Respuestas al cuestionario de Voces de la Frontera
Preguntas Legislativas 2010
Acción Voces de la Frontera
Acción c-4
1. ¿Cree usted que el gobierno estatal y local debe estar involucrado aplicar las leyes de inmigración? Sí o No. Explique por favor.
Los gobierno estatales y locales tienen el deber de proteger a todos sus habitantes, sin importar su ciudadanía o estatus migratorio. Los gobiernos estatales y locales deben evitar cualquier intento para aplicar las leyes federales de inmigración. Además, tiene que cerciorarse que no están colaborando con el gobierno federal en la violación de los derechos humanos de los inmigrantes indocumentados.
Siemmpre he sido un firme defensor de los derechos de los inmigrantes y por la liberaliazción de la política de inmigración de los Estados Unidos. Los derechos de los inmigrantes tienen significado personal para mí:
Apoyo las fronteras abiertas para la gente, no para los bienes. Para que sepan mi opinión sobre la participación del gobierno local en la aplicación de la ley federal de inmigración, por favor lean la siguiente columna que escribí para el Isthmus hace dos años:
EL PLANSKI: La política migratoria de Dave Mahoney hace de nuestro condado una zona de injusticia.
Dave Mahoney Sheriff del Condado de Dane se compromete a sequir colaborando con el gobierno federal con respecto a los extranjeros.
Bajo Mahoney, la oficina del Sheriff ha reportado a más de 400 immigrantes al ICE, la más reciente versión de INS. Esto es un aumento sustancial a lo que sucedió con el sheriff anterior, Gary Hamblin quien no dio alta prioridad a la represión en contra de inmigrantes indocumentados. Hamblin explicó al periódico Capital Times su enfoque sobre el tema migratorio:
“Existe la percepción por ahí de que la personas que están aquí de manera ilegal y que son víctimas del crímen no se siente con la confianza para reportar el crímen por miedo a que el servicio de inmigración llegue por ellos. Nadie quiere que otra persona sea víctima de un crímen y quiero hacer saber a la gente que la política del condado será de no reportarlos.”
¿Que fue lo que cambió? Mahoney tomo el cargo de Hamblin. Ni las peticiones, resoluciones, cartas ni la protesta pública de todos tipos lo han convencido. Este oficial local dice que no acatará la voluntad de los electores. Su primera prioridad será la cooperación con el gobierno federal.
Esto es muy curioso. El sheriff republicano anterior decide no ensañarse con los inmigrantes. Luego toma el cargo un demócrata y Dane County se vuelve repentinamente un lugar donde es aceptable el odio hacia los inmigrantes. ¿Me pregunto porqué?
La mayoría de la gente con le he hablado describe a Mahoney como un policía a la antigua que se ha interesado demasiado en colaboarar con otras agencias policiacas. De tener razón Mahoney es un Doughface - alguién que colabora con la injusticia.
"¿Doughface?" Sí. En la década de 1850, ese fue el nombre que algunos demócratas del norte recibieron por parte de sus críticos de otros partidos que se oponían a la esclavitud (Miembros de los partidos políticos Liberty, Free Soil y Republicanos. En el conflicto sobre la aplicación de la ley federal de esclavos, en particular la ley de esclavos fugitivos de 1850, hubo aquellos que exhortaron a la resistencia a los agentes federales y aquellos que colaboraraon. Los partidarios de la esclavitud dieron gracias a los colaboradores como lo hizo el Representante John Randolph de Virginia:
“Ello tenían miedo de sus dough faces (complicidad), le tenían miedo a su complicidad - Estaban bajo control.”
Y los que odian a los inmigrantes tienen a Mahoney. Sin importar si él es parte de ellos, el está llevando a cabo ese trabajo y nosotros también por tenerlo como oficial electo.
Link:http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=22681
2. Do you support driver card legislation for immigrants in Wisconsin who currently do not have access to driver’s license and auto insurance? Yes or No. Please explain.
Absolutely. I will sponsor this legislation, as well as any related legislation that you need me to champion.
Since my website went live on July 10th, the following pledges have appeared there, and been key elements of my campaign:
Link: http://votemanski.com/we-people
As of today, August 19th, I am proud (and sorry) to report that I remain the only candidate running in this race who has clearly articulated an immigrant rights plank on their website, or in their campaign literature.
3. Do you support in-state tuition rates at public universities and colleges for undocumented students in Wisconsin? Yes or No. Please explain.
Yes. See my response to Question 2, and then please allow me to expand on my response as follows . . . .
As Madison’s newest legislator, I will work with you to achieve a Wisconsin in which all residents are treated equally, regardless of U.S. citizenship or immigration status. Wisconsin should have one standard, and one standard only, for determining qualifications for education, welfare, voting, driving, and other rights and privileges. An Illinoisan or New Yorker who moved to Wisconsin one year ago should have no more, and no fewer, rights or privileges under state law than someone who moved here from Mexico at the same time.
4. Do you support Badger Care for pregnant women regardless of immigration status? Yes or No. Please explain.
Yes. Please see my previous responses, and please allow me to add that I am convinced that on health policy, Wisconsin must the lead the way, as it did years ago on so many other vital progressive reforms. As a state representative, I will work to pass a statewide single-payer program modeled on Senator Mark Miller's Health Security Act. That reform has long been the dream of health reform advocates senior to me. Like them, I refuse to accept the alternative -- that people will suffer or die for lack of the ability to pay.
5. Do you support the mandatory expansion of E-verify programs, which depend on databases from SSA and DHS to determine a worker’s eligibility to be employed, despite high numbers of inaccuracies? Yes or No. Please explain.
No. In researching this question, I have seen abundant evidence that, as you state, there are an exceptional number of inaccuracies in E-verify programs, and that further, those inaccuracies disproportionately impact foreign-born workers and people of color, and that those negatively impacted by E-verify are rarely informed of their right to challenge their ineligibility ruling.
6. Do you support bilingual education? Yes or No. Please explain.
Yes, and I will work to secure additional state support for bilingual education programs. As I stated earlier in my responses, I am a former ESL student, my mother was an ESL instructor, and I know the importance of providing educational opportunities in students’ native languages. At one time in Wisconsin’s history, bilingual education meant Norwegian and English, and then later, German and English. I have always opposed English-only, and you can count on me to do the same in the legislature.
7. Do you support an elected school board for MPS? Yes or No. Please explain.
Yes. I will am a strong defender of local democracy -- especially in communities that are already shut out of the process in so many other key areas of public policy -- and I opposed the attempted mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools. Some of my closest friends and allies have been involved in the leadership of that fight, including Todd Price, who was recently the Green Party’s candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and has been my colleague in the movement for democracy and education since 1994.
8. Do you support the use of taxpayer money to pay for vouchers that can be used to pay private school tuition? Yes or No. Please explain.
No. I have always been an opponent of school voucher schemes. Yesterday I had the good fortune to receive a call from Madison Teachers, Inc., our largest local teachers union, to the effect that their membership had voted to endorse my campaign. I would like to share with you some of what I told them in their interview process:
I am as strong a proponent for our public schools as you will ever meet. I have spent over twenty years advocating for public education. I have organized and participated in sit-ins, student strikes, labor strikes, and, in one case, a five-day hunger strike for funding for our primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools and colleges. I teach sociology at MATC-Truax, and am a member of AFT 6100. My mother taught for two decades at Madison West and was an MTI steward; she is today a fellow AFT member, working at UIC in teacher evaluation and certification. My wife, sister, father, aunt, uncle, other aunt, other uncle, and grandmother are all educators. The field of education defines my family.
Public education is under a deliberate and constant assault by corporate lobbyists and neoconservative ideologues. They have used our state and federal legislatures to effectively starve public education, and then, to force feed teachers, students, and parents a regimen of vouchers, charter schools, standardized testing, union-busting, and generational debt. The price already paid in this assault on our youth – particularly working class youth and youth of color – is unbearable.
I have worked side-by-side with MTI leadership and staff my entire adult life to resist these attacks, and have long been of the mind that, to quote a great Wisconsin strategist, “the best defense is a good offense.” For that reason, I have played a leadership role in developing a counter to the corporatization of education, working to build movements for campus democracy.
Specific examples of my work along these lines have included:
• Democratizing Education Network (DEN) – A national network of faculty, staff, students, and community leaders which I founded in 2004. See: www.DemocratizingEducation.org
• TAA AFT 3200 Political Education Committee – I was a proud member of the TAA and served on the PEC during the TAA strike of 2004.
• Books not Bombs National Student Strike – This 2003 national student strike was a protest against war spending and its impact on education funding. I helped to initiate and organize this protest.
• 180/Movement for Democracy and Education (180/MDE) – A national organization that was a precursor to the DEN (see above), running from 1998-2003, which I cofounded.
• Associated Students of Madison (ASM) – I served on the ASM Council at UW-Madison and as chair of the UW’s Shared Governance Committee.
• Democracy Teach-Ins (DTI) – From 1995-2002, a series of national “Teach-ins on Corporations, Education, and Democracy” took place on over 400 college and high school campuses. I served as national coordinator of the DTIs in their first four years.
• Mobilization for a People’s Budget – In 1995 and in years following, I was proud to work with various MTI, AFT, AFSCME and other education sector labor leaders in organizing mass protests for full funding for education and other key services.
• Students for Education Reform (SER) – In 1990, as a student at Madison West High School, I helped form and lead this regional activist group. We helped to achieve the adoption of state legislation protecting student free speech and restoring open campus, and mobilized students in support of the statewide teachers union rally that happened that year.
9. Do you support requiring voucher schools to meet the same academic and licensure requirements as public schools? Yes or No. Please explain.
So long as Wisconsin still provides subsidies to private schools through vouchers, yes. Furthermore, I support the creation of a section of Wisconsin corporate code specific to schools. All incorporated entities are, after all, public, not private, institutions. If a group of individuals wish to take advantage of the protections that the State of Wisconsin provides to corporations, and to incorporate a private school, it is the responsibility of our state to ensure that that private school meets or exceeds that same standards as other schools.
10. Do you support workers’ rights to organize collectively? Yes or No. Please explain.
I am a member of AFT 6100. I have been a member, in the past, of AFT 3200, and of the UW-Madison Federation of Labor and the Student Labor Action Coalition. I have been a member of the IWW since I was 16 years old. I spent several years organizing support for the struggle of the members of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, Oregon’s farmworkers union.
Yes, I strongly support the right to organize. As my platform reads, I will work to:
Link: http://votemanski.com/prosperity
11. What is your strategy to generate good jobs in the State of Wisconsin? Please explain.
“Competitiveness” should never be used as an excuse for a no-win “race to the bottom” which reduces state revenues, worker pay and protections and protection for our environment. For too long, our state’s leaders have offered corporate tax breaks as their sole means of promoting economic growth, attempting to remake Wisconsin in the image of low-wage, low-regulation, anti-union states in the South.
Wisconsin must grow by building on our strengths, including a highly skilled workforce and a well-protected natural environment that makes our state a desirable place to live and locate a business. My economic plan would build on Wisconsin’s strong tradition of worker-owned and community-owned cooperative businesses. State economic development programs should give a strong preference to cooperative businesses (Madison’s Union Cab and Isthmus Engineering are just two examples), because worker-owned businesses stay where they are -- no worker-owned business has ever extorted a tax break from government by threatening to relocate to a low-wage, low-tax state.
A state preference for worker ownership and community ownership is taxpayer protection, ensuring that our economic development dollars stay in our state. Wisconsinites should understand this idea better than anyone, because it’s the reason why the community-owned Green Bay Packers are still in Green Bay.
12. Do you think the Arizona law SB 1070 is a good law? Please explain.
Arizona’s SB 1070 is an atrocity. My latest heroes are the thousands of activists who have gone to Arizona to put an end to that racist law.
