Disenfranchised - School Counselors

MODERN SCHOOL COUNSELORS are too often the only advocates many children have. The thin red line between hope and hopelessness. In the face of chronic failure, neglect, abuse and worse. We carry on with the US Supreme court mandate that all children should have a free and adequate education "socialization" skills are a necessary adjunct if men are to be seen as equals. That statement is more true and necessary today. Counselors meet these needs and more in the education setting.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Al Frankin WINS!

Tuesday afternoon, after a grueling recount process, former Sen. Norm Coleman finally conceded defeat and congratulated Al Franken on his Senate victory in Minnesota. Franken is a longtime union member and supporter of workers' rights. Sen. Franken is expected to take a seat on the powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, where he will play a key role in health care reform.

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HRES 1104 IH 111th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 1104 Supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States, no matter their country of origin or their creed, and to commemorate the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week theme of ‘Crime Victims’ Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.’. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES February 24, 2010 Mr. COSTA (for himself, Mr. POE of Texas, Mr. BACA, Mr. CARDOZA, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. HASTINGS of Florida, Mr. HOLDEN, Mr. LARSEN of Washington, Ms. MATSUI, Mr. MCGOVERN, Mr. MINNICK, Mr. MOORE of Kansas, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr. PIERLUISI, and Mr. ROYCE) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary RESOLUTION Supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States, no matter their country of origin or their creed, and to commemorate the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week theme of ‘Crime Victims’ Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.’. Whereas over 25,000,000 individuals in the United States are victims of crime each year, including over 6,000,000 individuals who are victims of violent crime; Whereas a just society acknowledges the impact of crime on individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities by ensuring that rights, resources, and services are available to help rebuild the lives of victims; Whereas although our Nation has steadily expanded rights, protections, and services for victims of crime, too many victims are still not able to realize the hope and promise of these expanded rights, protections, and services; Whereas despite impressive accomplishments over the past 40 years in crime victims’ rights and services, there remain many challenges to ensuring that all victims-- (1) are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect; (2) are offered support and services regardless of whether they report the crimes committed against them to law enforcement; and (3) are recognized as key participants in our system of justice when such crimes are reported; Whereas justice systems in the United States should ensure that services are available for all victims of crime, including victims from underserved communities of our Nation; Whereas observing victims’ rights and treating victims with fairness, dignity, and respect serve the public interest by engaging victims in the justice system, inspiring respect for public authorities, and promoting confidence in public safety; Whereas individuals in the United States recognize that our homes, neighborhoods, and communities are made safer and stronger by identifying and meeting the needs of crime victims and ensuring justice for all; Whereas treating victims of crime with fairness, dignity, and respect, as encouraged and expressed by the theme of 2010 National Crime Victims’ Right Week, ‘Crime Victims’ Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.’, costs nothing more than taking time to identify victims’ needs and concerns, and effective collaboration among justice systems to meet such needs and concerns; and Whereas 2010 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, April 18 through April 24, 2010, provides an opportunity for justice systems in the United States to strive to reach the goal of justice for all by ensuring that all victims are afforded legal rights and provided with assistance as they face the financial, physical, spiritual, psychological, and social impact of crime: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives-- (1) supports the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week to increase public awareness of-- (A) the impact on victims and survivors of crime; and (B) the constitutional and statutory rights and needs of such victims and survivors; (2) recognizes that fairness, dignity, and respect comprise the very foundation of how victims and survivors of crime should be treated; and (3) directs the Clerk of the House of Representatives to transmit an enrolled copy of this resolution to the Office for Victims of Crime within the Office of Justice Programs of the Department of Justice.

Child abuse drops sharply in U.S. Study: Incidents declined by 26 percent from 1993 to 2006

The buildings had no running water, illegal wiring, boarded up windows and rodent infestations, officials said.any of these 74 children are presumably of school age, and will be starting one of Oakland's elementary schools next Monday. They are now homeless, living with relatives or in a shelter. When they arrive at school, they will not have a sign explaining their conditions. They will just be among the many thousands of Oakland students struggling to live way below the poverty line. Many of Oakland's schools are attended by students who live in poverty. Some schools are more than 90% economically disadvantaged.
We are often told not to make excuses for the poor performance of our schools, but I have seen firsthand the effect that poverty has on student performance. The children who lived in this apartment complex (until they were made completely homeless this week) are not that unusual. They have no place to study, so it is tough to do homework. There are drug users around the building, so it is noisy at night, making it hard to sleep. There are shootings in the neighborhood, so sometimes they have to dive to take cover from flying bullets. The nearest real grocery store is literally miles away, so food is often purchased at the neighborhood convenience store, and is highly processed and unhealthy. You can see them walking to school in the morning, eating their breakfast of corn chips and soda pop.
And just the stress of being poor takes its toll. If I am a bit short with my bills at the end of the month, I know how stressed that makes me. But those without regular work have a level of stress I have never even known. Unemployment in the Bay Area is over eleven percent, and is at least double that in many of these neighborhoods. That stress spills into family life, making people short-tempered and even violent. Children are often moved from one home to another, depending on who has space and food to take them in. Can you imagine how you would feel as a parent if you could not even afford to pay for a roof over your children's heads?
On Monday, teachers will welcome their students to class. The ones without homes, the ones who are hungry, the ones in foster care -- they will do their best to hide these conditions. Like wounded birds, they do not want to appear weak or flawed. Once they are grown and have achieved success, they may take some pride in their humble origins, but there is no pride in being homeless when it is your reality today.
Good teachers will find out soon who the hungry ones are, and work with the school and the child's parent or guardian to get them signed up for free lunches. They will make space for the children to stay after school and do homework. They will push all their students to do their best regardless of their circumstances. School can be a sanctuary for these students, a place where they are safe, and have a chance to be seen as human beings.
This fall there is less money than ever. Most of the Republicans in the state legislature have signed a pledge not to ever raise taxes, so when state revenues plummeted this year, school funding was cut by more than a thousand dollars per student. While the Bay Area remains an expensive place to live, Oakland's teachers are among the lowest paid in the region. Class sizes will expand, and there will be no money to repair the copy machine or replace broken furniture or lost books. Teachers will dip into their savings accounts to make up the difference for their children, because that is what we do.
But there is a way in which education rhetoric these days seems to deny that poverty has an impact on the ability of students to learn. Sometimes it feels as if the schools and teachers are actually being blamed for the conditions our students are forced to live in. These conditions should not be used to justify a poor quality education. But the schools and teachers that serve these students have special challenges, and need our support.
What is the impact of poverty on your students? How do you respond as an educator? How should we respond as a society?
Posted by Anthony Cody on August 26, 2009 7:49 AM

Child abuse drops sharply in U.S.
Study: Incidents declined by 26 percent from 1993 to 2006

updated 5:38 p.m. ET, Tues., Feb. 2, 2010
NEW YORK - A massive new federal study documents an unprecedented and dramatic decrease in incidents of serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Experts hailed the findings as proof that crackdowns and public awareness campaigns had made headway.

An estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse in 2005-06, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993, the study found.

"It's the first time since we started collecting data about these things that we've seen substantial declines over a long period, and that's tremendously encouraging," said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse.

It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it's a problem that is amenable to solutions," he said.

The findings were contained in the fourth installment of the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, a congressionally mandated study that has been conducted periodically by the Department of Health and Human Services. The previous version was issued in 1996, based on 1993 data.

The new study is based on information from more than 10,700 "sentinels" — such as child welfare workers, police officers, teachers, health care professionals and day care workers — in 122 counties across the country. The detailed data collected from them was then used to make national estimates.

What's behind the decline?
The number of sexually abused children decreased from 217,700 in 1993 to 135,300 in 2005-2006 — a 38 percent drop, the study shows. The number of children who experienced physical abuse fell by 15 percent and the number of emotionally abused children dropped by 27 percent.

The 455-page study shied away from trying to explain the trends, but other experts offered their theories.

"There's much more public awareness and public intolerance around child abuse now," said Linda Spears, the Child Welfare League of America's vice president for public policy. "It was a hidden concern before — people were afraid to talk about it if it was in their family."

She also noted the proliferation of programs designed to help abusers and potential abusers overcome their problems.

Finkelhor, whose own previous research detected a drop in abuse rates, said the study reveals "real, substantial declines" that cannot be dismissed on any technical grounds, such as changing definitions of abuse.

He suggested that the decline was a product of several coinciding trends, including a "troop surge" in the 1990s when more people were deployed in child protection services and the criminal justice system intensified its anti-abuse efforts with more arrests and prison sentences.

Finkelhor also suggested that the greatly expanded use of medications may have enabled many potential child abusers to treat the conditions that otherwise might have led them to molest or mistreat a child.

"There's also been a general change in perceptions and norms about what one can get away with, so much more publicity about these things," he said.

Released to little fanfare
One curious aspect of the study was the manner of its release. Although HHS had launched the study in 2004 and invested several million dollars, it was posted a few days ago on the Internet with no fanfare — neither a press release nor a news conference. Finkelhor, noting that experts in the field had been impatiently awaiting the study, described this low-profile approach as "shocking."

The findings might be disconcerting to some in the child-welfare field who base their funding pitches on the specter of ever-rising abuse rates, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

"The best use of scarce child welfare dollars is on prevention and family preservation — not on hiring more people to investigate less actual abuse," Wexler said.

The study found some dramatic differences in child abuse rates based on socio-economic factors. Poor children were three times more likely than other kids to experience abuse, and rates of abuse in African-American families were significantly higher than for whites and Hispanics.

Family structure also was a factor — for example, children whose single parent had a live-in partner faced an abuse rate 10 times that of a child living with two parents.

The main author of the study, Andrea Sedlak of the Rockville, Md.-based research firm Westat Inc., said she was heartened by the overall findings of declining abuse rates. However, she was troubled to find that more than half of child maltreatment incidents are not investigated by child-protection agencies.

"Is the system still so strapped?" she asked. "There's still a lot of material here saying the system has a long way to go."

The study does not cover the recent period in which the United States plunged into a recession, prompting some reports of increased domestic violence and abuse in hard-off families.

The global capital of feminicides

for years
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – Every day thousands of people, cars, trucks and trains pass through the Mexican town Ciudad Juarez’s six border crossings to the United States, while 300 international companies have set up so-called maquila factories – assembly plants that supply the US market. But Ciudad Juarez owes its international renown to a terrible, sad fact: a total of 393 women have been murdered in the border city between 1993 and 2007. It is known as “the global capital of Feminicides.”
Mayor Hector Murguia Lardizabal does not like to discuss it with foreign visitors, and he would rather ignore the fact that even the European Parliament has taken up the issue. He prefers to stress the positive aspects of “our beloved Juarez” – industry, cross-border traffic, plentiful tax income, international investment, seemingly unlimited growth. The city grows by 60,000 people every year. Forty years ago Ciudad Juarez was a town of 20,000, but 1.6 million people live there today. Across the border in El Paso, Texas, there are only 700,000. “We are first in everything,” Murguia told a group of visiting legislators of the German Bundestag.
Every two years, these legislators in charge of relations with Mexico travel to the North American country to keep up the contact with their Mexican colleagues. This year they wanted to find out more about the feminicides. The European Parliament demanded that Mexico and Central American countries give women better protection from violence. Across the region, women are murdered more than anywhere else in the world. The European Parliament demanded that these countries end gender inequality and prevent violence against women with all their might. It was only a few years ago that the authorities tackled the issue, under pressure from international public opinion.
The new leadership of the state of Chihuahua under Governor Jose Reyes Baeza Terrazas started to shed light on the brutal acts as most of the aggressors remained at large. In the whole of Chihuahua there was not a single police laboratory, no modern forensic medicine. Even today, despite the new labs and more professional police and investigative work, 126 cases remain unsolved. For a long time, impunity contributed to the increase in murders over time, most of them within family circles or in connection to drug crime and juvenile gangs. “Men think they can dispose of their wives as if they were their property,” said state Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez. “This is the worst form of murder in Mexico, there is an unimaginable hatred and disdain for women.”
Many young women and girls, most of whom migrated to the border city from the south to work in the maquilas, were victims of this violence and were murdered. Their bodies were found near the factories, on garbage dumps or in the desert – raped, strangled, mutilated. One attacker admitted that he and his friends, under the effect of drugs, abducted women one weekend, raped and murdered them. The desperation of the families is huge. They have the feeling that the authorities do not listen to them – the poor “morenos,” or dark-skinned people, from the south. Until 2004, not one case had been solved, though innocent people were tortured into making confessions, then jailed. Mothers seeking their missing daughters were told that the women had probably crossed the border to the United States illegally without telling their families. “We got started particularly by fighting impunity, through the professionalization of police work,” Attorney General Gonzalez said of the efforts since 2004. However, the authorities continue to give the impression that it is best to sweep the phenomenon under the carpet.
Leopoldo Gonzalez Baeza, chairman of the state human rights commission, thinks the whole issue is a product of exaggeration by the media. “We have the whole world against us, even Jennifer Lopez,” he complained. The US actress of Puerto Rican descent starred in the 2006 film Bordertown, about the killings in Ciudad Juarez. In the meantime, scores of women continue to demand justice. Irma Perez, whose daughter was murdered in 1995, no longer trusts official reports on the success of the investigations. In her daughter’s case, one suspect was arrested and then released again. “There is no investigation, for four months there has been silence,” she said. “Really they just don’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
source: Earthtimes.org
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ON JUNE 18, 2009 AT 6:50 AMCOMMENTS (20)
TAGS: CIUDAD JUÁREZ, FORCED LABOR, HUMAN TRAFFICKING, VICTIMS
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The buildings had no running water, illegal wiring, boase 74 childrre now homeless, living with relatives or in a shelter. When they arrive at school, they wiOakland students struggling to live way below the poverty line. Many of Oakland's schools are attended by students who live in poverty. Some schools are more than 90% economically disadvantaged.

We are often told not to make excuses for the poor performance of our schools, but I have seen firsthand the effect that poverty has on student performance. The children who lived in this apartment complex (until they were made completely homeless this week) are not that unusual. They have no place to study, so it is tough to do homework. There are drug users around the building, so it is noisy at night, making it hard to sleep. There are shootings in the neighborhood, so sometimes they have to dive to take cover from flying bullets. The nearest real grocery store is literally miles away, so food is often purchased at the neighborhood convenience store, and is highly processed and unhealthy. You can see them walking to school in the morning, eating their breakfast of corn chips and soda pop.

And just the stress of being poor takes its toll. If I am a bit short with my bills at the end of the month, I know how stressed that makes me. But those without regular work have a level of stress I have never even known. Unemployment in the Bay Area is over eleven percent, and is at least double that in many of these neighborhoods. That stress spills into family life, making people short-tempered and even violent. Children are often moved from one home to another, depending on who has space and food to take them in. Can you imagine how you would feel as a parent if you could not even afford to pay for a roof over your children's heads?

On Monday, teachers will welcome their students to class. The ones without homes, the ones who are hungry, the ones in foster care -- they will do their best to hide these conditions. Like wounded birds, they do not want to appear weak or flawed. Once they are grown and have achieved success, they may take some pride in their humble origins, but there is no pride in being homeless when it is your reality today.

Good teachers will find out soon who the hungry ones are, and work with the school and the child's parent or guardian to get them signed up for free lunches. They will make space for the children to stay after school and do homework. They will push all their students to do their best regardless of their circumstances. School can be a sanctuary for these students, a place where they are safe, and have a chance to be seen as human beings.

This fall there is less money than ever. Most of the Republicanse impact of poverty on your students? How do you respond as an educator? How should we respond as a society?

POSTED BY ANGRY AT 9:21 PM

Disenfranchised - School Counselors

Friday, July 3, 2009

Al Frankin WINS!

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