The six girls sitting in the church basement come here every Thursday to learn the 101’s of sewing and pattern making, but tonight they are in for a very different lesson.
“Do any of you watch the media or watch TV and say ‘I want to be that person and if I don’t dress like her I don’t feel good about myself?’” asks Kerstin Collett, who leads the class in Holy Cross Church in Chicago’s Back of the Yards. READ FULL STORY & VIEW VIDEORead more…
Amid fears that millions of people may be overlooked during next year's census, the Census Bureau will launch a $250 million promotional campaign to encourage participation in the decennial head count, especially among hard-to-reach minority groups in urban areas.
More than half those funds will go for advertising across traditional and social media, and nearly a quarter will be devoted exclusively to Asian, black and Hispanic outlets. READ FULL STORYRead more…
A city ban on hiring ex-cons for hospital jobs is unfair to blacks and Hispanics, a city woman claimed in a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Shanae Leath, who was convicted for her role in a mugging nine years ago, lost her shot at a clerical job at Bellevue Hospital when her record came to light. Leath, 28, said the city Health and Hospitals Corp. ban discriminates. READ FULL STORYRead more…
When Mama reached her eighties, we assumed that she would move in with us but cardiac problems meant specialized support. In the Latino culture, it is expected that families bring their aging parents home when that time comes. So, was it okay to consider assisted living?
One of the fastest growing groups in the nation, elderly Latinos are estimated to number nearly 15 million in the next ten years. Some will have no choice but to live with family due to cultural and socio-economic barriers, particularly as more elders find themselves financially strained. Approximately one out of every 12 elderly Hispanics has no health insurance. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Bert and Ernie may be looking for a third roommate, as the poor economy has finally reached "Sesame Street."
Sesame Workshop, the shows production company, will cut one-fifth of its work force because of the economic downturn, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Sixty-seven of 355 staff positions will be eliminated. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet - only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed.
Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the airhead execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according to a source familiar with the deal. READ FULL STORYRead more…
As the economic crisis gathered steam last year, Americans became increasingly stressed out and experienced worsened mental health — a trend that continues today, according to a landmark Gallup-Healthways poll out this week.
Done nearly every day in 2008 and still ongoing, the survey of 355,334 people is believed to be the largest, longest and most thorough poll showing how emotional well-being shifts with economic changes. READ FULL STORYRead more…
A couple of years ago, after Bob Hope's death, the organizers asked George to be the tournament's official host. He was honored and excited, and he threw himself into the "Hopez" with a level of energy and commitment that was astonishing even by his hyperbeanic standards. He hosted every party, canvassed all of his showbiz and athlete pals to play, signed every autograph, and exhausted himself in the process. I know, because I went to the first one he hosted, and I couldn't believe how wiped out he was at the end of each day. He looked like a roadkill pinata. But the next morning he was back, being George Lopez again. I was so proud of him.
This year's event will be hosted by Arnold Palmer, who may be the most important person ever to play golf. I love everything about Arnold, and I'm not upset at all that he is involved, but I am seriously disturbed at the way George Lopez was treated. After all the effort he put in, he was told in a two-minute phone call that his services were no longer needed. That was it. READ FULL STORYRead more…
My wise old grandmother used to invoke the Spanish phrase, "When money is tight, a nickel isn't worth a dime."
Actually, that's not a phrase in Spanish (I think it's Yogi Berra). And my grandmother has never passed along anything resembling sage-like insight. She's much more likely to complain that young people don't wear enough clothes.
The point is that we Latinos don't have any special wisdom for dealing with this economic disaster, which has become (say it with me) the worst crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, the statistics indicate that Hispanics are ill-suited to weather this financial maelstrom. READ FULL STORYRead more…
America has long been the envy of the rest of the world, and for good reason. Over the past century, the United States has harnessed its economic, scientific, cultural and educational resources to produce remarkable achievements in every field of human endeavor. But with nations like China and India emerging as major powers, many argue that U.S. dominance will soon be eclipsed, and what is known as the American Century will soon be over. Our fate is far from sealed, though. Whether America surmounts its challenges or slides to the middle of the pack will likely depend on its fastest-growing segment: the Latino community. READ FULL STORYRead more…
U.S. civil rights leaders today said an increase in hate crimes committed against Hispanics and people perceived to be immigrants in recent years "correlates closely" to the nation's increasingly contentious debate over immigration, faulting anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media and extremist group mobilization on the Internet.
Hate crimes targeted against Hispanic Americans increased 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, the most recent year in which FBI statistics are available, from 426 to 595 incidents, marking the fourth consecutive year of increases. READ FULL STORYRead more…
When a large white van slowed near Kennedy Park on a recent sunny -- but very cold -- November day, about six men didn't wait for it to stop before they opened the doors and jumped inside.
They were day laborers -- most were Ecuadorean immigrants -- and they were hoping for some work.
The contractor, who was building a house, only needed two workers that day. "Take me, take me," some of the nearly 20 men who gathered around his van shouted.
Wall Street may get the big publicity, but the effects of the country's economic downturn are felt on many other streets, including those in downtown Danbury, where day laborers seek work in construction, landscaping and cleaning. READ FULL STORYRead more…
A little more than two years after this city of 27,750 put itself in the national spotlight by trying to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments, life for Hispanics has changed in Farmers Branch.
Among working-class Hispanics, there are rumors that the city "doesn’t want us." They are jittery around police, and some know families that have moved out since the city started trying to prohibit illegal immigrants from renting in 2006.
The controversy has also inspired Hispanic professionals to organize, with the goal of gaining representation in a city where Latinos — who make up nearly half the population — have had virtually none. READ FULL ARTICLERead more…
Nearly 1 million Mexican migrants living in the U.S. are expected to head home for the holidays, but relatively few are returning loaded down with gifts and cash this year.
Many are simply moving back after losing their jobs in the U.S. economic crisis, a disappointing turn for an annual journey that has become a cherished tradition in towns and villages across Mexico.
In many impoverished hamlets, migrants are usually welcomed home with lavish festivities. Townspeople admire their new vehicles bought with U.S.-earned dollars, and children scramble to see what is inside boxes as if Santa Claus had just arrived. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Some 234,000 working-age Latinos who immigrated to the United States between 1990 and 1999 no longer are part of the American labor force, a new report says.
Those workers left the work force over the past year as the economy slid into recession, according to an analysis released Monday by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center. READ FULL ARTICLERead more…
Growing up along the Texas border, Edward Caballero remembers fearing the green-uniformed agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Now, the 32-year old Caballero — a former schoolteacher in the Rio Grande Valley — is one of thousands of new agents who have swelled the force's ranks to more than 18,000, a product of an historic recruitment blitz.
And unlike the Border Patrol of his youth, which was overwhelmingly Anglo, the expanded border agency is now 54 percent minority. Hispanics like Caballero comprise 52 percent of the agents. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Attracted by reasonable rents, a lower cost of living and relative quiet, Anthony Rodriguez moved to Allentown three years ago from Queens, N.Y., to start his own floral business. It didn't hurt that the city has a sizable Hispanic community.
''It's great because we get along with each other,'' said Rodriguez, 32. ''Spanish people help Spanish people.'' READ FULL STORYRead more…
A small but significant decline has occurred during the current recession in the share of Latino immigrants active in the U.S. labor force, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.
The proportion of working-age Latino immigrants active in the labor force has fallen, at least through the third quarter of 2008, while the proportion of all non-Hispanics as well as of native-born Hispanics has held steady. Among Hispanic immigrants, the decrease is sharpest among those from Mexico and those who arrived in the U.S. since 2000. Also, the increase in the number of foreign-born Latinos in the labor force is much smaller than previous years. READ FULL ARTICLERead more…
Robert Rose remembers when he first pitched advertisers the idea of an English language show about Latino culture.
"They were not receptive at all," says the founder and executive producer of LATV Networks, which produces the "American Latino TV" and "LatiNation TV" shows.
Advertisers "were loyal to the Univision model, which was that to reach Latinos, you had to do it in Spanish. Everyone had been saying the same thing for 25 years."
This was more than seven years ago, when Univision was still the 500-pound gorilla in the Latin TV market, he says.
Less than a decade later, four national Latino-targeted TV channels in English — Mun2, SiTv, MTVTr3s and LATV — have been launched and three syndicated programs such as "LatinEyes TV" air regularly across the U.S. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Lax enforcement of fair housing laws has resulted in a disproportionate number of minorities with high-cost, subprime loans and has contributed the current lending crisis, according to a national report released Tuesday.
The 99-page "Future of Fair Housing" report is the result of a six-month-long, cross-country investigation into the state of fair housing in America, headed up by former Department of Housing and Urban Development secretaries Jack Kemp and Henry Cisneros.
According to the report - which comes 40 years after the Fair Housing Act was put into place - roughly 54 percent of African Americans and 47 percent of Latinos received subprime loans in 2006 compared to approximately 17 percent of whites nationwide. READ FULL ARTICLERead more…
