Back in June, while announcing his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump made divisive comments regarding Mexican immigrants. He voiced his concerns that the United States had become a “dumping ground for everyone else’s problems” and that Mexico was “bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.”
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act and laws like SB4, which gives undocumented youth in California access to health care through Medical, more Latinos and residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley have gotten insured. But it’s not just about access. Yes, residents here need more and better quality care, but they also need it from doctors who are bilingual and can easily communicate with families so they don’t have to fear their doctor’s visits.
This Thanksgiving, as I eat a plate of turkey and not of tamales, I will bask in the delight of knowing that I’m lucky to have these two special dishes (and cultures) in my life.
We'Ced reporters dialogued about the Paris attacks and their aftermath. Below, they consider the consequences of a knee-jerk anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim reaction and wonder if, in the wake of the attacks, America should continue it's plan to provide refuge for 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.
But while we acknowledge the progress that has been made, we must recognize how much further we have to go. There remains just over two million youth arrested each year in America. This would include the South Carolina girl and many like her where no video was taken. On any given day, there are nearly 70,000 youth incarcerated in the United States – six times the rate of England.
The Ortiz family migrated from Mexico to the Coachella Valley in 1915, where the family patriarch, Esabel Parga Ortiz and his wife Maria Montoya Ortiz, first worked as fieldworkers.
Esabel Parga’s sons, Pete and Joseph were the first family members to join the armed forces, and since World War II, members of every generation in the Ortiz family have served in the United States military.
Now, five generations later, the Ortiz family has built a lasting legacy in the Coachella Valley, boasting more than 50 service members in four different branches of the military.
Both Trammel and Flores insist that one of the most important things about developing the Drum Corps was to ensure it came to fruition in South Merced, therefore giving youth a safe place away from all the violence plaguing the area.
“Of course teaching kids indigenous and contemporary technologies is a major component of our program,” stated Trammell. “But another component was to create a harm free zone.”
“Music can be the difference between getting in trouble or not,” added Flores.
In Brenner’s experience, there are a lot of people who see depression as simply being in a bad mood. They don’t realize that depression is a diagnosable and treatable condition. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mood disorders like depression are the third most common reason for hospitalization among youth and adults between the ages of 18 and 44.
“Many people think that a person who is depressed is sad all the time, is unable to laugh, is ‘weak’ and/or suicidal. None of these are true of everyone,” Scarlet says. “Many people with depression might not be ‘obviously’ depressed. They might laugh and appear happy while struggling on the inside.”
In fact, studies have confirmed that transgender older adults suffer far higher levels of depression, disability and loneliness than nontransgender older adults. Seventy-one percent of transgender older adults have contemplated taking their own lives, compared with just 3.7 percent of the general U.S. population.
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