links for 2011-05-11

"It is in the northeast where poverty’s reach has been most extensive and intractable, which historians attribute to arid conditions and the legacy of slavery. The nine northeastern states contain 27 percent of Brazil’s 192 million people but account for just 13 percent of its economic growth, said Paulo Guimaraes, regional chief of BNDES, Brazil’s development bank. In contrast, the southeast, rich in industry, churns out 56 percent of the country’s economic output with just 41 percent of the population."

"In April 2009, Vilsack announced a 'New Civil Rights Era for USDA' and began tackling the backlog of 11,000 equal employment opportunity complaints facing the department. He also placed a priority on closing decades-old discrimination claims by Hispanic, female, black and Native American farmers. Settlements have been offered in all of the cases and the number of pending equal employment opportunity complaints is down to 461, the lowest since the department began keeping track, according to agency officials."

"Shortly after Osama bin Laden's death was broadcast to the world, Linda Sarsour posted on Twitter, 'Osama Bin Laden is dead. Good, now can I get my identity back? 10 yrs is a long time. Can being Palestinian and Muslim be cool again?'

"In fewer than 140 characters, the 31-year-old progressive activist from New York summed up the views of many young Muslim Americans. They hope the al-Qaida leader's death, and the pro-democracy uprisings sweeping the Arab world, help erase the suspicion and fear many non-Muslims have viewed them with for nearly a decade."

**TRIGGER WARNING**

"This June Independent Lens and PBS will air the 2008 award-winning documentary Two Spirits. The film concerns the brief life of Navajo youth Fred Martinez who was murdered in 2001, at the age of 16, due to gender and sexual identity. Martinez came out early to his family, in their Cortez, CO home as gay, and experimented with female dress."

"He took five of his sons to Kansas in 1855 to assist in making the state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. The next year, after slavery-promoting thugs had savaged and burned the free community of Lawrence, Kansas, Brown retaliated by organizing a militia. He and four of his sons and six other men tracked down five pro-slavery reprobates along the Pottawatomie Creek and hacked them to death."