It turns out that paper pinwheels – even on a rainy day – are a great idea.

As they do each Valentine’s Day, members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth rallied and marched on their state capital to call for an end to mountaintop removal and a just economic transition in Appalachia.

Pinwheels planted at the state capital in Kentucky.

“We want what all people want,” KFTC Chair Steve Boyce told the crowd of 1,200 on the capitol steps in Frankfort, “clean air and water, safe and good jobs … a future full of hope and promise.”

The 30-year-old grassroots organization of 7,500 members holds I Love Mountains Day each year during the Kentucky General Assembly to urge lawmakers to pass a bill that would end the dumping of mountaintop removal mining waste in headwater streams. And for the last few years, they’ve included a message of New Power: new economic power, new energy power and new political power.

This year, participants brought thousands of homemade paper pinwheels to represent the 60,000 additional cases of cancer in Appalachia that recent studies have linked to mountaintop removal. The pinwheels also symbolized the hope that cleaner forms of energy offer the region.

In addition to the Stream Saver Bill, KFTC members lobbied for the Clean Energy Opportunity Act, which could create 28,000 net new jobs in Kentucky while slowing the increase in electric bills over the next ten years, according to a recent study commissioned by the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED).

Cody Montgomery, a young KFTC member living in the Eastern Kentucky coalfields, expressed his love for the mountains and his dismay that lawmakers fail to see the potential of the land and people to create a bright future beyond coal.

“I have witnessed with my own sweat the abundance that can be grown on less than a half acre of land. I’ve walked the ridges and hollers and held the potential of these hills in my own hands,” Montgomery said. “How so many behind these walls fail to see the same is a tragedy.”

Speakers also drew connections among communities around the world that are exploited by extractive fossil fuel industries. Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada, described the impacts of 30 years of tar sands extraction on her community – polluted air and water and higher rates of emphysema, asthma and cancers.

“It is encouraging to be here today, to feel like you are standing with me, as I am standing with you,” she said.

The field of pinwheels grew on the governor's lawn in Kentucky.

Participants marched around the capitol and to the governor’s mansion, where they planted pinwheels on the governor’s lawn and in a “mountain” that symbolized the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.

CHICAGO (AP) — A sense of order and decorum prevails at Noble Street College Prep as students move quickly through a hallway adorned with banners from dozens of colleges. Everyone wears a school polo shirt neatly tucked into khaki trousers. There’s plenty of chatter but no jostling, no cellphones and no dawdling.

The reason, administrators say, is that students have learned there is a price to pay — literally — for breaking even the smallest rules.

Noble Network of Charter Schools charges students at its 10 Chicago high schools $5 for detentions stemming from infractions that include chewing gum and having untied shoelaces. Last school year it collected almost $190,000 in discipline “fees” from detentions and behavior classes — a policy drawing fire from some parents, advocacy groups and education experts.

Officials at the rapidly expanding network, heralded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a model for the city, say the fees offset the cost of running the detention program and help keep small problems from becoming big ones. Critics say Noble is nickel-and-diming its mostly low-income students over insignificant, made-up infractions that force out kids administrators don’t want.

“We think this just goes over the line … fining someone for having their shoelaces untied (or) a button unbuttoned goes to harassment, not discipline,” said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, which staged protests last week over the policy after Woestehoff said she was approached by an upset parent

Students at Noble schools receive demerits for various infractions — four for having a cellphone or one for untied shoelaces. Four demerits within a two-week period earn them a detention and $5 fine. Students who get 12 detentions in a year must attend a summer behavior class that costs $140.

Superintendent Michael Milkie said the policy teaches the kids — overwhelmingly poor, minority and often hoping to be the first in their families to attend college — to follow rules and produces in a structured learning environment. He points to the network’s average ACT score of 20.3, which is higher than at the city’s other non-selective public schools, and says more than 90 percent of Noble graduates enroll in college.

While fights can be an almost daily occurrence in some urban high schools, Milkie says there’s only about one a year on each Noble campus.

By “sweating the small stuff … we don’t have issues with the big stuff,” he said.

Milkie said the fines also help defray the cost of administering after-school detention and the salary of the network’s dean of discipline, which otherwise would divert money intended for education.

But Donna Moore said the district is manufacturing problems that lead to unproductive badgering of students, including her 16-year-old son, who had to repeat ninth grade at Noble’s Gary Comer College Prep after racking up 33 detentions and several suspensions.

“It was nothing egregious, but just that the little things added up: a shirt unbuttoned, shoes not tied, not tracking the teacher with his eyes,” said Moore, adding that her son has an attention disorder. “It’s not normal to treat a young adult as a 2-year-old … kids internalize that.”

Woestehoff and Moore said some families have removed their children from Noble schools because they couldn’t keep paying the fees, though Moore said her biggest complaint is the infractions. Milkie said Noble sets up payment plans and on rare occasions waives the fees, and students never would be held back a grade solely because they couldn’t pay.

Even so, Matthew Mayer, a professor in the graduate school of education at Rutgers University, said a monetary fine is “highly inappropriate” because it likely has no bearing on students’ academic performance and disproportionately hurts poor families.

“It’s almost medieval in nature. It’s a form a financial torture, for lack of a better term,” Mayer said.

Emanuel defended the school, saying it gets “incredible” results and parents don’t have to send their children there. Charter schools are exempt from most district policies.

Parent Tammy O’Neal said her two daughters are excelling at Noble’s Muchin College Prep, and only one ever got detention, for not wearing a belt.

“If a kid is prone to getting in trouble and not taking school seriously, then (the fines are) a steep slope,” she said. “But why don’t you tell your kid to straighten up?”

Chadie Morris, 16, a sophomore at Noble Street College Prep, carries a 3.8 grade-point average at Noble Street College Prep, but figures she has paid $45 already this year for such things as talking in class.

“Sometimes it can be about the littlest things and you can still get demerits,” she said. “Demerits are horrible; detentions are horrible.”

But the aspiring lawyer, who struggled with absences until her adviser and principal persuaded her to come back, looks forward to attending a one-week summer college program.

Other charter school operators in Chicago and elsewhere said they don’t fine students but respect Noble’s academic success and its right to adopt its own discipline policy.

Tim King, CEO of Urban Prep Academies, which operates three high schools for boys in some of Chicago’s toughest and poorest neighborhoods, said he believes “very firmly in a more therapeutic or restorative approach vs. punitive toward student conduct.”

Every student in Urban Prep’s first two graduating classes was accepted to a college or university.

At Knowledge is Power Program, a network of 109 charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, middle school students are rewarded for good behavior with a weekly incentive “paycheck” — fake money that can be redeemed at the school store or used to defray the cost of field trip, spokesman Steve Mancini said. The system is phased out by high school because it’s no longer needed.

Milkie, though, doesn’t plan to change a thing.

“It’s a beautiful system,” he said. “I don’t want to brag, but it is. It’s why the kids are so successful.”

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I attended two events that caused me to reflect on what it takes to defend the principles of justice and morality.

The first was the memorial service for civil rights veteran Robert “Bob” Mants, Jr.

On my way to the service, I sifted through memories of those days of struggle and Bob’s courageous role. I suspect millions have seen the photo of Bob, the young man standing behind John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, looking calm but unyielding moments before troopers attacked the peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. I wanted to pay my respects to Bob and his legacy.

The other event – a talk by theologian Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine – brought my attention to the current challenge facing Alabamians of conscience: the state’s cruel immigration law, HB 56.

Face-off between Alabama State Troopers and civil rights activists, including Bob Mants, Jr. (in cap), on March 7, 1965 in Selma, Ala. Photo from the Civil Rights Movement Veterans Website: http://www.crmvet.org/mem/mantsb.htm.

Elements of these two events made me think deeply about faith, hope and action, concepts that have propelled my own lifelong quest for justice.

Alabama’s immigration law is regarded as the toughest in the country: In the words of Alabama state Sen. Hank Sanders, who has called for the law to be repealed, “HB 56 was intended to make the lives of undocumented immigrants intolerable.”

Today, families are afraid to leave their homes for fear of parents being detained and deported. There have been reports that the children of parents awaiting deportation have been placed in foster homes rather than with relatives. Laborers lacking proof of residency required by HB 56 have fled the state, leaving crops rotting in fields.

And while the Hispanic community has been the most notable target, two automobile executives (German and Japanese) were arrested for not having required documentation when stopped by police. Yes, this law feels frighteningly like South Africa’s apartheid.

Jim Wallis made that comparison to apartheid during an impassioned appeal at the Church of the Ascension in Montgomery, Ala., to repeal HB 56.

We have a moral obligation to challenge unjust laws. How long this injustice stands will depend upon the actions of you sitting in the audience and others who believe we are called to be a refuge, provide sanctuary, shield and surround those who need protection, as we challenge our government to make right what is wrong.

Wallis pointed out the irony of politicians and media commentators — notably, Fox News — claiming to be defenders of the religious foundation of Christmas, its sacred symbols and the nation’s religious heritage, while vigorously supporting Alabama’s immigration law – what Wallis termed a “miscarriage of Christmas.”

Wallis chose scripture to augment his case against HB 56 and its supporters, citing Matthew 25:35: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Wallis encouraged his audience to reach out to immigrants. He directed the audience to look around and see the face of God in each of us. He reminded us of Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from the Birmingham city jail to clergy, urging their involvement when the hearts of those in power were unyielding.

Wallis then shared a prayer that an elderly sister in his Washington, D.C., ministry offers each Saturday before serving hot meals to those in need: “Lord, thank you for waking me up this morning clothed in my right mind. I thank you that my bed last night was not my cooling board. And, Lord, help us to welcome you when you walk through this line today.” This prayer lifts up the notion that “when you do it to the least of these, you do it to me.”

Jim Wallis reminded us that people have taken risks throughout history for freedom and justice, and he proposed that we offer refuge and sanctuary to immigrant families. I told myself, in that moment, that Bob Mants understood such challenges; he had lived and fought accordingly.

I knew Bob Mants, mostly from a distance, for 35 years. He was not one to talk about himself. Early on, I knew of his connection with the Black Panther Party in Lowndes County, the place of my father’s birth. In the past year, I learned more about the extent of his involvement in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and, at his memorial service, I learned that he had been a Morehouse College student and a hard-hitting intellectual.

I brought my son, Alden, to Bob’s memorial. Alden, born in 1980, is not unlike many young people his age who have little sense of what our lives as African-Americans were like just 50 years ago. The questions he raised about the stories he heard at the service reinforced my yearning to help young people learn about the stalwart individuals, both well known and unsung, who have struggled for justice.

I want the next generation to understand the principles of this fight and recognize the courage that even the threat of death could not diminish. I had asked Alden to accompany me because I wanted him to learn more about Bob’s life and the lives of the 40 or so SNCC members present – persons such as Dorothy Cotton, Charles Sherrod, Bernard Lafayette, Constance Curry and Gwen Patton, to name a few – many of whom I consider mentors.

Bob Mants was my elder by several years. He was skeptical of folks he didn’t know, slow to trust strangers, myself included. But having endured the hatred and ugliness that accompanied integrating the rural high school near my home, I felt I didn’t need to prove myself to anyone. Over time, Bob was persuaded that my work as an organizer helping to establish child care facilities in the Black Belt was legit. He would stop by my office, perch on the corner of a table and ask me questions, or, occasionally, offer a brotherly opinion. His advice was available if I needed it.

I found that Bob respected what he saw in action and little else. His life was about taking care of the least among us and fighting for what was just, without grandstanding. At his service, an elderly lady, who appeared alone in her sadness, sat two seats away from me. She said, “He lived just two doors from my house. Each morning he would stop by and check on me and ask if I needed anything.” She wiped her tears. “I already miss him.” Bob’s son eulogized his father as “an ordinary man who did ordinary things extraordinarily.”

The last time I saw Bob Mants was in May 2011, in Albany, Ga., where we attended the Southwest Georgia SNCC reunion, passing on lessons of the movement to the next generation. While buying books, I became irritated with a vendor. Bob, within earshot of the disagreement, called out, “All right over there, troublemaker…” “Hey, I learned troublemaking from the best,” I replied. Laughing, he retorted, “I’ve got your back.”

Here I find the common thread linking those two pre-Christmas events. Jim Wallis urged us to follow scripture and realize that people of faith cannot sit passively while anyone is made to suffer unjustly. We must act on faith that a just world is possible – even though we have not seen it.

With the courage to hope for justice, action is the only course to follow. Each in his own way, Jim Wallis and Bob Mants have acted – and inspired others to act – in defense of the least among us. Jim Wallis is right: HB 56 is a nightmare. And, it is clear, immigrant families need the likes of Bob Mants, people who are trustworthy, compassionate and willing to take a stand.

Bob’s passing leaves civil rights advocates looking to the next generation for recruits to defend and advance the cause of justice. I hope my son, and my daughter, will be among those standing up for justice. Today, immigrants need to know – with the commitment that Bob Mants always showed – “We’ve got your back.”

Sophia Bracy Harris is co-founder and executive director of the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL) and Alabama director of the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice (SRBWI).

HOWELL, Mich. (AP) — The 2010 Buick Enclave parked in her garage kept Michigan resident Renee Moore from getting food stamps for two months last year, even though her family’s income had dropped to below the poverty level, her husband’s Ford Explorer had 300,000 miles on it and her family had less than $1,000 in the bank.

The reason? In the eyes of the state, she owned too much.

Unlike other states that moved away from setting limits on what families like the Moores can own before they qualify for help, Michigan last year made it harder for thousands of residents to become eligible for food stamps by adopting new limits on what people can own. Pennsylvania also is toughening its so-called asset test, adding new restrictions on who gets government help.

The move to redefine who’s truly needy comes after cash-strapped states saw a surge of applications for food stamp aid during the economic downturn. Still, leaders maintain the assistance needs to be targeted to those who need it most.

“We’re asking tough things, but we had a huge budget deficit and we had to work through that,” Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said. “We always try to help the people in the greatest need.”

Advocates for the poor have fought the new limits in both states, and while both have scaled back their original limits amid criticism they were too harsh, the changes still are expected to push thousands off the rolls.

In Michigan, families like the Moores were caught in limbo while the state worked out how much was too much to own.

When the limits were put into place last fall, recipients couldn’t have more than $5,000 in the bank or own cars worth more than $15,000. That’s when Moore, her husband and the couple’s 9- and 17-year-old sons lost the $419 in monthly aid they were receiving because the Buick Enclave they inherited when Renee’s mother died made them ineligible.

Losing the assistance for several months worsened the family’s financial situation. Moore, 51, is racing to finish her associate’s degree in marketing and an internship so she can find a job. Her husband continues to look for still-scarce carpentry and construction work.

“We don’t want to depend on the government to help us,” she said. “I’m trying. He’s trying. We just need a little help.”

Now, Michigan lets families exclude one vehicle and apply for food stamps as long as their second vehicle isn’t worth more than $15,000 and they don’t have more than $5,000 in assets. The Moores and about 1,484 households were able to apply for aid again after the guideline was relaxed.

In Pennsylvania, regulations set to take effect May 1 mean that households can have no more than $5,500 in eligible assets, including cash, checking and savings accounts, other investments, and things like boats and planes. One car and a home are excluded, as are life insurance and pension plans, family savings accounts and personal property.

If an elderly or disabled person lives in a household, the limit is $9,000. The state originally wanted to impose a limit of $2,000 per household, and $3,250 for a household with an elderly or disabled member.

About 4,023 Pennsylvania households are expected to lose their benefits when the limits take effect May 1. About 880,000 households now get food assistance.

“I’ve told them that I think this … is not exactly what we need at this time with the economy the way it is,” said Linda Davis, 64. The resident of the Pittsburgh suburb of Swissdale has written letters to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett to try and stop changes that could deny her $16 in monthly food stamps.

Food stamp rolls grew exponentially after the 2008 recession and financial meltdown left many jobless or struggling to pay their mortgages and make ends meet. Federal statistics show the annual average number of food stamp recipients grew 58 percent from 2008 to 2011. Households receive an average monthly benefit of $282, and recipients in some states can lose benefits after three months if they’re not working or applying for jobs.

The moves to add new limits are bucking the national trend. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have no asset test to get food stamps, and 16 eliminated it in the past 2 ½ years, according to the Washington-based Corporation for Enterprise Development.

As the need for assistance grew, Rochelle Finzel of the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures said, asset tests were seen as a hindrance to getting families back on their feet.

“There was an understanding families need assets” to have a financial cushion as they work their way out of poverty, said Finzel, a welfare policy analyst.

Three former Michigan budget directors who have worked under both Republican and Democratic governors warn that requiring the more than 900,000 Michigan households receiving food stamps to file documents on their assets will overwhelm state caseworkers and possibly cost the state money if its error rates go up and it gets hit with federal fines.

So far, those extra costs have been “negligible,” said Department of Human Services spokesman Dave Akerly.

States such as Texas, Utah and California are holding on to asset tests. Like Michigan, Texas says applicants can’t get food stamps if they have more than $5,000 in the bank and a second vehicle worth more than $15,000.

Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming don’t count vehicles as assets, but limit food stamp recipients to $2,000 in assets and $3,000 if the household includes someone elderly or disabled. Illinois and Tennessee are among the states that eliminated asset tests for food stamps in recent years.

Considering a vehicle an asset has been particularly controversial because some argue it helps people look for and keep a job. California lawmakers last year approved a bill doing away with restrictions that kept families on welfare from having a vehicle worth more than $4,650, but Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying the state couldn’t afford the change.

“In a highway state, a reliable means of transportation is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Roger Hernandez.

Jennifer Brooks, director of state and local policy at the Corporation for Enterprise Development, which supports programs that get people out of poverty, said states are finding that recipients are able to move off assistance faster if they can build up savings. Yet “the presence of an asset test, no matter how high it is, sends the signal that people shouldn’t save,” she said.

That’s not the way Michigan Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan sees it. Corrigan said applicants who still own expensive cars or a second home they haven’t put up for sale shouldn’t qualify for help. She was stunned during a visit earlier this year to a DHS office to see a food stamp applicant’s Hummer parked outside.

“Our concern is protecting the program for the truly needy,” Corrigan said.

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Associated Press writers Juliet Williams in Sacramento, Calif., and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

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Follow Kathy Barks Hoffman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kathybhoffman

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Tamara Lush | Associated Press

Chief Justin Timineri (photo courtesy of Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The air in the parking lot of Orlando’s Citrus Bowl smells like fresh cut oranges, shrimp and barbecue. A crowd has gathered before the game around a guy in a black chef’s coat. A camera crew orbits as he sets some shrimp and star melon kebabs on the grill with a flourish.

“Florida seafood — ya gotta love it!” the guy says, grinning. The crowd cheers. The cameraman is happy.

A man walks up and inquires about the hoopla. Someone in the crowd tells him the man in black is Justin Timineri, the state chef of Florida who’s filming a spot for ABC.

“Never heard of him,” said Paul Pedersen, of Orlando. “He’s like the governor’s mansion kinda deal? I had no idea we had a state chef.”

Move over, Mario Batali. Step aside, Gordon Ramsey. There’s a new chef on the cusp of celebrity in the U.S., and he’s from Florida.

Timineri is part culinary ambassador, part farm expert and part cheerleader for Florida-grown food. Technically, he’s a state employee working for the Florida Department of Agriculture — and he’s the only full-time state chef in the nation.

Timineri — tall, bald and known for wearing colorful sneakers — travels the Sunshine State showing people how to use the state’s produce and seafood in recipes. He creates healthy menus for people on food stamps and limited incomes and promotes the state’s food during trade missions around the world and in TV spots. Next month, he’s headed to Brussels to talk up Florida grouper at the world’s largest seafood expo.

It makes sense for the state to market its bounty: Agriculture is Florida’s No. 2 industry, and unlike tourism, the No. 1 business, farming didn’t suffer much in the recession. Florida is the nation’s top producer of oranges, grapefruit and sugarcane. It’s also No. 1 with a range of vegetables, from snap peas to squash and sweet corn, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“He is such a fantastic ambassador not only for promoting products grown in Florida,” said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. “But he’s also a terrific ambassador with kids.”

Timineri has a new mission this year: teaching schoolchildren to eat healthier. As part of the Department of Agriculture’s effort to get kids to eat locally grown produce, Timineri does in-school cooking demos he’s dubbed “Extreme Cuisine.” A recent personal victory came when he got a class of sixth-graders to try guacamole; the children were skeptical of whole avocados but loved the finished product.

“I have the best job in all of state government,” Timineri said.

The 37-year-old grew up in Tallahassee with Italian grandparents and good food.

“I knew ever since I could remember that I wanted to be a chef,” he said. “When I was little, I was always peeking around in the kitchen.”

Timineri didn’t go to culinary school. Instead, he got a job in a Tallahassee restaurant and then worked his way up in various kitchens. Eventually, he took a job as an event chef for the professional stock car and golf tours.

In 2006, he heard the state chef’s job created in the mid-1990s was open. He was hired over 60 others and makes $43,000 a year as part of the ag agency’s marketing department. His office includes a small test kitchen attached to the Bureau of Seafood.

Since becoming Florida’s state chef, Timineri won a Food Network Challenge with a recipe for crispy, pan-seared Florida snapper with passion fruit cream.

When he’s not traveling, he helps with events at the governor’s mansion. He especially likes cooking for Gov. Rick Scott and his family.

“They are very health conscious,” Timineri said. “Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood.”

Timineri has one tip for home cooks: Buy produce in-season, and buy local.

“People should first go to grocery store or the farmers market and find out what’s fresh and in season,” he said. “Then go home to find a recipe to match it.”

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Online:

Justin Timineri: http://www.thefloridachef.com/

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Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Sara is one of my favorite people.

She is probably the favorite person of everyone who has ever known her, being one of those people from whom sparks of life pop off like a Fourth of July sparkler. She has what the social pages might call “an infectious enthusiasm.” She also has a laugh that seems to originate from somewhere down near her toes, the kind of laugh that will save her from the grief of the social pages.

She was not in such good spirits the other day, however, when she asked if we could meet for coffee.

Sara looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. She looked like the essence of sadness, and this worried me. I asked after her husband (fine) and the children (good). And then I asked after her folks, who live in southern Tamaulipas, the Mexican state that borders Brownsville.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she sobbed. “My mom is dying,” she told me, “She is dying, and I don’t know what to do.”

I cursed, quietly, as I was all too familiar with this situation. Once again, a family tragedy had been made exponentially worse as it banged up against the lame-hearted, small-mindedness of our nation’s immigration politics.

Sara was in the midst of applying for residency in the United States, and she could not leave the area. If she crossed into Mexico, she would not be allowed back into the country. If she went to say farewell to her mom, she would, effectively, be saying farewell to her children, leaving them orphans, and to her husband, making of him, for all practical purposes, a widow.

Sara’s mom was dying and Sara couldn’t go give her a final blessing, Sara could not be with her mother to offer consolation during her last hours, Sara could not be with her mom as she died.

“My father,” Sara continued, “My father wants me to come and to be with him. He doesn’t understand why I can’t come, and he is furious with me. I don’t want him upset with me, not while my mom is dying. And my mom; I just don’t know what she must think of me.”

We spoke for a while more. We finished up our coffees. Sara looked a little bit better, though still so very sad. I told her that I would pray for her, not really knowing what that meant to her.

After Sara left me, I realized that she and I had actually been celebrating her mother’s last rites.  The stories, the tears, the awful feeling of impotence in the face of death, and the sharing of that—that is what happens during last rites.

It was not enough by half, but it is what Sara could manage in this day and age, this woman who once upon a time,  came to a strange land and founded her own family, leaving behind, once and  forever, another family, which was her own as well.

Between these families, both deeply loved, flows a river. The river carries upon its back a boundary, which establishes the limits of a nation, and which is, as well, a barrier, upon which lies many a broken heart.

GALAX, Va. — John D. Bassett III was winding along the dusty roads of northern China on a three-day fact-finding mission. It was 2001, and the third-generation furniture-maker was gathering ammo for an epic battle to keep his factory churning.

If he could locate the manufacturer of a single dresser, ornate in the style of Louis Philippe, he just might beat the Chinese.

Back at Vaughan-Bassett, his Galax factory, he had already deconstructed the dresser piece by piece, proving the bargain-basement $100 the Chinese were wholesaling it for was far lower than the cost of the materials.

The sticker on the back read “Dalian, China,” and now here he was, some 7,500 miles away from his Blue Ridge Mountains, trying to pinpoint the source of the cheap chest of drawers.

If they were going to war, he told his second-in-command son, Wyatt, they needed to heed Napoleon’s advice: Know your enemy.

They toured seven factories before they finally spotted the dresser in a showroom, in the remote reaches of Liaoning province, hours from Dalian. Its maker was happy to give them a tour, hoping the Bassetts would do what every other factory operator in Southwest Virginia was about to do — including the Henry County and Martinsville factories run by other members of Bassett’s extended, furniture-magnate family.

“I’ll sell the furniture to you, but you’ve got to do one thing for me first,” he said. “Close your factories.”

The official had no idea Bassett was on a mission to gather proof that Chinese manufacturers were not playing by the rules, threatening to put a permanent chill on the smokestacks that bore his family’s name.

He had no idea the aging patriarch would do the thing that few in his position would do — put people ahead of profits.

John Bassett may have grown up in the ultra-rich world of summer homes, prep schools and chauffeurs. But furniture industry watchers say he has more sawdust in his veins than anyone in the business.

As they left the factory, Bassett invoked the name of his grandfather and namesake, John D. Bassett, the man who put Virginia on the furniture-making map.

“He would roll over in his gra-ave!” Bassett boomed in his patrician Southern drawl.

Then he echoed the orders of another favorite warrior, Gen. George Patton.

“When confused,” he told his son, “attack.”

‘Asian Invasion’

Back in the spare Vaughan-Bassett offices, filled with ‘70s-era wood paneling and mismatched chairs, the general called his lieutenant sons to order.

The problem? Jobs were leaving for Asia by the thousands, thanks to NAFTA and the opening of trade to China. At first, the losses were in textiles ­— big-brand factories that made pantyhose, towels and sweatshirts. By 2002, more than 9,000 textile jobs had left Henry County for China, where wages were low and environmental regulations lax.

Now the Chinese were coming after furniture — and threatening at least as many jobs.

American factory owners were forging production contracts with Asian plants in a kind of outsourcing stampede. They would leverage the best-known names in the furniture industry, but the people making the dressers would be Chinese, earning $1 for every American worker’s $33.

“The saying was, ‘The dance card is filling up.’ If you didn’t sign with a factory right away, you’d be all alone,” recalled Doug Bassett, John’s oldest son and the company’s vice president. A former Republican congressional staffer, he left Capitol Hill to help his brother and dad battle what they call the Asian Invasion.

To hell with the dance card, Bassett told his sons. Imagine a desert island instead:

There is one woman stranded on it, surrounded by 12 men. “I got news for you, boys!” he bellowed. “When you’re the only girl left standing on an island with 12 men, you don’t have to be good looking, some-body’s gonna fall in love with you!”

If Vaughan-Bassett could be the last factory standing in the realm of mid-priced wooden bedroom furniture, they would get the business.

Bassett thought of his workers, mountain folk with an average age of 49. In a town where just 66 percent have high school degrees, many followed their parents and grandparents onto the assembly line.

He thought of his maverick grandfather. A century earlier, the elder John Bassett pooled $27,500 with his brothers to launch Bassett Furniture Industries in their eponymous Henry County town.

He knew the old man conducted business with his sons over long, four-course lunches made by servants in the family home. His grandfather had started out running a general store and in 1892 helped secure a post office for the fledgling town, which was then named for the family.

The elder Bassett branched into sawmilling and had the chutzpah to talk the fledgling Norfolk & Western Railway into running its new Punkin’ Vine line from Winston-Salem to Roanoke in 1892 — through the middle of his property. Why, with his sawmill, he would even sell them the timber for the ties. (Legend has it that he sold a railroad buyer many of the same pieces of lumber — more than once.)

A century before offshore production became the norm, the original John D. Bassett had the notion that he could fatten his profits if he quit exporting lumber to America’s furniture center in Grand Rapids, Mich., and make the stuff himself.

He went on to spawn the country’s biggest names in furniture — Hooker, Stanley, Bassett and more. As the northern factories collapsed in favor of the South’s cheap wages and plentiful woods, no one realized the creative destruction it wrought would repeat itself a century later.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. states have reached a $25 billion deal with the nation’s biggest mortgage lenders over foreclosure abuses that occurred after the housing bubble burst.

Federal and state officials announced the deal Thursday. It is the biggest settlement involving a single industry since a 1998 multistate tobacco deal.

Under the agreement, five major banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial — will reduce loans for nearly 1 million households. They will also send checks of $2,000 to about 750,000 Americans who were improperly foreclosed upon. The banks will have three years to fulfill the terms of the deal.

All but one of the 50 states agreed to the deal. Oklahoma, the lone holdout, will receive no money.

The conditions will be overseen by Joseph A. Smith Jr., North Carolina’s banking commissioner. Lenders that violate the deal could face $1 million penalties per violation and up to $5 million for repeat violators.

The settlement ends a painful chapter that emerged from the financial crisis, when home values sank and millions edged toward foreclosure. Many companies processed foreclosures without verifying documents. Some employees signed papers they hadn’t read or used fake signatures to speed foreclosures — an action known as robo-signing.

Under the deal, 49 states said they won’t pursue civil charges related to these types of abuses. Homeowners can still sue lenders in civil court on their own, and federal and state authorities can pursue criminal charges.

“There were many small wrongs that were done here,” said U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. “This does not resolve everything. We will be aggressive about going after claims elsewhere.”

Bank of America will pay the most to borrowers as part of the deal — nearly $8.6 billion. Wells Fargo will pay about $4.3 billion, JPMorgan Chase will pay roughly $4.2 billion, Citigroup will pay about $1.8 billion and Ally Financial will pay $200 million. This does not include $5.5 billion in federal and state payments.

The deal also ends a separate investigation into Bank of America and Countrywide for inflating appraisals of loans from 2003 through most of 2009. Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008.

“The settlement includes far reaching relief that will help many of our customers and complement our already extensive efforts to improve our borrower assistance efforts and servicing processes,” JPMorgan Chase said in a statement.

The banks and U.S. state attorneys general agreed to the deal late Wednesday after 16 months of contentious negotiations.

New York and California came on board late Wednesday. California has more than 2 million “underwater” borrowers, whose homes are worth less than their mortgages. New York has some 118,000 homeowners who are underwater.

In addition to the payments and mortgage reductions, the deal promises to reshape long-standing mortgage lending guidelines. It will make it easier for those at risk of foreclosure to make their payments and keep their homes.

Those who lost their homes to foreclosure are unlikely to get their homes back or benefit much financially from the settlement.

The settlement would apply only to privately held mortgages issued from 2008 through 2011. Banks own about half of all U.S. mortgages — roughly 30 million loans. Those owned by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not covered by the deal.

Some critics say the proposed deal doesn’t go far enough. They have argued for a thorough investigation of potentially illegal foreclosure practices before a settlement is hammered out.

Under the deal:

— Roughly $1.5 billion for direct payouts, in the form of $2,000 checks, for about 750,000 Americans who were unfairly or improperly foreclosed upon; another $3.5 billion will go directly to states.

— At least $10 billion for reducing mortgage amounts.

— Up to $7 billion for other state homeowner programs.

— At least $3 billion for refinancing loans for homeowners who are current on their mortgage payments but who are underwater.

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Associated Press Writers Michael Virtanen in Albany, N.Y. and Pallavi Gogoi in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Without adequate lighting, children cannot safely go out and play in the evenings. Their confinement contributes to health issues including obesity later on in life. Because drivers cannot see clearly after dark, accidents put everyone at risk.

Members and leaders of La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), recently saw the first fruits of their seven-year campaign for streetlights, said LUPE spokesman John-Michael Torres.

On a recent Tuesday morning, residents of Colonia San Cristóbal called the LUPE offices reporting that trucks and county workers had installed posts for the solar lights and then moved on. While celebrating the news from San Cristóbal, a call came from members in Colonia Muñiz announcing that trucks were installing poles there too. The solar lights were installed later that day in both colonias.

Next came word that solar lights were also on the way to Alton-area colonias. The streetlights are expected to rise in other precincts as well during coming weeks.

MIAMI – Workers nationwide are losing millions of dollars each week to wage theft as their employers, some unscrupulous, others scrambling to keep their businesses afloat, fail to pay the mandated minimum wage or overtime wages, or, in some cases, don’t pay their employees at all.

Wage theft is far more common than was known just a few years ago, according to a new report from the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University.

Workers, advocates and community members join in an action calling on a landscaping business in the Houston area to pay its workers the more than $1,500 it owed them. (Photo courtesy of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center)

“Employers are under a tight squeeze and looking for different ways to save money. Some are using wage theft as a business model to cut costs,” said Cynthia Hernandez, co-author of the report.

The research institute’s study comes just as Florida is debating how to handle wage theft allegations. The state hasn’t had a labor department since former Gov. Jeb Bush dismantled the department a decade ago.

Miami-Dade County has an ordinance against wage theft but has been sued by the Florida Retail Federation, which hopes to overturn the ordinance. The Florida Legislature is currently considering a statewide bill on wage theft.

Workers have become more aware of wage theft and their rights, and more are coming forward with their grievances. However, with the stagnant economy and high unemployment, just as many workers keep quiet, afraid that if they lose their job, they won’t find another.

At the same time, researchers say, wage theft became more prevalent during the recession as employers tried to shave costs, and sometimes took advantage of worker insecurity.

Wage theft is especially common in low-paying industries such as tourism, retail, hotels and restaurants. Construction workers, often contract laborers or day laborers, are also at high risk, according to the study.  Wage and labor laws apply to everyone who works in the United States.

Underpaying or not paying workers hurts families that can least afford to miss even one day of pay. It also creates an unfair playing field for business owners who follow the rules, and shortchanges services funded through payroll taxes, slowing economic recovery.

In Florida alone, more than $28 million in lost wages have been recovered over a two-and-a-half-year period by the U.S. Department of Labor for workers governed by federal laws, according to the report.

However, because Florida has no state enforcement for wage theft, many other cases are never investigated or compensated.

In a study by the National Employment Law Project, researchers estimated that employees in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City lose a stunning $56 million per week from wage theft.

Wage theft takes many forms and occurs nationwide.

In August 2010, 69 employees at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in Florida received a total of $433,819 in back wages after a U. S. Department of Labor investigation showed that employees were required to work through their meal times and after they had clocked out for the day.

In another case, a man reported working 12-hour days, six days a week on a supermarket construction project in Miami. The project manager made repeated excuses for not paying the workers and eventually disappeared.

And some are like Jose Lopez, a restaurant cook in Mission, Texas for 10 years. He often worked 70-hour weeks to support his wife and three children. He sacrificed time with his family, and was never paid for his overtime hours. He never knew he was entitled to overtime pay.

It wasn’t until the U. S. Department of Labor did a random inspection of the restaurant that Lopez learned for the first time that he was entitled to overtime pay when he worked more than 40 hours a week. Although afraid of retaliation, Lopez decided to stand up for his rights. When he told his boss that the law required that he be paid more for the extra hours he worked, he was fired.

Lopez went to Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and filed a lawsuit in federal court. A jury found in favor of Lopez and agreed that the restaurant owner owed him overtime and had retaliated against him. Lopez was awarded almost $85,000.  Tragically, Lopez never lived to see the money. He, his wife and a daughter were killed in a vehicle accident just a short time later.

Even after the judgment, the restaurant owner refused to pay. So attorneys, along with the marshal’s office and a locksmith, closed the restaurant, unlocked the safe, took all the cash, changed the locks and seized the property until the money that Lopez had sacrificed so much for, was paid to his orphaned children.

During the trial, Lopez told his attorney that he wasn’t fighting just for the money ‒ he was also fighting for justice – for himself, and for other workers. He wanted to spread the word that there are wage laws and they apply to everyone.

Part of the problem is that workers may not even know they are losing money they are rightfully owed, or be able to prove they have been shortchanged, because they don’t get a pay stub with their check. Ten states don’t require pay stubs issued with paychecks.

The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing regulations that will require pay stubs that are uniform, clear and detailed so that workers understand exactly what hours they are paid for and what is being deducted from their checks.

The federal labor act applies to companies involved in interstate commerce; do more than $500,000 business a year; contract with the federal government or institutions such as schools and hospitals.

However, the federal labor department doesn’t have enough investigators to review thousands of wage theft cases. And, despite the crisis, wage theft legislation is still in a period of experimentation and wait-and-see in many states and cities.

Some states, like New York, have enacted statewide legislation; cities such as Seattle and Los Angeles have passed their own ordinances without waiting for the state.

In Texas, wage theft legislation allows police departments to arrest employers who don’t pay workers and to file theft-of-services charges. In the past, the employers could avoid the criminal charges by making a minimal payment to the wronged worker.

But most states are like Florida – stuck somewhere in-between and looking for a solution.

“All the employers I know take the employer-employee relationship very seriously, and no one would intentionally deprive employees of the appropriate wages they earn,” said John Fleming, a spokesman for the Florida Retail Federation. “In any situation, you can find bad apples who want to take advantage or game the system. It can happen on the employer side or the employee side.

“We don’t want to see a bunch of different local ordinances,” he said. “It’s not that we disagree on the issue of wage theft; we thought the ordinance set up a process outside of the court system and didn’t have the necessary protections. The judicial system can ensure that justice is served.”

Others say the judicial system isn’t working, which caused communities like Miami-Dade County to create their own ordinances in the first place.

“Workers in Florida are particularly vulnerable to this type of exploitation because, unlike many states, there is no state level department of labor to which they can turn for assistance,” said Jeanette Smith with Interfaith Worker Justice in Florida, a national organization with local chapters.

For now, the fastest way for many workers to recover back wages is at the most local level – often by standing on the sidewalk with fliers and protest signs in front of the offending employer’s business, said Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago and author of “Wage Theft in America.”

“It is easy to disrupt business and cause a stir at these small places that depend on community support,” said Bobo. “Direct action is incredibly effective and empowering for workers. The employers respond.”

Bobo said one Chicago pizza place owner fired several employees recently and refused to give them their final paycheck. None of the employees had been paid overtime; some weren’t being paid minimum wage.

The fired employees organized a gathering in front of the business, handing out fliers to passersby warning: “Don’t buy pizza topped with exploitation.” By the end of the week, the former employees had received the pay they were owed.

In Arkansas, restaurant employees fed up with not being paid their full wages posted messages on their company’s Facebook page describing the unfair pay practice. They, too, were paid.

But longer-term solutions are needed, including stronger enforcement at the state and national levels, said Bobo.

“We need the ethical business community to step up and demand a level playing field,” she said. “If you are paying employees fairly, and the guy down the street, your competitor, is practicing wage theft, it is hurting you. It steals from the workers, and it steals from the public coffers.”

2012 © Equal Voice for America’s Families Newspaper