Pacific Progressive

High Levels of Latino and African American Seniors Lack Retirement Security

From Demos

The Institute on Assets and Social Policy and the national policy center Demos released a report revealing that only four percent of Latino seniors and eight percent of African-American seniors have the resources to maintain economic security for the duration of their lives. The report, "The Crisis of Economic Insecurity for African-American and Latino Seniors," underscores how the nation's seniors were experiencing declining economic security even before the Great Recession.

While only one in four white seniors currently have adequate resources for a secure retirement, the disparity between whites and people of color reveals that, for seniors of color, retirement insecurity is the norm and security is the exception.  This report looks to the history of racial discrimination in the housing and labor markets to explain this condition of insecurity among seniors of color: the extensive practice of redlining, segregation and workplace discrimination has inhibited the ability of today's seniors of color to accumulate the asset wealth needed for a secure retirement. Inequality experienced over the course of one's lifetime is compounded in later years and can continue with ripple effects over generations..

In response to these findings, the report makes the following recommendations:

--Ensure the strength and adequacy of the Social Security program.

--Sustain funding for senior support services, which help seniors meet basic needs.

Teen: My Principal Assaulted Me For Wanting to Form Gay-Straight Alliance Club

by Brian Stewart

This material was created by Campus Progress.

A Tennessee high school student says his principal verbally and physically harassed him because of the T-shirt he was wearing—a homemade shirt showing support for stalled efforts to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.

For months, Chris Sigler—a straight, 17-year-old student at Sequoyah High School whose sister is bisexual and has been subject to bullying—and others have tried to create GSA club but have been blocked by the seemingly discriminatory Principal Maurice Moser, who told the blog Talk About Equality that discussions about forming the club were “disrupting the educational environment.”

Then earlier this month, Sigler wore a T-shirt to school that read: “GSA: We’ve got your back.” Here’s how the ensuing scene reportedly transpired, according to ABC News:

Last Tuesday, a teacher told Sigler to cover up the shirt, but he resisted and wore it again on Friday. Moser ordered all the students out of the classroom, according to the Siglers, except for his sister Jessica, who refused to leave her brother.

Both students allege that Moser then grabbed Sigler’s arm, shoved him and chest-bumped him repeatedly while asking “Who’s the big man now?”

Teen: My Principal Assaulted Me For Wanting to Form Gay-Straight Alliance Club

 by Brian Stewart

This material was created by Campus Progress.

A Tennessee high school student says his principal verbally and physically harassed him because of the T-shirt he was wearing—a homemade shirt showing support for stalled efforts to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.

For months, Chris Sigler—a straight, 17-year-old student at Sequoyah High School whose sister is bisexual and has been subject to bullying—and others have tried to create GSA club but have been blocked by the seemingly discriminatory Principal Maurice Moser, who told the blog Talk About Equality that discussions about forming the club were “disrupting the educational environment.”

Then earlier this month, Sigler wore a T-shirt to school that read: “GSA: We’ve got your back.” Here’s how the ensuing scene reportedly transpired, according to ABC News:

Last Tuesday, a teacher told Sigler to cover up the shirt, but he resisted and wore it again on Friday. Moser ordered all the students out of the classroom, according to the Siglers, except for his sister Jessica, who refused to leave her brother.

Both students allege that Moser then grabbed Sigler’s arm, shoved him and chest-bumped him repeatedly while asking “Who’s the big man now?”

Transgender People Likely Disenfranchised by Voter ID Laws, Research Suggests

by Sam Menefee-Libey with Vincent Villano

This material was created by Campus Progress.

It’s no secret that some of the most common burdens in the daily lives of transgender people are identification documents. Gender markers (either explicit or inferred from photos or names) on everything from driver’s licenses to birth certificates to Social Security ID’s create constant difficulties—from bureaucratic headaches to legitimate safety concerns—for both transgender and gender non-conforming people.

Now, with the passage of “Voter ID” laws in several states, we can add the basic democratic right to vote to the list of activities that force transgender people to confront substantial institutional, personal, and psychological barriers to something crucial that many others take for granted.

First, some context: Over the past year, Republican legislators have launched themselves into a panic over “voter fraud” and have posited the need for stricter identification requirements when people vote.

But anyone who puts the slightest trust in (or even considers) empirical data about voting knows that voter fraud is an incredibly rare occurrence. By incredibly rare, we’re talking less than a thousandth of a percent rare.

(Campus Progress Map: Has Your State Passed a Voter ID Law?)

Social Security Administration Changes Gender Notification Policy

by Shay O'Reilly

This material was created by Campus Progress.

It happened quickly and quietly, making virtually no headlines: The Social Security Administration changed its gender notification policy last week, a shift that avoids outing transgender workers.

Under the new guidelines, the agency will no longer cross-reference employers’ reports of employees’ genders—submitted along with their Social Security Number upon hiring—to their database. More importantly, the administration will not notify employers if the listed gender of their employees does not match that on record.

This change will end a dangerous bureaucratic nightmare for thousands of Americans.

A National Center for Transgender Equality Freedom of Information Act request found that the Social Security Administration sent more than 700,000 no-match letters last year.

A no-match letter, sent when the recorded gender of an employee does not match the gender listed on the social security account, gave a transgender person two options: Try to change their gender with the Social Security Administration, or reveal their transgender status to employers and fellow employees.

Neither of these options was ideal.

A Better, More Diverse Senior Executive Service in 2050

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Jitinder Kohli, John Gans, James Hairston

Download this report (pdf)

Download the introduction and summary (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

From the start, the United States of America aspired to be a land of opportunity—a land where people come for a better life and where every child can dream of working their way to the top. It has always been a true melting pot, attracting the best from around the world to mix in a polyglot society to produce a sum better, more productive, and more innovative than its parts. The resulting diversity is a national asset—helping the United States become the world’s leading nation.

In this century, too, diversity will continue to power American society and the U.S. economy. By the year 2050 the U.S. Census Bureau projects a nation with no clear racial or ethnic majority. Fifty-four percent of the population will be people of color.

But what about the federal government? As the nation becomes more diverse, will the government reflect the diverse society it serves? That is the question the Center for American Progress’s Doing What Works and Progress 2050 teams seek to answer in this report. Specifically, we look at the ethnic, racial, and gender diversity of federal government’s most senior career public officials in the civil service. The career Senior Executive Service is a corps of around 7,000 senior managers. They work for the executive branch to help run agencies such as the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Huge Disparity in Share of Total Wealth Gain Since 1983

This material was published by the Economic Policy Institute.

Wealth is now lower for the typical household than it was a generation ago in 1983, while the wealth at the upper end has expanded.  As today’s Snapshot illustrates, the richest 5 percent of households obtained roughly 82 percent of all the nation’s gains in wealth between 1983 and 2009. The bottom 60 percent of households had less wealth in 2009 than in 1983, meaning they did not participate at all in the growth of wealth over this period.

NCAA Issues New Guidelines for Transgender Student Athletes

by Shay O'Reilly

This material was created by Campus Progress.

When George Washington University student Kye Allums came out last year, he was worried about keeping his basketball scholarship.

As a transgender man who plays women’s basketball, the rules were nebulous: Not only did he face potential rejection by his teammates, but there was also little precedent for the treatment of transgender student athletes in sex-segregated sports.

Luckily, his teammates and coach accepted him, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled—with input from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Women’s Sports Foundation, and It Takes A Team—that Allums would have no problems competing on the women’s team as long as he did not undergo hormone replacement therapy.

Now, the NCAA has made these rules official by approving a definitive policy for trans athletes last week.

Under the new policy, trans women may play on women’s teams as long as they have been taking hormone blockers for one year, and trans men may play on men’s teams if they are on testosterone therapy. Trans men who have started hormones may not, however, play on women’s teams.

Health & Human Services Letter Gives New Pro-LGBT Hospital Visitation Guidelines Teeth

This material was published by Campus Progress.

 by Shay O'Reilly

Hospitals are now required to allow designated persons—including same-sex partners in states that don’t allow marriage, along with close friends and non-blood kin—to visit their loved ones.

Despite President Obama’s April 15, 2010 memo requiring hospitals to grant visitation rights to non-relatives, there has been a delay in practical application. That delay ended last week, after the Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to states that included a plan for enforcement. 

Obama’s 2010 memo explicitly referenced the disparity between the treatment of same-sex and heterosexual couples, both in visitation rights and the ability to make decisions for incapacitated partners. The president wrote:

Uniquely affected are gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives—unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated.

The presidential memo also mentioned the inclusion of good friends and religious leaders in hospital visitation, and barred hospitals from blocking visitors on the basis of gender, disability, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Federal Marriage Grant Funded Anti-LGBT Iowa Group

This material was created by Campus Progress.

by Brian Stewart

A right-wing Iowa group that successfully campaigned for the ousting of three state Supreme Court justices, whose ruling legalized same-sex marriage, used federal funding to support some of its efforts, aninvestigation by the Associated Press reveals.

The FAMiLY Leader, formerly called the Iowa Family Policy Center, collected $2.2 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2006-2010 to offer marriage counseling services.

But those taxpayer dollars helped the socially conservative group function while it persuaded voters to kick three Supreme Court justices off the bench—the first time in the state’s history voters have removed a judge. The group also turned away same-sex couples from the counseling services despite the fact that gay marriage was legal in the state.

“During this grant time the group was working to promote an agenda that included their involvement in politics in terms of trying to defeat the retention of three Iowa Supreme Court justices," Randall Wilson, the legal director for Iowa’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter, told the AP. "It becomes concerning, too, when federal money subsidizes or potentially could have been used to subsidize a political effort."

Momentum to End Discrimination Against Unemployed jobseekers Builds, but Discriminatory Ads Continue

 by Laura Clawson, Daily Kos Labor

Mitchell Hirsch catches a whole bunch of discriminatory job listings showing up at CareerBuilder.com:

The latest examples appear two months after the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report detailing similarly exclusionary job postings this spring.  Since then, federal legislation has been introduced that would ban hiring practices, including job ads, that discriminate against unemployed workers by excluding them from consideration for employment opportunities.  As these harmful practices have attracted growing attention, one leading job site -- Indeed.com -- recently announced it would no longer post such exclusionary ads.

That's even as the movement to ban such discrimination gains steam. Wednesday, Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Hank Johnson and Senator Richard Blumenthal, sponsors of House and Senate bills prohibiting discrimination against unemployed jobseekers, held a press conference on the issue, at which:

Congress today received a petition with 250,000 names in support of ending discrimination against the unemployed, said David Elliot, a spokesman with the Washington-based USAction, a federation of 22 state affiliates that advocates for human- service programs and support for public education.

Anti-Transgender Violence: How Hate-Crime Laws Have Failed

by: Victoria Law, Truthout | News Analysis

On the morning of June 5, 2011, a 23-year-old African-American transgender woman, Chrishaun McDonald, and her friends were walking down Lake Street in Minneapolis. As they passed Schooner Tavern, Dean Schmitz, a 47-year-old white man, began shouting racial slurs at McDonald, asking, "Did you think you were going to rape somebody in those girl clothes?" Schmitz and two other bar patrons then attacked McDonald.

During the attack, glass was smashed into McDonald's face and Schmitz was killed. McDonald was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

The details of what happened are still not clear. However, considering the widespread discrimination, harassment and violence that transgender people face every day in the United States, McDonald and her friends had ample reason to fear that Schmitz's attack could lead to serious injury, if not death. A recent report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that 50 percent of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) murders in 2009 and 44 percent of LGBT murders in 2010 were of transgender women. This year, does not seem to be a safer year for transgender people either:

In January 2011, in Minneapolis, a transgender woman named Krissy Bates was strangled and then stabbed to death by her new boyfriend.

Targeting Dissent

by: Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts | Special Feature

Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts.

How little - yet how much - has changed in the last 40 years. The COINTELPRO papers sound distinctly 21st century as they detail the monitoring of perceived threats to "national security" by the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), Secret Service, and the military, as well as the intelligence bureaucracy's war on First Amendment protest activity.  

The Church Committee investigation concluded in 1976 that the "unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order."

In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of NSA "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency. The secret lists, which included people whose activities "may result in civil disturbances or otherwise subvert the national security of the US," were used by the NSA to extract information of "intelligence value" from its stream of intercepted communications.

Iowa Gay Marriage in Jeopardy With Senator’s Resignation

This material was created by Campus Progress.

 by Shay O'Reilly

After a special election this November, Iowans may find a challenge to the state’s legal gay marriage back on the ballot.

State Sen. Swati Dandekar, a Democrat from Linn County, resigned late last week after Republican Gov. Terry Branstad offered her a position on the Iowa Utilities Board. Her seat will be filled in a special election on Nov. 8.

Left in balance is the current Democratic majority, and with it the dominance of Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal.

Gronstal has proven himself an adamant defender of Democratic values in a state government otherwise dominated by Republicans, effectively vetoing House measures, including collective bargaining restrictions and some of the most stringent abortion limitations in the nation, by refusing to bring them to the floor for a vote.

Gronstal has also promised to block a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. Despite active lobbying by LGBT Iowans and their families, the Iowa Marriage Amendment passed the Iowa House in March 62-37—but failed to make it out of committee, with Gronstal stating outright that he would refuse to place it on the agenda.

Unequal Aid - Discriminatory Treatment of Gay and Transgender Applicants and Families Headed by Same-Sex Couples in the Higher Education Financial Aid Process

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Crosby Burns

Download this report (pdf)

Download the introduction and summary (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

See also: Fact Sheet: LGBT Discrimination in Higher Education Financial Aid by Crosby Burns

Financial aid for higher education often represents the lifeline that allows students to acquire a postsecondary education in our country. Access to higher education is the gateway to economic prosperity for many Americans. Individuals with higher education have higher earnings than those who do not, and that holds true across race, ethnicity, and gender. Similarly, those with higher education degrees experience lower rates of unemployment and poverty, as well as have fewer health issues than those who do not or cannot attain a postsecondary education. And those with college degrees exhibit higher rates of civic engagement—they are more likely to vote, donate blood, and volunteer.