hall. Faculty, students and staff from the City University of New York (CUNY) were protesting Mayor Bloomberg’s mid-year budget cut of $13 million to CUNY’s six community colleges. (0 comments)
• Living Wage Battle Spreads Across City
  By Diane Krauthamer, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  The Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst received $48 mil­lion in city tax breaks from 2004 to 2009 and is rated as one of the 10 most profitable malls in the country. It’s bustling with activity again this holiday season, yet most of the 3,100 workers in the mall’s 70 stores earn at or near the minimum wage. (1 comment)
• Feds on ICE: Judge Orders Government to Release Secure Communities Documents
  By Renee Feltz, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  Is it possible to opt-out of the controversial Secure Communities program that shares local arrest data with immigration agents? The public may know as soon as January whether the program is mandatory or voluntary. (0 comments)
• Experience Be Damned!: Education Department’s Self-Inflicted Crisis Leaves More Than 1,000 Veteran Teachers in Limbo
  By Marc Epstein, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  When there is evidence of bad public policy, you can safely assume that it took two parties working collaboratively to create the swamp. (0 comments)
• San Francisco’s New Hiring Ordinance Aims to Keep Workers, and Their Wages, Local
  By R.M. Arrieta, in the Dec 31, 1969 issue
  (Image courtesy Anne Cervantes) A historic local hiring ordinance is on the verge of passing in San Francisco. On Tuesday San Francisco City supervisors voted to mandate that city-funded construction projects hire a certain percent of local residents, or face consequences. The bill amends the current San Francisco law that relies only [...] (0 comments)
• Community Calendar, Nov.-Dec.
  By The Indypedent, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  (0 comments)
• Indy Fall Fundraising Campaign: Got Dough?
  By The Indypedent, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  A few weeks ago, at the start of our fall fundraising campaign, a professor from NYU wrote to us, noting that our recent issues were an “excellent … mix of politics, culture and theory.” He asked for 200 copies to hand out to his students, and enclosed a generous donation of $200 as well. (0 comments)

International

• News Analysis: After Cancún
  By Chris Williams, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  Cancún is slowly slipping into the Caribbean Sea. A combination of climate change, natural weather patterns and disastrous, hell-for-leather tourist development along the narrow strip of Mexican coast is dragging the resort town back whence it came. (0 comments)
• Ecuador Challenged by Indigenous Movements
  By Benjamin Dangl, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  The right-wing coup attempt in Ecuador led by police forces petered out almost as quickly as it began on Sept. 30, but the aftershocks continue to be felt, mainly with the exposure of the rupture between President Rafael Correa and the country’s indigenous movements. (0 comments)
• Bolivia Reconstitutes Neoliberalism
  By Jeffery R. Webber, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  On Dec. 6, 2009, Evo Morales won a decisive mandate for a second term in office with an astonishing 64 percent of the popular vote. This latest electoral victory marked the peak of a wave of successes at the polls, including 67 percent support for his administration in the recall referendum of 2008 and 61 percent approval of the new constitution in a popular referendum held in January 2009. (0 comments)
• The Ballad of Billy Lee: The Untold Story of An American ‘Desaparecido’ in Argentina
  By Joseph Huff-Hannon, in the Sep 29, 2010 issue
  On a sun-drenched afternoon this May, Evie Lou Hunt welcomes me in to her third-floor apartment in downtown Mendoza, a city of under a million in western Argentina at the foot of the Andes. An attractive woman in her early 60s, Evie has blond hair and looks fit. (1 comment)
• Panama Awakes
  By José Alcoff, in the Sep 29, 2010 issue
  Antonio Smith, a 25-year-old “bananero” or banana worker, hailed from the modest Panamanian town of Changuinola, smack in an expanse of tropical flatlands bordering on Costa Rica and the Caribbean Sea. (0 comments)
• Schooling the World
  By John Tarleton, in the Sep 8, 2010 issue
  Public education in the United States has been transformed by an accelerating push for free-market, or neoliberal, reforms that tend to result in privatization. The shift in power means elites increasingly decide what is taught and who teaches. (0 comments)
• Curse of the Black Gold
  By Michael Watts, in the Jul 28, 2010 issue
  One of the largest oil producers in the world, Nigeria exports 1.1 million barrels of petroleum a day to the United States. The continuing BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has refocused attention on the vast Niger Delta, home to thousands of oil and gas installations and an array of militant groups waging armed struggle against Western oil companies, a kleptocratic state and ruthless military forces. (1 comment)
• Haiti’s Future on Hold
  By Isabel MacDonald, in the Jul 28, 2010 issue
  After the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, Western leaders announced bold plans for building a “New Haiti.” The reconstruction, they emphasized, would be “Haitian-led,” based firmly on the principle of respect for “Haitian sovereignty” and carried out through “full and continued participation” by Haitians, “consistent with the vision of the Haitian people and government.” (0 comments)
• Honduras on the March
  By Chris Thomas, in the Jun 23, 2010 issue
  TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras—On June 28 of last year, soldiers burst into the Honduran presidential palace in the middle of the night, put Manuel Zelaya, the country’s leftleaning, democratically elected president, on an airplane and exiled him to Costa Rica. (0 comments)

Culture

• Stealing the Rainbow
  By Mary Annaise Heglar, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  When I first heard about Tyler Perry’s plan to direct a film version of ntozake shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, I considered committing homicide. (0 comments)
• Here’s Looking at Che
  By Mike Newton, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  You’ve seen it on T-shirts, buttons and even bobble-heads: the high-contrast, cropped image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, radiating hardscrabble idealism and a higher purpose. (0 comments)
• Irina’s Picks: Below the Street
  By Irina Ivanova, in the Dec 15, 2010 issue
  For those staying in NYC over the holidays — do something fun and avoid the usual crowds. (0 comments)
• Reclaiming Violence
  By Matt Wasserman, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  Black Bloc, White Riot is a postmortem of the anti-globalization movement without apologies. Drawing on his experience as a participant, Thompson attempts to understand the (unrealized) potential of this movement. In the process, he takes on the assumed wisdom on the left. (3 comments)
• Dancing With the State
  By Matt Wasserman, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  In Dancing with Dynamite, Benjamin Dangl explores the relationship between social movements and left-leaning governments in South America. In seven interesting if uneven case studies, he takes the reader across South America, attempting to map the left turn of the continent at the level of the grassroots. (1 comment)
• When John Brown Won
  By Scott Borchert, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  Near the end of Terry Bisson’s utopian novel Fire on the Mountain, one character, Yasmin, receives a book of alternative history. Titled John Brown’s Body, the story is as absurd as it is unsettling. (0 comments)
• Abstract Politicism
  By Mike Newton, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  It looks simple enough. A large canvas, evenly coated in deep burgundy, with some sparse vertical stripes in muted colors. The painting is Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950-51), and he created it as a profound expression of his life-long anarchist politics. (1 comment)
• From Conservapedia to Brooklyn Rock
  By Steve Wishnia, in the Nov 17, 2010 issue
  There isn’t much overtly right-wing music. Ted Nugent is known as a farright rock star for his “God, guts, and guns” spiel, but his favorite lyric subject is sex. (6 comments)
• Why We Should All Move to Germany
  By Irina Ivanova, in the Oct 20, 2010 issue
  In the wake of the recession, the plight of the U.S. worker has gone from bad to worse. But not to worry — labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan has the answer. He confirms what we have all suspected in our darkest moments: life is better in Europe, and in Germany, in particular. But not to worry — labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan has the answer. He confirms what we have all suspected in our darkest moments: life is better in Europe, and in Germany, in particular. (3 comments)