Quick note for important legislation in Louisiana

Latinola has a link to an editorial in the T-P regarding pending legislation in Louisiana regarding immigrants. (Have I mentioned how much I love the colors of Latinola´s website?)

I´ve taken the time to write local officials and hope others will, too. Here is some information...

Listed below are all the immigration bills, plus one resolution that have been filed:

Ø HB 1357 by Rep. Geymann (District 35, Lake Charles) creates the crime of harboring, concealing, or sheltering an alien. (passed House floor waiting to be heard by Senate Committee)

Ø HB 1358 by Rep. Geymann (District 35, Lake Charles) creates crime of unlawful transportation of an illegal alien. (passed House floor waiting to be heard by Senate Committee)

Ø HB 25 by Rep. Geymann (District 35, Lake Charles) requires police officers to verify citizenship of every person they arrest. (passed House floor waiting to be heard by Senate Committee)

Ø HB 1365 by Rep. Burns (District 89, Mandeville) requires that landlords verify legal status of aliens (passed Committee waiting to be heard on House Floor)

Update

We leave early tomorrow for Sacred Valley.

Shoes for 'Women Fighters'

This email is from my friend Leigh Ann, who has been working for the CDC and conducting her dissertation research in Zanzibar over the last year. If you have shoes you'd like to donate, contact me (coldspaghetti (at) gmail (dot) com) and I'll pass on Leigh Ann's information.

UPDATE: If you've got any soccer cleats, these would be like solid gold. THANKS!

Greetings Friends,

In every country where I work, I pick one local cause to support. I wait for an on the ground sort of outfit that you wouldn't know about unless you were there to find me. One always does.

In Zanzibar, my cause is the women's soccer team 'Women Fighters.'
I first heard about them from one of my Researchers who is a founding member of the team. Then they were featured at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in a film called "Zanzibar Soccer Queens".

After I saw the film, I was hooked! These women are infectious with their love of the game despite the social and cultural barriers to women being athletes in even a fairly progressive Muslim context. They face all the protests and admonitions you'd expect from everyone including husbands, brothers, religious leaders, etc. And yet the Women Fighters play on.

Once I watched the film, I asked my Researcher to introduce me to the team.
I've since practiced with them which involves simultaneously embarrassing myself and laughing loudly and often. I've also helped out the team a bit by getting equipment to them. In November when my family came out, they divided up 60 pounds of gear donated from my friends at Wake Forest University and carried it out. It was like kids at Christmas to see the team open the bags of gear!

Now as I'm getting read to visit Zanzibar again, I'm writing to ask you if have any running/athletic or soccer shoes in women's sizes which you could donate. These shoes can be worn. When I've practiced with the team, they have fewer pairs of shoes than players. When a player subs-in, she switches shoes with a player who's leaving the field. Shoes are the one thing the team asked me bring when I visit them next.

If you have shoes, please get in touch with me via email or phone. I leave for Zanzibar on May 6th so I will need to collect shoes this week. I'm hoping to get a dozen or so pair of shoes. I'm traveling on my own this trip so I won't be able to share luggage weight rations with other travelers.

Asante sana~ (thanks in Swahili)
LAM

This link is to a website about the film.
Warda is one of my favorite characters from the film & on the field. This girl's got game! She shows up for practice dressed like the shot on the left. Then she strips down to shorts & a t-shirt to run around.

http://www.zanzibarsoccerqueens.com/characters.html

WARDA KHALID, 20, [Midfield] gets support from her mother who
clearly sees a connection between sports and women's development.
WARDA is determined to gain employment before getting married, as
this will prevent her future husband from oppressing her. She hopes to
gain employment through playing football and also aspires to play
abroad. "My aspiration is to become a good footballer. I would also like
to visit other countries. I don't want just to be stuck here in Maissara."

6 billion

I just read Schroeder's interesting post about climate change (well, really, it's about an endorsement, but there is a lot of good stuff in there with it). He excellently shows cool graphs about spring onset and other global climate-related data. What I found interesting was the reference to China, specifically, that "China [is] on a course to match the entire world’s carbon output by 2050" and another, in a graph, related to China's need for coal, which is suppose to match that of the remaining world totaled by 2030.

In Reproductive Health and Population Studies (all areas of focus for us Global Health folk) we talk about China quite a bit. One of the issues that is raised involves the great global hand-smacking we laid on China for it's "One Child Policy," where Chinese families' reproductive rights are limited by law: couples register for permission to have a child and pay steep fines if they have more than the allocated One Child. Interestingly, I've not met many from China who have had much of a problem with this policy... that they are willing to share, at least. While I am not advocating a limit on anyone's reproductive rights, ever, there is an undercurrent of a whisper among the demographer and population studies circles of the world that is sort of like the elephant in the room whenever China is discussed. It goes something like this: "we can't support the policy, but thank goodness they did it...because imagine what we would be facing if they didn't."

In the face of all the current discussion on global warming, and the continued discussion that should rightfully occur, China is a particularly interesting subject.

Preoccupation

I can't get the news of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence out of my mind.

Why were we so quick to recognize Kosovo? What importance does it hold? Is there some sort of latent guilt for the years of Balkan wars where so many were tortured at the hands of the Serbs? (Yes, yes, atrocities occurred on all sides. However, the Croats, the Bosnians, and the Albanians all suffered many, many more deaths -- both civilian and military -- at the hands of the Serbs. Some of these atrocities occurred in front of UN troops assigned to the protect them.) What would our stance be if other ethnic majorities within areas of other countries -- the Kurds in Turkey/Iraq, for example -- declared independence? Didn't the treaties that stopped NATO attacks in Kosovo imply some sort of intent of keeping Serbia together, similar to the federation-style set-up used with Bosnians? I don't speak from a place of expertise here... I'm just trying to get my head around it.

Moreover, I was really moved by this book and what it means for a civilian population to be targeted and isolated. I've been addicted to her for months. I do not have faith in NATO or any other allied group to protect the vulnerable. The genocidal massacres at Srebrenica occurred in front of UN Security forces, who rolled back without once standing in protection of the civilian populace. This happened a year after Rwanda, four years after seeing what the Serb forces did in Vukovar. We've shown that we cannot bring ourselves to say the word "genocide" even when we know it is occurring because we'd be obliged to act. It makes me think that the only way to stop genocide from occurring is to help negotiate healing and understanding, not encourage nationalism and independence.