This week: Support the Healthy Hawks by donating old bikes and play equipment for kids in a pediatric unit; get some real facts, instead of protest-sign slogans, about Mexican immigrants' impact in the Midwest; recycle bunny-ear TVs instead of sending them to the landfill when the digital shift finally happens; and celebrate Juneteenth in a KCK neighborhood with a proud history of liberating slaves.
They're here, they're Mexican and lawmakers aren't doing anyone any good by scapegoating their new residents.
That was the take-home message last week, when Chicago-based researcher Rob Paral visited Kansas City to present his new study about Mexican immigration in the Midwest.
Bottom line: Our neighbors from the South are coming to Missouri and surrounding states in record numbers and the overwhelming majority aren't arriving through legal channels. Whether you're a Minuteman or an immigrati
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a presentation from Rob Paral, a researcher who suggests Mexican immigrants are coming to the Midwest is such large numbers that shunning or criminalizing workers from the other side of the southern border is both unrealistic and self-defeating.
In his definition of "Midwest," Paral didn't include Kansas. But Johnson County is very much part of this picture.
Bernardo Ramirez, executive director of Kansas City's Hispanic Economic Development Corporation,
