Hispanics

"Environmental racism" isn't a new expression. The Rev. Ben Chavis, former director of the NAACP, first used the term in 1982 to protest the location of a North Carolina toxic waste landfill. Since then numerous speakers have attempted to stoke the fires of activism by calling pollution in the inner cities the next civil rights issue.It's true that both industrialists and governments have typically put smoke-belching factories, air-polluting highways and waste-leaking landfills in communities where the people are least able to fight them.

One in a series of profiles of Maryland delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Jennifer Hosey was 7 years old the first time she volunteered for a presidential campaign — stuffing and stamping envelopes for Bill Clinton's 1992 run. She has volunteered in every election since. The Potomac resident, now 27, grew up around politics. Her mom was a longtime Democratic Party volunteer. As a student, Hosey was always looking for ways to do more for the party. This year, she is attending her first national convention and, as a delegate, formally casting a vote for President Barack Obama's nomination.

A HUGE ISSUE THAT nobody wants to talk about is bedeviling Democrats as they try to absorb the lessons of 1994 and reclaim the political center. That issue is race.The Democratic Party has long championed efforts to benefit racial minorities -- a disproportionate number of whom are poor.To aid these groups, the Democrats have backed everything from affirmative action and school integration to a vast expansion of such social safety net programs as Medicaid and food stamps. Those minorities have rewarded the Democrats with political loyalty.

An influx of immigrants is weaving a rich and varied cultural tapestry in Anne Arundel, a county already imprinted with historic ethnicity. "We have vibrant communities," said Carl O. Snowden, intergovernmental relations officer for Anne Arundel County. In some cases, the influence is so great that some county services are adapting to meet their needs. The Maryland Cooperative Extension's Anne Arundel office, for example, is experimenting with producing ethnic fruits and vegetables, such as the Chinese cabbage bok choy, to determine how they grow best here, said Dave Myers, an extension educator.

WASHINGTON -- Into the volatile political racial wars, Congress is now preparing to throw another complication -- statehood for Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico.The island has been an American commonwealth for nearly 100 years, locked in an anachronistic half-baked status that no longer makes much sense either in Washington or San Juan. Denying the territory full rights has kept it in dependent second-class limbo for too long.But the politics of elevating Puerto Rico into full participation in the union are murky, messy and even a bit mean.

Regarding The Baltimore Sun's editorial "Taking the 14th" (Aug. 15): Once again, The Sun wants to play the race game when editorializing anything that concerns illegal immigrants by stating "Republican willingness to encourage the birthright-repeal movement, with its borderline racism (75 percent of illegal immigrants are Latinos), will stamp them once more as America's white party.... ". White party? What an insult to all the blacks, Asians, Hispanics and other non-whites that help make up the Republican Party.

WASHINGTON -- Deep in the hushed archives of the Museum of Natural History, far from the thronging schoolchildren streaming past an 8-ton African elephant, Latin America specialist Laura Larco is on an expedition for the Smithsonian Institution.She dons white gloves and decides to shun the face mask she sometimes wears against decades-old dust. She gingerly removes a turn-of-the-century 8-by-10-inch glass negative from an envelope and, for the benefit of a visitor, describes a scene from the 1899-1902 U.S. occupation of Cuba:"It's a parade," she says, squinting at the image.

GEORGE MITCHELL says he's not a Supreme Court candidate because he wants to stay in the Senate and get the Clinton health care plan passed.Oh come now. If the plan isn't passed by October, when the Supreme Court convenes and when he would have to resign from the Senate, it probably isn't going to pass at all, George Mitchell or no George Mitchell.Besides, when did he get to be the key to passage? Until now every assessment of the plan's prospects in the Senate assumed the most important Democratic senators were Finance Committee Chairman Pat Moynihan, Labor and Human Resources Chairman Ted Kennedy and, perhaps, Medicare and Long-Term Care Subcommittee Chairman Jay Rockefeller.

Customers of Bank of America can request cash in English or Spanish at any of 9,000 automated-teller machines. Johns Hopkins Hospital, which has a division that expressly seeks international patients, provides medical instructions in languages that include Turkish. And some Home Depot stores direct customers to their wares in Spanish as well as English. Across the country, companies say they want to offer any assistance they can to customers who buy their services and products, whether they speak English or not. It's not only the right thing to do but also good for business, they say. Workers for whom English is a second language are also good for business.

So, if I understood her correctly, St. Mary's College History Professor Christine Adams is saying that if the truth be known women value "jobs" over parenting, and the fulfillment of such values is just not possible if women are not in control of their bodies ("For women, reproductive rights are economic issues," Sept. 18). Control, in her opinion, is that women must have the sole elective right to terminate their pregnancies to avoid being discriminated against and bullied by societal laws and mores.