Police officers file employer discrimination suit

By AMY TAXIN Associated Press
Posted: 03/02/2011 10:41:27 AM PST
Updated: 03/02/2011 03:41:35 PM PST

WESTMINSTER, Calif.—Three Latino police officers have sued their Southern California employer, alleging they have been passed over for promotions because of their ethnicity.
The officers for the Westminster Police Department say they have been turned down for special assignments including detective work in narcotics and gangs even though they have received honors, awards and good performance reviews.
The officers started to suspect they were being discriminated against when they realized all three of them were being passed over despite their exemplary records, said Victor Viramontes, who is the plaintiffs' attorney and national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.


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posted by: Angie Ngo

Diversity defines Silicon Valley, except at town halls

By Joe Rodriguez
jrodriguez@mercurynews.com
© Copyright 2011, Bay Area News Group
Posted: 04/16/2011 11:20:42 PM PDT
Updated: 04/18/2011 03:02:58 PM PDT


Silicon Valley may have the most dynamic, multiracial society on earth, but you wouldn't know it at city hall. With the 2010 census in, minorities now outnumber whites almost 2-to-1 in Santa Clara County. Yet non-Hispanic whites hold the vast majority of local city council seats, as well as every city manager's office in Santa Clara County's 15 towns and cities.


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posted by Angie Ngo

Retired Lt. Gen. Sanchez weighs run for US Senate

By HENRY C. JACKSON and WILL WEISSERT Associated Press
Posted: 04/18/2011 03:58:42 PM PDT

SAN ANTONIO—Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Monday he is considering running for the U.S. Senate in Texas as a Democrat, giving the party a high-profile recruit they hope can resonate with the state's rapidly growing Hispanic population.

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posted by Angie Ngo

Separate But Equal: Latino Students Forced Into ESL Classes in Texas

The Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) posted some important legal documents online for everyone to see. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:
At Preston Hollow Elementary School, a public school in an upper-income neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, Latino and other minority students were segregated into the school’s English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. They were kept separate from the Anglo students in the school, even though the majority of the Latino students in the ESL classes were proficient in English and some had even tested in English and been classified as “gifted and talented.” The Latino students were not allowed to mix with the Anglo students even in art, music, and physical education classes and were grouped in classrooms in separate hallways from the Anglo students.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

Latino Farmers Reject USDA Settlement, Claim Racism

A lawyer representing Hispanic farmers alleging discrimination by the United States Department of Agriculture over a number of years called the $1.3 billion settlement offered by the government on Friday “unacceptable.”

The group of farmers, which also includes women farmers, claims the USDA favored white farmers for years by giving them preference for loans and assistance. The offer by the government would amount to about $50,000 per farmer and set aside another $160 million in farm debt relief for eligible women and Hispanic farmers.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

AZ Senate Elimates Spanish Election Material

So this really isn’t about immigrants, undocumented or not. The folks in power in Arizona don’t want anything in their state that doesn’t look or sound like they do. This recent vote in the Arizona state senate proves the point.
The bill, SB1490 proposed by Maricopa County Senator Steve Smith, bars the production of all government material in laguanges other than English. The Arizona Senate has approved it.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

How Latinos Are Changing The Electoral College Map

Studying census data is somewhat like reading tea leaves or gazing into a crystal ball, one is always trying to determine what is said and what it means in the future. There are several things I discovered as I gazed at the crystal ball that are the census data: Latinos are going to play a major role in forthcoming presidential elections and Latinos are spreading over the entire country.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

Latinos Will Surpass the 55 Million Mark

So now that we’re 42 states into the 50-state Census roll-out reveal it’s a good time to pause to see where we are and what to expect. Back in the day (it’s only been 5 months but it seems like an eternity) when Carlos Guerra, Sara Inés Calderón, Gilberto Ocañas and I sat for coffee at the Foundry in San Antonio to plot News Taco we were convinced that the US Census was going to be a startling revelation. We wagered that the count would show at least 55 million Latinos in the United States – far more than most estimates had predicted. It turns out there’s some good ju-ju in the Foundry coffee because our aim was dead-on

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

Neo-Nazi, Latino Confrontation In Claremont

Head-shaven and military boot wearing a group of about two dozen white supremacists marched on the streets of Claremont, CA, in protest against what they claim is an “unbridled flow of immigration” into the region. What’s interesting is that these guys didn’t make the distinction between documented and undocumented immigrants, they don’t discriminate their hate, they pretty much don’t like any and all immigrants.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez

Texas Set To Pass Voter ID Law

The Republicans in Texas have been trying for years to pass voter ID legislation—and today they very likely will be almost done. The measure, which requires voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot in person, has already passed through the Senate and today, with a Republican supermajority controlling the lower chamber, it almost definitely will pass the House. Given that Gov. Perry has been itching to pass this thing for years, the bill should fly into law faster than a School House Rock song. The Democrats’ long battle to defeat the measure is seemingly over.

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Posted by Sylvia Lopez