Poverty & Race

PRRAC POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL

November/December 2004 Volume 13: Number 6

Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto by Alexander Polikoff

Reading Jason DeParle’s new a nation-threatening matter? Bear with ter still more personal acquisition by book American Dream (Viking), one me, and I’ll try to explain. the most favored. is struck once again by the unremit- First, take small comfort from There is no single explanation for ting, intergenerational persistence of small numbers. In an earlier New York America’s character change. But a ghetto poverty. From W.E.B. DuBois Times piece, DeParle makes this point major factor was disaffection by white through James Baldwin, Kenneth about the small ghetto population: ethnics and blue-collar workers, long Clark, and Douglas Massey and Nancy core elements of the New Deal coali- Denton, in compelling reportage by The poverty and disorder of tion. Disaffection over what? The Nicholas Lemann, Alex Kotlowitz and the inner cities lacerate a larger answer is over blacks trapped in ghet- DeParle, in endless statistical analy- civic fabric, drawing people from tos trying to penetrate white neighbor- ses, ethnographic studies and academic shared institutions like subways, hoods. Hubert Humphrey, civil rights research papers, the point is made over buses, parks, schools and even champion, not Richard Nixon, with his and over again: The concentrated pov- cities themselves.... Perhaps coded anti-black speeches and shame- erty of urban ghettos condemns gen- most damaging of all is the ef- less pandering to Southern segrega- eration after generation of black fect that urban poverty has on tionists, suffered the consequences. Americans to what Clark called lives race relations. It is like a poison There were other 1968 election issues, of impotence and despair. in the national groundwater that to be sure, but a number of historians Yet, some may object, only 2.8 is producing a thousand de- make a powerful case that it was fear million black Americans live in con- formed fruits... of blacks from ghettos “invading” centrated urban poverty — metropoli- white neighborhoods that finally sun- tan census tracts with poverty popula- What deformed fruits? Among (Please turn to page 2) tions of 40% or more. That’s only them is nothing less than breaking up 1% of Americans. Sad, to be sure, the coalition that birthed the New Deal but not a big enough deal to get worked and the Civil Rights Movement, a up about unless you’re a bleeding heart political sea-change that began in the CONTENTS: liberal. The country has more press- World War II years, gained strength A National ing matters to attend to. over the next two decades, then led to Gautreaux Program .. 1 Some 170 years ago, Alexis de Richard Nixon’s election in 1968, fol- Voting Rights Toqueville called racial inequality lowed in 1980 by the triumph of and Race ...... 3 Ronald Reagan. In November 1968, “the most formidable evil threatening Voting Rights the future of the United States.” American character changed. From a for Immigrants...... 5 Toqueville went on to prophesy that nation concerned with equality we Our New Board the evil of racial inequality would not became a nation that closed the doors be resolved — indeed, that it would on school and housing desegregation. Members ...... 19 eventually bring America to disaster. Under Reagan, we became an uncar- Resources ...... 20 How could that be? How could 1% ing nation, obsessed with the free Index to Volume 13 .. 26 of Americans, confined to ghettos, be market and with crafting rules to fos-

Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200 • Washington, DC 20008 202/387-9887 • FAX: 202/387-0764 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (GHETTOS: Continued from page 1) role sentences. coded. White skin denotes civility, In short, as a nation we are dog- law-abidingness, and trustworthiness, dered the coalition that had given gedly pursuing a ghetto-targeted mass while black skin is strongly associated America its reigning consensus liber- incarceration policy that is both mind- with poverty, crime, incivility, and alism creed. less and destructive of traditional distrust.” In American society at large, Another example of a deformed American values. It is mindless be- most whites act like the ones Ander- fruit is the War on Drugs, targeted on cause at enormous cost we insist on son studied — their public awareness black ghettos. Since Reagan assumed sticking with a policy that is having is also color-coded, and they steer office, we have built over 1,000 new no demonstrable effect on drug avail- clear of poor blacks and keep them in prisons and jails, many crowded be- ability, drug crime rates or crime rates their ghettos. Predictable ghetto be- yond capacity. Crowded with whom? generally. It is destructive of values havior then intensifies whites’ sense of The answer is blacks from ghettos. By because it has driven us to extremities danger, validates their color-coding 1990, nearly one of every four young that no fair-minded person can defend. and drives their conduct. black males in the United States was A final example of disfigured pro- Urban economist George Galster under the control of the criminal jus- duce is the demise of welfare, but with- describes a self-reinforcing “ghetto- tice system, more in major cities (over out the jobs supposed to have been part izing cycle.” First, ghettoization in- 40% in Washington, over 50% in Bal- of the deal. At the heart of Newt duces “behavioral adaptations” by timore). In his book, Malign Neglect, Gingrich’s successful, dump-welfare ghetto dwellers. Widely reported by Michael Tonry observes that the ris- the media, ghetto behavior is then seen ing levels of black incarceration were The concentrated as validating and legitimizing whites’ the foreseeable effect of deliberate poverty of urban prejudicial attitudes toward blacks. policies: “Anyone with knowledge of ghettos condemns The prejudices translate into with- drug-trafficking patterns and of police drawal from blacks, and into discrimi- arrest policies and incentives could generation after natory conduct in housing, zoning, have foreseen that the enemy troops generation of black employment and institutional arrange- in the War on Drugs would consist Americans to lives of ments of all sorts, which in turn lead largely of young, inner-city minority impotence and despair. to more ghettoization. males.” Part and parcel of our mass Ghettoization is growing, in spite incarceration policy are “three strikes” of many reasons to have expected the laws that mandate long prison terms campaign, was a stick-figure carica- contrary (the Kerner Commission ad- for third convictions. California has ture of the ghetto: “You can’t main- monition; passage of anti-discrimina- meted out a 25-year sentence for the tain civilization with twelve-year-olds tion laws; the substantial growth of the third strike theft of a slice of pizza, having babies and fifteen-year-olds black middle class; the unprecedented another for pilfering some chocolate killing each other and seventeen-year- good times of the 1990s). From 1970 chip cookies. Thirteen-year olds have olds dying of AIDS” (Gingrich, as to 2000, the number of metropolitan received mandatory, life-without-pa- quoted in DeParle’s new book). ghetto census tracts (40% or more pov- Can these deformed fruits be blamed erty population) doubled, from around solely on black ghettos? No, they can- 1,100 to over 2,200, and the number not. Ending black ghettos wouldn’t of blacks in metropolitan ghettos in- Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075-3591) end anti-black attitudes any more than creased from under 2.5 to over 2.8 is published six times a year by the ending Jewish ghettos ended anti- million. And there’s every reason to Poverty & Race Research Action Council, 3000 Conn. Ave. NW, #200, semitism. But it is not easy to find believe the problem has grown since Washington, DC 20008, 202/387- anything in American society that the 2000 Census. 9887, fax: 202/387-0764, E-mail: matches the black ghetto for its poi- In a nutshell, that is why I think [email protected]. Chester Hartman, soning effect on attitudes, values and we’d be well advised to play it safe Editor. Subscriptions are $25/year, conduct. with respect to Toqueville’s prophecy. $45/two years. Foreign postage ex- Sixty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal Color-coded poison continues to flow tra. Articles, article suggestions, let- wrote: “White prejudice and discrimi- into our groundwater, with disfigur- ters and general comments are wel- come, as are notices of publications, nation keep the Negro low in standards ing results that are plain to see. Di- conferences, job openings, etc. for our of living, health, education, manners saster may not come in the form of Resources Section. Articles generally and morals. This, in its turn, gives riots and race wars, as Carl Rowan may be reprinted, providing PRRAC support to white prejudice.” Decades predicts in his recent book, The Com- gives advance permission. later, sociologist Elijah Anderson’s ing Race War in America. But it will © Copyright 2004 by the Poverty studies of a ghetto and an adjacent non- be disaster no less if American values & Race Research Action Council. All ghetto neighborhood led him to con- are sufficiently deformed. rights reserved. clude: “The public awareness is color- (Please turn to page 8)

2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 From Slave Republic to Constitutional Democracy: The Continuing Struggle for the Right to Vote by Jamin Raskin

“Why is George Bush in the White imagination of the Warren Court in the the crucial currency of democratic poli- House? The majority of Americans did early 1960s redistricting cases like tics and the precondition for instrumen- not vote for him. I tell you this morn- Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, tal public action on other problems. But ing that he’s in the White House be- and later infused democratic move- achieving universal suffrage, as we cause God put him in there.” ments from Poland to South Africa. shall see, is still a maddeningly elu- Lieutenant-General William The many thousands of college and law sive goal, with millions of American Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of students who just went out to monitor citizens, a majority of them African- Defense for Intelligence, United the polls and participate in “election American and Hispanic, disenfran- States Department of Defense protection” in 2004 are part of this chised by law, and basic democratic legacy of struggle for democratic principles in constant danger on the In their indispensable book, Radi- rights. ground. To understand why basic vot- cal Equations, Bob Moses and Charles ing rights are still contested terrain, we Cobb describe the epiphany the 26-year The mechanisms of need to revisit the basic dynamics and old Moses had in 1960 when he ar- institutions of our political history. rived as a volunteer in Mississippi and disenfranchisement got to know Amzie Moore, president have grown more of the NAACP in Cleveland, Missis- complex and insidious. A Slave Republic of sippi. Moore was not interested in sit- Christian White Male ins to desegregate restaurants or law- suits to enforce Brown v. Board of That struggle is as important today Property-Holders Education. In an area where violence as it was four decades ago, but the and oppression had left 98% of Afri- mechanisms of disenfranchisement Our last great Republican President can Americans off the voter rolls and have grown more complex and insidi- — Abraham Lincoln — gave poetic too terrified to register, Moore “had ous. Racial minorities are no longer definition to the American vision of concluded that at the heart of disenfranchised by white primaries, democracy: a government “of the Mississippi’s race problem was denial poll taxes and literacy tests, but rather people, by the people and for the of the right to vote,” Moses writes. by a series of background structural people.” But this tantalizing ideal has “Amzie wanted a grassroots movement exclusions and dilutions, as well as the little to do with our beginnings, as Lin- to get it, and in his view getting that resilient dirty tricks and sleight-of- coln knew. We began as a slave re- right was the key to unlocking Missis- hand that reappear at election time. public of wealthy Christian white male sippi and gaining some power to ini- Moreover, convincing people of the property owners. The Constitution tiate real change. I had not given that efficacy of voting remains a problem: established no popular right to vote but idea any thought at all; I didn’t know While basic voting rights remain nec- left suffrage requirements up to the before I began talking to Amzie that essary to generate upward social mo- state legislatures, which imposed a the Mississippi where he lived was a tion for people at the bottom of the gauntlet of race, gender, religious, Congressional district that was two- society, they hardly seem to be suffi- property, wealth and age qualifica- thirds black.” cient to do so. Indeed, Bob Moses him- tions. It also vested in each legislature The voting rights movement self has thrown his own magnificent the power to appoint two United States launched in Mississippi nearly got energy over the last many years into Senators for the state, thus giving Moses killed, but it led to the Voting the Algebra Project, whose thesis is that smaller slave states like South Caro- Rights Act of 1965 and the creation of movement-style math education is a lina or Alabama the same U.S. Senate some long-suppressed majority-Afri- key project for social change in the age representation as large Northern states can American and Hispanic Congres- of high technology. like New York, Pennsylvania or Mas- sional districts (that would later be at- Even if other concerns, like alge- sachusetts. tacked by the Rehnquist Court). bra education and health care for all, The character of the U.S. House of Knocking on doors in apartheid Mis- command urgent attention today, vot- Representatives was defined by South- sissippi, Moses developed the vision- ing rights remain not only the para- ern resolve to entrench slavery in the ary rhetoric of “one person, one vote.” digmatic expression of first-class citi- Constitutional fabric. The first trick This “radical equation” captured the zenship and social standing, but also (Please turn to page 4)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 3 (VOTING: Continued from page 3) tives where each state, regardless of the Republican Party’s Presidential size, casts one vote, thus again mak- coalition. If you glance at a red-blue was to count slaves in the process of ing the states, rather than the people, map of 2000, you will find that the determining how many seats in the the functional base of the system. old Confederacy is the beating heart U.S. House of Representatives each Southern blueprints to rig our po- of George W. Bush country. Further- state would be apportioned. So mil- litical architecture worked like a more, because of the nation’s racial lions of slaves, none of whom could dream. The “slave power” proved demography and geography and the vote (obviously), were used to inflate extremely effective at both dominat- winner-take-all method of allocating the size of the Southern Congressional ing Congress — which for decades en- electors still used by all states except delegations controlled by their mas- forced a rule against even raising sla- Maine and Nebraska (and perhaps ters. Indeed, the Southern states ar- very as an issue — and also winning Colorado, as I write), most votes cast gued that slaves should be counted as and manipulating Presidential elec- by African-Americans in Presidential full persons in the census, while the tions. Four of the first five U.S. elections will count literally for noth- Northern states argued that the slaves, Presidents were Virginia slave masters ing. In 2000, more than 90% of Af- being disenfranchised, should not be who brought their household slaves rican Americans voted for Democrat counted at all. The two sides settled with them into the Presidency: George Al Gore, but 58% of all African on the infamous “Three-Fifths” pro- Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Americans lived in states that gave vision — counting each slave as three- Madison and James Monroe. And the 100% of their electoral college votes fifths of a person for the purposes of reign of slave power continued on and to Bush. This means that, in 2000, reapportionment, a clear and ominous off until the nation plunged into Civil most African Americans voted in states victory for political white supremacy. War. where their ballots ended up having As Garry Wills has shown in The New no effect on the election outcome. The York Review of Books, the resulting one Southern state where the African- Southern delegations to Congress, Because of the Electoral American vote clearly could have swollen with the “slave power,” College and our racial made a critical difference in 2000 was checkmated any moves against slavery. geography, most votes Florida, which makes all of the devi- With both the House and Senate cast by African ous strategies to cancel out African- institutionalizing America’s original Americans in American votes there both entirely sin, Article II of the Constitution fused Presidential elections comprehensible and deeply appalling. and reproduced these pro-slavery fea- tures in the design of the Presidential will count literally for • The Civil Rights Struggle Dis- selection process. The Electoral Col- nothing. mantled American Apartheid But lege system awards each state a num- Did Not Establish an Affirmative ber of Presidential electors equal to the Constitutional Right to Vote. number of U.S. House members it has, Even after the Civil War, the Elec- plus an extra two “add on” electors toral College propped up white su- Through the process of social and for its U.S. Senators. In the event of premacy and thwarted its opposition. political struggle, the American people a failure of any candidate to assemble In the 20th Century, Southern politi- have taken down many barriers to vot- an Electoral College majority, the cians cleverly used the Electoral Col- ing. The most significant changes have President is chosen in a “contingent lege to block civil rights for African been embodied in Constitutional election” in the House of Representa- Americans. Racist Southern Demo- amendments, although often that alone crats like Strom Thurmond (1948), has not been enough to overcome elite Harry Byrd (1960) and George resistance to voting by the poor and The Passion Wallace (1968) practiced the quadren- racial minorities. The 15th Amend- of My Times nial art of leaving the Democratic Party ment banned race discrimination in to run for President as Independents, voting (1870), but we still had to fol- PRRAC Board member Will- taking substantial chunks of Presiden- low through with the Voting Rights iam L. Taylor’s memoir (subtitled tial electors with them and sending a Act of 1965; the 17th Amendment An Advocate’s Fifty-Year Journey sharp message to the national Demo- gave us direct election of U.S. Sena- in the Civil Rights Movement) is cratic Party about the political perils tors (1913) — a populist victory that now out (Carroll & Graf, 251 pp). of racial integration. LBJ presciently Justice Scalia recently lamented at You can order it directly from us remarked after passage of the Voting Harvard Law School; the 19th Amend- at a discounted price of $20, s/h Rights Act of 1965 that the Democratic ment banned sex discrimination in included (it lists for $26). We’re Party would lose the South for a gen- voting (1920); the 23rd Amendment sure Bill will be happy to inscribe eration — and so it has. gave citizens living in the District of it, if you let us know. Today, the Solid South provides a Columbia the right to participate in majority of Electoral College votes in (Please turn to page 13)

4 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 Voting Rights for Immigrants by Catherine Tactaquin

Throughout this past year, the no- groups state that naturalized Latino dential race, immigrant voters in the tion of immigrant civic participation voters — the new immigrant voters — traditionally large foreign-born states has emerged time and again as a sig- may be key, given the increased num- of California, Florida, Illinois, New nificant trend in community enfran- bers of newly registered voters and the Jersey, New York and Texas are chisement. In cities around the coun- pattern of these voters actually going largely expected to contribute votes to try, especially where there are signifi- to the polls on Election Day. NALEO the Democratic Party. In the swing cant concentrations of immigrants, projects that nearly seven million states, however, the impact of immi- community organizations and immi- Latinos nationwide will vote in No- grant votes is less certain, although the grant rights coalitions have mustered vember. so-called battleground states may re- energy and resources to conduct voter Asian Pacific Islander communities appear in future elections – and they registration drives and to mobilize im- are also expected to significantly gain are all states where new immigrant migrant voters. The evident growth of new voters and presence at the polls. voters can impact an election outcome. the immigrant population has been the With over 12 million people, API According to Rob Paral: “In all, six key factor fueling these and other ini- communities are poised to become a battleground states may be identified tiatives, including proposals for “non- formidable electoral force. API immi- where new-citizen voters can make a citizen” voting in local elections, such grants have a fairly high rate of natu- difference in a two-candidate race even as school boards. if the difference in percentage points A report released in mid-October The growing ranks of separating the candidates is as high as by the Immigration Policy Center, a five points. These states are Arizona, division of the American Immigration “new citizens” are Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Penn- Law Foundation, called attention to increasingly important sylvania and Washington.” the potentially significant role an en- political players. Although the overall foreign-born ergized immigrant electorate could vote is only about 5% of the entire play in local, state and national elec- electorate nationwide, it is in particu- tions. In “Power and Potential: The ralization — over 40% — a source of lar areas of the country where the vote Growing Electoral Clout of New Citi- potential new voters. Between 1996 will have increasing impact. However, zens,” author Rob Paral wrote: “In and 2000, the number of Asian voters in the 2004 Presidential election, im- highly competitive electoral environ- increased by 22%. migrant community organizers were ments, the rapidly growing ranks of Despite these trends, certain factors often frustrated by the fleeting recog- ‘new citizens’ — foreign-born indi- continue to diminish the potential par- nition given to potential immigrant viduals who become ‘naturalized’ ticipation of immigrant voters. Jeffrey voters. As political strategists typically U.S. citizens — are increasingly im- Passel of the Urban Institute’s Immi- zeroed in on likely and undecided vot- portant political players.” gration Studies Program notes: “About ers in swing states, resources for voter That report describes the dramatic 62 percent of Latinos could not regis- registration, education and mobiliza- growth of immigrant populations over ter to vote in 2000 because they were tion did not, as a whole, flow to im- the last decade: Some 13 million either too young or not U.S. citizens; migrant communities. people immigrated into the U.S. dur- 59 percent of Asians could not regis- ing the 1990s. In the 2000 elections, ter. In contrast, only 35 percent of 6.2 million new citizens had registered blacks and 25 percent of whites could Increasing the Voice to vote, and over 85% of them voted not register to vote for demographic of Immigrants — a proportion far highter than turn- reasons.” out among all voters. Facing this reality, groups commit- The National Association of Latino ted to both short-term and long-term Elected and Appointed Officials Edu- Presence in Swing States goals of increasing immigrant commu- cation Fund, which has predicted nity voices at the polls nonetheless ral- Latino voter turnout quite closely in While the overall foreign-born lied to build initiatives that would sup- the last two Presidential elections, has population is just over 11% of the en- port immigrant civic in the elections projected that “one million more tire U.S. population, the concentra- and beyond. These initiatives have Latinos will vote in November 2004 tion of immigrants in several states has given attention to the significant chal- than in our last Presidential election, produced considerable political inter- lenges and barriers to engaging immi- a new record for the Latino commu- est for tapping into a rapidly increas- grants from numerous ethnic and lan- nity.” NALEO and other Latino ing pool of votes. In the 2004 Presi- (Please turn to page 6)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 5 (IMMIGRANTS: Continued from page 5) foreign-born population — over 26% terns. One such report will be issued of the total population and almost 15% by the DC-based New American Op- guage backgrounds and homeland ex- of the state’s voters — is ripe for voter portunity Campaign (NAOC), a new periences. Many initiatives build on engagement. Generations of U.S.- umbrella group focusing on immigra- ongoing organizing and advocacy, par- born members of immigrant families tion reform. Partners within NAOC ticularly on always controversial im- — a major demographic factor in Cali- believe that the voting power of im- migration policy issues. fornia — are also targets for registra- migrant communities will strengthen Many groups recall the upsurge in tion and get-out-the-vote activities. As their presence on critical immigration naturalization applications and immi- with initiatives in other states, MIV policy issues and will encourage grant voter registrations prior to and identified the need to reach particular greater civic engagement. after California’s infamous anti-immi- language groups, working with com- Some groups have already called at- grant ballot initiative, Proposition 187 munity-based organizations and oth- tention to some of the real problems in 1994. At that time, many immi- facing potential immigrant voters. The grants raised their concerns about im- New York Immigration Coalition portant decisions being made about In the 2000 elections, (NYIC), which has successfully spear- their lives, but without their voice. 6.2 million new citizens headed immigrant voter registration That concern has been repeated in Ari- had registered to vote, activities, has decried the loss of vot- zona, where the anti-immigrant Propo- and over 85% of them ing opportunities for immigrants sition 200 is on the November ballot voted. whose citizenship applications have [results unknown at the time of this been bogged down in lengthy back- writing], and would require proof of ground checks in the Department of legal status from anyone applying for ers to produce multi-lingual “palm Homeland Security (DHS). Accord- a public service or registering to vote. cards” on voting rights and informa- ing to NYIC, almost half of the more Organizers against the initiative have tion, and easily accessible voting than 126,000 immigrants in New York included new citizen voter registration guides with information and recom- with pending citizenship applications as a key component of their strategy. mendations on ballot initiatives of par- will find they are not be able to vote The state’s population is about 13% ticular concern and relevance to im- in November due to the processing foreign-born, and during the 1990s, migrant communities. MIV and oth- backlogs. In moving immigration ser- the Latino population grew by 88%. ers are also providing new voters with vicing into the DHS when it was es- Last year’s Immigrant Worker Free- “how to” information, understanding tablished in the wake of 9/11, Presi- dom Ride produced a campaign called that a lack of familiarity with the ac- dent Bush had set a six-month stan- “Freedom Summer,” building on the tual voting process — including where dard for citizenship application pro- historic work of the Civil Rights Move- to find the correct polling location — cessing, but in New York and else- ment in the South, to conduct voter can hinder participation. where, the wait is much longer. In registration work in the key states of According to Maria Rogers Pascual, Miami, there is a 21-month backlog; Arizona and Florida. For two months, NCCP Executive Director: “We will in Arizona, 13 months. 50 predominantly young activists not only be increasing voter turnout worked with local organizations to reg- from immigrant communities, but we ister new voters, particularly among will be helping to strengthen immi- Renewed Interest new citizens. Civic participation cam- grant community leadership for ongo- in Non-Citizen Voting paigns have been organized in several ing organizing on critical issues.” This states by regional and state immigrant has been a consistent theme of initia- Problems such as these in moving rights coalitions, as well as by such tives such as that of “One Voice, One towards citizenship, as well as a cur- groups as the National Korean Ameri- Vote” in Massachusetts and “New rent impasse on setting up a new le- can Service and Education Consortium Americans Vote ‘04” in Illinois, galization program for undocumented (NAKASEC), National Council of La where the state immigrant rights coa- immigrants, have stirred renewed in- Raza, Center for Community Change, lition has pledged to register at least terest in “non-citizen” voting — gen- Gamaliel Foundation [see article on 25,000 new voters and is giving focus erally, the opening of voting rights in Gamaliel in the Sept./Oct. 2004 to the large Muslim community whose local elections, such as for school P&R], ACORN and many more. civil liberties were particularly threat- boards, to all residents of a given lo- The Northern California Citizen- ened by the 9/11 backlash. cale, regardless of citizenship or im- ship Project (NCCP) is leading a new The outcome of many of these ef- migration status. California collaborative — Mobilize forts — in terms of voter turnout and Particularly during the last decade the Immigrant Vote (MIV) 2004 — to impact — will be described post-elec- or so, non-citizen voting initiatives reach diverse immigrant communities. tion in numerous reports being planned have emerged throughout the country, Although California was not identified to spotlight the significance of immi- and there are a few places where non- as a swing state, its large and diverse grant civic participation and voting pat- citizens can vote — such as in Takoma

6 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 Park, Maryland, and even in the guments that could just as well apply strengthened — certainly an argument school board elections (at least until to the encouragement of today’s new against the wedge politics of the Right recently) in New York City. citizen voters. These arguments in- that have sought to align working San Francisco voters are having an clude: 1) Democracy will thrive when people and other communities of color opportunity to weigh in on the issue it enfranchises all of its members — against immigrants over jobs, hous- on November 2 [again, results un- when they have representation (re- ing and so forth. known at the time of this writing]. member “no taxation without repre- Whether non-citizen voting be- Proposition F would allow non-citi- sentation” — non-citizens, including comes a “right” for immigrants at any zens to vote in school board elections. the undocumented, do pay taxes); 2) noticeable level, or whether new citi- Proponents say it is only fair; at least Discrimination and bias: Lacking vot- zens are rallied to register and vote, one-third of the children in the school ing rights, non-citizens are at risk of the scope and scale of immigration cur- district have at least one immigrant par- discrimination and bias by the major- rently and in the foreseeable future ent. The school board voted unani- ity, and their interests can be more demands that these issues of enfran- mously to support the proposition. easily ignored; and 3) Common in- chisement be addressed — and soon — Detractors claim the proposition is just terests: Other members of society, par- in yet another test for American de- a backdoor tactic — a “Trojan Horse” ticularly from the working class and mocracy. — to give citizenship rights to un- communities of color, face many of Catherine Tacqatuin (ctactaquin@ documented immigrants, under the the same issues immigrants face, and nnirr.org), a PRRAC Board Member, guise of supporting education. would benefit from non-citizen par- is Executive Director of the National The issue of non-citizen voting will ticipation and integration. Their con- Network for Immigrant and Refugee no doubt be a long and protracted de- cerns and political power would be Rights in Oakland, California. ❏ bate with uneven results. Political sci- entists Ronald Hayduk at the Borough of Manhattan Community College ar- Resources on Immigrants and Voting gues that non-citizens should have vot- “California’s Minority and Immigrant Mobilize the Immigrant Vote 2004, ing rights and says: it’s legal (not pre- Voters,” June 2004 brief from the Pub- California campaign website provides cluded by the Constitution); it’s ra- lic Policy Institute of California, at immigrant voting rights materials in six tional — with good reasons for enfran- www.ppic.org languages, lists resources and website links chisement, such as notions of equal for civic participation information. www. rights and treatment articulated in the “Election 2004: The Latino and Asian immigrantvoice.org/miv2004/index.htm Vote,” by Jeffrey S. Passel of the Urban suffragette and Civil Rights Move- Institute Immigration Studies Program, “Non-Citizen Voting: Pipe Dream or ment; and it’s feasible. 2004. Available at www.urban.org/ Possibility,” by Ronald Hayduk, Octo- Hayduk and other proponents have urlprint.cfm?ID= 8938 ber 2002, appears in Drum Major Insti- pointed out that until the 1920s, in tute for Public Policy e-journal at http:// fact, non-citizens could vote in local, Grantmakers Concerned with Immi- www. drummajorinstitute.org/plugin/tem- grants and Refugees. Website at plate/dmi/55/1694 state and even national elections in 22 www.gcir.org provides facts and figures states! Then, the anti-immigrant on immigration at state, national and in- “Political Apartheid in California: movements and xenophobia following ternational levels. Consequences of Excluding a Grow- World War I ended the practice. Op- ing Noncitizen Population,” by Joaquin position to non-citizen voting went Immigrant Voting Project at http:// Avila, in Latino Policy & Issues Brief, www.immigrantvoting.org/index.html. A No. 9, December 2003 for UCLA hand-in-hand with racist movements resource network promoting discussion of Chicano Studies Center. Can be found at against the influx of darker-skinned non-citizen voting in local elections. Based http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/ immigrants, fanning fears about the at New School University’s World Policy briefs/archive.html progressive political influences these Institute. new immigrants might inspire. “Power and Potential: The Growing “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The His- Electoral Clout of New Citizens,” by Current calls for non-citizen vot- torical, Constitutional and Theoretical Rob Paral, in Immigration Policy IN FO- ing certainly seem much more benign: Meanings of Alien Suffrage,” by Jamin CUS, Vol. 3, Issue 4, October 2004, from Giving all parents the right to vote in Raskin, Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Re- the Immigration Policy Center, a division school board elections gives them an view, 1993. of the American Immigration Law Foun- opportunity to decide key issues in dation. Available at www.ailf.org “Local Voting Rights for Non-U.S. their children’s education, and, it is Citizen Immigrants in New York “Voting Rights,” from the Asian Pa- argued, will encourage greater partici- City,” by Wendy Shimmelman, July cific American Legal Defense and Edu- pation in their community — isn’t that 1992. An unpublished report for the Cen- cation Fund at www.aaldef.org/ a classic “American” ideal? ter for Immigrant Rights in New York. voting.html Hayduk, as well as Wendy Available from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights: Shimmelman, offer three critical ar- [email protected]. guments for non-citizen voting — ar-

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 7 (GHETTOS: Continued from page 2) radical change would be inevitable. the “extra” 50,000 vouchers a neces- Whatever the time frame, we would sity. However, 100,000 new vouch- at last be treating a disease that has ers per year is not a fanciful figure; A National festered untreated in the body politic Congress authorized more than that for over a century. number as recently as the year 2000. Gautreaux Program The hypothetical is plainly intended But the hypothetical program could only to show that a national Gautreaux be run without issuing any new vouch- So what can we do about it? One program could operate at a meaning- ers at all. Currently, about 2.1 mil- answer is the Gautreaux lawsuit’s hous- ful scale; it is not a real-life working lion vouchers are in circulation. The ing mobility program writ large (high model. Metropolitan areas vary in size annual “turnover rate” is about 11%, quality pre- and post-move family — in 2000, the 35 largest of the 331 meaning that for various reasons (for counseling, coupled with housing metropolitan areas contained over half example, a family’s income rises above search assistance and unit identifica- the metropolitan ghetto tracts. An ac- the eligibility ceiling), some 230,000 tion, to enable inner-city families to tual program would be tailored to these vouchers are turned back to housing move with housing vouchers into authorities each year for reissuance to middle-class neighborhoods far from Housing expenditures other families. A Congressional en- the ghetto). Let me lay out the ele- “the Gautreaux way” actment could direct 50,000 of these ments of what I believe would be a turnover vouchers to the hypothetical workable program, and then respond would give us the double payback of program. to some of the multiple objections that The cost of assisting mobility moves will probably flood your minds — a ameliorating both our must of course be included in the cal- sketch only: A full rendition would affordable housing and culus. But at an average of $4,000 take more than the allotted space. our black ghetto crises. per family — a reasonable, even gen- Suppose 50,000 housing choice erous, figure based on the Gautreaux vouchers were made available annu- experience — we are talking about ally, were earmarked for use by black variations, operating at greater scale $200 million a year, $2 billion over families living in urban ghettos, and in big ghetto areas and at lesser scale ten years (excluding inflation). To put could be used only in non-ghetto lo- (or not at all) in metropolitan areas that figure in perspective and address cations — say, census tracts with less with small black ghettos. the question of whether we could “af- than 10% poverty and not minority ford” it, consider that for a single year impacted. Suppose that the vouchers (FY 2004), the Bush Administration were allocated to our 125 largest met- Several Questions proposed a military budget of some ropolitan areas. Suppose also that to $400 billion, which (excluding infla- avoid “threatening” any receiving com- The hypothetical raises several ques- tion) would amount to $4,000 billion munity, no more than a specified num- tions. Would 50,000 vouchers a year over ten years. ber of families (an arbitrary number be feasible? Could such an enlarged It is true that almost any program — say, ten, or a small fraction of oc- mobility program be administered re- can be viewed as affordable by com- cupied housing units) could move into sponsibly? Would enough families parison with our military budget. But any city, town or village in a year. volunteer to participate? Could 50,000 we aren’t talking about “any” pro- If an average of 40 municipalities private homes and apartments be found gram. We are talking about a pro- in each metropolitan area served as each year for the program? gram to end the successor to slavery “receiving communities,” the result The answers are necessarily specu- and Jim Crow that is perpetuating a would be — using ten as the hypotheti- lative because mobility on such a scale caste structure in the United States and cal annual move-in ceiling — that has never been tried, but answers there threatening incalculable harm to 50,000 families each year, or 500,000 are. The 50,000 annual vouchers, an American society. Achieving that, for in a decade, would move “in arbitrary figure chosen for purposes of a negligible fraction — .0005 — of our Gautreaux fashion.” Notably, the the hypothetical, really contemplates military budget, would be our best 500,000 moves would equal almost 100,000 new vouchers each year, with bargain since the Louisiana Purchase. half the black families living in metro- 50,000 of them earmarked for the That negligible fraction is the politan ghetto tracts. Gautreaux-type program. The point pricetag for mobility assistance only; We cannot, of course, assume that would be to leave 50,000 new “regu- it does not include the cost of the half of all black families in metropoli- lar” vouchers for other entering fami- vouchers themselves. At the current tan ghettos would choose to partici- lies ineligible for the mobility program annual cost of about $6,500 per pate. But neither would it require the or who, for a multitude of perfectly voucher, the ten-year voucher tab for departure of every black household to understandable reasons, were unable 100,000 new vouchers each year change radically the black ghetto as we or unwilling to participate in it. Fair- would be just under $36 billion (again know it. With enough participants, ness to non-participants would make excluding inflation). Adding roughly

8 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 7% for the administrative fee HUD tive challenge of a nationwide pays to housing authorities brings the Gautreaux-type program. Go, Florence total to about $38.5 billion, less than Would enough families volunteer to 1% of the $4,000 billion military fig- participate? We will not know until Our esteemed founding Board ure. Our affordable housing crisis is we try, but the Gautreaux experience member Florence Roisman (Pro- so severe that, entirely apart from suggests that they may. An average fessor at Indiana Univ. School mobility and ghetto-dismantling, we of 400 families moving each year in of Law) has won the 2004 Equal should be — and politics will some each participating metropolitan area Justice Works Outstanding Law day dictate — making affordable hous- would be required to reach the hypo- School Faculty Award for her ing expenditures of this magnitude. thetical goal (a smaller average num- dogged pursuit of equal justice Housing expenditures “the Gautreaux ber if more metropolitan areas were and her pivotal role in nurturing way” would give us the double pay- used). The 400-per-year number was a public interest ethic among law back of ameliorating both our afford- surpassed more than once by the students, and was honored at able housing and our black ghetto cri- Gautreaux Program even though the EJW’s Oct. 28 dinner in DC. To ses. further honor Florence, a num- Suppose, however, that the coun- For an infinitesimal ber of friends have made dona- try isn’t ready to spend $38.5 billion tions to the IU Foundation to over ten years for new “double pay- expenditure in budgetary terms, we support their summer public in- back” vouchers. Running the hypo- terest law fellowship program. thetical program with turnover vouch- could mount a program If you’d like to participate in this ers instead would eliminate entirely the that could end the tribute, contact Carol Neary, $38.5 billion cost of new vouchers. ghetto as we know it. Dir. of Development, IU School This would mean that the only addi- of Law, at 317/274-4209, tional tab for the hypothetical program [email protected]. — beyond the costs we are today al- ready incurring for the existing number of entering families was arti- voucher program — would be about ficially limited, not by lack of demand $200 million a year, taking us back to or market factors but by the funding administrators were given the right that .0005 fraction of our military and staff that could be extracted from tools, it is possible — indeed, likely budget. It is mind-boggling to think HUD in the Gautreaux consent decree — that the goal would be achieved. that, for an infinitesimal expenditure bargaining process. in budgetary terms, we could mount a Finally, could 50,000 homes and program that could — to use a storied apartments be found each year? The A Legal Question locution — end the ghetto as we know Gautreaux Program was able to place it. families in over 100 cities, towns and A different kind of question is What about administration? Under villages in the Chicago area, while the prompted by the notion of setting aside a consent decree in a housing desegre- hypothetical assumes an average of 50,000 vouchers each year for black gation case, the Dallas Housing Au- only 40. The Census Bureau counts families. How can one justify deny- thority in a little over two years as- 331 metropolitan areas in the country, ing poor whites, poor Latinos and poor sisted some 2,200 families, most of while the hypothetical assumes that the Asians, many also living in high-pov- them black, to move to “non-im- mobility program would operate in erty neighborhoods, an opportunity to pacted” areas (census tracts in which only 125. Each assumption is conser- participate in the mobility program? few Section 8 vouchers were already vative with respect to unit supply. Would it even be legal? in use, but in practice the receiving Most importantly, the potential sup- A dual justification can be offered. areas turned out to be predominantly ply of units is not a fixed-sum. More The first is that the proposal is designed non-black). Dallas was a case of di- fine-tuning of Fair Market Rents (in- to help the nation confront its “most rect administration by a housing au- creasing them in low vacancy times and formidable evil,” an evil that results thority. The Gautreaux Program was places, reducing them where they ex- in significant degree from fears and administered by a nonprofit organiza- ceed market rents) and more creativ- conduct generated by confining black tion. Moving to Opportunity, HUD’s ity about responding to landlord con- Americans, not others, to ghettos. The five-city Gautreaux-like demonstration cerns (for example, paying rent for the second is that the country is respon- program (using poverty, however, not several weeks it sometimes takes a sible for the confinement of blacks to race, as the measure), involves part- housing authority to “clear” a family ghettos in a manner and degree that is nerships between housing authorities for an apartment being held off the not the case with other groups. This and nonprofits. These varied and market) can make a big difference. If is obviously so for poor whites, who largely positive experiences suggest the 50,000 annual goal were made a already live mostly among the non- that we could handle the administra- bureaucratic imperative, and if local (Please turn to page 10)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 9 (GHETTOS: Continued from page 9) bility works well for many participat- need to be primed with government ing families. assistance. poor. Latinos and Asians, for all of A variation on this argument is that In both circumstances, the concern the discrimination they have suffered, dismantling the ghetto will undermine that gentrification will drive out the do not have slavery or Jim Crow in black institutions, political power and remaining poor can be addressed. their histories. Nor have they been ghetto communities that have values Where government assists the redevel- confined among their own to a com- deserving preservation. As for black opment process, the assistance should parable degree. Devoting 50,000 institutional and political strength, be conditioned on housing for the poor vouchers exclusively to blacks in ghet- Italians, Irish, Jews and others have as part of the mix. Where it does not tos can thus be justified both by the survived far more mobility than black (although usually some form of assis- purpose of the proposal and by the Americans are likely to experience; it tance will be involved), inclusionary unique history and current situation of is absurd to contend that the strong, zoning can mandate that some low-in- blacks in ghettos. resilient black American culture has come housing be included in all new As for legality, no one can be cer- anything to fear from a Gautreaux-type residential development above a tain in a time when 5-4 Supreme Court threshold number of units. Other tech- decisions are routine. But when in Housing choice vouchers niques — for example, property tax 1988 Congress authorized compensa- caps — are also available. tion to Japanese citizens who had been as “compensation” for herded into World War II detention confining blacks to camps, no serious legal question was ghettos is not a bad Revitalization as even raised. Though the analogy is legal rationale. an Alternative? obviously imperfect, housing choice vouchers as “compensation” for con- Others reject the Gautreaux ap- fining blacks in ghettos is not a bad proach in favor of preferred alterna- rationale. It is unlikely that even program. As for values in ghetto com- tives. A major one is “revitalization,” today’s Supreme Court would upset munities, it is plain to any objective but analysis discloses that, absent pov- an express Congressional determina- observer that the bad far outweighs the erty deconcentration, this is an inad- tion to make partial amends in this way good. equate alternative. A rudimentary for a history of slavery, Jim Crow and A further variation on the bad-for- form of revitalization is simply to go ghettoization. (Even so, one can imag- them argument is that non-movers will in — without worrying about poverty ine that for reasons of policy or poli- be worse off once some of the ablest deconcentration through housing mo- tics, Congress would choose to offer and most motivated among ghetto resi- bility — and improve shelter and ser- the mobility program to all residents dents leave. Even if true, this is not a vices for present residents. But with of metropolitan ghettos. That would sufficient reason to reject the ap- the suburbs having become the locus require a reworking of the numbers, proach. Should we not have passed of metropolitan employment growth, and possibly prioritizing poverty fami- the Fair Housing Act because the de- with the opportunity engine the ghetto lies, but would not affect the basic parture of better-off ghetto residents once was now a destructive, jobless structure or feasibility of the proposed may have left those who remained environment, it is hubris to think we program.) worse off? Moreover, the likelihood could reverse decades-old economic that deconcentration will foster rede- forces through improved shelter and velopment means that even many of services alone. William Julius Wil- Those Who Remain those who choose to remain will be son has concluded, correctly, that with- benefited over time. out increasing economic opportunities Even if a national Gautreaux-type The latter point may raise eyebrows. for poor blacks and reducing their seg- program were doable and legal, ob- Why will redevelopment be fostered? regation, programs that target ghettos jections remain to be addressed. One And if it is, won’t gentrification sim- are unlikely to have much success. is that the program would be harmful ply drive out remaining ghetto resi- A more sophisticated revitalization to the moving families, severing them dents? The answer to the first ques- approach is community redevelop- from family, friends and institutional tion is a matter of pressure: When, ment. With a nonprofit community support systems, and subjecting them like a balloon being filled, migrants development corporation generally to hostility and racial discrimination. poured in, the ghetto expanded out- leading the way, the idea is to attack An answer is to ask who are “we” to ward; as deconcentration lets out some all of a depressed community’s needs withhold a purely voluntary opportu- of the air, the pressure will be re- comprehensively and simultaneously nity from “them” on the ground that versed. When ghettos are located near — not just housing, but commercial we know better than they what is in desirable areas, redevelopment pres- development, job creation, school im- their interest. Moreover, studies of sures will be strong. When they are provement, health facilities, public the Gautreaux program show that mo- not, the redevelopment pump may and social services, credit supply,

10 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 crime and drug control. This form of achievement, jobs may still be scarce, ing played in many large cities and — revitalization is almost always aided neighborhood schools still problem- increasingly — in many older, inner- by government funding of one sort or atic, poverty still widespread, crime ring suburbs as well. Relative to their another. and drugs still unvanquished. Two of metropolitan regions, these “inside” The attraction of community revi- revitalization’s most enthusiastic sup- places face declining employment, talization is considerable. Residents porters, describing one of its most middle-class populations, buying of depressed neighborhoods need notable successes (Paul Grogan and power, relative incomes and tax bases, hope; the revitalizing possibility may Tony Proscio, in their book Comeback along with increasing, disproportion- supply it. Cities need redevelopment; Cities, writing of the South Bronx), ately poor minority populations. The the prospect of revitalization offers it. acknowledge that the poverty rate did “outside game” reverses these patterns, Democracy requires a strong citizenry; not decline, that employment was with most of the suburbs, particularly community-based revitalization builds mostly unchanged and that “substan- the newer, farther-out ones, garner- strong citizens. No wonder commu- tial racial segregation and isolation will ing a steadily growing share of the nity revitalization is the darling of continue.” region’s jobs, as well as middle-class philanthropy, supported by a growing The reason has to do with over five families with their incomes, buying national movement. decades of metropolitan development power and tax-paying capacities, while But cautions are in order. First, housing a disproportionately low frac- community redevelopment does not tion of the region’s poor. generally focus on ghettos, for few In the neighborhoods in Inside Game Outside Game ana- black ghettos boast the key instrument which most lyzes the powerful social and economic — a strong community development revitalization has been forces that generate these metropoli- corporation. Second, even in the attempted, the record is tan development patterns, and the in- neighborhoods in which most revital- stitutional — including governmental ization has been attempted, the record distinctly mixed. — arrangements that foster them. The is distinctly mixed. Revitalization is result is what Rusk calls the “tragic a difficult, multi-faceted, long-term dilemma” of community-based rede- undertaking. Numerous studies make patterns which David Rusk examines velopment programs. “It is like help- it clear that even after decades of stu- in his 1999 book, Inside Game Out- ing a crowd of people run up a down pendously hard work and much side Game. The “inside game” is be- escalator.” No matter how fast they run, Rusk writes, the escalator comes back down faster and faster. Some Selected Readings run so hard — some programs func- tion so well — that a few succeed in Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class, Thomas G. Kingsley & Margery Austin getting to the top, but most are car- and Change in an Urban Community Turner, eds. Housing Markets and Resi- ried back down, and the climb becomes (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990) dential Mobility (Urban Institute Press, harder and harder for those trying 1993) Sheryl Cashin, The Failures of Integra- later. tion: How Race and Class are Under- Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: To be sure, no effort to improve mining the American Dream (Public Af- The Great Black Migration and How it housing and services for poor families fairs, 2004) Changed America (Knopf, 1991) should be gainsaid. Some revitaliza- Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton, tion activity may actually prevent mar- America (New York: Henry Holt, 1998) American Apartheid: Segregation and the ginal neighborhoods from becoming Making of the Underclass (Harvard Univ. ghettos. Yet there is a danger that the Owen Fiss, A Way Out: America’s Ghet- Press, 1993) tos and the Legacy of Racism (Princeton appeal of community revitalization Univ. Press, 2003) Leonard S. Rubinowitz & James E. will lead to plans that leave ghettos Rosenbaum, Crossing the Class and intact by focusing exclusively on im- George M. Fredrickson, The Black Im- Color Lines (Univ. of Chicago Press, proving conditions within them for age in the White Mind (Harper & Row, 2000) 1971) their impoverished populations. We David Rusk, Inside Game Outside Game: should not be about the business of John Goering & Judith D. Feins, eds. Winning Strategies for Saving Urban fostering self-contained ghetto com- Choosing a Better Life? Evaluating the America (Brookings Institution Press, Moving to Opportunity Social Experiment 1999) munities apart from the mainstream. (Urban Institute Press, 2003) We should instead be trying to bring John Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportuni- the ghetto poor into the mainstream. Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second ties Lost: The Continuing Costs of Hous- The critical point is that only by en- Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago ing Discrimination (Russell Sage Foun- 1940-1960 (Cambridge Univ. Press, dation, 1995) abling the poor to live among the non- 1983) poor will significant long-term im- (Please turn to page 12)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 11 (GHETTOS: Continued from page 11) succumbed to the Nazis if Roosevelt So long as black ghettos exist, threat- had not dreamed up lend-lease and ening inundation should there be a provements be made possible in the life persuaded a reluctant America First break in any neighborhood’s dike, circumstances of most impoverished Congress to go along. Truman beat most white Americans will fear the en- families trapped in ghettos. Dewey. Nixon went to China. The try of blacks, any blacks, into their Experience demonstrates that com- Soviet Union collapsed. In one de- communities. And so long as that is munity revitalization can best be cade, the Civil Rights Movement the case, America’s “most formidable achieved through a mixed-income ap- ended generations of seemingly im- evil” will continue to afflict the na- proach that attracts higher-income pregnable Jim Crow. In a single fair tion. families to (formerly) poverty neigh- housing enactment, Congress stripped The other part of Tocqueville’s borhoods, thereby creating an incen- historically sacred private property prophecy — result in disaster — is less tive for private profit and investment. rights from American landowners. certain. Yet so long as we continue to Like housing mobility, mixed-income Even with respect to black Americans, tolerate the black ghetto, the prospect development also brings with it the history tells us that we can sometimes is for continuation of the two unequal crucial benefit of enabling the poor to manage to take forward steps. Lead- societies described by the Kerner Com- live among the non-poor. Community ership is key, but we will not have a mission Report, and continued fear of revitalization should thus be seen not Bush in the White House forever. blacks by white Americans. As long as an opposing or alternate strategy but It is ghetto fear — anxiety about in- as that fear persists, whites will con- as a follow-on, mixed-income comple- undation and anti-social conduct — tinue to treat black Americans as the ment to housing mobility. that explains a good deal (though not feared Other. They are likely to con- tinue to act fearfully and repressively, So long as black ghettos possibly to incarcerate still more black The Politics exist, most white Americans in still more prisons. In that event, the Toqueville prophecy of di- Americans will fear the saster may indeed become the Ameri- A final objection is that my entire entry of blacks, any proposal is an indulgent fantasy. Don’t can reality. we clearly lack the political stomach blacks, into their The alternative is to dismantle our for facilitating the movement of large communities. highest-poverty black ghettos and re- numbers of black families from inner- place them wherever possible with city ghettos to white neighborhoods? mixed-income communities, thereby What on earth makes me think that a all) of white attitudes toward blacks to lessen the fear and the fearful con- nation that has treated blacks the way in general, and white rejection of in- duct they generate. Nothing can bring America has through most of its his- moving blacks in particular. If the that about overnight, and any approach tory — the way it still treats the black black ghetto were replaced, over time will be fraught with difficulty and un- poor — would give a moment’s con- those fears and anxieties would be ame- certainty. But a national Gautreaux sideration to the course I am propos- liorated. Gautreaux teaches that the mobility program is a sensible way to ing? This very black ghetto issue was threshold fear of “them” can be over- begin a task that we postpone at our instrumental in shifting the political come by effective pre- and post-move peril. alignment of the entire country just a counseling; by certification from a Alexander Polikoff (apolikoff@ few decades ago, changing American credible agency that the moving fami- bpichicago.org) is staff attorney and character in the bargain. We remain lies will be good tenants; and, most former executive director of Business today the uncaring nation we then be- importantly, by keeping the numbers and Professional People for the Pub- came. Indeed, as this is being writ- down. No more than a handful of lic Interest (BPI), a Chicago public ten, the Bush Administration is pro- families a year entering any receiving interest law and policy center. He is posing to cut back radically on hous- community makes for a different ball also lead counsel in the Gautreaux liti- ing choice vouchers. A Gautreaux- game. gation. This article is adapted from type program would certainly be por- the final chapter of Polikoff’s forth- trayed as liberal social engineering. coming book, Waiting for Gautreaux: Should it ever be seriously considered, Two Courses The Slender but Precious Hope for ❏ wouldn’t some modern-day George Racial Equality. Wallace whip up the country’s hardly America confronts two courses. dormant Negrophobia, perhaps espe- The first is to continue to co-exist with Don’t forget cially easy to do at a time when work- black ghettos. The second is to dis- ing- and even middle-class Americans mantle and transform them. The pros- to send us items are having a hard time? pect along the first course, as for our Resources Maybe. Still, history is full of close Tocqueville prophesied, is that the evil section. calls and surprises. England might have of racial inequality will not be solved.

12 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 (VOTING: Continued from page 4)

Keeping the Promise Presidential elections (1961); the 24th The Third National Conference Amendment banned poll taxes in fed- on Housing Mobility eral elections (1964); and the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to December 3-4, 2004 18 for qualified voters in the states (1971). At the Urban Institute, 2100 M St. NW But this ad hoc sequence of democ- ratizing and anti-discrimination Washington, DC amendments for particular groups still does not add up to an affirmative uni- This working conference will bring together housing mobility versal right to vote, the kind that the program administrators, public housing agency representatives, International Covenant on Civil and researchers, and fair housing and civil rights activists to plan for Political Rights calls for and that, for the future of programs that help poor families move from high- example, post-apartheid South Africa poverty to low-poverty communities. We will hear the latest actually has. The South African Con- research on housing voucher mobility, in order to begin to de- stitution defines the new Republic as a velop a coherent set of policy proposals and organize to put “sovereign democratic state” with housing mobility back on the national policy agenda. “universal adult suffrage” and a “mul- tiparty system of democratic govern- ment.” In South Africa, “Every adult CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS citizen has the right to vote in elec- “Understanding and translating the latest research results from Moving to Opportunity and Gautreaux”: Margery Austin Turner, Most Americans think The Urban Institute that we have a Constitutional “right “Housing Mobility and Public Health”: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Harvard University to vote.”

“The Continuing Promise of Housing Mobility”: Alex Polikoff, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, and lead tions for any legislative body estab- plaintiffs’ counsel in Gautreaux lished in terms of the Constitution.” What difference does it make that “Mobility Programs Today — Promising Practices and Ongoing our Constitution has never made a dec- Challenges”: Jennifer O’Neill, CHAC; Ophelia Basgal, Alameda laration like that? After all, most County Housing Authority; Mary Davis, Leadership Council for people think that we already do have a Metropolitan Open Communities “right to vote,” and billions of dollars were spent in 2004 telling people to “Housing Mobility and the Future of the Integration Ideal”: Prof. exercise it. But, in truth, this void Sheryll Cashin, Georgetown Law School deep in the heart of our Constitution leaves us with a major democracy defi- Workshops will cover housing mobility in the Latino and Asian cit that poses the three following prob- communities, domestic violence and gender issues, public health lems for democratic legitimacy in impacts of housing mobility, and current issues in housing America. mobility administration. • Within the Electoral College sys- Conference co-sponsors include the National Fair Housing Alli- tem, the individual citizen has no ance, The National Low Income Housing Coalition, The Urban Constitutional right to vote for Institute, the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, the Leadership President, and the people have no Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, and the National right to control the selection of the Council of La Raza. The Conference is supported in part by a grant state’s electors from the Taconic Foundation.

For late registration and more information, go to www.prrac.org. Most Americans dimly understand that the popular vote does not control who wins in the Presidential election (Please turn to page 14)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 13 (VOTING: Continued from page 13) when legislatures grant the people the The Electoral College presents a right to vote in Presidential elections, massive challenge to democratic val- — thus, Vice-President Gore had they can always revoke it and “take ues and a standing invitation to politi- 500,000+ votes more than Bush in back the power to appoint electors.” cal mischief. But, even if we assume 2000 but still lost. Yet most people Even if the people seek to bind them- that we are stuck with it for the time also assume that a majority popular selves in their state constitutions to being, the electors should at least be vote controls which candidate captures abide by a popular vote for president, directly chosen by the people of each the Electoral College votes in their own they cannot restrain legislatures that state. The only way to strip the legis- state. But the 2000 Presidential elec- resolve in the future to appoint elec- latures of their dangerous power over tion taught us that this is false. tors of their own choosing. selection of the electors and establish In 2000, the Florida Supreme Court The events of 2000, however ex- real popular control of each state’s ordered a statewide manual recount of treme they seemed at the time, may electoral votes is by way of Constitu- 175,000 ballots that for various rea- prefigure the collapse of already frag- tional amendment. sons could not be read by the state’s ile democratic norms in close Presi- obsolescent punchcard machines. At dential elections. As the nation’s de- • In every election, millions of that point, leaders of the Republican- mographics shift, undermining the Americans entitled to vote are dis- controlled Florida legislature in 2000 enfranchised by bad technology, declared that the legislature would not The Court told us that voter registration obstacles, and tac- be bound by this recount and would state legislatures can tical suppression of voting, which independently select the state’s Elec- are problems engineered or tolerated toral College members. This an- appoint electors, by state election managers who op- nouncement stunned many Americans. regardless of the actual erate with relative impunity under Harvard Kennedy School of Govern- popular vote. current laws. ment Professor Alexander Keyssar, in the Political Science Quarterly (Sum- Because America has no Constitu- mer 2003), likened it to “a half-for- natural strength of the contemporary tional right to vote, it also has no na- gotten corpse” that “had suddenly been Republican Party, we can expect to see tional electoral commission to protect jarred loose from the river bottom and aggressive partisan tactics by its lead- voting rights and fair elections. floated upward into view.” ers in state legislatures — and their law- Rather, we have hundreds of partisan But in its opinion in Bush v. Gore, yers in the Supreme Court and other officials at the state and local level the Supreme Court’s majority empha- tribunals — working to accumulate 270 supervising our elections — people like sized that the Florida legislature was electors by hook or by crook. Indeed, Florida’s Secretary of State in 2000, acting well within its powers. The the Texas Constitution was amended Katherine Harris, who co-chaired the Court stated that the “individual citi- shortly after the 2000 election to pro- Bush for President campaign in zen has no federal Constitutional right vide that if the popular vote seems Florida, or Ohio Secretary of State to vote for electors for the President ambiguous or difficult to count, the Kenneth Blackwell, who co-chaired of the United States.” Thus, even Texas legislature shall have the right his state’s Bush for President campaign to immediately appoint electors of its in 2004. We have no national ballot choosing. This provision is redundant, but a maze of state ballots. We have of course, given the Court’s analysis no single system of voting but every- Our of the problem, but it is properly read thing from punchcard machines to the Award-winning as a statement of collective political “optical scan” method to the paranoia- Civil Rights Book intentions by a flagship Republican inducing “black box” computers with- legislature that last year, with fero- out paper receipts. Our election sys- The National Association of cious partisan precision, also moved tems are increasingly designed, not by Multicultural Education (NAME) heaven and earth to “gerrymander” public agencies but by private corpo- has given Putting the Movement U.S. House districts to favor Repub- rations, many of them run by political Back Into Civil Rights Teaching licans. I write before the 2004 elec- activists. The CEO of the Diebold its 2004 Multicultural Book tion, which has the benefit of thou- Corporation, which is the largest Award. And our wonderful part- sands of volunteer lawyers on the maker of the new voting computers, ner in this book project, Teach- ground. But if any state legislature spent a weekend at President Bush’s ing for Change, separately re- decides to take advantage of the ample ranch and wrote a fundraising letter to ceived NAME’s organizational confusion and controversy in the elec- fellow Republicans in which he award. If you haven’t already toral system to appoint electors with- pledged to deliver Ohio’s Electoral looked at/ordered the book, go to out regard to the popular vote, the College votes to President Bush. www. civilrightsteaching.org. people will have little structural re- In this electoral jungle, voting course. rights are weak but voting wrongs are

14 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 everywhere. Our votes are lost, mis- counted, passed over and suppressed PRRAC Needs Your $upport! in every election. This reality was shown by the outrageous practices that As we go to press, we don’t yet know the outcome of the upcoming came to light in Florida in 2000. Jour- national election, but we do know that PRRAC needs your help to con- nalist Greg Palast, in Harper’s, has tinue its progressive research and policy work. While our organization is documented that more than 50,000 primarily foundation-funded, we also are dependent on the individual con- persons – half of them African Ameri- tributions of our subscribers and supporters to pursue our research and can or Latino — were falsely accused advocacy agenda. Some of our current projects include the Housing Mo- of being felons and then illegally re- bility Initiative (including our upcoming Housing Mobility Conference), moved from the state voter registra- “Civil Rights Mandates in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program” tion list before the election by a pri- (a research and advocacy campaign to enforce fair housing requirements vate company with which Secretary of in the nation’s largest low-income housing production program), and a State Katherine Harris contracted to new effort to bring our award-winning civil rights curriculum on the road purge felons from the rolls. These citi- in a series of teacher-community activist workshops (“Putting the Move- zens were beyond the 600,000 con- ment Back into Civil Rights Teaching”). For a complete list of current victed felons who were already disen- PRRAC projects, see our website, http://www.prrac.org. Please consider franchised by law. After the election, giving generously to PRRAC this year, using the attached envelope. the state promised to restore the ille- gally purged voters and not to do it again. There were other irregularities. process; and up to 1.2 million votes certain things worse. The statute cre- Thousands of Florida voters who ac- were lost “because of polling place op- ated no legal redress for voters who tually made it into the voting booth erations” — meaning technical mal- are wrongfully excluded from the voter lost their votes to that masterpiece of functions, problems with lines and rolls, nor did it pass any criminal or design error, the Palm Beach “butter- hours, negligence, understaffing and civil penalties for officials who actu- fly ballot.” Tens of thousands more underfunding. Significantly, this ally violate a person’s right to vote. “overvote” ballots — where voters fol- study reports that these problems are There are no real teeth in the statute lowed ambiguous instructions and even worse in state elections than fed- when it comes to defending voting checked off the name of “Al Gore,” eral ones. rights against government misconduct. for example, and then also wrote it in And it has created some practices and separately — were cast aside and for- More than 8 million implications unfriendly to voting. gotten. Above all, more than 175,000 Several courts this year upheld the ballots were simply left uncounted Americans, a majority power of states under HAVA to toss when they failed to register on the of them African- out provisional ballots cast by bona fide punchcard ballot tabulations. Al- American and Hispanic, voters who vote in the wrong precinct. though the Florida Supreme Court belong to communities This would be unthinkable if the fun- ordered all of the ballots to be counted, that are absolutely or damental right to vote were rooted in a 5-4 majority on the U.S. Supreme substantially the Constitution rather than the grace Court quickly moved in to stop the of state legislatures. vote-counting. disenfranchised by law. We also face the recurring problem Florida was illustrative of our elec- of the modern Republican Party prac- toral practices, where we all belong to ticing scare tactics to intimidate mi- a reserve army of the disenfranchised After 2000, many were convinced nority voters. Just as Southern white that can be mobilized in different that all we needed was technological Democrats suppressed black voting in places at different times. According reform to improve the picture. The Mississippi, today’s Republicans are to the July 2001 report of the CalTech Help America Vote Act of 2002 always looking for ways to intimidate and MIT Voting Technology Project (HAVA) put billions of dollars into and deter racial minorities in the po- (“Voting: What It Is, What It Could state efforts to replace the punchcard litical process. A seminal example took Be”), “between four and six million machines with electronic voting and, place early in the Reagan years, in New presidential votes were lost in the 2000 most positively, required state provi- Jersey’s 1981 gubernatorial election. election.” Some 2 million votes were sional voting laws that will allow vot- The Republican National Committee simply never counted, primarily be- ers to cast challenged ballots if there launched a National Ballot Security cause of “faulty equipment and con- is a problem at the polls. Force, which sent letters to registered fusing ballots”; between 1.5 and 3 But HAVA did not fundamentally Democrats in African-American and million votes were lost in the maze- change the picture of official indiffer- Hispanic communities. Any letters re- like vagaries of the voter registration ence to voting rights and in fact made (Please turn to page 16)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 15 (VOTING: Continued from page 15) necticut, are subject to military con- plaintiffs in the suit, which was brought scription and can vote in Presidential by the District’s lawyer, alleged that turned as undeliverable became the elections under the terms of the 23rd their disenfranchisement in the U.S. basis for challenging voters and try- Amendment, they have been continu- Senate and House of Representatives ing to get them deleted from the rolls. ally frustrated in their efforts to achieve was unconstitutional. The District “On election day,” Laughlin voting representation in the United Court majority found that: “The Equal McDonald writes in The American States Senate and House of Represen- Protection Clause does not protect the Prospect, “the security force dis- tatives. This is a double injustice, since right of all citizens to vote, but rather patched armed off-duty police offic- Congress acts not only as their national the right of all qualified citizens to ers wearing official looking armbands legislative sovereign but ultimately as vote.” To be a “qualified” citizen for to heavily black. . . precincts in New- their local legislature as well under the purposes of national legislative repre- ark, Camden and Trenton.” They pa- terms of the Constitution’s “District sentation, you must live in a state and trolled the polls and posted signs ad- Clause” (U.S. Const. art. I, 17, cl. have the state grant you the vote. Thus, vertising a $1,000 reward for anyone 8), which confers upon Congress “ex- the District population, nearly 70% of offering information leading to the clusive Legislation” over the District. which is African-American, Hispanic arrest and conviction of people violat- and Asian-American, is simply in the ing election laws. This kind of “ballot Over 4 million American wrong place. security” operation has become stan- The effort that has come nearest to dard operating procedure in today’s citizens living in the accomplishing voting rights in Con- Republican Party, which understands, Territories have no gress for District residents was the pro- as one of its Michigan state legislators mechanism for posed D.C. Voting Rights Constitu- put it in 2004, that victory depends on participation in federal tional amendment, which would have suppressing the black vote. elections and no voting treated the District constituting the representation. Seat of Government as though it were • More than 8 million American a state for the purposes of Congres- citizens, a majority of them Afri- sional representation. The proposed can-Americans and Hispanics, re- amendment passed Congress in 1978 main absolutely or substantially dis- District residents have only a non-vot- by more than a two-thirds majority in enfranchised by virtue of exclusion- ing Delegate in the House, Rep. both the House and Senate, with over- ary voting policies that the courts Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been whelming Democratic support and sub- have found Constitutionally accept- brilliantly nimble but so far unsuccess- stantial Republican backing as well. It able or even obligatory. ful in promoting equal voting rights failed in the states when it found itself for her constituents against the frosty desperately short of national allies Unlike the haphazard disenfran- indifference of most politicians. against a ferocious conservative oppo- chisement that randomly affected mil- The District’s effort to climb up to sition. lions in 2000, there is a larger institu- a level of equal membership in tionalized disenfranchisement taking America has been a lonely one, and There are 4,129,318 American citi- place that rarely enters the headlines. the Constitution has been effectively zens living in the federal Territories More than 8 million Americans, a mobilized as an enemy to the cause. of Puerto Rico, Guam, American majority of them racial and ethnic In the early 1990s, a bill to grant a Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands minorities, still belong to communi- petition for statehood for D.C. failed who have no right to vote for Presi- ties that are absolutely or substantially by a 2-1 margin in the House of Rep- dent and no voting representation in disenfranchised by law. This is a popu- resentatives and never saw the light of the Congress. These 4+ million U.S. lation of voteless persons larger than day in the Senate. Members of Con- citizens living in the Territories are the combined populations of Wyo- gress repeatedly invoked the Consti- subject to the sovereignty of Congress ming, Vermont, Alaska, North Da- tution itself as the warrant for continu- under the “Territorial Clause” of the kota, South Dakota, Montana, Dela- ing disenfranchisement. Constitution (art. IV, 3, cl. 2). But ware, Maine and Nebraska. The un- In 2000, just a few months before they have no mechanism for partici- represented fall into three groups: its decision in Bush v. Gore, the Su- pation in federal elections and no vot- preme Court rejected an Equal Pro- ing representation in national govern- There are 570,898 taxpaying, tection attack on Congressional disen- ment. The largest Territorial popula- draftable U.S. citizens living in the franchisement of the District by af- tion is in Puerto Rico, home to District of Columbia who lack any firming a 2-1 decision of the United 3,808,610 people as of the 2000 Cen- voting representation in the U.S. States District Court for the District sus. In 1917, the Jones Act gave all Congress. Although Washingtonians of Columbia in a case called Alexander Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, and in pay more federal taxes per capita than v. Mineta (90 F.Supp.2d 35 [D. D.C. 1952 the island gained “Common- the residents of every state but Con- 2000], aff’d by 531 U.S. 940). The wealth” status. But, like the District’s

16 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Puerto dence, the status quo and “enhanced Rican “Resident Commissioner” still commonwealth” status. The political Thanks! acts only as a non-voting Delegate in rights of citizens in the Territories the House of Representatives. Also should not wait any longer for a choice There’s no way I could func- like residents of the District of Colum- of political forms that never emerges. tion as Editor of P&R without bia, Territorial residents are shut out The 23rd Amendment, which gave lots of help. And fortunately, of the Senate completely. Unlike residents of D.C. the opportunity to we’ve got it, and they’re terrific. Washingtonians, Puerto Ricans have vote in their first Presidential election So let me thank Teri Grimwood no voice even in Presidential elections. in 1964, set a precedent for using Con- for her reliable, quick and intel- Citizens living in the Territories stitutional amendments to enfranchise ligent layout work, and Brenda have all the responsibilities of other citizens who have no residence in a Fleet and Rebekah Park of the American citizens except that they do state and to recognize them as a per- PRRAC staff for all their good not pay federal taxes (unless they work manent part of the national commu- support work. — CH for the federal government). Some nity. people believe that this exemption jus- tifies complete disenfranchisement. We are the only nation from the state’s Governor, presently This is certainly not the view of Puerto Jeb Bush. Ricans and other Territorial residents, on earth that As one might expect in a period of who pay heavy local taxes, serve in disenfranchises the racially-tilted law enforcement, these the armed forces, are subject to the people of its capital policies have dramatic effects on the draft and consider themselves part of city. composition of the electorate. In the country. According to the U.S. Florida, a shocking 31% of all Afri- Court of Appeals for the Second Cir- can-American men are permanently cuit, the “exclusion of U.S. citizens disenfranchised. In both Delaware and residing in the territories from partici- There are more than 4 million citi- Texas, 20% of African Americans are pating in the vote for the President of zens disenfranchised, many of them disenfranchised. In Virginia and Mis- the United States is the cause of im- for the rest of their lives, in federal, sissippi, about 25% of the black male mense resentment in those territories state and local elections as a conse- population has been permanently — resentment that has been especially quence of a felony criminal convic- locked out of the electoral process. vocal in Puerto Rico” (Romeu v. tion. According to The Sentencing Felon disenfranchisement is at odds Cohen, 265 F.3d 118, 127 [2d Cir. Project and Human Rights Watch, in with the principle of universal suffrage, 2001]). As Judge Pierre Leval ob- their report, “Losing the Vote: The which is why the policy has begun to served in that case, the political ex- Impact of Felony Disenfranchise- fall around the world. Last year, the clusion of Puerto Ricans “fuels annual ment,” citizens who have been disen- Canadian Supreme Court in Sauve v. attacks on the United States in hear- franchised in their states because of Canada (Chief Electoral Officer) ings in the United Nations, at which criminal convictions amount to about struck it down as violative of Canada’s the United States is described as hypo- 2% of the country’s eligible voting constitutional right to vote, holding: critically preaching democracy to the population. In four states — Florida, “Denial of the right to vote on the ba- world while practicing nineteenth-cen- Mississippi, Virginia and Wyoming — sis of attributed moral unworthiness is tury colonialism at home.” citizens disenfranchised because of inconsistent with the respect for the Yet repeated lawsuits against the their criminal records constitute fully dignity of every person that lies at the disenfranchisement of Puerto Ricans 4% of the adult population. heart of Canadian democracy.” in Presidential elections have failed. Felon disenfranchisement is less a But our Constitution creates the The Constitution makes no provision strategy of individual moral rehabili- contrary implication. In 1974, the for Territorial residents to be repre- tation than mass electoral suppression. U.S. Supreme Court in Richardson v. sented in the national government and This analysis seems unavoidable when Ramirez (418 U.S. 24, 56 [1974]) therefore reduces citizens living in we consider that 1.4 million ex-offend- found that felon disenfranchisement Territories to colonial status. This ers, mostly African Americans, are does not violate the requirement of second-class seating is a central obses- permanently disenfranchised in eight “equal protection” in Section 1 of the sion of Puerto Rican politics and states. In Florida in 2000, 600,000 14th Amendment because Section 2 equally significant in other Territories. voteless citizens were former felons explicitly authorizes states to disen- There is little sympathy for seeking who already did their time and paid franchise persons convicted of “rebel- independence from the U.S., which their dues to society. They will never lion, or other crime” without losing seems an ever more far-fetched option. get their suffrage rights back under any Congressional representation. But Congress has refused to act in an current law, which operates like a po- Unless this decision is reversed, only effective way to grant Puerto Ricans a litical death sentence, unless they beg a Constitutional amendment can en- real choice among statehood, indepen- for, and receive, electoral clemency (Please turn to page 18)

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 17 (VOTING: Continued from page 17) Today, our political Constitution amendments we have added since the looks frail and incomplete in the face Bill of Rights have been suffrage-ex- franchise more than 4 million people of modern universal suffrage prin- panding or democracy-deepening who have been convicted of felonies ciples visible all over the world. We amendments. But they have had a and stripped of their voting rights or, are the only nation on earth that dis- sharply limited effect. Without a uni- at least, the 1.4 million ex-offenders enfranchises the people of its capital versal Constitutional right to vote who have served their time but are city. Our felon disenfranchisement granting every possible presumption in likely to remain disenfranchised until policies are backward compared to favor of the people, almost any elec- they die. those of other advanced democracies. toral policy can be turned against the Our election systems are raggedy, and electorate by partisan state election our electoral practices disfavor real officials. We need to show the politi- Catching Up to the electoral competition and diverse rep- cal maturity as a nation now to inscribe World — and Ourselves resentation. the people’s right to vote directly into The world was shocked to witness the people’s covenant. Americans are waking up to a cen- our electoral train-wreck in 2000, and Jamin Raskin (raskin@wcl. tral and surprising flaw of American american.edu) is a professor of con- politics—our deeply vulnerable right stitutional law at American Uni- to vote. But, in a certain sense, this Our political versity’s Washington College of Law only scratches the surface of our diffi- Constitution looks frail and founder of its Marshall-Brennan culties, which include: runaway par- and incomplete in the Program, which sends law students into tisan gerrymandering that destroys face of modern public high schools to teach a course competitiveness in most U.S. House universal suffrage in constitutional literacy. He is the author, most recently, of We the Stu- races and gives us an incumbent re- principles visible all election rate often exceeding 95%; a dents (CQ Press and the Supreme Court U.S. Senate with no African-Ameri- over the world. Historical Society, 2003 [2d ed.]) and can members except the (presumably) Overruling Democracy: The Supreme newly elected Senator from Illinois, Court versus the American People Barack Obama; winner-take-all elec- many of us were astonished to read the (Routledge, 2003). ❏ tions that systematically cancel out the Supreme Court’s pronouncement that voting strength and interests of tens of we have no Constitutional right to vote millions of people; blatant official dis- for President. But no one should have Additional Reading crimination against third parties and been surprised, for the evidence is all Bob Moses and Charles Cobb, Radical independents in ballot access rules and around us. A right-to-vote Constitu- Equations: Math Literacy and Civil debate participation; the continuing tional amendment is necessary not only Rights, Beacon Press (2001) dominance of big money in govern- to redeem the demoralizing chaos we ment and elections; and the unneces- experienced in the election of 2000 but Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: sary disenfranchisement of non-citizens to maintain the trajectory of our demo- The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Basic Books (2000) in local elections. cratic development against competing But these second-generation issues forms of government also lurking “The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter will be difficult to address until we within our society, such as empire and Intimidation and Suppression in America deal with the primary fact that we have national security state. Already the Today,” People for the American Way not protected voting as an affirmative entire Congressional Black Caucus has Foundation and NAACP, http:// www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/ Constitutional right. In the global con- endorsed a right-to-vote Constitutional default.aspx?oid=16368. text, this departure of American con- amendment proposed by Congressman stitutionalism from well-established Jesse Jackson, Jr. Dozens of other Laughlin McDonald, “The New Poll international norms is ironic. For the members of Congress have voiced Tax,” The American Prospect, Decem- United States was the first nation con- their support as well. There are signs ber 30, 2002, http://www.prospect.org/ print/V13/23/mcdonald-l.html ceived in popular insurgency against that the “election protection” move- tyranny and in favor of representative ment that intervened in the 2004 elec- Steven Hill, Fixing Elections: The Fail- constitutionalism. It was Bob Moses tion will not fold up its tent, but will ure of America’s Winner Take All Poli- and our modern Civil Rights activists, place democracy advancement high up tics, Routledge (2002) battling the political oppression of on the agenda. The Center for Voting and Democracy, apartheid Mississippi, who produced The history of the United States can the nation’s leading voting reform or- the slogan of “one person, one vote” be read as a struggle for inclusive de- ganization — www.fairvote.org. that swept the earth at the end of the mocracy against structures of domina- 20th Century. tion and exclusion. Many of the

18 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 Our New Board Members

Director of its Project for the Future of Equal Justice. In 2002, she helped form the Mississippi Center for So- cial Justice, a collaborative racial and economic justice law firm that prac- tices community problem-solving ap- proaches. Prior to coming to CLASP, she was Executive Director of the Southern Africa Legal Service & Le- gal Education Project. She is the im- mediate past Board President of the Washington Council of Lawyers, a voluntary bar association promoting Darrell Armstrong pro bono and public interest law. A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe Col- Craig Flournoy Darrell Armstrong is pastor of his- leges and the Harvard Law School, she toric Shiloh Baptist Church in Tren- then clerked for Sixth Circuit Judge Craig Flournoy is an Assistant Pro- ton, NJ — its third pastor in the last Damon Keith. fessor of Journalism at Southern Meth- 100 years. He is the founder and Board odist Univ. in Dallas. For over a de- Chair of the National Association of cade, he was a reporter for the Dallas Foster Children, Inc. and is a mem- Morning News, where he twice won a ber of the [NJ] Governor’s Cabinet for Pulitzer Prize (among many other Children. He chairs the Social Con- awards) for his investigative reporting, cerns Committee of the General Bap- including “Separate and Unequal,” a tist Convention of NJ and is a mem- series on racial discrimination and seg- ber of the NJ Supreme Court Com- regation in HUD’s low-income hous- mittee on Minority Concerns. He is a ing programs throughout the country. trustee of the College of New Jersey. His undergraduate degree is from the He holds a BA in Public Policy from University of New Orleans, and he Stanford and a Masters in Divinity holds a Masters from SMU, a doctor- from Princeton Theological Seminary. ate from Louisiana State University.

Olati Johnson

Olati Johnson is the Kellis Parker Fellow in Law at Columbia Law Request School. Prior to that she served as a for Syllabi consultant at the ACLU’s National Legal Dept.; counsel to Sen. Kennedy We’ve received several syllabi on the Senate Judiciary Comm., As- for courses dealing with race and sistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal poverty issues. We’d like to list Defense Fund, and a program assis- them (and how to access them) in tant at the Children’s Defense Fund. a future issue of P&R. If you Camille Holmes She holds a BA from Yale and a law teach/taught or are taking/took degree from Stanford, following such a course, please pass on Camille Holmes is Senior Staff which she clerked for US Court of (preferably by email) such a syl- Attorney at the Center for Law & So- Appeals Judge David Tatel and Su- labus. cial Policy in Washington, DC and Co- preme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 19 Resources

When ordering items from rights organizations and the Resources Section, the underlying class Please drop us a line letting us know how useful please note that most differences within the our Resources Section is to you, as both a lister listings direct you to black community that and requester of items. We hear good things, but contact an organization explain much, only sporadically. Having a more complete sense other than PRRAC. Prices www.uncpress.unc.edu of the effectiveness of this networking function will include the shipping/ [9050] help us greatly in foundation fundraising work handling (s/h) charge (and is awfully good for our morale). Drop us a when this information is • “Asian Americans short note, letting us know if it has been/is useful to provided to PRRAC. “No and Voting” is the special you (how many requests you get when you list an price listed” items often issue (Vol. 2:2, 2004) of item, how many items you send away for, etc.) are free. AAPI Nexus, the journal Thank you. of the UCLA Asian Amer. When ordering items from Studies Ctr. (headed by PRRAC: SASE = self- PRRAC Bd. member Don • “Building Personal Bouman, Margaret addressed stamped Nakanishi). $16 from the & Professional Compe- Stapleton & Deb McKee, envelope (37¢ unless Ctr., 3230 Campbell tence in a Multicultural is a 14-page article in the otherwise indicated). Hall, Box 951946, LA, Society,” sponsored by Sept./Oct. 2003 issue of Orders may not be placed CA 90095-1546, 310/ the Natl. Multicultural Clearinghouse Review: by telephone or fax. 825-2968, aascpress@ Inst., will be held Nov. Journal of Poverty Law & Please indicate from aasc.ucla.edu, 11-14, 2004 in Bethesda, Policy. Available from which issue of P&R you www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc MD. Inf. from NMCI, the Sargent Shriver Natl. are ordering. [9062] 3000 Conn. Ave. NW, Ctr. on Poverty Law, 50 #438, Wash., DC 20008, E. Washington St., #500, • “Names Make a 202/483-0700, Chicago, IL 60602, 312/ Race/Racism Difference: The screen- [email protected], 263-3830, admin@ ing of resumes by www.nmci.org [9024] povertylaw.org, • “The New Great temporary employment www.povertylaw.org Migration: Black agencies in California” [9033] Americans’ Return to the (Oct. 2004) is available Poverty/ South, 1965-2000,” a from the Discriminat1on • “Do Child Character- 2004 Brookings Inst. Research Ctr., 125 Welfare istics Affect How Chil- report, is available at University Ave., Berke- dren Fare in Families www.brookings.edu/ ley, CA 94710, 510/845- • “The Shape of the Receiving & Leaving urban/publications/ 3473, x311, spierre@ Curve: Household Welfare?,” by Sharon 20040524_frey.htm impactfund.org, Income Distributions in Vandivere, Martha [9042] www.impactfund.org/ U.S. Cities, 1979-1999,” Zaslow, Jennifer Brooks drc.html [9072] by Alan Berube & & Zakia Redd, is an Aug. • The Deacons for Thacher Tiffany (35 pp., 2004 Discussion Paper Defense: Armed Resis- • “Redefining Rights in Aug. 2004), is available from The Urban Inst., tance & the Civil Rights America: The Civil (possibly free) from the 2100 M St. NW, Wash., Movement, by Lance Hill Rights Record of the Brookings Inst. Met. DC 20037, 202/261- (363 pp., 2004), has been George W. Bush Admin- Policy Prog., 1775 Mass. 5699, BNowak@ published by the Univ. of istration, 2001-2004” is a Ave. NW, Wash., DC ui.urban.org [9037] No. Carolina Press. It’s U.S. Commission on 20036-2188, 202/797- an extraordinary, meticu- Civil Rights staff report 6139, www.brookings. • “Working Hard, lously documented that was posted on the edu/metro [9020] Falling Short: America’s account, focusing largely Commission’s website, Working Families & the on the Bogalusa, LA area, but has engendered fierce • “Time Limits, Pursuit of Economic of largely unknown partisan conflict among Employment, and State Security,” by Tom activism on the part of Commission members Flexibility in TANF Waldrom, Brandon oppressed African (Republican appointees Programming: How Roberts, Andrew Reamer, Americans; the relation- objected to posting it States Can Use Time Sara Rab & Steve Ressler ship between such armed prior to the Nov.2 Limits & Earnings (36 pp., Oct. 2004), is resistance and the election). It still may be Disregards to Support available at www.aecf. nonviolent resistance viewable/downloadable at Employment Goals, org/initiatives/ activities of the Civil www.usccr.gov/pubs/ Preserve Flexibility & jobsinitiative/ Rights Movement; the bush/bush04.pdf [9099] Meet Stricter Federal workingpoor/ conflict between the goals Participation Require- working_hard_new.pdf of national and local civil ments,” by John M. [9044]

20 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 • Poverty Law News is Criminal Economic/ • The New Teacher a weekly electonic Book: Finding Purpose, newsletter published by Justice Community Balance & Hope During the Sargent Shriver Natl. Development Your First Years in the Ctr. on Poverty Law, • “Lost Opportunities: Classroom (2004), from www.povertylaw.org Rethinking Schools; The Reality of Latinos in • “Promises & Pitfalls” [9053] $14.95 ($3 discount if the U.S. Criminal Justice is the Federal Reserve ordered from System,” an Oct. 2004, System’s 4th annual • Ideas, Policies & www.rethinkingschools.org/ 147-page report from the Community Affairs Programs to Broaden orderform/order.shtml) Natl. Council of La Raza, Research Conf., April 7-8, Asset Ownership is a is available ($20) from [9051] website from the New 2005 in DC; Alan NCLR, 202/785-1670; Greenspan, keynote America Fdn., • “Making the ‘No downloadable free if you speaker. Inf. from their assetbuilding@ Child Left Behind Act’ register online with Div. of Consumer & newamerica.net, Work for Children Who NCLR. [9043] Comm. Affairs, Bd. of AssetBuilding.org [9064] Struggle to Learn: A Governors, Fed. Reserve Parent’s Guide” (22 pp., • “The Vanishing System, Wash., DC 20551. • Leaving Welfare: Oct. 2004) can be Black Electorate: Felony [9069] Employment & Well- Disenfranchisement in downloaded at Being of Families that Atlanta, Georgia” (Sept. www.LD.org/nclb [9056] Left Welfare in the Post- 2004) is available from Education Entitlement Era, by The Sentencing Proj., • Beyond ‘Bilingual’ Gregory Acs & Pamela Education: New Immi- www.sentencingproject.org/ • New Directions in Loprest (Sept. 2004), has grants & Public School pdfs/atlanta-report.pdf Civic Engagement: been published by The Policies in California, by [9057] University Avenue Meets Urban Inst., 2100 M St. Alec Ian Gershberg, Anne Main Street (114 pp., NW, Wash., DC 20037, Dannenberg & Patricia • “Political Punish- 2004) is available (likely 202/261-5709, Sanchez (2004), has been ment,” a 2004 study by free) from the Pew Partner- [email protected] published by The Urban the Family Life Ctr., ship for Civic Change, 5 [9066] Inst., 2100 M St. NW, found that 20% of Boar’s Head Ln., #100, Wash., DC 20037, 202/ African-Amer. males in Charlottesville, VA 22903, • “A Profile of Fami- RI, and as many as 40% 261-5709. [9070] lies Cycling On & Off www.pew-partnership.org in some Providence [9014] Welfare” is an Oct. 2004 neighborhoods, cannot • “National Board MDRC report, available Certified Teachers & vote due to felony • “Complementing at www.mdrc.org/sps/ Their Student Achieve- disenfranchisement. Inf./ Teachers: A Practical go.cgi?c=b0mYxfl7Fzmdoy ments,” by Leslie copies from The Sentenc- Guide to Promoting Race JJKJ51 [9089] Vandervoort, Audrey ing Proj., staff@ Equality in Schools” is a Amrein-Beardsley & sentencingproject.org, 210-page, 2003 workbook, David C. Berliner, www.sentencingproject.org published by England’s appeared in the Sept. 8, Community [9060] Runnymede Trust, avail- 2004 issue of Educational able (no price listed) from Organizing Policy Analysis Archives. • “Innocence and the Granada Learning, The The study — which shows Crisis in the American Chiswick Centre, 414 • “Protecting Low- that students of teachers Death Penalty,” by Chiswick High Rd., Income Communities certified by the Natl. Bd. Richard C. Dieter (61 London W4 5TF, England, From the New ‘Urban for Profl. Teaching pp., Sept. 2004), a Death 020-89963333, www. Renewal’: Antidis- Standards outperformed Penalty Inf. Ctr. report, is granadalearning.co.uk placement Advocacy & the students of available from the Ctr., [9021] Relocation Rights www.deathpenaltyinfo.org noncertified teachers on a Enforcement,” by S. standardized text — is [9081] • How Does Teacher Lynn Martinez, is a 23- available at epaa.asu.edu/ Pay Compare? Method- page article in the Sept./ epaa/v12n46/v12n46.pdf • “Purged!” a 44-page, ological Challenges & Oct. 2003 issue of Oct. 2004 report by Laleh [9071] Clearinghouse Review: Answers, by Sylvia Ispahani & Nick Will- Allegretto, Sean P. Journal of Poverty Law & • “Ending Social iams, from ACLU, Right Corcoran & Lawrence Policy. Available from Promotion: The effects to Vote & Demos, http:// Mischel (54 pp., 2004), is the Sargent Shriver Natl. of retention,” by Jenny www.aclu.org/ available (no price listed) Ctr. on Poverty Law, 50 Nagaoka & Melissa votingrights/ from the Econ. Policy E. Washington St., #500, Roderick (68 pp., March votingrights.cfm?ID= Inst., 1660 L St. NW, Chicago, IL 60602, 312/ 2004), a Chicago study, 16845&c=167. [9082] #1200, Wash., DC 20036, 263-3830, admin@ is available at www.epinet.org [9027] povertylaw.org, www.consortium- www.povertylaw.org chicago.org/publications/ [9032] pdfs/p70.pdf [9075]

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 21 • “Ending Social 261-5699, BNowak@ Princeton, NJ 08544, is available from the Jt. Promotion: Dropout ui.urban.org [9038] [email protected], Ctr. for Pol. & Econ. rates in Chicago after crcw.princeton.edu/ Studies Health Policy implementation of the • “Hidden Slaves: fragilefamilies [9028] Inst., www.jointcenter.org eighth-grade promotion Forced Labor in the [9087] gate,” by Elaine U.S.,” by Laurel Fletcher • “Initiatives to Reduce Allensworth (48 pp., & Kevin Bales (73 pp., Teen & Adult • New Supporting March 2004), is available Sept. 2004), has been Nonmarital Childbear- Healthy Marriage Web at www.consortium. issued by the Univ. of ing,” by Richard Site has been launched by chicago.org/publications/ Calif.-Berkeley’s Human Wertheimer & Angela MDRC, www.supporting pdfs/p69.pdf [9076] Rights Ctr. & the DC- Romano Papillo, is an healthymarriage.org based Free the Slaves. Aug. 2004 Policy Brief [9090] • “Breeding Animos- Available at http:// from The Urban Inst., ity: The ‘Burden of freetheslaves. net/ 2100 M St. NW, Wash., • “Child Support Acting White’ & Other resources/pdfs/ DC 20037, 202/261- Substantially Increases Problems of Status Hidden_Slaves.pdf [9049] 5699, BNowak@ui. Economic Well-Being of Group Hierarchies in urban.org [9036] Low & Moderate-Income Schools,” by William A. Families,” by Paula Darity, Jr. (Oct. 2004), Families/ • “Asian American & Roberts, is an Oct. 2004 concluding that most Pacific Islander Youth at report, available from the black students do not Women/ Risk” is the topic of a Ctr. for Law & Social carry a cultural bias Children forthcoming special issue Policy (headed by former against high achievement of AAPI Nexus, the natl. PRRAC Bd. member Alan in the classroom, is • “Marriage Promo- peer-reviewed journal Houseman) at www. available from Prof. tion & the Living published by UCLA’s clasp.org/Pubs/DMS/ Darity, [email protected] Arrangements of Black, Asian American Studies Documents/ [9097] Hispanic & White Ctr. (headed by PRRAC 1023218849.8/ Children,” by Laura Bd. member Don CS_Economic_FS.pdf • “Parent Leaders: An Wherry & Kenneth Nakanishi). They seek [9092] Untapped Resource in Finegold (7 pp., Sept. submissions, with a Dec. Education,” sponsored 2004), is available (likely 31, 2004 deadline for • “Child Support by the Ctr. for Parent free) from The Urban letters of intent. Send to Payments Benefit Leadership, will be held Inst., 2100 M St. NW, [email protected], & Children in Non-Eco- Dec. 8-9, 2004 in Wash., DC 20037, 202/ cc [email protected] & nomic as Well as Eco- Charleston, SC. Inf. from 261-5687, pubs@ [email protected] nomic Ways,” by Paula 859/233-9849, x229, ui.urban.org, [9041] Roberts, is an Oct. 2004 www.centerforparent www.uipress.org [9018] report from the Ctr. for leadership.org [9022] • “The Impacts of Law & Social Policy • “What is ‘Healthy Neighborhood Poverty (headed by former Marriage’? Defining the Deconcentration Efforts PRRAC Bd. member Alan Employment/ Concept,” by Kristin on Low-Income Houseman), available at Jobs Policy Anderson Moore, Susan Children’s & Adoles- www.clasp.org/Pubs/ M. Jekielek, Jacinta cents’ Well-Being,” by DMS/Documents/ Bronte-Tinkew, Lina Rebecca C. Fauth, 1024408642.85/ • “Parents’ Labor Guzman, Suzanne Ryan & appeared in Children, CS_Noneconomic_FS.pdf Force Participation: Zakia Redd, an 8-page, Youth and Environments, [9093] Does Child Health Sept. 2004 Research Brief 14(1), 2004, pp. 1-55. Matter?” (3 pp., Aug. from Child Trends, is [9077] • “The Child Support 2004) is available (likely available (possibly free) Program Promotes free) from the Ctr. for from them at 4301 Conn. • “National Costs of Marriage & Reduces Research on Child Ave. NW, #100, Wash., Teen Pregnancy & Teen Non-Marital Childbear- Wellbeing, Wallace Hall, DC 20008, 202/572- Pregnancy Prevention: ing,” by Paula Roberts, is 2nd flr., Princeton Univ., 6000, www.childtrends. What We Know,” by an Oct. 2004 report from Princeton, NJ 08544, org [9023] Wilhelmina Leigh (2003), the Ctr. for Law & Social [email protected], is available from the Jt. Policy (headed by former crcw.princeton.edu/ • “Maternal Stress & Ctr. for Pol. & Econ. PRRAC Bd. member Alan fragilefamilies [9025] Mothering Behaviors in Studies Health Policy Houseman), available at Stable & Unstable Inst., www.jointcenter.org www.clasp.org/Pubs/ • “State Policies That Families” (3 pp., Sept. [9086] DMS/Documents/ Affect Working,” by 2004) is available (likely 1024418627.66/ Katherin Ross Phillips, is free) from the Ctr. for • “State/Local Costs of CS_Marriage.pdf [9094] an Aug. 2004 Discussion Research on Child Teen Pregnancy & Teen Paper from The Urban Wellbeing, Wallace Hall, Pregnancy Prevention: Inst., 2100 M St. NW, 2nd flr., Princeton Univ., What We Know,” by Wash., DC 20037, 202/ Wilhelmina Leigh (2003),

22 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 Wilhelmina Leigh, Kelley research reports, 213/ Clarence Page & contri- Food/ D. Coleman & Julia L. 689-2283, ellen@ butions by Maude Hurd Nutrition/ Andrews (2004), is weingart.org, and her ACORN col- Hunger available from the Jt. Ctr. www.weingart.org/ leagues, a Philadelphia for Pol. & Econ. Studies, institute/resource/email/ case study, discussion of Health Policy Inst., [9061] legal remedies by John • “Estimating the www.jointcenter.org Relman and colleagues, a Possibilities & Patterns [9085] summary chapter by of Food Stamp Use Housing PRRAC’s Chester Across the Life Course,” • “Visible Differences: Hartman & an appendix by Mark Rank & Thomas Improving the Oral • “The Human Right with Resources. [9047] Hirschl (Oct. 2004), is Health of African to Housing: Making the available from the Inst. American Males” (2004) Case in U.S. Advocacy,” • “Making Rural for the Study of is available from the Jt. by Maria Foscarinis, Brad Housing Programs Work Homelessness & Poverty, Ctr. for Pol. & Econ. Paul, Bruce Porter & in Indian Country” (Sept. 566 S. San Pedro St., LA, Studies Health Policy Andrew Scherer, is a 17- 2004) is available ($5) CA 90013, 213/689- Inst., www.jointcenter.org page article in the July- from the Housing Assis- 2280, institute@ [9088] Aug. 2004 issue of tance Council, 1025 weingart.org, Clearinghouse Review: Vermont Ave. NW, #606, www.weingart.org/ • “Missing Persons: Journal of Poverty Law & Wash., DC 20005, 202/ institute/ [9073] Minorities in the Health Policy, available from the 842-8600, x141, leslie@ Professions” (208 pp., Sargent Shriver Natl. Ctr. ruralhome.org, Oct. 2004) is the report of on Poverty Law, 50 E. downloadable at www. Health the Sullivan Commn. on Washington St., #500, ruralhome.org [9065] Diversity in the Health Chicago, IL 60602, 312/ • Race & Research: Workforce. Available at 263-3830, admin@ • “Putting the ‘Choice’ Perspectives on Minority http://admissions.duhs. povertylaw.org, in Housing Choice Participation in Health duke.edu/ www.povertylaw.org Vouchers (Pt. 3)” (44 Studies, eds. Bettina sullivancommission/ [9029] pp., July 2004), by the Beech & Maurine documents/sullivan_ Chicago Area Fair Goodman (2004), is Final_Report_000.pdf • “Community Service Housing Alliance & the available ($35.95) from [9098] Requirement for Public Housing Choice Voucher the Amer. Public Health Housing Residents: Project, is available at Assn., PO Box 753, States’ Implementation & www.state.il.us/dhr/ Waldorf, MD 20604- Homelessness Strategies for Advo- Housenet/Vouchers.pdf 0753, 301/893-1894, cates,” by Judith [9067] [email protected], • “Housing First for Goldiner & Risa E. www.apha.org [9063] Families” is a 2004 Kaufman, is an 11-page • New ACORN Study handbook from the Natl. article in the July/Aug. on Lending Disparities • “The Health of Alliance to End 2004 Clearinghouse shows evidence of Latino Communities in Homelessness, available Review: Journal of increased disparities in the Southern United at www.naeh.org/net- Poverty Law & Policy. mortgage loans to States: Challenges & works/housingfirst [9039] Available from the minority & low-income Opportunities” (Sept. Sargent Shriver Natl. Ctr. borrowers in cities across 2004) is available from • “Metropolitan Areas on Poverty Law, 50 E. the country. Contact the Natl. Council of La with Sheltered Homeless Washington St., #500, Valerie Coffin, 410/735- Raza, www.nclr.org/files/ Populations: Evidence Chicago, IL 60602, 312/ 3373, fairhousing@ 26898_file_ThehealthOf from the 1990 & 2000 263-3830, admin@ acorn.org [9091] Latino.pdf [9079] Censuses,” by Barrett A. povertylaw.org, Lee & Chad R. Farrell, www.povertylaw.org • “An Introduction to • “Factors Affecting an Oct. 2004 Brookings [9031] Community Land the Health of Men of Inst. study, is available at Trusts,” co-sponsored by Color in the United www.brookings.edu/ • Why the Poor Pay the Inst. for Community States,” by Wilhelmina dybdocroot/metro/pubs/ More: How to Stop Economics and HUD, Leigh (2004), is available 20041011_homeless.pdf Predatory Lending, ed. will be held Nov. 18-19, from the Jt. Ctr. for Pol. [9055] Gregory D. Squires 2004 in San Mateo, CA. & Econ. Studies Health (2004), is just out. The Presenters include ICE’s Policy Inst., www. • New Homelessness/ 238-page collection new ED, Gus Newport jointcenter.org [9084] Poverty Resource (2004) ($44.95, from Greenwood (former head of Boston’s from the Weingart Ctr. Pub. Gp., 800/225-5800) Dudley St. Neighb. • “Meeting the Association’s Inst. for the covers the full range of Initiative and Mayor of Workforce Development Study of Homelessness & issues around this Berkeley) & John Davis Needs of Community- Poverty alerts subscribers growing, nefarious of Burlington Assoc. Based Health Facilities: to the latest, cutting-edge practice. The 9 chapters Contact Julie Orvis at A Toolkit,” by academic & policy include a Foreword by ICE, 413/746-8660,

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 23 x118, [email protected] Miscellaneous For subs., contact them at Pol. Sci. Assn. Michael [9083] 1 Rapson Hall, 89 Church Harrington Award for • The World Guide: St., Mpls., MN 55455- “outstanding book that • “Building Homes, 2003/2004: An alterna- 0109, [email protected], demonstrates how scholar- Celebrating Leadership” tive reference to the www.plannersnetwork.org ship can be used in the is the annual Housing countries of our planet [9035] struggle for a better Assistance Council Natl. (624 pp., 2003) provides world,” www.kansaspress. Rural Housing Conf., inf. for 240 countries on • The Center for Social ku.edu/ [9059] Dec. 9-11, 2004 in DC. childhood, women, food, Media at American Univ., Inf. from 202/842-8600, health, education, headed by Prof. Patricia • Next Generation x141, leslie@ruralhome. population, employment, Aufderheide, “brings Awareness Foundation org [9080] habitat & human welfare. together makers, scholars, Films/Documentaries $34.95 from Garamond students & users of media Submissions: The Fdn. Press, 800/898-9535, that make a difference.” seeks notable films, Immigration [email protected], They hold forums & documentaries & partici- www.garamond.ca [9017] roundtables, film festivals/ pants for consideration for • “Looking to the series/workshops, confer- The 2005 Annual Natl. Future: A Commentary • The Progressive ences, and have special Black History Month Film on Children of Immi- Planning Reader (108 collections. 202/885- & Discussion Series. Dec. grant Families,” by pp., 2004) is a compen- 2060, x6, socialmedia@ 26, 2004 deadline. Mark Greenberg & dium of articles from american.edu, www. Submissions should be Hedieh Rahmanou, Progressive Planning, the centerforsocialmedia.org sent to the Fdn., PO Box appeared in the Fall 2004 quarterly magazine of The [9054] 6885, Alexandria, VA issue of The Future of Planners Network. $12 22306, 202/409-7240, Children, available at from PN, 1 Rapson Hall, • Place Matters: [email protected], www.clasp.org/DMS/ 89 Church St., Mpls., MN Metropolitics for the 21st www.ngaf.org/ [9096] Documents/ 55455-0109, www. Century, by Peter Dreier, 1097006751.66/ plannersnetwork.org Todd Swanstrom & John • “Making Participa- Future_of_Children.pdf [9034] Mollenkopf, will be out in tion Count!” is the 2004 [9068] Dec. 2004 in a 2nd, Independent Sector annual • Progressive Planning revised edition (Univ. of conf., Nov. 7-9, in is the quarterly magazine KS Press). The original Chicago. Among the of The Planners Network. edition won the Amer. presenters: (former

PRRAC'S SOCIAL SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD

Frank Bonilla Paul Ong CUNY Department of Sociology UCLA School of Public Policy & Social Research Xavier de Souza Briggs Harvard Univ. Kennedy School of Government Gary Orfield Harvard Univ. Grad. School of Education Camille Zubrinsky Charles Department of Sociology, Univ. of Pennsylvania Gary Sandefur Univ. Wisconsin Inst. for Poverty Research John Goering Baruch College, City Univ. of New York Gregory D. Squires Department of Sociology Heidi Hartmann George Washington Univ. Inst. for Women’s Policy Research (Wash., DC) Margery Austin Turner William Kornblum The Urban Institute CUNY Center for Social Research Margaret Weir Harriette McAdoo Department of Political Science, Michigan State School of Human Ecology Univ. of California, Berkeley

Fernando Mendoza Department of Pediatrics, Stanford Univ.

24 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 PRRAC Bd. members) (Santa Cruz, CA office) - with expertise in commu- Baltimore, MD 21231, Wade Henderson, Angela mid-$50s, for their Aryeh nity development and/or 410/327-6220, info@ Glover Blackwell & Neier Fellowship - affordable housing are Alston/Bannerman. org, Robert Greenstein, Raul $42,000; for their sought. Ltr./resume/list of www. AlstonBannerman. Yzaguirre, Karen Reproductive Freedom 4 refs. to Prof. Phil Berk org [9078] Narasaki, Susan Proj. - mid-$50s; & for at the Dept., Campus Box Berresford, Ralph Neas, their Karpatkin Fellow- 3140, Chapel Hill, NC • The Sentencing Gay McDougall. Inf. from ship - min. mid-$50s. 27599-3140. [9048] Project is hiring an 202/467-6100, Nov. 30 deadline for all. Operations Mgr., a meeting@Independent Contact ACLU, 125 • Kirwin Inst. for the Development Mgr. & a Sector.org, www. Broad St., 18th flr., NYC, Study of Race & Director of Advocacy. IndependentSector.org NY 10004-2400, 212/549- Ethnicity Post Doctoral Nov. 15 deadline for 1st 2 [9019] 2500, www.aclu.org Fellowships at Ohio St. positions, Nov. 29 for [9026] Univ. (2-yr. support, 3rd. See their website for under the supervision of full descriptions and Job • The Manna Commu- the Inst. Dir., PRRAC Bd. application procedures, nity Development Org., a member john powell). www.sentencingproject.org/ Opportunities/ comm. dev. & progressive Applics. accepted until hiring.cfm [9095] Fellowships/ organizing group working April 30, 2005. Applics./ with mostly long-time q’s to Tara McCoy at the • The Univ. of Mass.- Grants African-Amer. residents of Inst., 423 Mendenhall Boston College of the Shaw neighborhood of Lab., 125 S. Oval Mall, Education is seeking to • The American Civil Wash., DC, is seeking a Columbus, OH 43210, fill a tenure-track Asst. Liberties Union seeks 3rd Lead Tenant Organizer. [email protected] Prof. of Higher Educ. yr. law students/recent Dec. 13, 2004 deadlne. [9074] position. Ltr./c.v./at least graduates for their Ltr./resume to Manna 1 peer-reviewed example Brennan Fellowships - CDC, 614 S St. NW, Rear • Alston/Bannerman of scholarship/name, min. mid-$50s; for their Carriage House, Wash., Fellowship Program mailing & email ad- applied research fellow- DC 20001. [9045] offers sabbaticals for long- dresses, tel. # of 3 refs. to ship in civil liberties & time activists of color. Dr. Alicia C. Dowd, natl. security - low $50s; • The Univ. of No. $15,000 for 3 months or Search #605b, U. Mass.- for their lesbian & gay Carolina Dept. City & more for reflection & Boston, 100 Morrissey rights & AIDS projs. - Regional Planning seeks renewal. Dec. 1 deadline. Blvd., Boston, MA 02125- min. mid-$50s; for their to fill a tenure-track Asst. Inf. from the Program, 3393, 617/287-7593. Drug Law Reform Proj. Prof. position; candidates 1627 Lancaster St., [9100]

November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 25 Poverty & Race Index, Vol. 13 (2004)

This Index includes the major articles in the six 2004 issues of Poverty & Race (Vol. 13). The categories used frequently overlap, so a careful look at the entire Index is recommended. Each issue also contains an extensive Resources Section, not in the Index below, but available in database form cumulatively for all 13 volumes . We are happy to make available photocopies of any of the articles listed in the Index. We also can send an Index for any or all of the first 12 volumes of P&R (1992-2003). Please order by number and article name and include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Race/Racism 428. “Low-Wage Work—America’s Broken Promise,” Beth Shulman, March/April 419. “New PRRAC/Teaching for Change Publication [Putting the MOVEMENT Back Into Civil Rights Teaching], March/April Families/Women/Children 420. “Organizing to Protect the Civil Rights Movement’s Legacy,” Chris Johnson, March/April 429. “Kinship Care Policy and Low-Income Minority 421. “FAIRNESS: The Civil Rights Act of 2004,” Ritu Children,” Jennifer Ehrle & Rob Geen, Jan./Feb. Kelotra, March/April 422. “Remembrance and Change in Neshoba County,” James W. Loewen, July/Aug. Health

430. “Racial Disparities in Housing and Health,” Community Organizing Dolores Acevedo-Garcia & Theresa L. Osypuk, July/Aug. 423. “Organizing for Regional Equity: The Gamaliel 431. “Healthy Homes,” Julia Burgess, July/Aug. Foundation,” Jill Mazullo, Sept./Oct. 432. “What Works: A Fifty Year Retrospective,” David Barton Smith, Sept./Oct. 433. “Why is HHS Obscuring a Health Care Gap?,” H. Economic/Community Development Jack Geiger, Sept./Oct.

424. “Race, Poverty and ‘Economic Development’ Gone Haywire,” Greg LeRoy, May/June Housing

434. “A Racial Equity and Opportunity Agenda for Education Metro Boston,” Nancy McArdle, March/April 435. “Housing Segregation/School Segregation,” David 425.“Why is School Reform So Hard?,” Linda Freund, May/June Christensen & Stan Karp 436. “Housing Quiz,” May/June 426. “Schools and the Achievement Gap: A Symposium,” 437. “Some Lessons from Brown for the Fair Housing Sept./Oct. Movement,” Philip Tegeler, July/Aug. • “Even the Best Schools Can’t Close the Race 438. “Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto,” Alex Achievement Gap,” Richard Rothstein Polikoff, Nov./Dec. • “Social Class, But What About the Schools?,” Pedro A. Noguera • “Don’t Lose the Battle Trying to Fight the Immigration War,” John H. Jackson • “Simplistic and Condescending,” Jenice L. 439. “Voting Rights for Immigrants,” Catherine View Tactaquin, Nov./Dec. • “Inequality and the Schoolhouse,” Stan Karp • “Even the Best Schools Can’t Do It Alone,” Wendy Puriefoy Voting • “What Teachers Know,” Mark Simon • “Family and School Matter,” Krista Kafer 440. “From Slave Republic to Constitutional Democ- • “Schools Count,” Dianne M. Piché & Tamar racy: The Continuing Struggle for the Right to Ruth Vote,” Jamin Raskin, Nov./Dec. • “Rothstein Responds,” Richard Rothstein PRRAC Activities & News Employment/Jobs Policy 441. “Visit PRRAC’s New Website,” March/April 427. “The Living Wage: A Progressive Movement in 442. “Our New New Board Members,” Nov./Dec. Action,” Jared Bernstein & Jeff Chapman, Jan./Feb.

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November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 27 POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL Board of Directors CHAIR Darrell Armstrong S.M. Miller William L. Taylor John Charles Boger Shiloh Baptist Church The Commonwealth Washington, DC University of North Carolina Trenton, NJ Institute School of Law Craig Flournoy Cambridge, MA [Organizations listed for Chapel Hill, NC Southern Methodist Don Nakanishi identification purposes only] University University of California Philip D. Tegeler VICE-CHAIR Dallas, TX Los Angeles, CA President/Executive Director José Padilla Thomas Henderson Florence Wagman California Rural Legal Lawyers' Committee for Roisman Chester W. Hartman Assistance Civil Rights Under Law Indiana University Director of Research San Francisco, CA Washington, DC School of Law Camille Holmes Indianapolis, IN Brenda Fleet SECRETARY Center for Law & Social Anthony Sarmiento Office Manager john powell Policy Senior Service America Kirwin Institute for the Study Washington, DC Silver Spring, MD Rebekah Park of Race & Ethnicity Olati Johnson Theodore M. Shaw Research Associate Columbia Law School NAACP Legal Defense Ohio State University Tabitha Iwuh New York, NY & Educational Fund Columbus,OH Clerical Assistant Elizabeth Julian New York, NY TREASURER Inclusive Communities Catherine Tactaquin Nisha Agarwal Sheila Crowley Project National Network for Elizabeth Grote National Low Income Dallas, TX Immigrant & Refugee Law Student Interns Housing Coalition Rights Washington, DC Oakland, CA

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