Okay, the deal is the that the people of the Depression era changed the world, inspired by a President with a vision and who got stuff done.

The Roosevelt Campus Network is trying to replicate that, and here's more:

On FDR's birthday, the Roosevelt Campus Network, is launching a youth-generated vision for the
future-- a New Deal for the Millennial America. In the same way that FDR's New Deal established America's political course for years to come, the culmination of the Campus Network's Think 2040 project, Blueprint for the Millennial America, outlines the Millennial generation's goals and policy priorities for the next thirty years and offers a unique glimpse
at an engaged, socially empathetic, community-minded, and hyper informed generation of
Americans. To date, thousands of Millennials nation-wide have contributed their 2040 vision.
Now, young people across the country are taking action to
make their vision a reality. Over the course of the next few months, students nation-wide are
launching action projects to move towards their 2040 goals, including

• Investments in public infrastructure
• Equal access to quality education
• Elimination of the socioeconomic achievement gap
• Climate change adaptation and mitigation
• A strong green jobs sector
• The creation of a stronger, more flexible "social safety trampoline" as top priorities for
the next thirty years.

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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger

This week, two high-profile trials involving the racially motivated murders of Latinos in Pennsylvania and Arizona are exposing the unsettling implications of growing anti-immigrant sentiment. But while antagonistic political discourse and incendiary policy are shown to provoke ethnic violence--correlating with a 52 percent increase in hate crimes--they also indirectly drive sexual violence against immigrant women. The combination of stricter enforcement and increased cultural animosity toward immigrants renders undocumented women workers more susceptible to workplace rape and sexual exploitation--violent crimes that don't generally register as hate crimes but that nevertheless bespeak of racially charged motives.

Two murder cases highlight senseless violence against Latinos

The trial of Minuteman border vigilante Shawna Forde, and two other individuals charged with the 2009 murder of a nine-year-old Latina girl and her father, began this week in Arivaca, Arizona. Julianne Hing at ColorLines reports that Brisenia Flores was shot twice in the head by home invaders allegedly enlisted by Forde, who is accused of sanctioning racially motivated home invasions to finance (via robbery) her border patrol activities. Flores' parents were also shot, but her mother, Gina Gonzales, survived.

As Hing notes, Forde had strong ties with both the Tea Party movement and prominent anti-immigrant groups, including the influential conservative think-tank Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

Forde had a habit of ending her emails with the sign off, "Lock and Load" and had close ties with tea party groups. She was involved with the Minutemen American Defense--her supporters claim she was once a Minuteman National Director--a loose affiliation of anti-immigration border activists who took to policing the border on their own with guns and surveillance equipment. Forde has also had ties with the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform. These groups have all been labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Immigrant rights groups and Latino community advocates alike have characterized the grisly crime as part of a growing anti-immigrant hate crime epidemic plaguing many divided communities across the country.

One such community, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, recently saw the close of another hate crime case, in which three police officers were accused of covering up the racially motivated murder of 25-year-old immigrant Luis Ramirez. As New America Media reports, a Shenandoah jury issued a split verdict against the officers who were charged with obstruction of justice, falsifying records and conspiracy for their alleged attempt to protect Ramirez's teenage murderers. Former police Chief Matthew Nestor was found guilty on the first two counts, but found not guilty of conspiracy. Former police Lt. William Moyer was similarly found guilty of making false statements, but acquitted of all other charges, as was former police Officer Jason R. Hayes. Latino advocacy groups have characterized the officers' actions as a stark example of politicized community leaders privileging white criminals over their Latino victims.

Death of 17-year-old farmworker brings to light workplace exploitation

As antagonistic immigration discourse and prejudicial policies foster violence, immigrant workers are increasingly susceptible to workplace exploitation. In the case of 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, that exploitation proved deadly.

Change.org's Antonio Ramirez reports that Jimenez, who was two months pregnant, died of exposure while pruning grapes on a field owned by California's Merced Farm Labor. The company had been fined previously for violating heat regulations, but still failed to ensure that its workers received legally mandated access shade, water and breaks. Now, Merced's owner, Maria De Los Angeles Colung, as well as its former safety coordinator, Elias Armenta, are charged with involuntary manslaughter in Jimenez's death but, as Ramirez notes, they've accepted a plea bargain which would only mandate community service.

Jimenez's preventable death highlights rampant exploitation of immigrant workers in the U.S. food industry--particularly of women. As Alternet's Jill Richardson reports, immigrant workers are increasingly the victims of wage theft and are routinely exposed to toxic pesticides and other hazardous conditions while women workers regularly contend with a variety of workplace sexual abuse and harassment. Richardson summarizes the phenomenon thusly:

In addition to the fondling and groping the women endured on the job, women also engaged in consensual relationships with supervisors to gain "a secure place in American society, a green card, a husband -- or at the very least a transfer to an easier job at the plant." [...]

And then there's the nonconsensual stuff: A 2008 piece in High Country News revealed that farmworkers refer to one company's field as the "field of panties" because so many women workers are raped by supervisors. And as far back as 1993, the Southern Poverty Law Center found in its own study that 90 percent of female farm workers cite sexual harassment as a serious problem.

While the sexual abuse of (largely undocumented) women farmworkers doesn't register as a hate crime in the same way that the racially motivated murders of Luiz Ramirez and the Flores family do, the nature of their exploitation is clearly gendered and racialized. As immigration enforcement tightens, effectively pushing undocumented workers further underground while discouraging undocumented victims of violent crimes from coming forward, farmworkers will continue to be targeted for exploitation based on their gender, race and nationality--the same criteria upon which Ramirez and the Flores family were targeted for deadly violence.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse<. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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For President Obama, the path to victory in 2012 appeared to become more evident in recent weeks. Since last November's shellacking, Obama has done two things that could strengthen his reelection chances in 22 months. First, he has begun to successfully portray himself as charting a middle course between extremists in both parties. By forging compromises that have angered both the left of his Democratic Party and the far right of the Republican Party, Obama has contributed to this image. The lengthy list of legislative accomplishments, in spite of a confoundingly difficult political environment, to which he can point also contributes to this perception. Second, Obama has, for one of the few times since taking office, regained some of the communication skills that he demonstrated as a candidate. This was most apparent during his speech in Arizona following the tragic shooting in Tucson.

The problem with narrative is that it isn't relevant, and it will not become relevant unless the economy turns around in a way that is meaningful for the millions of Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, deeply in debt, scared of losing their home, frightened about the future or some combination of these things. If the economy is still in this shape in November 2012, voters will continue to be oblivious to Obama's lists of accomplishments or his reinvigorated communication skills and attempts to stress these things will be viewed as merely spin and in some cases acutely insensitive spin. This is not good news for the president or his party. If, however, the economy begins to turn around by the election, Obama's other strengths will reinforce his candidacy, making him a very difficult candidate to defeat.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Oil barons Charles and David Koch held their annual billionaires' summit in Palm Springs on Sunday, Nancy Goldstein reports in The Nation. Every year, the Kochs gather with fellow plutocrats, prominent pundits, and Republican legislators to plan their assault on government regulation and the welfare state. This is the first year that the low-profile gathering has attracted protesters.

The Kochs are best known for pumping millions into the ostensibly grassroots Tea Party movement. At TAPPED, Monica Potts points to Jane Mayer's famous 2010 profile of the Koch brothers that made their name synonymous with vast right wing conspiracy. Her colleague Jamelle Bouie questions whether the Koch brothers really deserve their bogeyman status--no single cabal of funders can single-handedly sway public opinion, he argues.

That's true, but $30 million can go a long way. That's the amount the event's organizers expect to raise for the GOP, according to Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, who also notes the event was off-limits to the mainstream media.

David Dayen reports at AlterNet that about 800 to 1,000 protesters rallied outside Sunday's summit at the Rancho Las Palmas resort. Twenty-five protesters were arrested for trespassing. Police in full riot gear carted the protesters away. To add a surreal note to the proceedings, conservative provocateur Andrew Brietbart emerged from the summit on roller skates to argue with the protesters.

Several progressive organizations collaborated to draw the crowd including Common Cause, the California Courage Campaign, CREDO, MoveOn.org, 350.org, the California Nurses Association, and the United Domestic Workers of America. The Media Consortium's own Jim Hightower was a featured speaker at the rally.

Plastic vs. the poor

YES! Magazine highlights a video lecture by racial and environmental justice advocate Van Jones on the hidden economic toll that plastic takes on the world's poor. When we discard our plastic bottles in the recycle bin, we assume they are destined to be reused or recycled. In fact, Jones says, they are often shipped to developing countries and simply burned. Needless to say, these toxic plastic bonfires aren't held in the tonier parts of town. It's the poorest people who bear the brunt of living next door to heaps of flaming pop bottles. Jones' central point is that treating objects as disposable inevitably leads to treating people the same way, because the most vulnerable are forced to live with the worst consequences of pollution.

Wall Street winfall doesn't help Main Street

The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly hovered above 12,000, prompting the New York Times to proclaim the booming stock market as a sign of an economic recovery. But as George Warner notes in Campus Progress, surging stocks aren't bringing jobs back:

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, 9.4 percent, underestimates the true extent of our employment problems by leaving out the many workers said to have "dropped out of the workforce." By the Economic Policy Institute's estimates, we are 11.5 million jobs short. 27 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. (To see how little our labor market has bounced back, check out this Youtube visualization of the last 3 years...the only thing you can't see is recovery.)

Warner adds that an analysis released last week by the Congressional Budget Office predicts that unemployment will remain high until 2016. What few jobs have been created are overwhelmingly low-wage positions without benefits. This is hardly a foundation on which to build lasting prosperity. A surging stock market without job creation means that the investor class is getting richer while ordinary people continue to struggle.

Hawkeyes Eying Wage Hike?

State Rep. Bruce Hunter (D-Des Moines) has introduced a bill that would raise the Iowa state minimum wage, Tyler Kingkade reports for the Iowa Independent. The bill would increase the minimum hourly wage to $7.50 on January, 1, 2012 and to $8.00 on July 1, 2012. The last time Iowa raised the minimum wage was in 2007 when the rate jumped from $5.15 per hour to the current $7.25.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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