File photo of a Tel Aviv rail station. (Flickr photo by n0nick.)
When thousands of Latin American immigrants left their homelands throughout the 1990s in search of opportunity, the U.S. was not the only country recruiting this cheap labor. Many European countries sought Latin American workers. And thousands of immigrants also ended up in the state of Israel. As Israeli politicians seek to deal with their immigrant “problem” in light of the economic times, the children of these Latin American immigrants could be deported.
Independent Producer Reese Erlich found that many of these non-Jewish young people now share a strong Israeli identity, with little memory of a Latin American homeland.
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Latino Perceptions of Muslims
President Obama at the official service for the slain soldiers at Ft. Hoood, Texas. (Photo by The U.S. Military.)
In the wake of the shootings at Ft. Hood, Texas earlier this month, there has been considerable discussion about the alleged shooter’s Islamic faith in playing something of a role in the murders. There are many unanswered questions about the shootings. Latino USA’s student producer Xorge Oliveras went to the streets in Austin, Texas to ask Latinos if the events shaped their perceptions of Muslims.
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The Ft. Hood shootings left psychological scars that spilled over into the national psyche, as Latino USA’sMaria Hinojosa observes.
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Community Gardens in Cincinnati
Findlay Market Corp. created the CHEF Program to encourage local farming.
The traditional fall harvest is always a boon to local farmers markets. But at Cincinnati’s Findlay Market, the season has something of a twist. In an effort to meet the growing demand for locally grown produce, the Findlay Market received a USDA grant to help create the Cultivating Healthy Entrepreneurs and Farmers (CHEF) program. The program helps turn urban lots and empty city spaces into community gardens. And this season was the first fall where these farmers sold their goods at the farmers market.
Earlier this summer, local producer Daniel Denvir caught up with some of these urban farmers and sent this report.
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All across the country many Latino families will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. While many ethnic communities have various forms of the tradition, the American version of Thanksgiving is uniquely a nationalistic celebration.
FERNANDEZ FAMILY
This week, StoryCorps Historias brings the story of one family’s first Thanksgiving meal. Jose Fernandez came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1960s. He was a teenager when his family arrived in Florida. And here, from our StoryCorps booth in New York, he tells his wife, Teresita, about that first November.
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DIAZ FAMILY
Now another story about sharing a meal. It comes from Julio Diaz, a social worker from the Bronx. Every night diaz ends his hour-long subway commute one stop early just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night as he stepped off the train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
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CARRANZA FAMILY
When he was a poor kid, Adolph Carranza remembers how donations from the Salvation Army would come around the holidays. Among the exotic canned goods he recalls was this strange jelly-like substance called “cranberries” that no one wanted to try in his household.
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Last year StoryCorps launched a new holiday tradition — it’s called the National Day of Listening, which happens on the day after Thanksgiving. StoryCorps encourages you to take an hour on that day to sit down with a relative or loved one and ask them about their life. StoryCorps has do-it-yourself materials to help you get a great interview and preserve it for your family — and they’re available for free online. Just click on the logo below.
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Reese Erlich is a best-selling book author and freelance journalist who writes regularly for the Dallas Morning News, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio and National Public Radio.
Daniel Denvir is a freelance print and radio reporter based in Philadelphia, PA.
