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Expert Preparation and Community Education Program

SCSJ has joined with other voting rights advocates, experts and attorneys to form the Community Census and Redistricting Institute. The centerpiece of the Institute will be a week-long Expert Preparation and Community Education Program held in Durham, NC, from July 26-31. This program will bring representatives from community organizations together with voting rights experts and lawyers to discuss how to empower grassroots low-wealth communities of color to fight for fair representation during the 2011 redistricting round. Please contact Allison Riggs for more information about the program or redistricting.

HURRICANE – Participatory Human Rights Documentation and Story-Collecting

What do you get when you give immigrants the tools to document violations of their human rights? The Coalición de Organizaciones Latino-Americanas (COLA) has discovered that in telling their stories, immigrants find support, develop stronger shared analyses together, and become leaders in denouncing the abuses they experience. In addition, you will find truths that cannot be denied and the sickening details behind the abuses against immigrants normalized by mainstream society's stereotypes and criminalization of immigrants and people of color. Those details collected through documentation also become critical data that grassroots leaders can use to address anti immigrant policies such as 287(g) and Secure Communities programs, which COLA has done in Western NC. With the goal of empowering even more immigrant and refugee communities with the same tools, a coalition of organizations including COLA, SCSJ, American Friends Service Committee, North Carolina Justice Center, and the Latin American Coalition hosted the first statewide Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network (HURRICANE) Training on May 8th in Greensboro. The groups represented a multiethnic immigrant community in North Carolina including representatives from the Muslim American Society, El Centro Hispano, Immigrant Solidarity Committee of Charlotte, Neighborhood Good Samaritan Center and United African Sisters, each with members who have directly experienced or witnessed human rights abuses as immigrants. The training started with discussions built on developing a stronger shared analysis about what community documentation means. As the day progressed, the participants learned more about each other’s stories, setting the precedent for future partnerships. Over the next few months, participants will begin gathering stories, organizing story telling nights, and hosting more trainings to further develop leadership. In the long term, the organizations hope to identify trends via the documentation and initiate organizing to combat them. SCSJ is committed to continuing this work and further expand participation in this project, which creates a platform for immigrants to tell their own stories and advocate on their own behalf.

New Hill Residents Request Concessions

New Hill Residents Request Concessions BY TED RICHARDSON, STAFF WRITER For five years, residents of New Hill have fought plans for a wastewater treatment plant in their community. But the $327 million project appears closer to reality, and could begin construction as early as this year. So a group of residents is trying to at least cushion what they think will be negative impact on local residents. "We're trying to make a bad thing less bad," said Paul Barth, president of the New Hill Community Association. So last month, Barth's group presented a mitigation plan to the Western Wake Partners, a coalition of towns spearheading the project. Through the plan, the group is asking the towns to extend sewer and water service to a wider group of New Hill residents - and pay for it in full. The group also wants a bigger buffer around the actual plant - and guarantees that the towns won't expand the plant beyond what is already proposed. The mitigation plan also calls for resident recourse if the plant does not operate as advertised. "If the Western Wake Partners are going to move ahead on this, it seemed wise for us to try to improve this plan," said Chris Brook, attorney for the New Hill Community Association, which has been fighting approval of the plant since 2005. Cary, along with Apex, Morrisville and Holly Springs, formed the Western Wake Partners to build the wastewater treatment plant to meet the needs of their fast-growing population. In 2006, the partners issued an environmental impact statement determining the unincorporated town of New Hill was the best location for the plant. The town of Cary, as the lead agent in the Western Wake Partners, has already used its power of eminent domain to purchase a 237-acre parcel in New Hill where the 62-acre plant is proposed to be built. The project also includes a network of pump stations and sewer lines, with an estimated completion date of 2013. The cost will be divided among the participating towns. According to the New Hill Community Association, the site would impact 230 residents. Steve Brown, Cary's public works director, says an environmental impact statement from the Army Corps of Engineers already includes discussion of appropriate mitigation. Brown said it would be premature to discuss anything further until the Corps makes its final decision. Brook said the New Hill Community Association wants their mitigation plan to be incorporated into the Corps statement, which Henry Wicker of the Army Corps of Engineers says may be published in the next couple of weeks. If that document endorses the New Hill site, then it would open the door for permit applications and subsequent construction of the plant. Brook says the mitigation plan in no way signals a retreat by those who have fought the New Hill site. "While this plan constitutes a good faith effort by the New Hill Community Association to improve upon the sewage treatment plant, it does not signal the association's acceptance of Site 14," Brook said. "We're still weighing options to stop Site 14, which, if necessary, will include litigation." ted.richardson@nando.com or 919-460-2608

What is Heirs' Property?

SCSJ's Becky Jaffe explains the concept of heirs' property and discusses the importance of land ownership in communities.

Interview with Rebecca Fontaine, a Community Organizer in North Carolina

See link for audio interview. The Bond Fund interviews Rebecca Fontaine, who is the community organizer at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) in Durham, North Carolina. She discusses how she works with her colleagues and the Bond Fund on our joint project to oppose local police cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rebecca dedicates her time to Immigrants’ Rights organizing and casework as a bilingual immigration paralegal. She brings a long history of participating in Latin America Solidarity work including trade justice campaigns, equitable development, demilitarization, and immigrants rights activism. Before coming to SCSJ she worked in Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast for over two years doing community-based development with rural families and coordinating experiential education for international delegations. Most recently she worked in a resource office at an immigrant-led community center in Durham. Rebecca graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 2005.

Building Grassroots Power through the Census

Not only have SCSJ’s community partners throughout the South been working hard to reduce the undercount, but they have also been using the census as an organizing tool for building sustainable grassroots power. Sixty-eight organizations in five states – VA, NC, GA, FL and LA – have implemented their own unique outreach projects through funds from SCSJ’s mini-grant program. These groups and other organizations are collaborating with the communities they support and are a part of – disenfranchised communities that the Census Bureau has struggled to count for decades, such as working-class families, communities of color, homeless people and new immigrant communities. Conducting outreach around the census has been a fantastic opportunity for grassroots community organizations to build their base, strengthen their capacity, and cultivate relationships with other progressive and grassroots organizations. In Guildford County, NC, various groups joined forces to form the Census Community Coalition, with strong representation from the Latin@ community, the Arab/Middle Eastern community, African immigrant groups, the Montagnard Dega community, the African-American community, and local student groups. Organizations like FaithAction International House, Montagnard Dega Association, La Vela Center, and the Islamic Center of the Triad have collaborated to develop their grassroots analysis of the census while sharing resources and strategies. Some examples of outreach in their communities include door-to-door canvassing, church announcements, flyering at local events, and new technology messaging through YouTube videos. Working off of their census partnerships, this coalition and others across the south will continue to mobilize and politicize their constituents and membership, through redistricting and beyond. Haven’t been counted in the census yet? Not sure? Call the Census Bureau’s hotline to get counted or have your questions answered.

Group Files Lawsuit Against Wake School Board

Group Files Lawsuit Against Wake School Board By myNC.com WAKE COUNTY, N.C. - A group of Wake County citizens has filed a lawsuit against the Wake County School Board. The suit, which was filed Thursday morning, references a March 23 meeting where the Wake County School Board passed a resolution opposing the diversity policy in favor of so-called "neighborhood schools." The plaintiffs are being represented by the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, NC NAACP, UNC Center for Civil Rights, NC Justice Center and multiple private lawyers. According to the suit, the plaintiffs argue that the school board made no effort to make it possible for everyone to attend that diversity policy meeting, despite the overwhleming public interest. Many of the plaintiffs in the suit allege that they were barred from the meeting, violating state law and undermining the democratic process. "The school board has made it clear that they have an agenda to follow," said Woody Barlow in a written statement. Barlow is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and a junior at Enloe High School. "I feel cheated that they would skirt procedure just to have their way, and regardless of what people think of the policies of the board, everyone should feel threatened by their disregard of the democratic process." Manypeople were barred from attending due to limited space. Some news organizations offered to pay to move the meeting to a larger venue. But the offer came too last minute, and the school board then issued a ticket policy for the meeting. The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the actions taken on March 23 based on violations of the Open Meetings Law. "The suit does not ask for any money in compensatory damages. It is purely a good government lawsuit," said Irv Joyner said in a written statement. Joyner is an attorney with the NC NAACP. The plaintiffs also ask the court to order the school board to eliminate policies and practices adopted since the March 23 meeting that have restricted public access to the board. The suit asks the court to require new, clear and consistent procedures put in place to ensure that all members of the public who want to attend meetings are allowed to do so and to effectively participate in the process.

Lawsuit filed against Wake school board

Lawsuit filed against Wake school board By T. Keung Hui (Raleigh) News & Observer Posted: Thursday, May. 06, 2010 RALEIGH — A group of Wake County residents filed a lawsuit this morning accusing the Wake County school board of violating state law by restricting public access to a meeting in which a resolution was passed calling for community schools. In the lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court, the residents say the school board violated the state Open Meetings Law by requiring people to get tickets to attend the meeting. During the meeting, the board passed by a 5-4 vote a resolution calling for the creation of community-based schools and the end of the district’s socioeconomic diversity policy. The lawsuit asks the court to throw out the vote. The citizens are represented by the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, NC NAACP, UNC Center for Civil Rights, NC Justice Center and multiple private lawyers. Citing security and crowding concerns, the school district had required people to get tickets for a seat in the board room. The overflow crowd at the meeting stretched into the hallways and outside the building. Three people were arrested at a protest. The lawsuit cites the offer by The News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting to pay for the cost of relcoating the meeting to a larger site. Citing logistical concerns, school board chairman Ron Margiotta turned down the request. The civil rights groups representing the people filing the lawsuit had also raised concerns that day about the ticket policy. keung.hui@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4534

Point of view: Severing the bonds of trust

Point of view: Severing the bonds of trust BY CHRIS LIU-BEERS RALEIGH - As people of faith, we are greatly disturbed by reports of local law enforcement targeting Spanish-language church services in their misguided hunt for undocumented immigrants in Zebulon. All people - regardless of their immigration status - have the right to worship free from harassment and unconstitutional checkpoints. Just because someone doesn't have the right papers for the U.S. government does not make him or her any less a child of God. It's shameful that a country so proud of its religious freedom would unfairly target church-going members of the community. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Imagine the outrage and front-page headlines if police officers interrupted Sunday services at prominent white churches looking for people who cheated on their taxes or were late on their child support. Do we really want to be a society where you have to show proper documentation before being allowed to attend church? The N.C. Council of Churches has always affirmed that police and other institutions of justice have a vital role to play in our society, especially when they act in good faith to serve the common good and to protect the vulnerable against abuse. As North Carolinians, we are indeed deeply thankful for the policewomen and men who serve our communities, protecting individuals and society from criminal behavior. However, to the degree that particular law enforcement tactics tend to prey on those with less power in general and immigrant communities in particular, we are compelled to speak as people of conscience and faith. In fact, these kinds of rogue tactics are not only immoral, they also threaten public safety. When police target churches to enforce federal immigration law, it severs the bond of trust that is necessary for law enforcement to serve and protect immigrant communities. Across North Carolina, immigrants (both documented and undocumented) are becoming increasingly hesitant to report crimes to the police because they fear that they will be deported. This fear applies to both crime victims and witnesses. Again, we have to ask ourselves: do we really want to live in a society where our neighbors won't call the police when they see our houses being robbed? Rebecca Fontaine of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice reminds us that "Using local police officers for immigration enforcement erodes public trust in law enforcement, systematizes racial profiling, creates incentives for illegal arrests and prevents police from doing their job, failing to keep some of our most vulnerable communities safe." We believe that the rule of law is important. "Many people think we have good [immigration] laws and bad people who are breaking them," says Frank Sharry, head of America's Voice, a pro-immigration reform advocacy group. "But we have bad laws and mostly good people who have no line to get into legally." Until Washington has the courage to take action, we'll probably see more local dollars misallocated to round up church-goers. In the meantime, people of faith across North Carolina are joining together to demand that immigrants be treated with dignity and respect - as children of God. Chris Liu-Beers is a program associate with the N.C. Council of Churches

Suit Challenges Diversity Vote

Suit Challenges Diversity Vote BY T. KEUNG HUI AND THOMAS GOLDSMITH - Staff Writers RALEIGH -- In the first legal challenge for the Wake County school board majority and its vow to remake North Carolina's largest school district, opponents filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing that two votes against the diversity policy should be tossed out because state law was violated. The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, contends that the school board majority has stifled public participation by deliberately refusing to move recent board meetings to larger venues despite knowing there would be large crowds in attendance. This refusal violated the state's Open Public Meetings Law , the lawsuit says, so votes taken March 23 and Tuesday to ditch the diversity policy and replace it with a student assignment policy canted toward neighborhood schools should be declared void. Some of the civil rights groups providing legal services have also criticized ending efforts to balance the percentage of low-income students at individual schools to bolster overall academic achievement. Several of the plaintiffs are parents and students, many from magnet schools, who have spoken out against changing the diversity policy. "Whether or not you support the diversity plan, the school board wasn't doing what it was doing the way it was supposed to be doing it," said Andrew Snee, 15, a Broughton High School freshman and one of the plaintiffs. School board Chairman Ron Margiotta has toldsupporters they should expect a number of lawsuits from opponents. On Thursday, he said this lawsuit was merely a tactic by opponents to stop the board majority from fulfilling its campaign promises. "I think we bent over backwards to allow people to speak," Margiotta said. "If they want to just bring us into court, all this will do is take more money from the children of this county. Accept the wishes of the people of this county." A court hearing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday in Courtroom 5B in the Wake County Courthouse in downtown Raleigh. On March 23, the board voted 5-4 in favor of a resolution calling for the creation of community-based schools and discontinuation of socioeconomic diversity. On Tuesday, the board gave initial approval by a 4-3 vote to a revised student assignment policy that fleshes out the previous resolution. Early warning But the threat of legal action has been in the air since before the new board majority took office Dec. 1 after four Republican-backed candidates swept last fall's election. The Rev. William Barber, state president of the NAACP, warned at the time that if Wake County's new approach to assigning students wound up resegregating schools, the system could be subject to a lawsuit based on the state constitution's stipulation that all children are guaranteed a sound basic education. Margiotta cited the threatened NAACP suit against Wake as a justification for hiring Republican lawyer Tom Farr as interim special counsel. Margiotta said the board's majority members wanted to keep their options open in case they chose not to call on longtime board attorneys Tharrington Smith, whose founding partner Wade Smith is a former state Democratic Party chairman. The state NAACP is among the groups providing attorneys in the lawsuit. Other groups in the case include the ACLU of North Carolina, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, UNC Center for Civil Rights, and the N.C. Justice Center. Orage Quarles III, publisher of The News & Observer, is a member of the board of directors of the N.C. Justice Center. The crowds at board meetings have sharply increased since December, escalating the often rancorous public opposition to the ruling majority. Starting with the March 23 meeting, the school system began requiring tickets for seats in the boardroom. Margiotta had cited concerns raised by the fire marshal for the change. But the lawsuit contends that the board created the ticket policy and chose not to move any of the meetings to a larger venue because it felt that "full public access" might "threaten their narrow majority and jeopardize" their plans. "They felt that hearing from so many people was slowing down the process and slowing down what they wanted to get done," said Woody Barlow, 17, an Enloe High School junior and one of the plaintiffs. The suit notes how the school board turned down the last-minute March 23 offer from The News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting to pay for relocating the meeting to the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. "This is about democracy and the way we make decisions in this country," said Swain Wood, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. The crowd at the March 23 meeting overflowed into the hallway and outside the building. Angry students began chanting, leading to the arrests of three protesters, none of whom are current Wake students. Tedesco shrugs School board member John Tedesco, a member of the majority, called the case a "nuisance complaint." Even if the board loses the case, he said the only thing that will happen is they'll reapprove the changes again. "All they're doing is taking money out of the classroom to pay for their lawsuit," Tedesco said. "It won't change the vote."

School Board Opponents Arrive Early For Meeting

School Board Opponents Arrive Early For Meeting By Thomas Goldsmith - Staff writer RALEIGH -- Opponents of the Wake County school board's plans to end use of socioeconomic diversity in student assignment were already in place today before the beginning of a preliminary meeting now in progress. Several representatives of the grassroots nonprofit Great Schools in Wake were among those waiting in the lobby of the schools administration building on Wake Forest Road to receive tickets for the meeting. And several are in attendance at the meeting of the Committee of the Whole, which precedes the full board meeting at 3 p.m. The move to take diversity out of the assignment equation at the full board meeting has brought out not only several long-term supporters of the former diversity policy, but also plans by a social action group to demonstrate outside the building. The Coalition for Southern Justice, based in Durham, filed the necessary paperwork to stage the demonstration. Passage on second reading of a new assignment policy would represent a significant victory for the current board, which has four members who joined after posting wins in contentious elections last fall. It would end decades of Wake County's attempts to balance student populations in an effort to keep schools from having excessive concentrations of low-income or minority students. Supporters of the change have said the old policy merely hid the low academic performance of students in low-income and minority groups by sending them to schools that were high-achieving in aggregate. Update: As the Wake County School Board prepares to reverse its long-time diversity-based assignment plan, about 15 protesters are chanting against the change. Outside the schools administration building on Wake Forest Road, students from Broughton, Enloe and Cary high schools are carrying signs and shouting "Shut it down!" about the new assignment plan. The plan is up for its second reading later today. "We have demands for the school board," said Andrew Snee, 15, a Broughton High School freshman and one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the system that was dismissed Friday. The protesters want the board to put off consideration of the new assignment plan and rescind a policy under which people must get tickets to attend school board meetings. Elena Everett, an activist with from Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice, helped organize the protest.