Multiple Marginality
latimes: In Mexicali, a haven for broken lives: The once-grand El Hotel Centenario is now the decrepit El Hotel del Migrante Deportado — the Hotel of the Deported Migrant. It hosts a procession of lost souls. They blame America for exploiting their labor, then discarding them. But they also are haunted by their mistakes, accomplices to their own downfall. The U.S. offered me opportunities, and I blew it. We’re here for being reckless. I lost everything because of my stupid mistake. My wife warned me: You shouldn’t be drinking and driving. Honestly, the American dream is over. A 39-year-old former day laborer dedicates a prayer to his teenage son in the San Fernando Valley: “For our families who lack food because of our absence, we pray that we are reunited one day.” Photo: Christian Rivera, 25, sobs during a breakfast blessing at the Hotel of the Deported Migrant. He said he was crying because his wife called this morning to say she had lost her job at a Wal-Mart in Seattle. Now there’s no income for her and their 7-year-old son. Rivera was deported for failure to pay court fees for a traffic ticket and deported again when he tried to sneak back into the U.S. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
"Poverty is not simply having no money — it is isolation, vulnerability, humiliation and mistrust. It is not being able to differentiate between employers and exploiters and abusers. It is contempt for the simplistic illusion of meritocracy — the idea that what we get is what we work for. It is knowing that your mother, with her arthritic joints and her maddening insomnia and her post-traumatic stress disordered heart, goes to work until two in the morning waiting tables for less than minimum wage, or pushes a janitor’s cart and cleans the shit-filled toilets of polished professionals. It is entering a room full of people and seeing not only individual people, but violent systems and stark divisions. It is the violence of untreated mental illness exacerbated by the fact that reality, from some vantage points, really does resemble a psychotic nightmare. It is the violence of abuse and assault which is ignored or minimized by police officers, social services, and courts of law. Poverty is conflict. And for poor kids lucky enough to have the chance to “move up,” it is the conflict between remaining oppressed or collaborating with the oppressor."

— Megan Lee (via sociolab)

(Source: docs.google.com, via crunkfeministcollective)

latimes: A 10-year nightmare over rape conviction is over: Brian Banks spent years in prison, branded a rapist. Then his accuser provided the key to getting his conviction dismissed. Banks had a choice: He could take the he said-she said case to trial and, if convicted, risk being sentenced to 41 years to life in prison. Or, as his lawyer advised, he could accept a plea deal. Photo: Brian Banks, with his attorneys, is overcome with emotion in the courtroom. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

» 4 TED Talks that Inspire Social Entrepreneurship

latimes: Caught in the cycle of poverty: Choices, challenges and chaos keep undermining a woman’s attempt to escape the struggles her mother and grandmother faced. She wants to provide a better life for her children but seems not to know how. “My mother struggled, my grandma struggled and I am struggling,” Cole said. “Hopefully they will see what we went through as a family and it makes them want to be better and go to school and graduate so they don’t have to struggle.” Their struggles often involve housing. Cole and her family have briefly stayed in an old van, in a motel and, for one night, on skid row. “I try not to cry in front of my kids,” she said. “I cried.” Late last year, Cole was paying $400 to rent a room in South Los Angeles, where the whole family slept. But the roommate complained about the noise and the mess, and she eventually kicked them out. Photo: Cole, in relief and joy, embraces boyfriend Juan Sena after learning that they had gotten the new one-bedroom apartment. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

» Editorial: Behind the barbed wire of California's prisons

latimes:

Since 1996, the media have not been allowed to interview inmates — and conditions have deteriorated. AB 1270 would allow the media back in.

theatlantic: For the First Time Ever, a Majority of the Unemployed Have Attended College Everybody is looking for the next big “bubble”. Maybe it’s bonds. Or tech stocks. Or … college? With tuition soaring and job prospects not, a growing chorus thinks higher education might just be too big not to fail. The calculus is simple. If college costs keep rising, but job prospects don’t improve, eventually higher education won’t be worth it. Pop goes the campus bubble — or so the story goes. That brings us to one of the more inauspicious recent headlines. For the first time ever, the majority of the unemployed have attended some college. Does this mark some kind of inflection point? Is it time to ditch the classroom for the office? Not exactly. […] The chart above isn’t a story about a college degree no longer paying off. The chart above is a story about more people going to college, but not nearly as many more people finishing college. Read more. [Image: IBD, via Business Insider]
good: How Fingerprinting Food Stamp Recipients Hurts Everyone Every year, thousands of New Yorkers must report to state offices for government fingerprinting. These residents aren’t criminals. They’re applying to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps. New York is poised to end this system, but there are still those who think it’s necessary to avoid fraud. Sarah Parsons says this is flawed logic. Read more on GOOD.is

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