May 17, 2012

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for Issues / Civil Rights/Liberties

Briefing Begins in Top Two Primary Case

February 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Last week, the first round of legal papers on California’s new Top Two Primary was filed in an influential federal appeals court.  On January 31, 2012, Michael Chamness, Daniel Frederick, and Rich Wilson filed their Opening Brief, which you can read here.

Our Brief shows that California’s Top Two Primary Law violated the rights of Californians in two troubling ways.  First, it unconstitutionally violated the rights of minor-party candidates, by forcing them to falsely state on the ballot that they have “No Party Preference”.  Second, the Top Two Primary law disenfranchised all voters who cast write-in votes in the general election.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who is being represented by Attorney General Kamala Harris, will file her opposition papers on March 1, 2012.  We will then file our Reply Brief on March 15, 2012.

The U.S. Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit) has not yet indicated when it will hear this case.  More detailed information about this grassroots effort to defend voters rights can be found here.

– Gautam Dutta

Filed Under: California, Civil Rights/Liberties, Gautam Dutta, Grassroots Activism, Voting Rights

Workers’ rights at Apple factories

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There’s been a lot of attention paid recently to the rights of workers at Foxconn factories in China. Foxconn is one of the biggest suppliers and manufacturers of Apple iPhones and iPads. There’s been a This American Life, Mike Daisy did a whole Broadway show about Steve Jobs that includes a trenchent commentary on the working conditions in Shenzhen. Now the mighty New York Times takes a microscope to factory life (and really, workers live inside the factories, which are like small bustling cities.)

Here is the saddest and most poignant description I read:

He had been promoted quickly at Foxconn, and after just a few months was in charge of a team that maintained the machines that polished iPad cases. The sanding area was loud and hazy with aluminum dust. Workers wore masks and earplugs, but no matter how many times they showered, they were recognizable by the slight aluminum sparkle in their hair and at the corners of their eyes.

While the description is almost poetic, the “twinkling dust” can be deadly.

Dust is a known safety hazard. In 2003, an aluminum dust explosion in Indiana destroyed a wheel factory and killed a worker. In 2008, agricultural dust inside a sugar factory in Georgia caused an explosion that killed 14.

So the factory explodes, and Lai, who had moved to Chengdu to be able to afford a wedding to a beautiful nursing student, was lying on the floor of the factory.

Eventually, his family arrived. Over 90 percent of his body had been seared. “My mom ran away from the room at the first sight of him. I cried. Nobody could stand it,” his brother said. When his mother eventually returned, she tried to avoid touching her son, for fear that it would cause pain.

“If I had known,” she said, “I would have grabbed his arm, I would have touched him.”

“He was very tough,” she said. “He held on for two days.”

After Mr. Lai died, Foxconn workers drove to Mr. Lai’s hometown and delivered a box of ashes. The company later wired a check for about $150,000.

That’s not an insignificant amount. Lai made $22/day, or $6864 annually if he’s pulling the 6 day workweeks that are common, and not taking any weeks off. That’s easily a lifetime of money for his family. But it doesn’t change the fact that the process of assembling all the gadgets that we love so very much (not just Apple) is a painful and laborious one done by workers who make less in a week than the cost of said gadget.

This NYTimes story doesn’t even get into the infamous suicides at Foxconn that caused the company to put up a mesh net around its periphery. for that, go watch Mike Daisey’s The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs or listen to This American Life’s episode on the turmoil within the plants, and why some workers would rather take their lives than continue working on the assembly lines.

A majority of people don’t know where Apple makes its products, nor do they really care, according to a recent poll. So I’m glad the issue is gaining traction and getting attention, because in order for these processes to change, the consumers are the ones who have to be aware and be willing to hold Apple accountable, the way that activists held Nike and Gap accountable. Apple recently released a list of their suppliers, but they still aren’t letting activists into their plants to examine the conditions. I’m not saying we shouldn’t own cell phones and tablets, just that we should be mindful of where they come from.

–Caroline

Filed Under: Caroline, Civil Rights/Liberties, Foreign Affairs, Grassroots Activism, Jobs/Employment Issues, Social Justice, Technology

A Question of Newt

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Now that Newt Gingrich has pulled off an upset victory against Mitt Romney, how far will his momentum carry?  Based on the margin of his victory Newt has a real chance of winning the GOP’s Florida primary — which would be huge.

That said, the Republican powers-that-be will make sure that Mitt Romney ultimately wins the nomination, as the remaining contenders (Gingrich, Santorum, Paul) are simply too conservative to appeal to moderate voters — which they must win in order to beat President Obama.

Here’s the good news:  by forcing Romney into a drawn out fight for the GOP nomination, Gingrich & Co. will force Romney to veer further right than he’d like, especially on hot-button issues such as immigration.  As Caroline recently noted, Romney’s now adopted the mean-spirited position of denying financial aid to students who grew up here in the US!  Needless to say, that’s no way to appeal to immigrant communities, whether Asian American or Latino.

How long will it take Romney to win — and how much will he be forced to pander to the right?  Stay tuned.

– Gautam Dutta

Filed Under: 2011-2012 Campaign, Civil Rights/Liberties, Gautam Dutta, Grassroots Activism, Immigration, Obama Administration, Republican Party

CAPAC Members Release Statements on the Passing of Civil Rights Leader Gordon Hirabayashi

January 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: The release below is from our friends at CAPAC. It went out on January 6, 2012.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 6, 2012
Contact: Gene Kim, 202.225.5464
Gene.Kim@mail.house.gov

CAPAC Members Release Statements on the Passing of Civil Rights Leader Gordon Hirabayashi

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Judy Chu, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), and Congressman Mike Honda, CAPAC Chair Emeritus, released the following statements in response to the passing of Gordon Hirabayashi.

Rep. Judy Chu:

“Gordon Hirabayashi’s passing marks a sad loss for our community and country. At a time when Japanese Americans were suffering from discrimination and internment at the hands of their own government, he stood up to challenge an unjust law and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. It wasn’t until decades later that justice was finally served, and that was only as a result of his tireless efforts and unflinching faith in the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Every generation needs someone like Dr. Hirabayashi. He was a great American, and he will be missed.”

Rep. Mike Honda:

“Gordon Hirabayashi’s dedication to the most cherished principals of American democracy created an iconic moment in the history of the civil rights movement. Gordon’s defiance of the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans is an indelible reminder that we must never let ‘war hysteria, racial prejudice and a failure of political leadership’ derail the continuing mission of America – to live as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  Gordon’s legacy is a lodestar for every American – inspiring us to work tirelessly to forge a more perfect union.”

Months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hirabayashi purposefully defied a curfew targeting citizens of Japanese ancestry, refused a directive to report to an internment camp, and was later jailed.  His case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him and upheld the government’s argument that such restrictions were necessary. He later spent a year in federal prison for refusing to complete a form to enter the armed forces that required Japanese-Americans to renounce any allegiance to the emperor of Japan. He argued that the prompt was discriminatory because it implied that Japanese Americans were loyal to a foreign power when other Americans were not required to make similar pledges. In 1986, after his case and those of other internees were reopened, he was cleared of his past convictions. As a result of this ruling, Congress passed legislation providing reparations for Japanese American internees. He stated that his case was not a Japanese-American issue, but “an American case, with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans.” Gordon Hirabayashi died earlier this week at 93 years of age.

###

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) is comprised of Members of Congress of Asian and Pacific Islander descent and members who have a strong dedication to promoting the well-being of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Currently Chaired by Congresswoman Judy Chu, CAPAC has been addressing the needs of the AAPI community in all areas of American life since it was founded in 1994.

Filed Under: Civil Rights/Liberties

AAA-Fund Defends Voter Rights

January 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Asian American Action Fund

Asian American Action Fund
707 H St NW Floor 2
Washington, DC 20001

January 7, 2012

The Honorable Paul Fong
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA  94249-0022
Re: Letter of Opposition to AB 1413

Dear Assemblymember Fong:

Asian American Action Fund opposes AB 1413 in its present form, because it rashly and needlessly bans voters from casting write-in ballots in every general election – a right Californians have enjoyed since 1891.

Since 2000, AAA-Fund, a national political organization (aaa-fund.com), has given Asian Americans a powerful voice in the political process.  Towards that end, we help elect worthy leaders who care about the needs and priorities of the Asian American community and the community-at-large.  We also organize grassroots events and discussions that enable more Asian Americans to participate in the political process.

For over a century, write-in voting has provided Californians with an important safety valve.  If a candidate suddenly withdraws, becomes incapacitated or is charged with a crime, it is often too late to remove his or her name from the ballot – depriving the voters of the critical opportunity to vote for their second choice.  Toward that end, write-in voting gives voters the ability to choose the candidate of their choice.

In November 2010, a write-in candidate (Lisa Murkowski) was elected to the U.S. Senate.  Over the past century, California has elected one write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate and two write-in candidates for the U.S. Congress.  Significantly, even the State of Washington – which recently adopted the “Top Two” primary system – allows voters to cast write-in votes in the general election.

Thank you for hearing our serious concerns about AB 1413.  Please do not hesitate to contact us at 415.236.2048 or info AT aaa-fund.org with any questions.

Sincerely,

Gautam Dutta
Gautam Dutta, Esq.
Executive Director
Asian American Action Fund

Filed Under: AAA Fund, California, Civil Rights/Liberties, Grassroots Activism, Political Reform, The Editors, Voting Rights

Youth arrests for violent crime reach lowest level in 20 years

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This post was originally published at Reclaiming Futures Every Day
Good news from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). In their recently released Juvenile Arrests 2009 bulletin (the latest year data is available), OJJDP analysts found that in 2009, youth arrests for violent crime reached the lowest level in 20 years.

From the news release:

According to the 2009 data, U.S. law enforcement agencies made an estimated 1.9 million arrests of persons younger than 18 years old, nine percent fewer than in 2008. Between 2008 and 2009, there were declines in nearly every offense category. The number of juvenile arrests for Violent Crime Index offenses–murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault–decreased ten percent from 2008, reaching its lowest level since the early 1990s.

Filed Under: Civil Rights/Liberties, Liz Wu, Social Justice

Vaclav Havel, RIP (1936-2011)

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.

– Vaclav Havel

We mourn the passing of a leader who bravely fought for political freedom.

Filed Under: Civil Rights/Liberties, Foreign Affairs, Gautam Dutta, Voting Rights

How the rightwing gets progressive money to tear down teachers

December 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Former AAA Fund blogger Lee Fang has a great investigative article up in the Nation (“How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools) on how the Gates Foundation is giving conservative think tank American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) nearly half a million – $400,000 – to sponsor education reform bills at the state level. ALEC is not a friendly organization – it doesn’t promote the health and welfare of underserved communities, or anything that you might associate with the good that the Gates Foundation does. It is the main policy organizing arm of the right wing that pushes the most heinous anti-immigrant (SB 1070 clones), anti-civil rights (they push all the restrictive voter bills), anti-worker, anti-health care reform bills at the state level, and they try to do it across all the states. Basically, if a large corporation like Blue Cross Blue Shield has a bill they want to promote, they give money to ALEC to help them get state legislators to sponsor and move their bills along. 85% of their funding comes from corporations.

I can say this from first hand experience – I spent more than a year fighting anti-immigrant, anti-worker policies across the states that ALEC was pushing. And now everyone knows the terrible impact that they can have, from Arizona to Alabama.</rant>

Going back to Gates funding an anti-teacher agenda. Crooks and Liars has additional analysis:

Education for profit is lucrative and alluring, especially to people with large sums of money parked and waiting for investment in big-profit items. So when Bill Gates claims to stand for education reform in this country, I place him squarely in the category of those who stand to profit from privatized education.

Teachers are up against a wide range and nexus of for-profit education corporations, companies that make money by performing measurements of No Child Left Behind (SchoolNet is one), venture capital firms (led by KleinerPerkins), hedge funds and finance types, elected officials, and foundations (Gates, Eli Broad, Dell, etc.) which are seeking to push anti-union and anti-teacher proposals. These groups hire high-priced lobbyists to promote their agenda:

Levesque noted that reform efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year, Levesque advised, reformers should “spread” the unions thin “by playing offense” with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, “even if it doesn’t pass…to keep them busy on that front.” She also advised paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public. Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain charter bills to fly “under the radar.”

Public sector workers have been under attack this cycle, and there’s no doubt that teachers don’t have the clout to combat these bills on their own. 

Lobbyists like Levesque have made 2011 the year of virtual education reform, at last achieving sweeping legislative success by combining the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations. Thanks to this synergistic pairing, policies designed to boost the bottom lines of education-technology companies are cast as mere attempts to improve education through technological enhancements, prompting little public debate or opposition. In addition to Florida, twelve states have expanded virtual school programs or online course requirements this year. This legislative juggernaut has coincided with a gold rush of investors clamoring to get a piece of the K-12 education market. It’s big business, and getting bigger: One study estimated that revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.

Needless to say, I don’t think online education is the main solution to our education crisis. And I’m definitely opposed to companies profiting from replacing real live teachers with video teachers. That’s not a substitute teacher, that’s a virtual teacher, as in virtually no education.

Thirteen other states have enacted laws to expand or initiate so-called school choice programs this year.

Meanwhile, ALEC has continued to slip laws written by education-tech lobbyists onto the books. In Tennessee, Republican State Representative Harry Brooks didn’t even bother changing the name of ALEC’s Virtual Public Schools Act before introducing it as his own legislation. Asked by the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Tom Humphrey where he got the idea for the bill, Brooks readily admitted that a K12 Inc. lobbyist helped him draft it. Governor Bill Haslam signed Brooks’s bill into law in May. The statute allows parents to apply nearly every dollar the state typically spends per pupil, almost $6,000 in most areas, to virtual charter schools, as long as they are authorized by the state.

It’s worse than charter schools – it’s video schools. The onslaught is coming, be forewarned and arm yourself with knowledge.

– Caroline

Filed Under: 2011-2012 Campaign, Caroline, Civil Rights/Liberties, Demographics, Education, Jobs/Employment Issues, Republican Party, Social Justice, Voting Rights

OWS is an opt-out movement

November 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I have been struggling with how to define and explain Occupy Wall Street to people who ask. Is it the sunny park in front of Los Angeles City Hall where Tom Morrello played for an enthusiastic and diverse crowd of people willing to share food, materials, ideals? Is it the drum circle at Zuccotti Park (not really a park but just a patch of concrete as many such NYC parks are defined) in the shadow of 4 skyscrapers? Is it the hapa family with kids camping out at McPherson Square? Is it millions of Americans who are seeking work, from the recent college grad who has tends of thousands in loans but no way of paying them off, to the almost 60 year old small businessman who has to declare bankruptcy right before he was supposed to retire? I see Occupy Wall Street in the Asian American faces of the 99 percent, in my friends and family who have been looking for work for so long, ashamed of not being able to contribute to their families in a striving immigrant culture that doesn’t want to talk about unemployment.

Even friends who are likely to be sympathetic are frustrated by the lack of a cohesive message and goals. Broadly I think of OWS as being about addressing financial inequality. Matt Taibbi in “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests” has a whole article about how he sees OWS as being essentially opt-out, seeking an exit from the grind: “We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire.”

He admits that he didn’t get it at first, “But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it’s at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned “democracy,” tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.”

He addresses his ambivalence about the cops, who are a part of the 99% (and some cops do recognize this) as a target of the OWS movement, because they are working class too.But ultimately it’s not about the cops doing their job, it’s about the decisionmakers who prioritize what crimes get prosecuted:

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all.

. . . People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It’s about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a “beloved community” free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn’t need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

This is what is moving about Occupy Wall Street – people want change, and they are taking the time to deliberate about what changes they want to see during General Assembly. Folks are participating in the dialogue of the commons again, and they are reclaiming the commons space. People are questioning again. I actually don’t know if OWS is permanently an opt-out movement, or if the whole can even be described as such – Occupy the Polls and caucuses is happening in Iowa and New Hampshire because people till see the importance of electoral participation. Not as a be all, end all, not as a “once we elect this woman or man, s/he will create the changes that we want” but as a longer term discourse about what kind of society we want to be. Communities across America are coming back together, picking up the pieces, and strengthening our neighborhoods. We see it in upstate New York, where a community decided to build their own department store and sold shares to local residents. We see it in the tent cities across America, where people are congregating because they care again, and they care enough to join others. So in a sense, I feel that OWS is not as much opt-out as it is the pause before these disillusioned Americans opt back in, and how.

–Caroline

 

Filed Under: 2011-2012 Campaign, Caroline, Civil Rights/Liberties, Culture, Economy, Grassroots Activism, Jobs/Employment Issues

TX GOP’s Illegal Plan to Target Minority Voters

October 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Texas lawmaker Hubert Vo, a member of the AAA-Fund Honorary Board, recently alerted us to the GOP’s illegal plan to target communities of color.

Having failed to defeat Rep. Vo at the polls, the GOP is now trying to rob him of his district.  As Lenora Solora-Pohlman, Chair of the Texas Democratic Party, explains in the Houston Chronicle:

The Republican-dominated Legislature reduced the representation of Harris County in the Texas House from 25 seats to 24 seats. It paired Democratic state Reps. Scott Hochberg and Hubert Vo in order to eliminate a district where minorities make up an overwhelming majority of the electorate and have consistently voted together to elect their candidate of choice. Furthermore, the illegally gerrymandered House plan gives Anglo voters control of 14 of 24 House districts, meaning that 33 percent of the county’s population effectively controls 58 percent of the county. In other areas, the Republican House map leaves a significant portion of the Hispanic population stranded in a district where it has little influence.

Based on the demographic changes in our county, the Republican maps deny accurate representation to the communities responsible for the population growth, a blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act. A map drawn in compliance with the Voting Rights Act would have ensured that those populations responsible for the overwhelming majority of the population growth in Harris County were provided the electoral opportunities they deserve. To be clear, choosing to decrease Harris County’s representation doesn’t just hurt minorities; it hurts all Harris County residents, who will see their voices diminished in the Legislature.

And recently, a panel of three federal judges ordered Texas not to move forward with its redistricting plans (via TPM):

Justice Department lawyers have declared in court that they believe the congressional and statehouse redistricting plans signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry have been adopted at least in part for the purpose of “diminishing the ability of citizens of the United States, on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, to elect their preferred candidates.”

AAA-Fund is proud to support Rep. Vo, the first Asian American Democrat to be elected to the Texas statehouse, in his fight against the GOP’s outrageous — and illegal — misuse of power.  Because lawsuits cost money, any donation you can give will help Rep. Vo fight back against this Republican power grab.

No one — and no party — is above the law.  Please support Rep. Vo’s courageous efforts at hubertvo.com.

– Gautam Dutta

Filed Under: Civil Rights/Liberties, Gautam Dutta, Political Reform, Texas, Voting Rights
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »