Hasta La Gadget!

“Day laborers refuse to be objectified by those who exploit them and their circumstances. Americans need to see day laborers standing on street corners not just as workers or as immigrants but also as parents, grandmothers, sons or daughters, as artists and songwriters, and most of all, as human beings.” — Pablo Alvarado, NDLON Executive Director

This week at UCLA, more than 200 day laborers from across the country will come together for the eighth national convention of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) (http://www.ndlon.org.). They will gather to share experiences and struggles, celebrate victories, and continue the development of national and local strategies. To understand the significance of this event, one needs to understand the how the fight for the day laborers’ rights has become a battleground in the national debate on immigration.

During the mid-1990s, the city of Agoura Hills in Southern California became the hallmark of the conditions day laborers faced throughout the country. The city enacted an ordinance, upheld in state court, prohibiting day laborers from soliciting work in public areas. Sheriff’s deputies engaged in a vicious campaign to drive day laborers and anyone profiled as a day laborer away from the city. They harassed, chased, arrested, and ticketed day laborers just for being present in the city — for waiting for buses, walking down the street, even visiting fast food places. These actions culminated in the local perception of day laborers as a burden and a public nuisance disrupting normal patterns of business, traffic, and pedestrian interchange. Day laborers became the target of state-sponsored repression, placing them at the forefront of the broader movement to criminalize immigrants.

From out of this repression, a movement emerged led mainly by day laborer leaders and organizers, mostly from Central America. Deeply rooted in the pedagogy of Brazilian popular educator Paulo Freire, these organizers worked to raise the consciousness of day laborers to become more aware of how their experiences were connected to broader sociopolitical forces. Through popular education, day laborers developed leadership skills to transform their reality.

In August 2001, after a year of strategy meetings, a group of day laborer organizers from around the country realized the potential of creating a national network that would forge an agenda to promote and protect the rights of day laborers. The first ever historic gathering of more than 200 day laborers and their allies resulted in the founding of NDLON. Priorities for the nascent network included protecting the labor and civil rights of day laborers, enhancing the organizing of day laborers, and calling for a humane and inclusive legalization program.

Dirigente popular (“popular leader”) is a popular education concept that has great meaning for NDLON member organizations. The term connotes an organic leadership, embodied both individually and collectively, that embraces democratic principles to enable participants to take control of their lives. A dirigente popular is committed to creating new leaders. This is the model of leadership promoted by NDLON over the years, and it has created a generation of day laborer leaders who continue to humanize the immigrant rights movement.

As the immigration debate has unfolded in recent years, NDLON has had to maintain a high profile in Washington, D.C., to fight anti-day-laborer provisions in immigration reform proposals. NDLON’s work with national immigrant rights organizations in D.C. and its historic 2006 partnership agreement with the AFL-CIO (http://www.aflcio.org.) have been instrumental in ensuring that the rights of day laborers will be included in any proposal for comprehensive immigration reform. NDLON took the leading role in taking on Joe Arpaio and Arizona’s SB 1070. They were a leading organization to challenge the President’s Secure Communities Program that connects immigration enforcement with local law enforcement. In California, NDLON was a leader in the coalition to pass the TRUST Act, which curtails the scope of the Secure Communities Program and provides restrictions on issuing ICE holds.

In the process of litigating for the First Amendment rights of day laborers, organizers and legal advocates created innovative legal and organizing strategies that created a strong synergy between lawyers and worker leaders. The maturity of day laborer organizing, and NDLON’s ability to combine grassroots efforts with policy advocacy to protect migrant and worker rights, enabled day laborers to work at the forefront with Dream activist groups and other grassroots organizations to spearhead the Not1More Campaign (http://www.notonemoredeportation.com). This campaign has resulted in a strong, nonviolent, grassroots movement to stop President Obama’s deportation machine that has resulted in over 2 million deportations and the tragic separation of countless families.

The courage to stand up to the powerful stakeholders opposing the immigrant rights agenda, and to become a nuisance to them, in order to win political equality has been the strength of the day laborer movement. NDLON members fight for day laborers to be citizens of their community, and NDLON has fought to have immigrant-led voices at the table for administrative relief. As President Obama decides on his historic decision regarding the future of deportations, NDLON members will be convening to decide their plans for the coming year. Tune in to see what comes next.

It’s rare that I see a movie that brings me to tears. It even more rare for me to sit through a movie that is over two hours long and for me to remain riveted and on the edge of my chair. That’s why I was so surprised that the movie Boyhood had that effect on me. I’ve heard many, many stories of the struggles to raise happy and healthy kids in the most difficult of situations. I’ve known and worked with many resilient and gritty kids who describe having grown up in the most uncomfortable and wrong environments. So, why, I have had to ask myself, did this “coming of age” movie about Mason Jr., his sister Samantha, and their frequently single mother Olivia get to me at such a deep level?

I will tell you why. I know firsthand the pain of clawing my way out of a less than optimal childhood. I also know what it is like to raise a child as a single parent to the best of my ability despite feeling so scared and so tired. I know about the struggles of parents, children and teens from my work as a clinical psychologist and from my life as a child, teen and a mother. None of these roles are a cakewalk. And, they are particularly not a cakewalk when kids are moving frequently, getting new parents through marriage and divorce and when you are running the family show on your own.

The movie drove home some excellent points about good parenting and I’d like to underscore them for you. I would love, of course and as usual, for you to weigh in with your own unique perspectives.

Consider:

1. At every point in your parenting life it is more important to love your child than it is to let them know how dreadful and disappointing your ex is/was. Trust me when I tell you that they will learn about the positive and negative qualities of their other parent on their own. It is not your role to point out the shortcomings of their other parent. Use your energy to LOVE them instead of to berate your ex.

2. Take care of yourself as a parent. Your kids are watching you. They need to see that life is worth living as an adult. It’s hard for kids to be happy when their parents are sad. I remember going through my own divorce and my daughter asking me why I never smiled. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. I smile a lot now. Life is good and there were many magical and bright moments during that period as well.

3. Be the biggest member of your child’s fan club. In the movie, the mother listened carefully when her kids spoke, even when it meant that she might have her feelings hurt or that she might have to consider making some life changes. Boy, did she know how to love. I could and can relate. I am very aware that most parents can. I know that. You tell me. You’ve been crying and laughing in my office for almost three decades.

4. Encourage the sibling bond rather than turning the kids against each other. In the movie, Samantha and Mason had each others’ backs. That is exactly what siblings should be doing for each other. Guard carefully against claiming one child for yourself and another for your ex. Please. Thank you.

AND

5. Don’t despair. Love your kids and stay attuned to them through all that life hurls in your direction. They will be grateful. They will more likely than not grow into young men and women who have developed lovely and heartwarming skills through observation and problem solving.

Keep on keeping on. It will be worth it. Trust me.

Kairosoft’s strategy sim Game Dev Story is one of my favorite iOS games. But if you really want to make a video game on the go, check out the iOS app RPG Creator. That is, if you can read Japanese.

Like the popular RPG Maker, RPG Creator seems geared for making two-dimensional RPGs. It appears to have a lot of graphical assets in stock, but you can also import images from your iOS device’s Camera Roll. The app also has a cache of character and monster sprites, music and sound effects. The app’s latest update lets users export their creations and try the games that other users have made.

RPG Creator is a free iOS app (with an in-app purchase to unlock all its features), but it’s only in the Japanese iTunes Store and is of course in Japanese. Your best bet for now is to contact developer Ryohei Sato and let him know that you’re interested in his app.

[via Siliconera]