Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Innovative Words Don’t Change the Global Refugee Crisis

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The battle over the words used to describe migrants

BBC: The word migrant is defined in Oxford English Dictionary as “one who moves, either temporarily or permanently, from one place, area, or country of residence to another”.

It is used as a neutral term by many media organisations – including the BBC – but there has been criticism of that use.

News website al-Jazeera has decided it will not use migrant and “will instead, where appropriate, say refugee“. An online editor for the network wrote: “It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.” A Washington Post piece asked if it was time to ditch the word.

There are some who dislike the term because it implies something voluntary but that it is applied to people fleeing danger. A UN document suggests: “The term ‘migrant’… should be understood as covering all cases where the decision to migrate is taken freely by the individual concerned, for reasons of ‘personal convenience’ and without intervention of an external compelling factor.”

“Migrant used to have quite a neutral connotation,” explains Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. “It says nothing about their entitlement to cross that border or whether they should be.” But some people believe that the word has recently developed a sour note. It is being used to mean “not a refugee”, argues Betts.

Online searches for migrant are at their highest since Google started collating this information in 2004. And in the past month (to 25 August using the Nexis database), the most commonly used term in UK national newspapers (excluding the Times, the Sun and the Financial Times) was migrant – with 2,541 instances. This was twice as popular as the next most frequently used word, refugee.

A refugee, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, “is any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country”.

“Refugee implies that we have an obligation to people,” says Betts. “It implies that we have to let them on to our territory and give them the chance to seek asylum.”

But there would be many people who would be wary of labelling someone a refugee until that person has gone through the legal process of claiming asylum. In the UK, and other places, claims for “refugee status” are examined before being either granted or denied.

“The moment at which they can officially say whether they are refugees or economic migrants is the moment at which the EU state that is processing their claim makes its decision,” says Tim Stanley, historian and columnist for the Daily Telegraph. “I am not questioning the validity of their narrative, I am not saying that anyone was lying about it. I am saying that it is down to the state in which they have arrived to define what they are.”

Asylum seeker refers to someone who has applied for refugee status and is waiting to hear the result of their claim. But it is also often used about those trying to get to a particular country to make a claim. The word asylum is very old indeed having first been used in 1430 to refer to “a sanctuary or inviolable place of refuge and protection for criminals and debtors, from which they cannot be forcibly removed without sacrilege”.

The most common descriptor for asylum seeker in UK newspaper articles between 2010 to 2012 was the word failed.

But while the term failed asylum seeker describes someone who has gone through a well-defined process, there are less specifically applied terms.

One of the more controversial ones is illegal immigrant, along with illegal migrant.

A study by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University analysed 58,000 UK newspaper articles and found that illegal was the most common descriptor for the word immigrants.

“The term is dangerous,” argues Don Flynn, director of Migrants Rights Network. “It’s better to say irregular or undocumented migrants.” Calling someone an illegal immigrant associates them with criminal behaviour, he adds.

Other critics of the phrase say that it gives the impression that it’s the person that is illegal rather than their actions. “Once you’ve entered the UK and claimed asylum, you are not illegal. Even if your asylum claim is refused, you still can’t be an illegal migrant,” says Zoe Grumbridge from Refugee Action.

The UN and the EU parliament have called for an end to the phrase. Some people have also criticised the use of clandestine. In 2013, the Associated Press news agency and the Los Angeles Times both changed their style guides and recommended against using the phrase “illegal immigrant” to describe someone without a valid visa.

But others disagree, saying that the phrase can be a useful description. “If you are coming into a country without permission and you do it outside the law, that is illegal,” says Alp Mehmet, vice chairman of MigrationWatch UK. “If they haven’t entered yet, they are not illegal immigrants, although potentially they are migrating using illegal means.”

Clearly there are those who want to make a distinction between people using the accepted legal channel to enter a country and those who are entering by other methods.

“I understand why people are uncomfortable with that term but it is accurate when you are talking about someone who has broken the law to enter the country or who has been told to leave the country and is breaking the law by staying,” says Stanley.

Another criticism of the term immigrant, with or without the word illegal added on to it, is that it is less likely to be used to describe people from Western countries. Some commentators have suggested that Europeans tend to be referred to as expats.

“Very often when we talk about British people who migrate,” says Emma Briant, author of the book Bad News for Refugees, “we tend to talk of them as expats or expatriates. They are not immigrants.” There has been some satirical commentary about the differences between the terms.

But the shift towards the neutral blanket term migrant has been pronounced. To again use UK national newspapers as a measurement, 15 years ago, in the month to 25 August, the terms refugee, asylum seeker and illegal immigrant were all used more often than migrants.

And many disagree that migrant is in any way offensive. “It’s a proper description for anyone who has moved across a border,” says Don Flynn from the Migrants Rights Network.

Judith Vonberg, a freelance journalist who has written for the Migrants’ Rights Network about the issue, goes further. She says that ditching the word could “actually reinforce the dichotomy that we’ve got between the idea of the good refugee and the bad migrant”.

Alp Mehmet, from Migration Watch, also believes that migrant should be used but because it is an easy word to understand. “Everyone… knows exactly what we mean by migrants.”

Some people also believe that migrant is an appropriate phrase to use when a group of people could include both refugees and economic migrants. Tim Stanley argues that it does accurately reflect a significant number of people who are making the crossing into Europe. “It is why the UNHCR is absolutely right to describe that group of people as both migrants and refugees,” he says.

The use of the term economic migrant has been much debated. Home Secretary Theresa May used it in May to describe migration into Europe. She said that there were large numbers of people coming from countries such as Nigeria and Somalia who were “economic migrants who’ve paid criminal gangs to take them across the Mediterranean”.

The term economic migrant is “being used to imply choice rather than coercion”, says Betts. “It’s used to imply that it’s voluntary reasons for movement rather than forced movement.”

Some words have fallen almost completely out of favour. Alien was used regularly in the UK press before World War Two, says Panikos Panayi, professor of European history at De Montfort University. “The first major immigration act [in the UK] was called the Aliens Act 1905,” he says.

But in the US, alien remains official terminology for any person who is not a citizen or national.

The Obama administration proposed Dreamers as a new positive way – with its reference to the American Dream – of describing undocumented young people who met the conditions of the Dream act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors).

There is another word with positive connotations that is not used much anymore. “Exile has gone out of credit,” says Betts, since the end of the Cold War. “It had a slightly sort of dignified and noble connotation,” he argues.

It was used to describe someone who had been forced out of their country but was still politically engaged with it and was planning on going back one day. “I think that today, many Syrians are in that position,” says Betts.

The shifting language of migration might seem petty to some but to those involved in the debate there is no doubt of its importance. “Words matter in the migration debate,” says Rob McNeil from the Migration Observatory.

 

Legitimate Voting is up to YOU at the Local Level

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The most precious duty real citizens have is to vote, but must be an informed voter, where the vote is good for the country. Ensuring votes are made in a legitimate location, not duplicated, not under fraudulent names and with validated identification must be task undertaken by every citizen at the local level. Understand the laws, challenge the voter rolls and volunteer.

Voter Fraud across the country in past elections has been noted and reported with little consequence and this is where demands for investigations and prosecutions come into play.

Fraud cases below:

North Carolina

Florida

Maryland

Ohio

Need more?

300 cases investigated by the Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation’s list of nearly 300 documented cases of voter fraud in the United States continues to grow.

Recent additions reveal that voter fraud is not just an individual or isolated crime; in some counties and communities, election fraud is almost a way of life.

These additions again reinforce the need for measures such as voter ID laws and procedures designed to verify the accuracy of voter registration information are needed to prevent these crimes in the first place.

Take East Chicago, Ind., for example, a town made infamous by the extensive voter fraud that occurred there in the 2003 Democratic mayoral primary election. More details here.

At the County level:

 

Election Group: 141 U.S. Counties Have More Registered Voters Than People

Firm says they’ll bring lawsuits if voter rolls are not purged

FreeBeacon: A public interest law firm is threatening to bring lawsuits against more than 100 counties across the United States that appear to have more registered voters than living residents.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a law firm dedicated to election integrity based in Indiana, recently sent statutory notice letters to election officials in 141 counties putting them on notice of their discoveries. The group says if action is not taken to correct the questionable voter rolls, they will bring lawsuits against every single county on the list.

“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of PILF. “Close elections tainted by voter fraud turned control of the United States Senate in 2009. Too much is at stake in 2016 to allow that to happen again.”

The statutory notice letters argue the counties are violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and urge them to correct the issue, claiming their voter rolls contain a substantially high amount of ineligible voters. The group used federally produced data to come to their conclusions.

“Voter rolls across America have been discovered that contain substantial numbers of ineligible voters, resulting in the possible disenfranchisement of legally eligible voters via ballot dilution that threatens to subvert the nation’s electoral process,” a sample letter sent to the counties reads.

“Based on our comparison of publicly available information published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Election Assistance Commission, your county is failing to comply with Section 8 of the NVRA,” it continues. “Federal law requires election officials to conduct a reasonable effort to maintain voter registration lists free of dead voters, ineligible voters and voters who have moved away.”

“In short, your county has significantly more voters on the registration rolls than it has eligible live voters and is thus not reasonably maintaining the rolls.”

According to PILF, the 141 counties targeted for their suspicious voter rolls span across 21 states and include: Michigan (24 counties), Kentucky (18), Illinois (17), Indiana (11), Alabama (10), Colorado (10), Texas (9), Nebraska (7), New Mexico (5), South Dakota (5), Kansas (4), Mississippi (4), Louisiana (3), West Virginia (3), Georgia (2), Iowa (2), Montana (2), and North Carolina (2), as well as Arizona, Missouri, and New York (1 each).

Data provided by the group also shows that some counties have voter registration rates that exceed 150 percent.

Franklin County, located in Illinois, contains the highest voter registration rate of any county on the list at 190 percent. Franklin is followed by Pulaski County, also located in Illinois. Pulaski boasts a 176 percent voter registration rate, according to the group.

Adams said former Attorney General Eric Holder and current AG Loretta Lynch refused to enforce the law because they don’t have a problem with corrupted voter rolls.

“Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch have deliberately refused to enforce this law because they have no problem with corrupted voter rolls,” Christian Adams told the Washington Free Beacon in an email statement. “They don’t like the law, so they don’t enforce it. It’s a pattern that has come to characterize this Justice Department.”

 

 

14th Amendment Does Not Give Birthright Citizenship

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It is about time that this matter gets full attention and debate.
The most important word is but 2 letters: We the People OF meaning loyalty, honor and duty.

He unabashedly wades into politically dangerous territory and yet continues to be rewarded by favorable poll results. He has clearly tapped into a reserve of public resentment for inside-the-Beltway politics. How far this resentment will carry him is anyone’s guess, but the Republican establishment is worried. His latest proposal to end birthright citizenship has set off alarm bells in the Republican party.

The leadership worries that Trump will derail the party’s plans to appeal to the Latino vote. Establishment Republicans believe that the future of the party depends on being able to capture a larger share of this rapidly expanding electorate. Trump’s plan, however, may appeal to the most rapidly expanding electorate, senior citizens, and may have an even greater appeal to the millions of Republicans who stayed away from the polls in 2012 as well as the ethnic and blue-collar Democrats who crossed party lines to vote Republican in the congressional elections of 2014. All of these voters outnumber any increase in the Latino vote that Republicans could possibly hope to gain from a population that has consistently voted Democratic by a two-thirds majority and shows little inclination to change.

And Nothing Odd About Supporting Such a Reading Critics say that Trump’s plan is unrealistic, that it would require a constitutional amendment because the 14th Amendment mandates birthright citizenship and that the Supreme Court has upheld this requirement ever since its passage in 1868. The critics are wrong. A correct understanding of the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment and legislation passed by Congress in the late 19th century and in 1923 extending citizenship to American Indians provide ample proof that Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Simple legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president would be constitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Birthright citizenship is the policy whereby the children of illegal aliens born within the geographical limits of the U.S. are entitled to American citizenship — and, as Trump says, it is a great magnet for illegal immigration. Many of Trump’s critics believe that this policy is an explicit command of the Constitution, consistent with the British common-law system. This is simply not true. Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Here is the familiar language: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.

Today, we somehow have come to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction; but this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous. If this had been the intention of the framers of the 14th Amendment, presumably they would have said simply that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens.

Indeed, during debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause, attempted to assure skeptical colleagues that the language was not intended to make Indians citizens of the United States. Indians, Howard conceded, were born within the nation’s geographical limits, but he steadfastly maintained that they were not subject to its jurisdiction because they owed allegiance to their tribes and not to the U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported this view, arguing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant “not owing allegiance to anybody else and being subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.”

Jurisdiction understood as allegiance, Senator Howard explained, excludes not only Indians but “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Thus, “subject to the jurisdiction” does not simply mean, as is commonly thought today, subject to American laws or courts. It means owing exclusive political allegiance to the U.S. Furthermore, there has never been an explicit holding by the Supreme Court that the children of illegal aliens are automatically accorded birthright citizenship. In the case of Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. of legal aliens was entitled to “birthright citizenship” under the 14th Amendment. This was a 5–4 opinion which provoked the dissent of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who argued that, contrary to the reasoning of the majority’s holding, the 14th Amendment did not in fact adopt the common-law understanding of birthright citizenship.
The framers of the Constitution were, of course, well-versed in the British common law, having learned its essential principles from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As such, they knew that the very concept of citizenship was unknown in British common law. Blackstone speaks only of “birthright subjectship” or “birthright allegiance,” never using the terms “citizen” or “citizenship.” The idea of birthright subjectship, as Blackstone admitted, was derived from feudal law. It is the relation of master and servant: All who are born within the protection of the king owed perpetual allegiance as a “debt of gratitude.” According to Blackstone, this debt is “intrinsic” and “cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered.” Birthright subjectship under common law is the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. America’s Founders rejected this doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, after all, solemnly proclaims that “the good People of these Colonies . . . are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.” So, the common law — the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance — could not possibly serve as the ground of American citizenship. Indeed, the idea is too preposterous to entertain.
For All GOP Candidates Consider as well that, in 1868, Congress passed the Expatriation Act. This permitted American citizens to renounce their allegiance and alienate their citizenship. This piece of legislation was supported by Senator Howard and other leading architects of the 14th Amendment, and characterized the right of expatriation as “a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Like the idea of citizenship, this right of expatriation is wholly incompatible with the common-law understanding of perpetual allegiance and subjectship. One member of the House expressed the general sense of Congress when he proclaimed: “The old feudal doctrine stated by Blackstone and adopted as part of the common law of England . . . is not only at war with the theory of our institutions, but is equally at war with every principle of justice and of sound public policy.” The notion of birthright citizenship was characterized by another member as an “indefensible doctrine of indefeasible allegiance,” a feudal doctrine wholly at odds with republican government. Nor was this the only legislation concerning birthright citizenship that Congress passed following the ratification of the 14th Amendment. As mentioned above, there was almost unanimous agreement among its framers that the amendment did not extend citizenship to Indians. Although born in the U.S., they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Beginning in 1870, however, Congress began to pass legislation offering citizenship to Indians on a tribe-by-tribe basis.
Finally, in 1923, there was a universal offer to all tribes. Any Indian who consented could become a citizen. Thus Congress used its legislative authority under Section Five of the 14th Amendment to determine who was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It could make a similar determination today, based on this legislative precedent, that children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A constitutional amendment is no more required today than it was in 1923. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. Legislation to end birthright citizenship has been circulating in Congress since the mid ’90s and such a bill is circulating in both houses today. It will, of course, not pass Congress, and if it did pass it would be vetoed. But if birthright citizenship becomes an election issue and a Republican is elected president, then who knows what the future might hold. It is difficult to imagine that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to confer the boon of citizenship on the children of illegal aliens when they explicitly denied that boon to Indians who had been born in the United States. Those who defy the laws of the U.S. should not be allowed to confer such an advantage on their children. This would not be visiting the sins of the parents on the children, as is often claimed, since the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. would not be denied anything to which they otherwise would have a right. Their allegiance should follow that of their parents during their minority. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. No one is advocating that those who have been granted birthright citizenship be stripped of their citizenship. Equal protection considerations would counsel that citizenship once granted is vested and cannot be revoked; this, I believe, is eminently just. The proposal to end birthright citizenship is prospective only.
Political pundits believe that Trump should not press such divisive issues as immigration and citizenship. It is clear, however, that he has struck a popular chord — and touched an important issue that should be debated no matter how divisive. Both the Republican party and the Democratic party want to avoid the issue because, while both parties advocate some kind of reform, neither party has much interest in curbing illegal immigration: Republicans want cheap and exploitable labor and Democrats want future voters. Who will get the best of the bargain I will leave for others to decide.
*** For more reading and to see who are in this fight…
Further, Jeb Bush was actually correct too when it comes to the Chinese and their operation to gain birthright citizenship.

 

Creepy Underworld Advertised on Billboards Escort Service

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Read with caution, fair warning.

Raid of Rentboy, an Escort Website, Angers Gay Activists


For some gay activists, it had shades of bathhouse raids and gay-bar roundups from decades ago. On Tuesday, federal authorities burst into the Union Square office of the gay-escort website Rentboy.com and arrested the chief executive and several employees on prostitution charges.


Rentboy, which federal authorities called the biggest male-escort website, had been around for almost two decades, allowing escorts to pay to advertise themselves. It was well known in the gay community, hosting pool parties, dances and awards shows throughout the country. Many members of the L.G.B.T community have criticised the authorities for allowing certain escort services like Asian VIP Service to continue while targeting the male-escort industry.
After federal authorities charged its top executives with promoting prostitution, seized the website and went after the business’s assets on Tuesday, many gay activists were infuriated. The Transgender Law Center, a civil-rights group, criticized the arrests, as did some male sex workers from websites similar to teentuber xxx. Several activists said they would use the episode to renew calls to decriminalize prostitution.

“To many in our community this feels like a throwback to when the police raided gay bars in the ’50s and ’60s,” Justin Vivian Bond, a performer and an activist who is transgender, wrote in an email. “This invasion of a consensual hookup site which is run for and by members of the L.G.B.T. community feels like a real slap in the face after gentrification and the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations drove so many gay bars out of business and forced people to meet online instead of in person,” the activist added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Danny Cruz said he had posted ads on Rentboy “to supplement income” for about seven years, starting when he moved to New York. He said he had talked regularly to the executives who were arrested, both about his business and about staying safe.

“I don’t see why the government would be interested in what two people do behind closed doors,” Mr. Cruz, who is now involved in the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Los Angeles, said.

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which participated in the investigation, said in an email that “any insinuation that a specific population was targeted is categorically false.”

The federal complaint says that although Rentboy.com, whose headquarters are on 14th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, had a disclaimer telling visitors that they could not exchange money for sex, that was “clearly” happening. Escorts, the complaint says, posted ads including penis size, pay rate and preferred fetishes, and the site’s visitors then contacted them directly. On a separate website, DaddysReviews.com, clients would review the individual escorts, the complaint says.

The seven current and former Rentboy executives were charged with conspiring to violate the Travel Act by promoting prostitution, and each faces up to five years in prison.

Mr. Walls said: “As the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is responsible for the enforcement of laws that promote the legitimate movement of people, goods and currency in domestic and foreign transactions. Our allegation with this case is that the business and its principals purported itself to be an escort service while promoting criminal acts, namely illegal prostitution.”

Rentboy’s chief executive, Jeffrey Hurant, 50, said in an interview excerpted in the criminal complaint that “there is no place on this website where somebody says I’ll have sex for money because that is against the law.”

The director of the site, Michael Sean Belman, 47, said in another interview excerpted in the complaint: “We say that escorts are selling their time only.”

“What happens between you and the escort is up to you,” he said. “That way it’s legal.” (The complaint says he “incorrectly” summarized the legality.)

Derrick De Lise, publisher of the online magazine Queer Voices, said the fact that the government went after a gay-escort website, without making mention of protecting sex workers, made it seem as though the site’s gay affiliation attracted the government attention.

In 2014, federal authorities seized myRedBook, a California-based site with ads for sex. But unlike in the Rentboy case, the charges included money laundering. The authorities also said myRedBook allowed child prostitution, which has not been cited in the Rentboy case.

MyRedBook’s owner, Eric Omuro, was charged with using the mail and the Internet to promote prostitution and with laundering money derived from the site. Mr. Omuro pleaded guilty in 2014 to using a facility of interstate commerce with the intent to facilitate prostitution, and admitted that the site allowed prostitutes to post ads. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison. In an affidavit submitted for sentencing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had found more than 50 juveniles advertised for prostitution on his site.

Mr. Omuro was the first website operator to be convicted on prostitution charges, the Department of Justice said.

“It’s troubling to think that we’re investing resources and time to target Rentboy and sex workers,” said Alex Garner, a writer and activist in Washington, “when what we really should be having is a reasonable and thoughtful conversation about the decriminalization of sex work. We have an entire police force we should be overhauling, we have murders of trans women happening in large numbers, and we’re devoting our time and energy to cracking down on sex work. Who’s choosing to prioritize it?”

Nellin McIntosh, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

We Are the Government, Here to Help Local Communities

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Creepy and shovel ready, kinda sorta…

From the White House:

Here’s How the Federal Government is Working with Local Communities to Create Change, in One Map:

Summary:
Get the facts and data behind the programs the Obama administration has put in place in partnership with the communities they intend to serve, all across the country.

As the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, it’s my job to oversee the implementation and enforcement of the President’s priorities across the Administration.

You might call us the nerve center where goals become initiatives, and initiatives become programs at work on the ground in local communities and states across the country.

With that in mind, let’s go back to basics for a second and focus on something we can all agree on:

Any plans that we want to make for improving communities across the country need to be hatched in partnership with those communities — by the people who live in them, work in them, and stand to benefit from them.

Take a look at the federal programs at work in your area.

This week marks ten years since the neighborhoods of New Orleans were left devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Since then, community partnerships with the federal government have helped revitalize those communities. They’ve made sure the city’s vital health clinic system stays funded and delivering high quality services. They’ve laid the groundwork to open the Loyola Avenue-Union Passenger Terminal Streetcar Line in the city’s business district. They’ve brought the number of homeless veterans in New Orleans to a functional zero by December of 2014 – more than a year ahead of the proposed goal. (Hear straight from a New Orleanian about the role open data played in the city’s transformation.)

There are projects like these at work across the country, whether you realized it or not.

Over the course of the past six years, this Administration has been steadily creating programs in partnership with the communities they intend to serve – from southeastern Kentucky to Fresno to Detroit.

While there are a lot of things we have been up to from addressing climate change to poverty alleviation, we are taking a new approach — one that relies on communities developing plans that best fit their needs rather than the laundry list of programs the government has. It’s pretty simple. First, we partner with communities by seeking out their plans or vision. Second, we take a one-government approach that crosses agency and program silos to support communities in implementing their plans for improvement. Finally we focus on what works, using data to measure success and monitor progress.

Take a look at how local programs have changed New Orleans communities.
Construction and development of the Loyola Avenue-Union Passenger Terminal Streetcar Lines had stalled out, leaving low-income areas underserved for decades. A $45 million TIGER grant ensured the streetcar expansion was completed by 2013, and has connected residential neighborhoods — including low-income communities — directly with Amtrak and intercity bus service.
See how local programs have transformed communities within Fresno, CA.
The plot of land at Belmont and Poplar Avenues was virtually abandoned. AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps has since installed water-saving irrigation, cleaned up the alleys, built a community garden, and planted native trees.

 

We wanted to give the American public a sense of exactly what that looks like – and give you the opportunity to take a look at what’s at work in your area. So today, we released a snapshot view of the Obama administration’s community-based initiatives. It combines datasets from initiatives across more than 15 Federal agencies – and we’re adding datasets and features as we continue building it.

Take a look – see what’s at work in your area.

Then, share how you’ve seen these programs at work in your community. If you’ve got a photo, share that with us, too.

From the start, this map has been built in the open, and source code is available on GitHub. We want to know what you think, and how we can improve it – so share your thoughts with us here.