Tuesday, May 13, 2025
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A View From the Ground
News and information about politics, government, civic participation and engagement from URL Media's network of Black and Brown publishers.
Good evening. Haitian-American community leaders have teamed up with The Haitian Times for a three-day summit in Indianapolis to chart a course for the diaspora. A new report from the newspaper focuses on the highlights and challenges faced by the community and attendees discussed new strategies. Understanding civic engagement and what it means to be Haitian was at the core of the conference. Find out more in The Haitian Times.Plus, we’re bringing you the latest updates at url-media.com as events unfold. Have a question? Write to us at [email protected].
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Republican Texas legislators are continuing to weaponize their hostility to immigrants, passing a new bill in the state house that could result in legal visa holders having to give up their homes, according to AsAm News.The bill, SB17, is designed to prevent companies, governments, and individuals hostile to the United States from buying or renting property in the state passed the GOP-controlled House 85-60 on March 8. It passed in the Senate in March. It focuses on nations named in a 2025 threat assessment report from National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard. The Texas Attorney General’s office would be empowered to investigate property owned by nations deemed hostile. The office could seize the property under a court order, the Dallas Morning News reports.But this puts emphasis on citizens of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. Asian American community leaders are angered by what they call racist legislation, and some Texas Democrats say they will try to minimize the damage.“This is a totally racist bill, sugarcoated by Homeland Security,” Alice Yi of Asian Texans for Justice told AsAm News, calling it a “partisan issue against the Asian community.”Democratic State Rep. Gene Wu said that the bill opens up potential hate crimes because of its anti-immigrant nature. “Nobody around here knows the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese or Japanese and Vietnamese,” Wu told the Morning News. “When the attacks come, when the hate crimes start, it will be against all Asians – everybody with [an] Asian face.”Rep. Rafael Anchia, also a Democrat, introduced an amendment that would allow temporary protection status that would exempt visa holders and political refugees from SB17. But the House voted to table the amendment.If the bill moves without amendment, it would go to Gov. Greg Abbott for signing.Read more at AsAm News.→
Marylanders who suffered sexual abuse as children are finding their voice just two years after the passage of a law was to expose abusers. But nobody expected the number of people who were victimized to be in the thousandsThe Child Victims Act was passed in 2023, allowing victims to name adults who did them harm in lawsuits, removing the statute of limitations on sexual abuse claims. This encouraged people who had been abused in state-run juvenile detention facilities to come forward. and Now as many as 6,000 people are suing or preparing to sue the state of Maryland, Baltimore Beat reports.
“Never did I think that the number of claimants would be what they were,” State Delegate C.T. Wilson, a sexual abuse survivor who was a major backer of the Child Victims Act, said at a March legislative hearing. “How could you predict that amount of malfeasance and institutional neglect?”The number of allegations is so large that the survivor community is asking if the state will launch an investigation of what took place in the juvenile facilities.
“There should be a huge investigation into why this happened,” David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told Baltimore Beat. “We’ve got a problem, and we’d better figure out what the root cause of this is. There was apparently a total lack of accountability going on there.”
New Yorkers can expect to receive a little financial relief thanks to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators. They want to send “inflation refund” checks to individuals who filed state taxes, according to Documented State budget officials say about 8.2 million filers will be eligible for checks of up to $400 each, costing New York $2 billion.The whole thing is part of a $254 billion budget agreement which legislators were to begin voting on last week, reported Gothamist. People who had an adjusted gross income of $150,000 or less in 2023 are eligible for the money. Those who made more or were claimed as their dependents would not be eligible.“Because of inflation, New York has generated unprecedented revenues through the sales tax — now, we're returning that cash back to middle class families,” Hochul said in a 2024 statement announcing her intention to back the refund. “It's simple: the cost of living is still too damn high, and New Yorkers deserve a break.”The best thing about this break is that New Yorkers won’t have to do anything to get their checks. New York State’s Department of Taxation and Finance will automatically send the checks based on filers’ 2023 tax returns.Read more at Documented. →
Thanks to the Trump administration’s policy of resuming collection of defaulted student loan debt, borrowers could be subject to “involuntary collections,” meaning the government would take money from people whichever way it can. That could be out of tax refunds, social security, benefit checks, and possibly garnishment of wages.
URL Media reports the federal Office of Student Aid, which paused collecting the debts because of the COVID crisis, restarted the process May 5. Five million people are in student loan default, but the U.S. Department of Education, largely dismantled but still operative enough to collect the debt, says that number is expected to grow to 10 million.But women and people of color are also likely to be disproportionately affected by the heavy-handed resumption of collection. These groups carry the most student debt, and that would impact the already widened racial wealth gap, according to statistics from the Student Borrower Protection Center. However, there are things you can do if you find yourself squeezed by the feds, including:
1. Get new repayment terms.
2. Pursue a rehabilitation agreement.
3. Request a hearing.
4. Consider going back to school.
5. Seek trusted guidance.
Check out our Currency of Impact dashboard, a new tool designed to revolutionize media buying conversations and put community impact on the foreground. Dive into our impact tracker and case studies highlighting demonstrated impact across the URL Media network. This project was co-produced with the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Visit it here.
