“For Many Latina Teens, Gang Life Adds to Stress - New York Times” plus 3 more

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• For Many Latina Teens, Gang Life Adds to Stress - New York Times
• Paul J. Nyden: WVU Press brings back novel for another look - Charleston Gazette
• USA, Canada rivalry has evolved over time - NHL.com
• Why I’m Leaving the Senate - New York Times

For Many Latina Teens, Gang Life Adds to Stress - New York Times Posted: 20 Feb 2010 07:50 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Sitting at a wobbly table in the back room of Enlace Chicago, a privately funded violence prevention agency in Little Village , 13-year-old April slumped in her chair and buried her face in her hands. A curtain of jet-black bangs fell across her knuckles. Her nails were bitten to nubs. She said nothing. "If you're feeling depressed, you should tell me," said Araceli Hurtado, 29, an Enlace outreach worker assigned to April. April was silent. "You can't expect me to help if you can't tell me what's wrong," Ms. Hurtado said, pressing. More silence. The space heater belched a puff of hot air. April's eyes brimmed with tears, but before they could spill over, she balled her fists and ground them into her eyelids, angry at her own crying. Three days earlier, on Jan. 10, April — who would allow neither her last name to be used nor her photo to be taken because she feared recrimination from a gang — tried to end her life by swallowing 12 pills prescribed to her for a skin infection. "I thought the world would be better off without me," she said. When April first met with a reporter two months ago, on her third visit to Enlace, she wore a bright yellow hooded sweatshirt with a black shirt peeking out below — a colorful homage to her gang, the Latin Kings. She had a few trips to juvenile detention on her record and was on the road to failing most of her classes. When she was 9, April said, her brother was shot to death in front of her by a member of a rival gang. She held him as he died, and she swore she would get revenge. A year later, she was initiated into a female chapter of the Latin Kings. It was no surprise; most of her immediate family was already involved in gangs. Even if they were not, gangs would probably be a part of April's life. In this neighborhood, students say, not taking sides — being "flakes" — makes a person suspect to everyone and protected by no one. "April is one of the girls who comes from generations of gangbangers," said Ms. Hurtado, who has lived a life filled with difficulties similar to April's, including brothers with gang ties and bouts of depression. April's counselor, Ms. Hurtado, has attempted suicide several times, and was recently hospitalized for stomach problems arising from the six times she took overdoses of pills. But she learned to cope and earned a bachelor's in criminal justice from Westwood College and is pursuing a master's in mental health from Argosy University. For April, she is an inspiration. Latinas ages 12 to 17 are the largest group of minority girls in the country, the United States Census Bureau has reported. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five Latina teenagers in the United States has seriously considered or attempted suicide, a number higher than that for any other racial or ethnic group of the same age. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007 show that 42 percent of Latino girls in Grades 9 to 12 reported feeling sad or hopeless daily for more than two weeks. Latinos are the largest ethnic group in metropolitan Chicago, making them the largest ethnic group in the region, 2006 census data show. Native-born Latinos are also the youngest ethnic group in the region, with nearly 57 percent under the age of 18. Experts say April's struggles are common to many second-generation Latina youth who get mixed messages about how to behave. Patricia Perez, the mental health director at the Pilsen Wellness Center in Chicago, said women had certain roles in Latin American culture, like being a wholesome churchgoer and a base of support for the family. Ms. Perez said that in the last year she has seen an increase in depression and suicidal behavior among Latinas who sought services at the center. Living in the United States, however, young Latinas feel pressures to adapt to the more freewheeling lifestyles of American teenagers, and they are encouraged to be more assertive. "These girls are stuck in the middle," Ms. Perez said. Paired with these struggles is the stigma associated with mental illness in the Latino community, thus making treatment a last resort, experts say. April's tumultuous home life adds to the pressures she faces. Across the street from her house in December, a neighbor's festive web of holiday lights shined brightly, but April's house stood dark. A cement wall emblazoned with gang graffiti encircled it. Inside, her father sat in the darkness surrounded by pill bottles, empty soda cans and trash as he watched television in Spanish. When he opened the door to greet her, his reception was distant and chilly. "He has a metal heart," April said, her interpretation of his implanted artificial valve. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Paul J. Nyden: WVU Press brings back novel for another look - Charleston Gazette Posted: 20 Feb 2010 08:47 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Hearts of Gold By J. McHenry Jones Edited by John Ernest and Eric Gardner, West Virginia University Press, 305 + x pages. Paperback, $22.95. CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Celebrating Black History Month, West Virginia University Press just re-published "Hearts of Gold," a long forgotten novel by J. McHenry Jones. It is the first volume in "Regenerations: African American Literature and Culture," a new series of reprints of African-American works that are out-of-print or failed to attract the attention they deserved. "Hearts of Gold" was published in 1896, a generation away from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Born in 1858, Jones was a speaker, community leader, political activist, university president and novelist. After growing up in Pomeroy, Ohio, Jones became the principal of the Lincoln School in Wheeling in 1882. In 1898, Jones became president of the West Virginia Colored Institute, now West Virginia State University. Jones was active in Republican Party politics and was a leader in the Grand Order of Odd Fellows and the Epworth League, an interracial religious group. In 1896, Jones used his own money to help finance his novel, which was printed by the Daily Intelligencer Steam Job Press in Wheeling. In 1909, Jones died and was buried in the cemetery on Barron Drive in Institute, near West Virginia State. The importance of race Post Civil War years were "a time when the significance and centrality of race in the United States was variously exposed and veiled," John Ernest and Eric Gardner point out in their extended introduction to the new edition of "Hearts of Gold." Jones and other African-American writers offered a starkly different view of American society in an era when a growing number of publications - such as the Uncle Remus series by Joel Chandler Harris - romanticized Southern society and its inequalities. By the end of the 19th century, white supremacist ideologies became widespread and lynchings were common. Jones offers readers the stories of real African-American characters, not "idealized earthy slaves with amusing folk wisdom," Ernest and Gardner write. "Over a century later," they add, "we still have much to learn from the singular excursion into fiction by this remarkable African American educator and leader." Reginia Underwood, one of the book's heroines, was born to Ethel Underwood, the only daughter of Judge Underwood and his wife. The judge was an abolitionist who helped slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. Interestingly, Judge Underwood opposed the marriage of his own daughter to George Stewart, a runaway slave. After his daughter Ethel died, Reginia was raised by her grandparents and their friend, Mrs. Levitt. Reginia was very light-skinned and was never immediately identifiable as African-American. "Hearts of Gold" presents a complex story of Reginia's friendship with Lucile Malone, who married Clement St. Clair, a local newspaper writer and editor. (Both were white.) St. John's good friend, Lotus Stone, was black and became a medical doctor. The loving but difficult relationship between Reginia and Lotus is a central theme of the book. Their relationship was difficult both because of widespread racist attitudes and specific efforts made by the novel's villain, a cousin who worked to steal the Underwood family estate from Reginia. Some of the novel's most powerful chapters portray life in the steel mill and coal mining towns in northern Alabama. Reginia moved from Canada to Granville, a growing steel town, and sought to use her compassion and "missionary spirit" to run a new school for black children. Some of the book's most powerful chapters portray the disastrous and inhuman conditions in Southern mines staffed with prisoners, typically convicted on minor and questionable offenses. Stone became close friends with a fellow miner known only as "Forty Seven," for his prisoner identification number. He ended up in the mine after getting convicted for stealing one cabbage from a farm field. Owned and operated by a millionaire senator, the prison mining camp was carved from land once filled with beautiful streams, tall elm and oak trees, deer, squirrels and birds. "Into this natural paradise, like the serpent into Eden, came man," Jones writes. "He broke through the forest, tunneled the mountains, bridged and vitiated the stream, killed the game and in place of the song of the bird and the murmur of the stream, brought the whistle of the engine." "Hearts of Gold" criticizes "the best educated and most able Afro-Americans" for finding "themselves possessed with a rare conservatism when any race enterprise bids for their support." The book promotes the underlying social messages of the four Gospels, embodied by people like Reginia. But Jones has harsh criticism for "the shams and ignorant practices" of "half-hearted ministers, more desirous of a name for themselves than zealous for the purity of the church of God." The plot of Hearts of Gold is often complex. But the stark portrayals of working inside mines, of police abuse and of a brutal lynching will remain lasting images for anyone who reads this book by a man who spent most of his professional life in West Virginia. Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5164. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

USA, Canada rivalry has evolved over time - NHL.com Posted: 20 Feb 2010 06:38 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. VANCOUVER – It goes back to the days when there only were six NHL teams -- the fabled Original Six -- and though 95 percent of the players were Canadians, two-thirds of the teams were based in American cities. In those days, NHL scouts would check on American players only if absolutely forced to and U.S.-born skaters would be greeted with dismissive gestures, if not derogatory comments, from their Canadian teammates upon entering NHL dressing rooms. It was ratcheted up considerably in 1991, when American defenseman Gary Suter knocked Wayne Gretzky out of the Canada Cup -- and, some say, ignited The Great One's history of back problems with a hit from behind in the first game of the finals. It reached a fever pitch in 1996 when, for the first and only time in history, a U.S. hockey team won a best-vs.-best men's hockey tournament by defeating Canada -- in Montreal, of all places -- to win the inaugural World Cup of Hockey. In recent years, perhaps because of respective foreign policy decisions or maybe because the games are getting too close for some people's comfort, fans on both sides have taken to booing the other's National Anthem. And in the two most recent World Junior Championships played in Canada, local fans routinely rooted against the U.S. teams in the games in which Canada wasn't involved. Of course, it is all wrapped up in geopolitics as well and the unique relationship between two bordering countries that couldn't be more alike and friendly in most ways. The larger nation to the north traditionally has been a bit wary, if not envious, of the military, political and cultural clout of the far more populous nation south of the 49th Parallel. "It" is the Canada-United States hockey rivalry -- and it now is the one that invokes the most intense passion for both countries. Canada-Russia? That was so 1972. U.S.-Russia? That was a two-time thing – in 1960 and again in 1980. Rivalry Sunday at the 2010 Olympic hockey tournament will comprise three games. None will be more bitterly contested nor stir more complicated emotions that Team Canada vs. Team USA. John Mayasich, who won gold with the U.S. Olympic team at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, recalled a meeting with Canada in 1956 at the Cortina Games. En route to winning a silver medal, Team USA beat the club team (Kitchener-Waterloo) that Canada sent to those Olympics. "Afterward, the Canadian coach offered us anything we wanted -- they'd pay anything -- to come to Montreal for a rematch right away," Mayasich said. "Our coach, (John) Mariucci was from the NHL -- he played with the Chicago Blackhawks. He refused. He said, 'No, they'll have to sit on that one for four years.'" Four years later, the Americans beat Kitchener-Waterloo again in the Olympics on their way to winning gold. Canada never sent a club team to another Olympic Games -- and American victories over Canadian teams at major tournaments became very rare things. A breakthrough came in 1996 at the inaugural World Cup of Hockey – as seminal a moment for American hockey as the '60 and '80 Olympic triumphs. Ron Wilson was the American coach then, as he is now. His declaration in the delirium of Team USA's postgame celebration: "We came through. We put to rest what a lot of people had said, earlier openly, and now, I guess in hushed tones: that Americans don't have the character and grit to play this great game of hockey." "Everybody in Canada sees them as the big brother that you want to hang around with but you're not sure if you can trust all the time. And for Canadians, that's a tough thing to digest. All of a sudden, with what used to be their game, now the big brother is saying: 'OK, I'm taking the puck; I'm taking the stick and I'm taking the game.'" -- Hockey analyst Pierre McGuire The truth is, though, that the American hockey quest for respect from Canada never really ended. Six years later, on American soil in Salt Lake City, Canada beat Team USA in the Olympic final – with a Canadian dollar coin (a loonie) surreptitiously buried in the ice by a Canadian ice technician. On the eve of that game, American center Jeremy Roenick had this to say: "This is a one-game grudge match. To say we're going to kick their (butt) would be crazy. But definitely the desire to is there." Added American center Doug Weight: "This rivalry is incredible from your friends to your enemies. I'm not going to say we hate each other, but we want to beat each other so bad that it feels like hate. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of friends there. But I don't want to beat anybody more than I want to beat Canada." The feeling finally has become mutual, for myriad reasons. "I think it really started to heat up when Gary Suter hit Wayne Gretzky from behind in the Canada Cup," said Pierre McGuire, the hockey analyst for NBC in the U.S. and TSN in Canada who was born in Englewood, N.J., now lives outside of Montreal and has split his life and citizenship between the two nations. "I really believe that is when it really started to percolate. But the big thing is: Canadians are very proud of their game. And they view it as THEIR game. "Obviously, they competed so hard against Russia and Sweden and Finland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia for so long, they never really viewed the U.S. as a threat. But because of the way the Americans have really developed their programs and the stars they're starting to produce down in the United States and the number of first-overall picks like Patrick Kane and Erik Johnson, the Canadians are feeling that a little bit of their fabric is taken away from them. Things that never used to happen are happening now -- the Americans winning World Junior gold in 2004, winning again in Saskatoon, on Canadian soil, with John Carlson, an American player, a first-round pick who actually did his training playing major junior hockey in Canada. All of this stuff percolates within the Canadian fabric. And people start to say: 'These guys really are a rival.' "I think the big thing too, when you think about Canada and the U.S.? Everybody in Canada sees them as the big brother that you want to hang around with but you're not sure if you can trust all the time. And for Canadians, that's a tough thing to digest. All of a sudden, with what used to be their game, now the big brother is saying: 'OK, I'm taking the puck; I'm taking the stick and I'm taking the game.'" On Sunday in Canada Hockey Place, Canada and the United States battle once again over the puck and the stick and – at least in this tournament – for North American hockey supremacy. "It's obviously a lot of pride on the line," rambunctious American forward David Backes said. "You're playing for your country and you're playing on a huge stage. I don't think there will be too many TVs turned off in all of North America when that game is on on Sunday. "It's a non-workday, so many people are going to see it. It's at 4:30, right in the wheelhouse, 7:30 Eastern (time). There will be a lot of people watching it and it's setting the tone for the rest of the tournament. Obviously, if you lose, you don't go home. But it's setting the seedings. And for the other portion of the tournament, it means a lot." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Why I’m Leaving the Senate - New York Times Posted: 20 Feb 2010 06:10 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. BASEBALL may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials. Milton Berle famously joked: "You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think." These days, though, the institutional inertia gripping Congress is no laughing matter. Challenges of historic import threaten America's future. Action on the deficit, economy, energy, health care and much more is imperative, yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed. There are many causes for the dysfunction: strident partisanship, unyielding ideology, a corrosive system of campaign financing, gerrymandering of House districts, endless filibusters, holds on executive appointees in the Senate, dwindling social interaction between senators of opposing parties and a caucus system that promotes party unity at the expense of bipartisan consensus. Many good people serve in Congress. They are patriotic, hard-working and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before. It was not always thus. While romanticizing the Senate of yore would be a mistake, it was certainly better in my father's time. My father, Birch Bayh, represented Indiana in the Senate from 1963 to 1981. A progressive, he nonetheless enjoyed many friendships with moderate Republicans and Southern Democrats. One incident from his career vividly demonstrates how times have changed. In 1968, when my father was running for re-election, Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader, approached him on the Senate floor, put his arm around my dad's shoulder, and asked what he could do to help. This is unimaginable today. When I was a boy, members of Congress from both parties, along with their families, would routinely visit our home for dinner or the holidays. This type of social interaction hardly ever happens today and we are the poorer for it. It is much harder to demonize someone when you know his family or have visited his home. Today, members routinely campaign against each other, raise donations against each other and force votes on trivial amendments written solely to provide fodder for the next negative attack ad. It's difficult to work with members actively plotting your demise. Any improvement must begin by changing the personal chemistry among senators. More interaction in a non-adversarial atmosphere would help. I'm beginning my 12th year in the Senate and only twice have all the senators gathered for something other than purely ceremonial occasions. The first was during my initial week in office. President Bill Clinton had been impeached and the Senate had to conduct his trial. This hadn't happened since 1868, and there were no rules in place for conducting the proceedings. All of us gathered in the Old Senate Chamber. For several hours we debated how to proceed. Finally, Ted Kennedy and Phil Gramm, ideological opposites, were given the task of forging a compromise. They did, and it was unanimously ratified. The second occasion was just days after Sept. 11. Every senator who could make it to Washington gathered in the Senate dining room to discuss the American response. The nation had been attacked. The building in which we sat had been among the targets, and only the heroism of the passengers prevented the plane from reaching its destination. We had to respond to protect the country. There were no Republicans or Democrats in the room that day, just Americans. The spirit of patriotism and togetherness was palpable. That atmosphere prevailed for only two or three weeks before politics once again intervened. It shouldn't take a constitutional crisis or an attack on the nation to create honest dialogue in the Senate. Let's start with a simple proposal: why not have a monthly lunch of all 100 senators? Every week, the parties already meet for a caucus lunch. Democrats gather in one room, Republicans in another, and no bipartisan interaction takes place. With a monthly lunch of all senators, we could pick a topic and have each side make a brief presentation followed by questions and answers. Listening to one another, absent the posturing and public talking points, could only promote greater understanding, which is necessary to real progress. Evan Bayh, the governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1996 and a senator since 1999, announced his retirement from the Senate last week. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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