Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Tag: Culture

You are Here :
Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , , , ,

Soooo…. they’re not stealing ‘our’ jobs

In the no kidding department, a recent study published by the Immigration Policy Center finds Immigration Does Not Increase Unemployment:

There is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates among native-born workers, according to a pair of studies released May 19 by the Immigration Policy Center.

The reports analyze data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census 2000 data . They are the first two installments of a three-part series, Untying the Knot, which seeks to —debunk the frequently misrepresented relationship between immigration and unemployment,— IPC said.

According to IPC, opponents of an immigration overhaul —frequently argue that immigrants ‘take’ jobs away from many native-born workers, especially during economic hard times.—

—We commissioned this report in order to take a serious look at whether or not immigration is in fact impacting unemployment among the native-born and what we have found is that scary rhetoric is not a substitute for good data,— said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Law Foundation. IPC is the research arm of AILF.

—These findings are in line with other long-term studies conducted around the world which have shown that immigration has very little impact on native unemployment,— Johnson said. —In order to have a serious policy debate, we need good, honest numbers and that is what we believe we have provided in these reports.—

Unemployment Rates Similar in High-, Low-Immigration Areas

According to the reports, if immigrants took jobs away from native-born workers, one would expect to find a high unemployment rates in those parts of the country with large numbers of immigrants, particularly recent immigrants who are more willing to work for low wages and under worse conditions than long-term immigrants or native-born workers.

However, —analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau clearly reveals that this is not the case,— IPC said.

—The level of unemployment in the U.S. is painful, scary and difficult—”so we shouldn’t belittle it,— said Dan Siciliano, senior research fellow at IPC and executive director of the program in law, economics, and business at Stanford Law School. —However, the very notion that immigration has anything to do with unemployment does just that. It belittles the challenge of unemployment,— he said.

Siciliano said the idea that immigration is causally linked to unemployment among the native-born is a —red herring distracting from the real causes of unemployment.—

According to the report, there is —no correlation between the number of recent immigrant workers in a given state, county, or city and the unemployment rate among native-born workers.—

For example, recent immigrants make up 8.4 percent of the population in the Pacific region (including California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii) but only 2.8 percent of the population in the East North Central region (including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin). However, both regions have nearly the same unemployment rate, 10.8 percent in the Pacific region, and 10.0 percent in the East North Central region.

Another example cited in the report is between New Jersey, a state where recent immigrants make up 7.3 percent of the population, and Maine, where recent immigrants make up 0.8 percent of the population. Both states have similar unemployment rates—”8.3 percent in New Jersey and 8.1 percent in Maine, according to the report.

—Locales with high unemployment rates do not necessarily have large numbers of recent immigrants, and locales with many recent immigrants do not necessarily have high unemployment rates,— according to the report.

IPC said that on average, recent immigrants comprise 3.1 percent of the population in counties with the highest unemployment rates, which average 13.4 percent. Recent immigrants account for a higher share of the population (4.6 percent) in counties with the lowest unemployment rates (below 4.8 percent), the report found.

Immigrants Don’t Impact Minority Unemployment

Additionally, the report found that there was no connection between immigration and unemployment rates of native-born minorities, such as African Americans.

—On the question of race we find that there’s just no connection between immigration and unemployment,— said Rob Paral, senior research fellow at IPC and the principal of Rob Paral and Associates, a research consulting firm.

—The culprit when it comes to unemployment is not immigration,— Paral said.

In the 10 states with the highest shares of recent immigrants in the labor force, the average unemployment rate for native-born blacks is about 4 percentage points less than in the 10 states with the lowest shares of recent immigrants, according to the report.

Similar findings were found for the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest number of recent immigrants compared with the 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest number of recent immigrants.

—The absence of any significant statistical correlation between recent immigration and unemployment rates among different native-born racial/ethnic groups points to deeper, structural causes for unemployment among the native-born, such as levels of educational attainment and work skills,— IPC said.

As I have oft repeated, the people who complain most loudly about immigrants have other, more central issues, an animus against people of slightly darker skin tones, or against Catholics, or for a thousand other less well-informed/reactionary reasons. They’re the first to enjoy cheaper meals, lower cost construction, and the time and energy they saved not having to mow the lawn, plant the garden, or clean the house, all because José, Janek, Engjí«ll, Sonja, or Agnieszka did the work. They rarely speak against wage theft or the abuses these workers are subject to. They close their eyes, pay 10-20% less, and complain — Why can’t they just speak English?

Why? Because yes, they’re talking about you; your greed, laziness, and hypocrisy.

Huw gets it right in his I’m a bad Homosexual Activist and Californians and the Prop 8 thing… posts (thanks to the Young Fogey for the link). We stand to complain about high prices, high unemployment, unfairness from our comfort zone while the person working for us is getting squished. He says:

Making a —just for me society— instead of a Just Society is really rather sinful.

And I say Amen.

The PNCC, a Church founded by immigrants, understands the immigrant experience and honors people of all nations and cultures. The Lord asked us to go and preach to all nations because all are valuable in His sight. Human value is a totality and our call to value each person’s inherent dignity is absolute. That’s makes us, as Christians, as PNCC members, rather radical.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , , , ,

Polonian events in New York’s Capital Region

Parish Festival

St. Michael’s Parish Festival, 20 Page Ave, Cohoes, NY

Polish American Food, Games & Rides, Freckles’ the Clown, Children’s Activities, Vegas Games of Chance, Raffle, Chinese Auction, Dancing to the Rymanowski Brothers Orchestra and Tony’s Polka Band, Polish & American Craft Vendors, and Dance Groups

Friday, May 29th, 5pm-10pm
Saturday, May 30th, Noon – 10pm
Sunday, May 31st, Noon – 6pm

For more information please call 518-785-9002.

Screening of Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn

At Proctors Theater in Schenectady, Friday, May 22, 2009 at 2:30pm, 5:10pm & 7:45pm

This Oscar nominated film follows the story of four Polish families whose lives are torn apart when, at the outset of WWII, a great number of Polish soldiers fall into the hands of Soviet troops and later brutally become victims of Stalinism along with citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.

This war drama is not rated. This film is in Polish, Russian and German with English subtitles. This film has a total running time of 121 minutes. Tickets are $6.

Everything Else, , , ,

Voices — Roots and Branches of New York Folk Music

The New York Folklore Society is holding a benefit gala on Friday, May 29th in Schenectady, New York. All proceeds will benefit the New York Folklore Society, a service organization dedicated to the study, promotion, and continuation of New York’s diverse folklore and folklife. Details as follows:

Proctors’ Theatre, 432 State Street, Schenectady
Reception/Meet the Artists at 5:30 p.m. in Robb Alley, Proctors
Concert begins at 7:00 p.m. in the GE Theater of Proctors

Please join us for a benefit event featuring some of New York’s favorite musicians – traditional as well as performer/interpreters. Featured performers (a tentative list) include ballad singer Colleen Cleveland, Senegalese drummer and dancer Fode Sissoko, singer/songwriter Dan Berggren, Abenaki storyteller and musician Joe Bruchac, multi-instrumentalist John Kirk and Cedar Stanistreet, and performer/interpreters Kim and Reggie Harris.

Reception and Concert $40.00
Concert only $20.00
(a $1.50 surcharge will be added via the box office at Proctor’s Theatre)

Tickets Available through the New York Folklore Society, 518-346-7008 or through Proctor’s box office. A portion of the ticket price is tax deductible.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Dancing with your children

Two Friends Author New Book on Dance and Songs for Children

twofriendscoverMaria Bielski and Janina Dobkowski have recently co-authored and published a book of Polish children’s singing games and dances entitled “Two Friends, They Went A’ Dancing.”

The book contains the lyrics of ten popular singing games in both English and Polish as well as a vocal music score with chords. Clear step by step movement and dance instructions are outlined with the text. In addition, a CD of the recorded songs with accompaniment is included so that parents, grandparents, teachers, and children can immediately enjoy the songs and games. Each page has an original “wycinanki” (Polish cut-out style) illustration designed by the artist, Joanna Bielska, which can be reproduced for coloring or craft projects.

The authors created this book as a resource for anyone interested in folk culture. They hope it assists parents and grandparents in passing Polish traditions on to their children and grandchildren. Teachers, occupational therapists, ethnic dance directors, whether Polish or not, can use this book to enrich their classroom program, physical education curriculum, music and dance classes, and children’s events. The CD can be used during assemblies, parties for both children and adults, car trips, and sing a longs.

Both authors are teachers by profession and have an extensive background in Polish folk art, music, and dance. They have danced with the Polish American Folk Dance Company and organized countless folk dance workshops all over the New York Metropolitan area. They are members of the Polish American Teachers Association, which has its headquarters at the Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Professional Women’s Association.

Ms. Bielski has been on the teaching staff of the Krakowianki and Gorale Children’s’ Dance Group of Greenpoint for the past several years. Ms. Dobkowski is a member of the National Dance Association and Dance and the Child International which fosters dance opportunities for children. Mana and Janina have been friends since their teenage years in the Polish Scouting organization. They have been dancing and singing together their whole lives. The authors invite everyone to grab a friend, young or old, and dance.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

The Haunted Manor (Straszny Dwor) in San Francisco, CA

The Pocket Opera presents The Haunted Manor (Straszny Dwor) by Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819 Minsk -1872 Warsaw) in a new translation with lyrics in English.

Straszny dwór

A NEW TRANSLATION of a buoyant and colorful comedy, by a composer revered in Poland as second only to Chopin.

“It is hard to think of a more prodigiously tuneful opera after Mozart than The Haunted Manor” wrote one critic. Greatly beloved in Poland where it is often performed, and where it is considered the quintessential Polish opera, comparable to The Bartered Bride, the quintessential Czech opera, yet it is practically unknown elsewhere. Pocket Opera, nudged by a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, comes to the rescue!

Two young soldiers, in a characteristically Polish burst of patriotic fervor, make a vow to remain single in order to be instantly available in case of need – a not unlikely prospect, considering their homeland’s turbulent history and its precarious location, sandwiched between two powerful and aggressive neighbors, Russia to the East, Prussia to the West.

This causes great consternation among the unmarried ladies in a land largely depleted of eligible men, due to decades of losses on the battlefield. Despite the somber background, a lively, exuberant, romantic comedy emerges, with a parade of colorful characters and a sparkling, ever flowing stream of dancelike melodies – the mazurka, the polonaise, the krakoviak . . .

How does the haunted manor come into play? Come and find out!

Costumes and props on-loan from the Polish Arts and Culture Foundation and Łowiczanie Polish Folk Ensemble. Łowiczanie will perform in the opera. Singers include Patrycja Poluchowicz and Dalyte Kodzis. Rehearsal space for the Pocket Opera partially subsidized by The Polish Club Inc. (San Francisco).

Performances:

  • Sunday, April 19th, 2:00 PM at the Legion of Honor – Florence Gould Theatre at the CPLH, San Francisco, CA
  • Sunday, April 26th, 2:00 PM at the Legion of Honor – Florence Gould Theatre at the CPLH, San Francisco, CA
  • Saturday, May 9th, 2:00 PM at the Julia Morgan Theater – Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Berkeley, CA

Philip Lowery from Pocket Opera will be interviewed by Zbigniew Stanczyk, “Studio Poland,” to air this coming Sunday, April 19th at 2pm on San Francisco’s KUSF (90.3 FM on your radio dial, or listen online).

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Spring Dance/Majówka 2009 at the Albany PCC

Polski klub ma zaszczyt zaprosić całą Polonię na Zabawę Wiosenną!
225 Washington Ave Ext Albany NY 12205

Sobota 2 Maja, 2009 o godzinie 8 wieczorem

Zabawiać będzie nas zespÏŒł ECHO (MA)
$15 od osoby……….
Obiad do nabycia na mjejscu ……
cash bar….

Po bilety proszę dzwonić do:
Andrzej Jakubiak 518-884-9038
Małgorzata Leoniuk 518-221-6406
Marian Wiercioch 518-235-5549

Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Poetry by Polish, Polish-American, and Polish Diaspora poets

Dr. John Z. Guzlowski and Christina Pacosz have co-edited two issue of the journal KRITYA that feature poetry by Polish, Polish-American, and Polish Diaspora poets. The April issue alone includes poems by 18 poets from Poland, the US, and England.

Dr. Guzlowski has also written a brief statement on the importance of celebrating the art and writing of the Polish Diaspora. writing and art are important.

Over the years, I would hear about a poet here or a novelist there who wrote about the Polish Diaspora, and I would track these writers down, and slowly I began to realize that I wasn’t the only one writing about the Diaspora…

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Exhibitions at the Tate

From ArtDaily: Miroslaw Balka to Undertake Next Commission in The Unilever Series at Tate Modern

LONDON.- Tate and Unilever announced that the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka will undertake the tenth commission in The Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern (13 October 2009 —“ 5 April 2010).

Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1958, Balka lives and works in Warsaw and Otwock. This will be the artist’s first public commission in the UK, which will be unveiled on Monday 12 October 2009. Miroslaw Balka is one of the most significant contemporary artists of his generation. His work has had critical acclaim both in this country and internationally. Comprising installation, sculpture and video, Balka’s works explore themes of personal history and common experience drawing on his Catholic upbringing and the fractured history of his native country, Poland. Intimate and self-reflective, his works demonstrate his central concerns of identifying personal memory within the context of historical memory.

In works such as Oasis (C.D.F.) (1989), he suggests a domestic setting in which the daily rituals of human existence are played out. Eating and sleeping, love and death are evoked using materials which have a particular resonance for Balka such as milk, wooden planks from his childhood home and pine needles salvaged from the tree that grew outside his window. In this work dedicated to the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, Balka invokes both the spiritual and the everyday.

Central to Balka’s work is the use of materials of humble quality such as ash, felt, soap, salt and hair to give a sense of spirituality through their association with lives lived and memories left behind. Salt, for example, alludes to human emotions in the form of sweat or tears, whilst soap evokes the intimate yet universal daily rituals of cleansing as explored in Hanging Soap Women (2000), in which used bars of soap donated by women are strung together on a wire. In the installation, 190 x 90 x 4973 (2008), Balka constructs a wooden walkway with walls measuring 190cm high (the artist’s height) without any ceiling and made from simple common building materials such as plywood, creating a claustrophobic tunnel with no visible destination.

Memorials play an important role in Polish society but also in Balka’s personal experience —“ his grandfather was a monumental stonemason and his father an engraver of tombstones. His early performances and sculpture referred to his experience of the rituals of Catholicism, perhaps made more intense in a country where religion was repressed…

I would love to see this. If we reflect on this work we see the underlying Catholic connection – the communion of saints, the Church triumphant. It is our connection, raw and closest to the heart, seen through eyes of faith, made beautiful.

For more information visit the Tate

Also from the Tate: Symbolism in Poland and Britain from 14 March to 21 June, 2009.

Perspective, Political, , , , ,

All for fear

From TPMCafe: Huntington revisited

After Professor Samuel Huntington passed away on December 24, I held off commenting on his work during the first 30 days of mourning out of respect for the norms that govern such a period. I believe we are now ready for a balanced review of his work.

The theme that runs throughout Huntington’s various works is best characterized as a theory of fear. His books typically identify a mounting threat, such as Mexican immigrants, Islamic civilization, or democratic proclivities, and then point to the need for strong national-unity building measures and mobilization of the people (including militarization) in response to the barbarians at the gates. Sometimes, the argument is formulated in basically analytical terms: If the required vigorous responses to the particular challenge at hand are not forthcoming, various calamities will ensue (e.g., the U.S. will lose a large part of its territory to Mexico and its Anglo-Protestant identity will be undermined) that will implicitly call for stronger countermeasures. In other cases, advocacy for powerful antidotes is quite explicit. As Huntington puts it in the Foreword to Who Are We?, he is writing as a patriot and a scholar, in that order.

Taken on its own, the threat-response thesis is unproblematic, a correlation the validity of which even people without social training can readily discern, and one that has often been repeated in the annals of social analysis. When the Nazis were about to overrun Britain, the country suspended habeas corpus. And few, even among the strongest supporters of Israel, would deny that while continuous threats from armed neighbors and terrorists and the responses to these threats have helped keep the segments of Israeli society together, they have also involved a measure of militarization and have imposed limits on civil rights.

The key issue then is to determine whether a nation truly faces particular threats or whether such concerns are largely drummed up, if not totally manufactured–say, in order to keep a nation under the control of one powerful elite or another and to make its citizens accept various governmental measures that they otherwise would not tolerate. These measures might include the curtailment of rights, economic belt-tightening, and discrimination against foreigners, among others. It is a familiar issue, seen for example in the debates over whether or not Saddam actually possessed nuclear weapons that could pose an imminent threat to the United States. Even more recently, it has been witnessed in the argument over whether or not Social Security is indeed in “crisis.” We must ask: If the various threats are real, what is their magnitude? And if the dangers are vastly exaggerated, what purposes are served by such a politics of fear…

A good read, putting our country’s trends in perspective. The only point I would make is that Huntington just represented one side of the fear mongering elitist class. It really isn’t left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican. The sins are the same, the power grab in a different dress; with all the dresses from the same nation over individual dressmaker. Sadly, our rights diminish, our freedoms like sands through the fingers of a fear filled child.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Learning culture, from the family on up

From the Buffalo News: Dance troupe, trip to Poland connect teen to her roots

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. But where did we come from? At one point in history, your ancestors likely emigrated to the U. S. from someplace else. Do you know from where —“and when —“ they came?

Nineteen-year-old Christina Slomczewski does.

Christina, a sophomore at Daemen College, takes great pride in her family’s history. She grew up in a home in Buffalo based on Polish traditions, and she often heard her grandmother speak the language.

—As a child, I always heard my grandmother talking to family and friends in Polish, and it always seemed like a bonding experience,— said Christina.

Christina’s great-great-grandparents emigrated to the United States. Even though her ties to Poland are not extremely close, the tradition has been passed down since those first relatives set foot on American soil. The family eats Polish foods such as ham, potatoes, pierogi a dough pocket filled with fruit, meat, cheese or potatoes and kielbasa, a Polish sausage. They also celebrate swenconka, or a blessing of Easter food the day before Easter.

So, naturally when Christina was offered the chance to travel to Poland, she jumped at the opportunity. Last summer Christina went to Poland for a month with the Kosciuszko Foundation. The foundation is an organization which helps children in Poland learn English from American teachers. Even without a teaching degree, Christina was able to spend her time in the city of Przypok, Poland, as a teacher’s assistant, teaching the English language to students ages 9 to 14.

—While I was there, the teacher and I did lessons with the kids until lunchtime. And in the afternoon we played games with them. It was a lot of fun and the children were really nice,— she says.

“Believe it or not, the U. S. and Poland are a lot more alike than most people think,— says Christina. —They have shopping malls like we have here —“ and they even have a lot of American based foods. [But] I realized how lucky we are to have so many things in the U. S.— Christina says: —Every day we take for granted the little things, like clean tap water and free public restrooms. In Poland you have to pay two dollars for a small bottle of water and 50 cents every time you needed to use the bathroom—

Christina is currently a member of Western New York’s largest Polish-American cultural and dance group, Harmony Polish Folk Ensemble. Harmony was founded by several families with Polish ties. They have upwards of 50 members, who range in age from four to 75.

Manya Pawlak-Metzler, president of Harmony, says she is always very impressed with Christina’s —ready-to-go— attitude. —Christina is reliable, dedicated, and eternally upbeat. Her ability to adapt to frequent change is unparalleled, and her skill in level of dance has recently resulted in her placement as a junior instructor for our organization,— said Pawlak-Metzler.

Harmony’s mission is to expose Western New York to Polish culture through traditional song, dance, and simple language lessons. But on a less dramatic scale, the group is also out to prove those who believe Polish dancing is all polka, very, very wrong.

—I think that the people who usually associate [our] dancing with polka all the time are surprised. They get to see the more traditional side of Polish dancing.— Christina said.

—I’m proud to show where my family came from every time I dance with Harmony. Just within the hour show we put on for people, they get to live as if they were one of those Polish villagers, and they take home with them a story which they can tell their families for generations to come.—

The article points to experiences much like my own (although, I was never a dancer…). Knowledge of ones roots, cultural connections, being in the family, and most especially the extended family. Those are the experiences that give us a core sense of warmth, connection, and of being grounded. As we mature those experiences blossom into a deeper knowledge, studied history, and all its intricacies. That knowledge doesn’t destroy our our starting point, it only deepens our understanding of it.

Beyond the family, the article points to the support of church and community, both of which are essential in establishing a sense of self.

All Right Reserved © 2005 - 2023