Seth Freed Wessler
GET UPDATES FROM Seth Freed Wessler
 
Seth Freed Wessler is a writer in Brooklyn, New York, whose work explores the politics of race, inequality and the nation state. He grew up in Maine and lived and worked in New England and California. Seth has written extensively on immigration, the safety-net, the recession and jobs, and family policy. He is a senior researcher at the Applied Research Center, a think tank on race, and an investigative writer for ColorLines.com. At ARC, Seth has authored reports on the recession, organizing and workers rights. His stories can be found in publications including ColorLines.com, The Texas Observer, In These Times, The Huffington Post, theGrio.com and Link TV.

Blog Entries by Seth Freed Wessler

How Immigration Reform Got Caught in the Deportation Dragnet

Posted October 7, 2010 | 19:02:26 (EST)

Shahed Hossain is a Texan to the core. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence just outside of Fort Worth, dated a young woman whose mother worked as an accountant for a military contractor, went fishing on the river with his best friend, and held a weekend high school...

Read Post

Unanimous Supreme Court Narrows Deportation Pipeline

Posted June 15, 2010 | 01:05:26 (EST)

In a hugely significant unanimous decision Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that a documented immigrant convicted of two minor drug-possession crimes will not face mandatory deportation. The ruling could drastically alter implementation of a controversial 1996 law that limited discretion for immigration judges and helped drive rising deportation numbers....

Read Post

Israel, Gaza and the 'Lynching' of Morality

Posted June 2, 2010 | 14:35:20 (EST)

A peculiar reference has emerged from Israel's murderous weekend siege of a group of civilian ships in international waters: the lynch mob. The metaphor, though, has not been conjured to describe the actions of the Israeli military, which killed at least nine people after soldiers descended from helicopters onto a...

Read Post

The Far-Right Movement Behind Arizona Copycat Bills

Posted May 4, 2010 | 20:08:11 (EST)

State lawmakers pushing a new crop of immigration-enforcement bills are overwhelmingly affiliated with a network tied to eugenics and anti-Latino fear-mongering.

Cross-posted from ColorLines

The growing number of immigration-enforcement bills in state legislatures around the country are not merely following Arizona's lead. Rather, the bills--which legislators have...

Read Post

Congress Doesn't Work for the Unemployed [VIDEO]

Posted April 9, 2010 | 18:24:20 (EST)


Cross-posted from RaceWire

The Senate gets back to work next week after its spring break and the opening fight will almost certainly be over unemployment insurance. Before they adjourned, Senators...

Read Post

The Criminal Flaw in Obama's Immigration Vision

Posted March 19, 2010 | 14:00:00 (EST)

2010-03-19-GettyImages_86341997.jpg

On Sunday, March 21, tens of thousands of immigrant rights supporters will march on Washington, demanding a fix to the broken immigration system. It'll come just days after Senators Schumer and Graham outlined their immigration proposal, a plan Obama said "should...

Read Post

New York Abandons Role as Sanctuary for Immigrants

Posted October 26, 2009 | 12:58:51 (EST)

Coauthored by Janis Rosheuvel and Seth Wessler

New York is a global city, a mash up of people from everywhere. New Yorkers like to boast that we don't care where our neighbors came from since they are an essential part of our community now. But these values are under attack....

Read Post

Torn Apart by Deportation, Families Struggle to Stay Together

Posted October 24, 2009 | 14:56:55 (EST)

In recent months, the Obama administration has announced plans to expand the 287(g) program despite widespread abuses and racial profiling. It's also pouring money into "Secure Communities," a program that puts immigration agents into local jails. Meanwhile, more beds are being added to the vast and notoriously flawed...

Read Post

30% Unemployment, Pre-Recession: Immigrant Communities Need Real Recovery

Posted August 26, 2009 | 00:00:11 (EST)

Last week, the world's central bankers got together for a little strategy session in Colorado, and declared that the recovery is on its way. This is the way it works with recessions. They ravage the world, leave millions hungry and homeless, and are eventually said to be 'over.'

For...

Read Post

GM Bankruptcy Hurts People of Color Hardest. Workers Desperately Need EFCA.

Posted June 4, 2009 | 16:12:20 (EST)

When General Motors filed for bankruptcy on Monday, it left behind a long trail of grievers -- twenty-one thousand of them. The loss of these good, union jobs and the many more that will be shed when related businesses close are devastating families and communities. For black workers,...

Read Post

Stop the Next American Nightmare

Posted May 18, 2009 | 19:02:28 (EST)

This weekend the New York Times reported that middle class families of color have been most hurt by the subprime crisis in New York City. The article confirms previous findings that show middle and upper income borrowers of color across the country are more likely to receive predatory, high...

Read Post

It's Time to Rethink Our Welfare Policy

Posted February 5, 2009 | 11:02:12 (EST)

Earlier this week the New York Times reported that even as many states have skyrocketing unemployment, their welfare rolls are shrinking. As a researcher for a racial justice think tank, I've been traveling the country collecting accounts of how this recession is playing out in the lives of every day...

Read Post