Texas Civil Rights Review

Category: Uncategorized

  • MALDEF Secures Landmark Education Victory in Texas

    From the MALDEFian

    Judge orders improvements in programs for English language learners

    AUGUST 14, 2008 – Citing “palpable injustice” a federal court found that the State of Texas is failing to overcome the language barriers faced by tens of thousands of English Language Learner (ELL) students in the State’s public school secondary programs. MALDEF’s victory in United States v. Texas represents the most comprehensive judicial decision concerning the civil rights of ELLs in a quarter century.

    The case was born out of long-standing discrimination against Latino students in Texas schools, which resulted in their inclusion in a 1981 Order that required the State of Texas to, among other things, provide appropriate and effective language educational programs for ELL students. Twenty-five years later, MALDEF and Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy, Inc. (META) filed a Motion under the Modified Order to enforce its terms. MALDEF argued that the State had failed to implement and monitor the bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for ELL students in the state, resulting in the denial of equal educational opportunities for those students.

    In July 2007, District Court Judge William Wayne Justice ruled that MALDEF was not entitled to the relief it sought. After MALDEF and META persisted in the case on behalf of ELL students, Judge Justice vacated his earlier ruling in its entirety. Finding that “[s]econdary…students in bilingual education fail terribly under every metric,” he ordered the State to create a language program for ELL secondary students and a monitoring system that met the requirements of the federal Equal Education Opportunity Act.

    This ruling was a tremendous victory for ELL students in a state that has one of the highest percentages of ELLs in the country. In the 2004-05 school year, more than 15 percent of the student population in Texas’ public schools were identified as ELL. Ninety-three percent of those were Hispanic. According to the Texas Education Agency, only 13.1 percent of those students are recent immigrants.

    The education system has significantly failed these students, allowing them to continue to experience the effects of the discrimination that first brought MALDEF to court on their behalf nearly 30 years ago. The court found that not only does the Texas Education Agency under-identify ELL students, but the “achievement standards for intervention are arbitrary and not based upon equal educational opportunity; the failing achievement of higher grades is masked by passing scores of lower grades; and the failure of individual school campuses is masked by only analyzing data on the larger district level.”

    “Failed implementation cannot prolong the existence of a failed program into perpetuity,” the court concluded. Texas now has until January 2009 to come up with a revamped monitoring system that actually measures equal educational opportunities and an improved educational program for secondary ELL students. The new system will be introduced in the 2009-10 school year.

    “This decision gives hope for the future of thousands of young Texans. Its importance cannot be overstated,” said MALDEF Staff Attorney David Hinojosa who, along with META, brought the case on behalf of LULAC and the American GI Forum.

  • TCRR Fall Quarter Retrospective 2008

    Our quarter-year of absence at the Texas Civil Rights Review has coincided with the electoral revolution led by Barack Obama, so we couldn’t be more pleased to have a picked a season during which little more needed to be said.

    Yet the time of absence wasn’t chosen so much as it was delivered with a bundle of priorities that left not a spare minute to type in. At one point, it was only thanks to a delayed airplane that I was able to hammer out a fast note to a contributor. The competing priorities this past quarter were entirely welcomed, so worry not; our energies are well, our spirit intact.

    In the short time I have to write tonight, I’d like to reflect upon what usually goes on here, and why we miss it.

    The Texas Civil Rights Review was founded in 1997 as on online archive dedicated to racial equity in the Land Grant system of higher education in Texas, and, by proxy, across the USA. Thanks to that work in the 1990s some real progress was made for some real people. And as we look forward to Change, please remember Mr. President that equity in the Land Grant system is still possible, still worthy, and perhaps more than ever a timely theater for economic and democratic renewal of ourselves and our posterity.

    After a few years of exile from Texas politics (perhaps not unrelated to our successes in the Land Grant establishment) we returned in 2003 with a hopping mad interest in what had happened to affirmative action policy, and we proudly outed a blue-ribbon report from a Land Grant college committee that recommended affirmative action in admissions. (We still like to call it integration, remember?)

    As Summer turned to Fall in 2004 we covered the trial for public school funding in an Austin District Court, and documented the courageous struggle of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to uphold the principles of equitable funding, especially for impoverished Hispanic children.

    On Christmas Eve 2004 we posted our first of many letters from federal prisoner Ramsey Muniz. We still say it would be a righteous act to pardon Ramsey and set him free.

    In the opening months of 2005 we covered the hearings that officially certified the election of Hubert Vo to the Texas House of Representatives. We followed up on the Vo hearings with a massive review of the hearing documents. (Rep. Vo has since been re-elected twice. In 2008 he won a comfortable 56 percent of the vote.)

    In April of 2005 we reported on thousands of pages of documents that we reviewed at the office of the Texas Secretary of State regarding the construction of a statewide voter database that was built to satisfy the so-called Help America Vote Act (VAWA).

    During the summer of 2006 we filed an open records request with the Texas Governor seeking documentation for the deployment of the Texas National Guard to the border with Mexico. We were told there were no documents. Later that year, we followed a rising flood of immigration issues that culminated in the federal roundup of several Palestinian families from the Dallas area who were cruelly treated regardless of age or pregnancy status.

    In 2007 we let fly a few thousand words over the converging issues of immigration injustice in Texas, symbolized by the Hutto family prison and the border wall reflex. If Change means anything, it should make a difference on both of these issues.

    Earlier this year we covered the federal harassment of Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza, who was finally released to live with this wife and children after a year of meaningless imprisonment at Haskell. And we reported on the shocking detention of Bujar Osmani who was nabbed by federal agents while taking a bathroom break at a law office.

    As the summer of 2008 turned into record swelter, we reported the death, the federal documents, and the dreams of Riad Hamad, ebullient champion of Palestinian children.

    In these stories and others, we have been very nearly alone in our commitment to documentation and detail. So yes, there was something to miss when we were absent during the Fall quarter of 2008. If you missed us, you weren’t alone. We kind of missed us too.

    As for the future, we remain realistic. The amount of time devoted to the Texas Civil Rights Review these past five years will not be sustainable, but the reasons for this are good ones. Your editor has not given up or burned out. I’m just busy.

    Whenever I do have a few spare hours, you’ll know it. I’m here. I keep my eyes open. I may be out of the office a lot, but I ain’t giving up the lease. — gm

  • Archive: Hutto Freedom Walk

    Note: The following item previously appeared in the announcements section of the Texas Civil Rights Review.–gm

    Crayon picture of child crying standing on an x'd-out broken heart

    IF THESE PICTURES LOOK CHILDISH, ITS BECAUSE THEY ARE. THESE PICTURES WERE DRAWN BY CHILDREN THAT WERE DETAINED AT THE HUTTO DETENTION FACILITY. WE CAN NOT IGNORE THE CRIES OF THE CHILDREN, IT DOESN’T JUST GO AWAY!!!

    Crayon picture of American flag

    Si alcaso estos debujos parecen infantil es porque lo son. Son los debujos de ninos detenidos tras las rejas de T.D. Hutto. No se les olvide el llanto y sufrimiento de las familias tras las rejas de T.D.Hutto.

    Crayon picture of child crying behind jail bars

    Texas Indigenous Council

    Free the Children Coalition
    San Antonio, Texas

    Freedom Walk and Protest Vigil

    May 24, 2008
    12:00 PM – 4:00 pm
    T. Don Hutto ‘Residential’ Facility
    1001 Welch Street
    Taylor, TX

    Assembles at Heritage Park, 4th & Main St., Taylor, TX

    Assembly Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

    Procession to Hutto Prison – Protest from 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM

    Music:
    James Perez y Carnival, Karma & Arma Musical will be performing on behalf of this cause: Please contact Javier : 210- 724-3400 for further details.

    Contact:

    Antonio Diaz ~210-396-9805

    Jose Ortha ~512-914-7292
    Jina Gaytan ~210-884-8597

  • Diane Wilson Arrested at Indian Consulate in Houston

    Press Release

    HOUSTON — Police arrested activist Diane Wilson Monday at the Indian Consulate in Houston. Wilson is on an indefinite fast in solidarity with nine survivors of the Uni*n Carbide Gas Disaster in New Delhi, India.

    Through her actions, Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman, has urged the Government of India to fulfill the survivor’s demands for clean water, health care and justice. She refers to the survivors “my sisters and brothers,” as she is also from a community polluted by Dow/Carbide in Seadrift, Texas.

    On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a Uni*n Carbide pesticide plant; thousands more are now being poisoned by toxic waste from the abandoned factory site. Wilson believes firmly that the Indian government and Carbide parent company Dow Chemical must be held accountable for the ongoing disaster there.

    Diane Wilson summed up her commitment to justice and connection the Bhopal survivors: “As one of the Bhopalis said, ‘What else can people do when their government ignores their pain and cries of injustice? Agitate, agitate!’”

    Diane’s fast is part of an ongoing Global Fasting Relay, which is being supported by nearly 400 concerned individuals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and India. (The full list of fasters available at http://www.bhopal.net) In North America, actions have taken place in Boston, San Francisco and Toronto, with further action planned at the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC. The brave yet perilous decision to begin an indefinite fast has been undertaken by Wilson and others only after numerous unsuccessful attempts to focus the attention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toward the grave situation in Bhopal.

    Diane Wilson, a mother of five, became aware of the Dow/Carbide crimes in Bhopal after learning her own Texas County, located near several chemical plants including a Carbide/Dow plant, was the most polluted in the US. After Ms. Wilson was arrested after a protest at her local Dow facility, she toured the country refusing to go to jail until the former CEO of Uni*n Carbide was jailed. Former Carbide CEO Warren Anderson jumped bail after the Bhopal Disaster and has refused to face manslaughter charges in India.

    Survivors are demanding the establishment of a special commission to deal with the issues that still plague the people of Bhopal. They are also demanding that the Prime Minister hold Dow Chemical legally liable, following Dow’s purchase of the initial disaster offender, Uni*n Carbide, in 2001. Though survivors have gained support from many influential lawmakers, as well as the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the Prime Minister Singh has not budged from his ongoing support of this rogue chemical company.

    Nearly half a million people were exposed to poisonous methyl isocyanate during a runaway chemical reaction at the Uni*n Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984. Since then, more than 22,000 people have died and 150,000 survivors continue to be chronically ill, as the Indian government and Dow have repeatedly failed to address their liabilities in the atrocities of the world’s worst industrial disaster.

    The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) is a coalition of people’s organizations, non-profit groups and individuals who have joined forces to campaign for justice for the survivors of the gas leak. The Campaign for Justice in Bhopal is active in more than 20 cities in the US, UK, France and India.

    To view who has signed up for the fast worldwide, visit www.bhopal.net/2008hungerfast.html.

    For more information about the history of the gas disaster, visit the following websites: www.bhopal.net, www.studentsforbhopal.org, and www.truthaboutdow.org

  • Voter ID Ruling: Supremes Done US Wrong

    By Faddy MacMough
    Don’cha Know
    A Bona Fide Redneck Column
    from the Texas Civil Rights Review

    Well, from the left-edge of the world of Reneckedness I have a question. When does a civil right become an uncivil wrong? Maybe the editor will try to change that to incivil wrong … but I did mean uncivil … as in uncivilized.

    Some newspaper editors have been suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively reinstated the poll tax that once kept minorities and the poor from voting, and it did so for no justifiable reason. They say that when the high court upheld an Indiana state law that requires a form of government-issued photo identification card for anyone to vote and that has undone our civil rights.

    I suppose that those rednecks in Indiana (some call ’em lawmakers) approved the bill on the grounds of fighting voter fraud. What seems passing strange is that in upholding the law, the court said there is no evidence of voter fraud. The court apparently traded away the ability of many poor Americans to vote out of deference to fears that someone might cheat.

    Now I admit to bein’ a redneck … but even to me that is a genuine case of fractured logic. Accordin’ to the Supremes, any state is now permitted to deny access to the polls to hundreds of voters – documented cases of such were entered into evidence – to prevent some potential, yet undefined, evil character from sneaking into the booth and voting twice. Well, now doncha know that kicks the concept of voting as the most sacred right in a democracy straight into the hole in the outhouse seat!

    This photo-identification ruse is simply voter suppression, enacted by Indiana’s redneck legislature to keep down the vote of minorities and senior citizens. It is those people who will have the most trouble getting state-approved photo-identification cards and who will likely miss the vote.

    For the historically challenged, the poll tax long had its supporters in the Old South. It cost only a couple of dollars to vote, its apologists said. That wasn’t much of a sacrifice for the sacred right. The poll tax wasn’t charged to most whites. That’s because people whose ancestors had voted before minorities won the right to vote after the Civil War were grandfathered in.

    The whole idea of a poll tax, as with the identification card, is to suppress the vote of the poor. The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned poll taxes in 1964, but six justices effectively reinstated it with this decision.
    So, let’s ask a simple question: How difficult can it be for someone to get a photo-identification card? The answer is: A lot harder than you might think.

    Testimony before the court centered on the poor who do not own vehicles and who, therefore, do not have driver’s licenses. They can file for other forms of identification, but those cards require personal trips to government offices, which can be expensive, difficult or impossible for the infirm. Many citizens also don’t have access to their birth certificates, a key document needed in getting the proper identification in Indiana.

    Just as those southerners who supported the poll tax denied that it was an impediment to voting, those Indianan’s supporting this identification requirement say it is not a big deal. But it is a big deal for the poor, and that’s why the Indiana legislature enacted this law. They know they implemented a new tactic in our nation’s sorry history of denying the vote to our poor and minority populations. And our supremes said they were right to do so, and worse, fer the rest of us … that means our states can do the same damned thing.

    And, here you and I sit whining about it. Maybe it is time that this old a-hole got off his butt and helped to start the revolution. Of course, then again, maybe Franz Kafka was right: “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind it only the slime of bureaucracy.”

    Fredegar N. MacMough (his friends call him Faddy) is a pseudonym for a redneck living in New Mexico … in one of those down at the heel oil towns where the only hope is in the fall when we put our kids up to distract us from the grinding daily shit of our lives by watching them play football. Where the town spends most of its time either talking about this season or in hibernation waiting for next fall … and some still talk about when they played football. Pity the poor chump who only sires daughters … there is no glory in that.