Michigan State House Discusses Whether Undocumented Children Have Right To Attend School In Michigan

Michigan state house (education committee) currently discussing whether undocumented children have a right to attend school in Michigan and whether their parents have right to decide which school.

The debate started as a debate as to whether or not parents could trigger a privatization or take over of a public school if the school was "failing".  The bill would allow for a simple majority of parents to take over the school and hire a charter operator to run same.  (As a retired public school administrator, I will skip adding my two cents to that debate.)

However, the discussion has devolved further as to whether or not the parents of undocumented children would have a right to vote in such an "election" and even if their kids have a right to attend school.

This posting in Twitter from conservative reporter Dave Murray of Grand Rapids Press:

"Dave Murray:

Trigger discussion has spun into a debate on whether illegal immigrants can attend schools, then vote in trigger elections."

P.S. I believe that the US Department of Education and Supreme Court have ruled that schools have no right to turn children, any children, away from public school doors.

The link to an article that Mr. Murray has just published can be found at:

http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/09/detroit_parents_say_parent_tri.html

Homelessness can't simply be wished away

For some people, the line between having and having not is thinner than we’d like to believe.

One not-so-tiny disaster, one troubling financial misstep, one awful decision and what was once there is not anymore and there you are.

And then the troubles build on top of each other, growing and roiling and fulminating like some personal form of nuclear fusion and the bad becomes worse and the worse becomes unimaginable.

We are all convinced we live in a protective little bubble where the truly nasty stuff stays away and afflicts somebody else. Truth is, it doesn’t always happen that way.

Homelessness is a problem everywhere and anywhere in this country. You can ignore it all you like.  You can look the other way or pretend local, state and federal government programs will take care of it so you don’t have to. But, again, it just doesn’t work that way.

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120916/NEWS01/309160017/Chuck-Carlson-Homelessness-can-t-simply-wished-away?nclick_check=1

Voces establishes itself in Battle Creek Latino community

The memory still makes Kate Flores shudder.

She recounts the story of a local Latino woman who was in the midst of a miscarriage, could not speak English and had no way to make herself understood at the hospital because there was no interpreter.

So instead, she relied on her English-speaking 13-year-old son in the emergency room, the only person she trusted to make herself understood to doctors.

“Can you imagine?” said Flores, executive director of Voces, a nonprofit organization seeking to provide assistance to Latinos in the Battle Creek area.

It’s that story, and others too much like it, that convinced Flores and others concerned about the local Spanish-speaking community to get behind Voces, Spanish for “voices.”

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120913/NEWS01/309130001/Voces-establishes-itself-B-C-Latino-community

Racial, Regional Divide Still Haunt Detroit's Progress

For many years — perhaps even decades — Detroit has been the poster child for economic malaise. Adjusting for inflation, per capita income in metro Detroit dropped more than 20 percent between 1999 and 2010.

Some analysts say regional cooperation might have helped keep Detroit above water when the car industry sank, but that entrenched divisions that pit the city against its suburbs, and blacks against whites, have hindered that.

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/11/160768981/racial-regional-divide-still-haunt-detroits-progress

NY Times Editorial: The Constitution on Skid Row

In 2011, a Federal District Court judge enjoined the city (of Los Angeles) from seizing property there unless it was abandoned, contraband, evidence of a crime or an immediate threat to public health or safety, and from destroying it unless it posed a threat.

In a welcome 2-to-1 ruling last week, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that order, rejecting the contention that “the unattended property of homeless persons is uniquely beyond the reach of the Constitution.” 

The court found that the Fourth Amendment’s protection of possessions and the 14th Amendment’s due-process guarantee prohibited this kind of confiscation of personal property by government, regardless of the homelessness of the owner. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-constitution-on-skid-row.html?_r=1

Chance Encounter

The community I live in is a relatively affluent one.  Not Gross Pointe or East Grand Rapids, but the rate of free and reduced price lunch in the schools is roughly half of the state average.  According to the real estate web site for Trulia Realtors, the average listing price for homes in my zip code is currently $357,000.  Only four of 133 homes currently listed for sale are listed for under $100,000.  The average is no doubt pulled up since seven homes, all with Lake Michigan access, are listed at over $1 million.  The median home listing (normally a better indicator of the community since a few very expensive homes can skew the data quickly) is still about $230,000-$240,000.

However, within the community are pockets of poverty.   Approximately, 29 percent of the children last school year qualified for free/reduced price school lunch.  There are areas of trailer and migrant housing.   As mentioned above, there are homes in the district which are valued at less than $100,000.  Some are much less.

My point is that poverty exists here.  But I wasn't really thinking about that when I went to the public library recently.  I wasn't thinking about the fact that many people don't have access to not only medical care, but dental and vision care as well.  This lady was my reminder:

Chance Encounter

Walking into the library entry 
my thoughts are on the book 
needing to be returned 
and the new one I hope to check out.
But I see kneeling there
a woman who also notices me 
as she tries on a discarded pair of glasses 
from the box marked:"Lions Donations."


Her search much more urgent
than feelings of embarrassment 
so she continues, as do I 
to deposit my returned book 
in the slot next to her.

Perhaps ten minutes later 
after checking out a new book 
on the life of Darwin 
I exit where
she is still kneeling in the entry 
scrounging through the box
trying out nearly every pair.
Alone.

So, with sadness in my eyes 
I pass her by again. 
She looking for better sight. 
Me, for human evolution 
and dignity. 

Hunger Action Week challenge to West Michigan: Can you live on $4.37 per day?

You spent about $30 on food for the week. But it's only Thursday, and most of the food is gone. You won't be able to buy any more for two days, meaning a few pieces of bread and peanut butter will be your Saturday and Sunday meals.

How is your stomach going to feel by Sunday night?

Area food assistance agencies want you to know.

The organizations are challenging people to live on $30.59 cents during Hunger Action Week from
Sept. 14-20 as part of the "HunGRy?" program. That weekly total breaks down to $4.37 a day.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/09/hunger_action_week_challenge_t.html

Pow Wow Celebrates the Harvest and Pokagon Way of Life

Musician Jason Wesaw says the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi has gathered around this time of year for generations to celebrate the harvest and all that the land provides to help them maintain their way of life. And for 27 years, the Pokagon have held the Kee Boon Mein Kaa Pow Wow, which takes place this weekend in Dowagiac.

“Kee Boon Mein Kaa literally means ‘I quit picking huckleberries,” Wesaw says.

Pokagon Cultural Associate Andy Jackson says huckleberries and the pow wow itself hold great significance to Pokagon families. Jackson recalls going to look at the old huckleberry patch with her grandfather

http://wmuk.org/arts-and-more/select/314309/

Invisible Americans (the Poor) Get the Silent Treatment

It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight, out of mind.”

And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans.  Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

http://billmoyers.com/2012/08/24/invisible-americans-get-the-silent-treatment/

Michigan Poverty Law Program's New Self Help Law Site

The Michigan Poverty law Program has developed (and is continuing to develop) a new self-help legal web site. The site includes self-help information for Michigan civil (but not criminal) legal matters. 

Their new web site is:

http://www.michiganlegalhelp.org/