(This was for SF Public Press. We are sharing content.)
Teachers in San Francisco have begun pledging their federal coronavirus relief checks to undocumented members of their communities.
“Our union has fought to defend immigrant rights, to support families in need,” said Frank Lara, a teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann school in the Mission who proposed the idea to the union. “As educators, when we get trained on issues of equity and social justice, we know that we have to give more attention, more resources, more support to the people who have the most need.”
Within about a day of bringing the idea to the union, Lara said some 100 educators had responded, pledging around $35,000. Ten had pledged their entire anticipated relief check. Lara calculates that if all 6,000 members of the union give 10 percent of their stimulus checks, the union could pool some $360,000 in funds, enough for about 300 stimulus check equivalents to go to undocumented individuals. READ MORE AT SF PUBLC PRESS.
America is a continent, not a country. The idea that there’s a group of people who deserve help and a group who doesn’t, and that membership in which group is based solely on where you were lucky enough to be born? That’s genocidal and disgusting.
There is a difference btw being here legally (born or naturalized) and not being here legally. Whether that should be the distinction for who gets help is another issue. Frankly, not everyone needs help (just as not everyone needs rent forgiveness of mortgage postponement). For the sake of everyone’s safety and health, shouldn’t we focus on helping those who really need the help?
Frankly, I don’t see why salaried people, or those still working or getting benefits, should be getting checks anyway. IS that true of these teachers? If there are still getting paid – despite school being closed until who knows when? Then why shoud they be getting a check?
But it does make me question voting for extra parcel taxes to fund additional salary raises for these same teachers though.
Kudos to Mr. Lara and all teachers,
When I taught at Potrero Middle the staff
donated money for murals to cover the graffiti
on the back of the building alongside the schoolyard.
Cost 35 bucks in spray paint for each one.
Panels around 8×12
‘Love’
‘Pride’
Those kinds of giant words.
Lasted for over 20 years.
A word of advice from an old Navy Radioman?
Teach every kid in the district Morse code and
how to set up a neighborhood communications
network with a bag of cheap whistles.
For when the internet gets shut down and y’all
still want to keep communicating.
Avalos in D-11!
h.
So many american citizens need help so wrong to help illegals the cheaters that cut in line over real legal immigrants the came here the right way
Americans will get a check, and they can do whatever they like with it.
I agree 100%! We need to help Americans first. Not people who are here illegally.
This is so wrong!
There’s more than enough for US citizen workers who lost their jobs and for immigrant workers (no matter how they got here). One Mark Zuckerberg lives in our neighborhood (at least one of his countless houses is here, who knows where he lives, or is “lives” is the proper term). How many billions of dollars has he sucked and continues to suck from American taxpayers, non-American taxpayers, and people who don’t pay any tax? And his great achievement, a monument to contemporary capitalism, which got how much in tax breaks, is offering to provide 100,000 masks to public health workers. Wow Mark, at 75 cents a mask, do you think Facebook can afford it? Billionaires like Zuckerberg are abominations and they are showing precisely why this crisis is a political not a medical crisis. Rather than stepping forward and using a tiny portion of his monstrous wealth to help people who are truly desperate, he either hides behind Trump (!) or has disappeared with friends and family to some desert island (where he has another house, or maybe he owns the entire island). Don’t be a zucker Artemisia. Nothing makes the Zuck and his buddy billionaires happier than to see us fighting among ourselves for what? $1200? Does that sum even qualify as a crumb?
If you don’t need the money, give your relief check to a needy American first. They might be a person of color, who cares what their skin tone is, but give it to your fellow paisano, not someone who broke the law to come here and make money.
And who do you think is currently picking and packing the produce that comes from the Imperial Valley? Who’s slaughtering pigs in North Carolina or packing chickens in Arkansas? Who is it that really puts food on our table (not who buys it from the store)? How many do you think are American citizens? Think again Paisano. Think about it next time you order from Safeway or Whole Foods. In general, but right now particularly, I would say our lives depend on people “who broke the law to come here and make money.”
No Human Being Is Illegal!
I am sorry you feel that way, but I came to this Country for a better life.THE SAME WAY YOUR ANCESTORS DID!
Their intent may be to support people who are here, who lost their jobs, who desperately need help, but aren’t about to get any help from our government. The needy Americans might be better off for being eligible for help.
If you are saying it looks bad to give taxpayer money to people here illegally when fellow taxpayers are suffering, I have to agree. But it probably wasn’t meant as a thumb in the eye of the American taxpayer.
‘Needy’ Americans will get a check. Americans who get a check can do whatever they like with their money.