links for 2011-05-04

"Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said the drive to collect fading memorabilia, including letters, photographs, toys and articles of clothing, before survivors died was 'a kind of race against time so that they will be remembered.'

"The Holocaust narrative remains a focal point for Israel, where some 200,000 survivors live. The Jewish state holds its annual Holocaust remembrance day on Monday."

"'We've been getting a lot of calls from schools and other organizations that say they have available content for us to use,' Long said, adding that much of it will be in the Navajo language. The need to preserve the language was one a key point the tribe used in getting the license from the Federal Communications Commission for two low-power channels to serve the reservation."

"'How did we acquire that picture of the lazybones snoozing under the cactus?' said Guadalupe Loaeza, a columnist for Reforma newspaper and author of books about the foibles of Mexico’s rich and famous. 'We know that life is hard every day in our country. That you cannot work one job. You have to have three. You have to work even on the weekends.'”

"Immigrant and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at halting a Utah immigration law that they say will create a police state and is too much like one of the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law, which is also before the courts.

"The Utah law, signed by Gov. Gary Herbert in March, requires people to prove their citizenship if they're arrested for serious crimes _ ranging from certain drug offenses to murder _ while giving police discretion to check citizenship on traffic infractions and other lesser offenses."

"'It is intolerable for school districts to continue operating schools that retain their racial identity from the Jim Crow era,' said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the Justice Department. 'If school districts are not willing to work collaboratively to eradicate the vestiges of de jure segregated schools, we will ask the courts to take the steps necessary to ensure that students of all racial backgrounds have the opportunity to attend diverse, inclusive schools.'”

"However, Carleen Sanchez, vice president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, said that the protest represents a broader cause.

“'Ethnic studies are under assault,' she stated in a phone interview.

“'Administrators do not recognize the importance of ethnic studies,” Sanchez continued. 'Given our origins in civil rights, I think that that type of direct action and individual sacrifice is part of our history.' She emphasized, 'A hunger strike is not silly.'”