HURRICANE KATRINA
This is My Home
By Advancement Project and Washington Koen Productions (December 2006)
This documentary is about the fight for public housing in New Orleans where most of the city’s public housing withstood Hurricane Katrina with little or no damage. Yet, thousands of families remain shut out and displaced throughout the country. This documentary is a tribute to the perseverance of the displaced residents of New Orleans and is a call to action to all justice-minded people to support the residents’ right to return home. For more information, visit: www.advancementproject.org.
A Continuing Storm: The On-Going Struggles of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees
By Appleseed (August 2006)
The first comprehensive report on the status of the more than one million Katrina evacuees reveals that local nonprofit and government agencies responded quickly to assist evacuees while the reponse of federal and national organizations’ were hindered by burdensome application and eligibility requirements. The study also identifies continuing areas of dire need for evacuees, including long-term housing and mental health care. http://appleseeds.net/servlet/PublicationInfo?articleId=207.
Abandoned and Abused: Orleans Parish Prisoners in the Wake of Katrina
By National Prison Project of the ACLU, ACLU of Louisiana, ACLU Human Rights Program and Racial Justice Program, Human Rights Watch, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Safe Streets/Strong Communities (August 2006)
During and after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of men, women, and children were abandoned at Orleans Parish Prison (OPP). Deputies left as flood waters entered OPP, leaving inmates behind, locked in their cells—some in sewage-tainted waters up to their chests. This report seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of what these men, women, and children experienced and serve as their voice. http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/prison/oppreport20060809.pdf
Law Students Working Within the Post-Katrina Legal Landscape
By The Student Hurricane Network (October 2006)
This report explores a set of legal questions and problems faced by individuals and communities throughout the Gulf Coast region, and the role law students have played to address these needs, while giving the reader an idea of the far-ranging legal issues facing the hurricane-affected communities. The report contains four parts: Criminal Justice, Housing, Workers’ Rights, and Voting Rights. http://www.hurricane-katrina.org/files/shn_report_oct_2006.pdf.
One Year after Katrina: The State of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
By Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, A project of the Institute for Southern Studies/Southern Exposure, (Volume XXXIV, No. 2: 2006)
This report reveals the state of Gulf Coast rebuilding on the anniversary of the storm. Through statistics, status reports, in-depth investigations, and profiles of community leaders, the report highlights the challenges ahead for a just and sustainable renewal. The report analyzes more than 250 indicators and reports on 13 major issue areas, including Demographics, Housing, Economy, Schools, Health Care, Arts, and Hurricane Readiness. The report also contains an index of some of the organizations working on Gulf Coast issues. http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/
images/One_Year_After.pdf.
Planning after Hurricane Katrina
By Robert B. Olshansky
This report acknowledges that Hurricane Katrina was the greatest urban and regional disaster in U.S. history. The rebuilding of New Orleans and surrounding areas of Louisiana and Mississippi will require a large and complex planning effort. It is important to learn from disasters of the past, while also applying the planning knowledge of the present. From past disasters, it is known that successful reconstruction requires both outside funding and local citizen involvement. Optimistically, a new New Orleans will involve improved flood safety, revitalized neighborhoods, housing opportunities for all, and equitable treatment of all residents. Planners have an obligation to take an active role and advocate for the funding and full participation necessary to achieve these goals. The alternative would be a city that is poor, unsafe, and unequal.
https://planning.org/katrina/reader/
pdf/japaafterkatrina.pdf
Right of Return Means Access to the Ballot, Access to Neighborhoods, and Access to Economic Opportunity.
By Melanie Campbell, Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy (Volume IX: 2006)
More than one million people were displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They are residents of three of the poorest states in the nation—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. New Orleans represents a microcosm of right-of-return issues for all Gulf Coast residents who were displaced by these storms. This article explores the race, economic, and class divides that appear to be key factors in determining which Gulf Coast residents truly have access to the right of return including: who will have access to a barrier-free ballot to vote in the 2006 New Orleans mayoral race, who will have access to actively participate and benefit in rebuilding their communities, who will have access to temporary housing to reunite families, and who will have access to the economic opportunities to rebuild their lives.
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/HJAAP/
06%20articles/campbell06.pdf
KATRINA BOOKS
Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
By Michael Eric Dyson
The first major book to be released about Hurricane Katrina, Dyson's volume not only chronicles what happened when, it also argues that the nation's failure to offer timely aid to Katrina's victims indicates deeper problems in race and class relations. His contention that Katrina exposed a dominant culture pervaded not only by "active malice" toward poor Blacks, but also by a long history of "passive indifference" to their problems, is both powerful and unsettling. Through this history of neglect, Dyson suggests, America has broken its social contract with poor Blacks who, since Emancipation, have assumed that government will protect all its citizens. Yet when disaster struck the poor, the cavalry arrived four days late.
http://www.amazon.com/Come-Hell-High-Water-Hurricane/
dp/0465017614/sr=8-12/qid=1166114560/ref=sr_1_12/104-2883933-1376747?ie=UTF8&s=books
Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities
By John Brown Childs
This book gathers together responses to the hurricane from more than 30 contributors, including community activists, sociologists, writers, and musicians. Some have been displaced by the hurricane and write about what they have lost. Others write from a distance, seeing patterns in the response to the hurricane that reflect a cultural bias of race and class. Together they offer not only critical assessments of what went wrong, but also hopeful conjecture about possibilities for the future of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and the United States.
http://www.amazon.com/Hurricane-Katrina-Brown-Childs-Editor/dp/0971254621/sr=8-4/qid=1166114560
/ref=sr_1_4/104-2883933-1376747?ie=UTF8&s=books
Waters Dark and Deep: A Hurricane Katrina Survival Story
By: Katie Thomas
This book is the untold story of the rescue and reunification of one New Orleans familiy, including De’Monte Love, the six-year-old boy who along with six other children made national headlines when they were separated from their parents, rescued, and later reunited with their families. www.watersdarkanddeep.com.
EDUCATION: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
ESEA: It’s Time for a Change! NEA’s Positive Agenda for the ESEA Reauthorization
By National Education Association (July 2006)
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), renamed the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act of 2001, established laudable goals—high standards and accountability for the learning of all children, regardless of their background or ability. However, the law must be fundamentally improved and federal lawmakers need to provide adequate funding if NCLB is to achieve its goal. Congress has to reauthorize the legislation in 2007, offering an opportunity to make it more workable and more responsive to the real needs of children. NEA has developed a comprehensive document that spells out detailed recommendations to make the law better. http://www.nea.org/lac/esea/images/posagenda.pdf
It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act
By Appleseed (September 2006)
This report documents an effort to combine practical, on-the-ground perspectives, based upon interviews and on federal, state, and district policy research, with current social science research on key parental involvement issues and effective practices. Mostly, it reflects an effort to assemble and analyze what is known as a matter of practice and as a matter of research in framing an action agenda promoting more effective parental involvement practices by schools, districts, and states. http://appleseeds.net/servlet/PublicationInfo?articleId=211
Open to The Public: The Public Speaks Out on No Child Left Behind—A Summary of Nine Hearings, September 2005–January 2006
By Public Education Network
Between September 2005 and January 2006, Public Education Network (PEN) held a series of public hearings to give students, parents, and community members—audiences very much affected by the law, but usually left out of the policy debate—an opportunity to tell their side of the NCLB story. PEN’s underlying NCLB premise is that if data about school and district performance is made available, the public and policymakers will act on the data and demand conditions that enable schools to become proficient. The report offers recommendations from the public.
http://www.publiceducation.org/2006_NCLB/main/
2006_NCLB_National_Report.pdf
“Overhauling NCLB”
By Monty Neill (Fall 2006)
The federal law that is wreaking havoc on educational quality across the nation, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is due for re-authorization by Congress in 2007. While many observers believe this will not be completed until after the 2008 presidential election, Neill argues that we need to begin mobilizing now to ensure that the next version of the longstanding Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is a very different law in several critical regards. He maintains that the importance of changing the law can scarcely be overemphasized. While state laws and district practices have often promoted the same harmful policies as NCLB, the federal law has made such programs more onerous, adding more testing and layers of counterproductive "accountability" mandates. And NCLB has made it harder and less likely for states or districts to implement improved assessment and genuine school improvement programs. He concludes that overhauling NCLB should be a political priority, not only for groups working at the national level, but also for local and state individuals and organizations, many of whom have potentially powerful ways to reach out to and influence members of Congress.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/
archive/21_01/over211.shtml
The 2006 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
By Tom Loveless, Brown Center on Education Policy (October 2006)
This report launches the second volume of the Brown Center Report on American Education. The five issues of volume one were published from 2000 to 2004. Part three of this issue looks at how states have responded to the No Child Left Behind Act. Several analysts have recently concluded that states are "racing to the bottom" by artificially inflating the number of students who demonstrate proficiency on state tests. It is indisputable that states report larger numbers of proficient students than the NAEP test. But the studies have overlooked some key questions. Is NAEP such a good test that it should be used as a benchmark for judging state assessments? Can NCLB be blamed for the discrepancies between reported levels of proficiency on NAEP and state tests? How large were the discrepancies before NCLB?
http://www.brookings.edu/gs/
brown/bc_report/2006/2006report.pdf
Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-Depth Look into National and State Reading and Math Outcome Trends
By Jaekyung Lee, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (June 2006)
This study offers systematic trend analyses of NAEP national and state-level public school fourth and eighth graders’ reading and math achievement results during pre-NCLB (1990-2001) and post-NCLB (2002-2005) periods. It compares post-NCLB trends in reading and math achievement with pre-NCLB trends among different racial and socioeconomic groups of fourth and eighth graders from across the nation and states. National and state progress toward closing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps is evaluated not only in terms of success in reducing the test score gaps but also in terms of reducing each subgroup’s chance of failing to meet desired performance standards. Further, it provides new evidence on the impact of state accountability policy on the achievement gap trends and the discrepancies between NAEP and state assessment results.
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/
research/esea/nclb_naep_lee.pdf
38th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools (2006)
By Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup
The major findings of this poll center on how people want improvement to come about, on the way the public assesses the public schools, and on how it views some of the strategies used in current change efforts. The final section deals with the change strategy dominating K-12 education today, the implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0609pol.htm
EDUCATION BOOKS
No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform: Critical Essays by Educators
By Thomas S. Poetter (April 2006)
No Child Left Behind and the Illusion of Reform highlights the scholarship of eight doctoral students in curriculum and their professor, who took on the legal, political, philosophical, social, cultural, economic, and curricular assumptions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This book, the manifestation of their work, is a critical examination of the impact of the NCLB on the lives of children, families, and teachers.
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
State and Local Anti-Immigrant Toolkit
By Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
This toolkit provides vital information and guidance on how to address one of the most important critical attacks facing the Latino community today. This guide describes the various ordinances throughout the country, their legal flaws, and provides arguments than can be used against them. http://www.maldef.org/publications/index.cfm.
Toolkit for Responding to Local Anti-Immigrant Ordinances
By National Immigration Forum (November 2006)
This toolkit looks at the trend of anti-immigrant ordinances sweeping the country and creates strategies for combating these ordinances based on the lessons learned in the struggle to defeat the Avon Park, Fla., ordinance. http://www.immigrationforum.org/documents/
CRB/LocalOrdinanceToolkit.pdf.
From ‘There’ to ‘Here’: Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America
By Audrey Singer and Jill H. Wilson (September 2006)
This paper uses data to determine the number of refugees arriving in this country, their settlement patterns, and finds that unlike most other immigrants, refugees have access to a various resources designed to help them succeed both economically and socially. http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060925_refugee.pdf.
How to Deal with No-Match Letters: For Organizers and Advocates
By National Immigration Law Center (October 2006)
In the wake of a rapidly growing anti-immigrant sentiment, pending immigration reform, and aggressive ICE raids, immigrant workers—of all immigration status’—are coming under scrutiny in the workplace. This toolkit is designed to help organizers and advocates understand the rights and options of workers who receive a “no-match” letter from the Social Security Administration. http://nilc.org/immsemplymnt/SSA-NM_Toolkit/nomatchtoolkit_howtodeal_2006-10-25.pdf
Immigrants and the U.S. Health Care System
By California Immigrant Policy Center (September 2006)
With the debate over immigration reform still going strong, immigrants are increasingly accused of costing the United States an exorbitant amount of money in public benefits and other related resources—including health care. This resources offers information about health care access, expenditures, and what is behind the cost of health care in California. http://www.caimmigrant.org/source/Imm&HealthCareCIPC.pdf.
Myths and Facts about the New Department of Homeland Security-Proposed “No-Match” Rule
By National Immigration Law Center (October 2006)
This toolkit is designed to help employers better understand what they are/not expected to do under the pending Homeland Security rule if the employer receives a letter informing her that a positive social security match could not be made for an employee. http://nilc.org/immsemplymnt/SSA-NM_Toolkit/nomatchtoolkit_mythsfacts_2006-10-18.pdf
On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States
By Abel Valenzuela, Jr., UCLA Center for Study of Urban Poverty; Nik Theodore, University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development; Edwin Melendez, New School University Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy; and Ana Luz Gonzalez, UCLA Center for Study of Urban Poverty (January 2006)
This report is the first of its kind to profile the national phenomenon of day labor in this country. The picture of day labor as presented in this report is taken from a national survey of 2,660 day laborers randomly selected from 264 hiring sites in 139 municipalities in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/
csup/uploaded_files/Natl_DayLabor-On_the_Corner1.pdf.
Real ID Act: National Impact Analysis
By National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (September 2006)
In this impact analysis report, the authors conclude the Real ID Act will likely cost the country more than $11 billion to implement because among other things, it will be necessary to re-issue driver’s licenses and/or other identification to as many as 245 million card holders—each of which will have to present her/himself in-person to get an updated identification and the systems needed to meet the requirements that every identification document presented to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) be verified prior to issuing a new identification, have not yet been created. http://www.ncsl.org/print/statefed/
Real_ID_Impact_Report_FINAL_Sept19.pdf.
Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages: New Data and Analysis from 1990 to 2004
By Giovanni Peri, Ph.D., Immigration Policy in Focus (Volume 5, Issue 8: October 2006)
Immigrant workers are often accused of bringing down wages for U.S. born workers. This report finds that due to differences in education, skill sets, and occupations, immigrants and native workers tend to be employed in jobs that are interdependent rather than competing with each other for the same jobs. Additionally, the author finds that adding new workers to the workforce stimulates investment which in turn has a positive effect on wages.
http://www.gcir.org/new/reports/pdfs/infocus_10306.pdf.
Reverification of Employment Eligibility: Frequently Asked Questions
By National Immigration Law Center (July 2006)
With immigrant workers under the microscope, employers are increasingly asking such workers to re-establish their right to work in this country. Read this Q & A fact sheet to learn more about when an employer can and cannot re-verify employment eligibility. http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/ircaempverif/tpstoolkit/
QA_reverification_2006-07.pdf
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS BOOKS
Deporting Our Souls: Values, Morality, and Immigration Policy
By Bill Ong Hing
In the past three decades, images of undocumented immigrants pouring across the southern border have driven the immigration debate and policies have been implemented in response to those images. More recently, the Oklahoma City bombings and the tragic events of September 11 have provided further impetus to implement policies that are anti-immigration in design and effect. This book discusses the major immigration policy areas—undocumented workers, the immigration selection system, deportation of aggravated felons, national security and immigration policy, and the integration of new Americans—and the author suggests his own proposals on how to address the policy challenges. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/
catalogue.asp?isbn=0521864925.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Killing Affirmative Action: Would ending it really result in a better, more perfect Union?
By Ellis Cose, for the USC Institute for Justice and Journalism (2006)
This report looks at the effects of successful anti-affirmative action measures on states that have passed such measures, as well as the reasoning and individuals behind the rapidly developing trend. http://www.justicejournalism.org/images/cose/
Affirm_Final_PDF.pdf
Why You Should Care
By The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
This short analysis looks at the impact of affirmative action in this country and its history—including the various attacks it has undergone throughout the years. http://www.civilrights.org/issues/affirmative/care.html.
