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Fri
01 Jun Artist Fusion 1st Friday 2012, Oakland Events, Live Music Your positive energy is requested @ Artist Fusion 1st Friday. Enjoy Art, Professional Networking, Live Music, Spoken Word and…

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Fri
06 Jul Artist Fusion 1st Friday 2012, Oakland Events, Live Music Your positive energy is requested @ Artist Fusion 1st Friday. Enjoy Art, Professional Networking, Live Music, Spoken Word and…

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08 Jun Evolve 2nd Fridays All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip …

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Diablo Area News

Report says female farmworkers suffer sex abuse

Female farmworkers across the United States are commonly sexually harassed and assaulted, in part because their immigration status makes them fearful of calling police, according to a report being released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.

The survey by the international rights group mirrors two previous reports on the risks facing women and girls that had focused on California, where most of the nation's farmworkers reside.

"Our research confirms what farmworker advocates across the country believe: Sexual violence and sexual harassment experienced by farmworkers is common enough that some farmworker women see these abuses as an unavoidable condition of agricultural work," said the report.

An estimated 630,000 of the 3 million people who perform migrant and seasonal farm work are women. The federal government estimates that 60 percent of them are illegal immigrants.

"It's easiest for abusers to get away with sexual harassment where there's an imbalance of power, and the imbalance of power is particularly stark on farms," the report's author, Grace Meng, told The Associated Press.

The report calls on Congress to pass laws protecting immigrant farmworker women, and for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to repeal rules that encourage local police to report federal immigration violations.

The report describes incidences of rape, stalking, fondling and vulgar language used against women, who say they often don't report it because they are afraid of being fired or, worse, deported.

Meng interviewed 52 farmworkers and 110 attorneys, social service providers, law enforcement officials and members of the agriculture industry in New York, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Colorado, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and the state of Washington, but focused primarily on California because of its large farmworker population.

Women who work for labor contractors are more vulnerable than those who work directly for a farmer, the report said.

"The goal of our report was to show that this was a national problem. And to show the governmental barriers that exist to reporting these crimes and abuses. And to demonstrate it's a human rights problem," Meng said.

While previous studies have said that up to 80 percent of women who work in the fields have been harassed or assaulted, a counselor in the heart of California's agriculture region says her experience puts it at closer to half.

She said the problem exists in all businesses where immigrant women may lack English language skills and trust in law enforcement, but that farms are the biggest employers so the abuses occur more frequently there.

Incidences are rarely reported to authorities, said Amparo Yebra of the nonprofit Westside Family Preservation Services Network in Huron, Calif.

"We have had a lot of complaints," said Yebra. "Most of the people are farmworkers, but if they get the opportunity to get out of the fields to work in a store, some of the owners take advantage of those people also."

Sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal in California, and Bryan Little of the California Farm Bureau Federation says the legislature identified it as a universal problem. The Farm Bureau's affiliate group, Farm Employers Labor Service, provides sexual harassment prevention and training, which employers are required to provide every other year to anyone who works in a supervisory capacity.

"Agriculture is a big industry in California, but it seems unlikely that they passed this law just for ag," Little said. "They must have responded to something bigger going on in the workplace."

_{Wed, 16 May 2012 14:55:55 -0700}

County to bring in archeologists to examine hospital grave site

County officials said Wednesday they planned to call in archeologists to help identify the remains found in pine-box coffins unearthed by construction crews working on the expansion of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese said the work crews had stumbled upon an old cemetery for indigent and unclaimed bodies that had long ago been forgotten and covered over by a parking lot.

“It’s been abundantly clear there was an old cemetery of some kind – people are calling it a potter’s plot -- but it was paved over many years ago,” he told KTVU.

“It’s my understanding,” he added. “That whenever these plots were paved over was long enough ago that there are few people around that were carrying that history in their minds.”

Among actions officials plan to take Friday is to go to court and get permission to remove 100 of the pine- box coffins and leave the other 1,350 in place.

“It’s not something we deal with here,” he said. “There is a human dignity issue here. We don’t know what will be used to determine the next of kin. Those two issues have to be dealt with right off the bat.”

Cortese said the progress of the construction project will be complicated and slowed for a while.

“We haven’t fully accessed the final impact yet.” He told KTVU. “Every construction project has delay provisions in it. Those usually run per day…Every day that goes by is going to cost something.”

The coffins were unearthed earlier this year, but the discovery did not come to light until this week.

The remains of as many as 1,450 people may have been buried on the hospital grounds between 1875 and until about 1935.

Officials believe from old maps that the crew has only uncovered an outer fringe of the old cemetery.

_{Wed, 16 May 2012 14:23:01 -0700}

Attempted murder suspect arrested in Richmond SWAT standoff

A 26-year-old man wanted in connection with an attempted murder in Richmond surrendered to a SWAT team Wednesday morning after an overnight standoff, a Richmond police lieutenant said.

A special investigations unit located attempted murder suspect Todd Gillard, of Richmond, as he was going into an apartment at Gately Avenue and Ells Street around 10 p.m., Lt. Bisa French said.

A SWAT team surrounded the apartment and was in contact with Gillard.

They negotiated with him throughout the night until he surrendered around 5 a.m. and was taken into custody, French said.

Gillard had a $1.5 million arrest warrant out for him in connection with a February attempted murder, French said. No one was injured in the standoff, she said.

_{Wed, 16 May 2012 12:52:26 -0700}

News Source: MedleyStory More Local News Stories