NEWSRACE & HUMAN RIGHTS

In May, Vietnamese authorities responded to a land rights protest by the Hmong minority group in northern Vietnam with a harsh crack down. They detained over 100 people, and hundreds more have been reported in hiding.

In response, Bruce Thao launched a petition calling on the US State Depart to speak out about this human rights violation, successfully mobilizing first hundreds and then thousands of people to speak up for the Hmong.

I asked him a few questions to help get a better picture of the situation, and it became clear that this recent crack down is just the most recent incident in a multi-generational pattern of persecution. He told me, “My parents are Hmong refugees who fled Laos during the Vietnam War. They've endured war, migration, and refugee camps. I have also worked with Hmong in Thailand and have seen first hand the level of discrimination and high levels of poverty the Hmong live in in Southeast Asia as a result of being ethnic minorities, and particularly given our alignment with the United States during the Vietnam War. I can never turn my back on my people."

When a few passengers on an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight, a carrier run by Delta, noticed two imams dressed in Islamic garb on their flight on Friday, they asked that the passengers be removed.

So what did the pilot do? He went right ahead and kicked the Muslim passengers off the flight!

Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul, who hold high religious positions in the Muslim community, were heading from Tennessee to North Carolina when the incident occurred. According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations, the men "went through security, even went through secondary security, and got on the plane."

The plane was taxiing out when the passengers complained that they were uncomfortable with the men being on their flight.

In an ironic twist of fate, the men were headed to North Carolina for a conference on prejudice against Muslims, or Islamaphobia.

With only 150 signatures sent to Georgia legislatures, a local Native American tribe has successfully used Change.org to get a discriminatory bill dropped!

One of the Creek Tribes, the Kialegee Tribal Town, wanted to come home. Then the Georgia State Legislators tried to prevent Indian Tribes that are recognized by the state from acquiring land for purposes other than casinos.

After the legislators got over 100 e-mails through this Change.org campaign, the House Judiciary Committee signed off the bill as "died in committee."

"We’ve drawn a line in the dirt, and it happens to be our dirt," said Wallace Seabolt of The Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee, who started the petition. "We don’t ask anything except to be allowed to practice out culture, our traditions, and to share that... I think Change.org is really great. I’ll be in touch if there are any more things we need to work on.”

These tribes are recognized by Georgia and the bill (SB 62) would have unconstitutionally placed a severe hardship to require them to wait until the General Assembly is in session to get approval for a purchase or transfer of land. Local Native American activists argued, successfully, that such a policy would constitute illegal interference over American Indian tribes and violate the American Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, Subsection 1302(8).

A big congrats to everyone involved, and thanks for taking action!

How many people have Miami Police fatally shot since last July?

Not one, or even two or three, but a shocking seven.

Two of the victims were reportedly unarmed. All were African American, and all of the officers involved in the shootings are Hispanic.

To say that these details have raised eyebrows would be an understatement. The NAACP, the ACLU, People United to Lead the Struggle for Equality, Miami Commissioner Richard P. Dunn II, among many others, joined Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson in the charge to prompt the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the series of shootings. Change.org echoed the call for action last week by publishing an article and launching a petition that’s garnered more than 200 supporters calling on US Attorney Gen. Eric Holder to initiate a federal investigation into the Miami Police killings.

In the popular imagination, the Miami Police force has long been linked to the 1980s TV show “Miami Vice” in which two handsome cops - one black, one white - solve crimes wearing flashy, pastel suits. Fast forward to the present: the Miami Police is still leaving its mark on popular culture, but far from the glamorized way that Crockett and Tubbs did. In a pilot for a reality TV show filmed in January called “Miami’s Finest SOS,” officers stalk the streets to round up African Americans, with one policeman declaring, “I like to hunt.”

That remark has raised eyebrows given that a vocal segment of the Miami community has accused the police department of literally hunting down black men and killing them. In an eight-month period ending in February, Miami Police have fatally shot seven black men, two of whom may have been unarmed, according to the New York Times. To boot, these killings appear to be racially charged. While each victim was African American, each of the officers involved is Latino.

New Yorkers have just about seen and heard everything, so it takes a lot to get them riled up. But when an anti-abortion billboard recently debuted in Soho, New York liberals fiercely objected.

That’s because the billboard - put up at Watts Street and Avenue of the Americas by Texas group Life Always - featured a picture of a small black girl combined with this message: “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

The billboard so offended New York City Councilwoman Letitia James and her legislative aide Aja Worthy-Davis that yesterday they launched a Change.org petition targeting Life Always and billboard owner Lamar Advertising, asking them to remove it. Later in the day, Lamar Advertising announced that it would take the billboard down.

“This was a dirty attack on Planned Parenthood and on our reproductive services for women,” Councilwoman James told Change.org. “To mask it under the guise of being concerned about black children was offensive to me.”

Victory!

While massive protests hold the state's attention, Wisconsin Republicans are advancing voting laws that could disenfranchise thousands of the state's poor and minority voters.

This week, with Democratic Senators still in hiding to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker's plan to bust public sector unions, unopposed Republicans advanced Senate Bill 6, a law that would require voters to show ID at the polls.

If passed, SB-6 could be the most restrictive voter ID law in the nation.

Over the weekend we reported about Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's refusal to denounce a proposal to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan infamous for leading his rebels in a massacre of black Union soldiers, with an official Mississippi license plate.

After more than a week of side stepping the issue and telling the state NAACP and others that he would not denounce the notion of recognizing the racist confederate general, the governor, who has presidential aspirations, seems to have felt the political heat and yesterday stated for the first-time that he would veto any measure that seeks to honor General Forrest.

Yes!

This month, Wisconsin became the latest state to join a federal program that will lead to skyrocketing deportations of hardworking people and a scary uptick in civil rights violations in the state.

The program, called "Secure Communities", works like this: When someone is arrested, state or local officials can run the fingerprints through an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) database to determine the person's criminal or immigration history. If local officials receive a "hit", immigration officials are notified and investigate the case to determine whether that person should be deported.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims that the program's purpose is to find and deport those convicted of major drug, national security or violent crimes - a goal that most folks can agree on.

Looks like California's celebration of Martin Luther King Day took a turn for the... Arizonian. This month students and faculties from two California campuses are fighting the demolition of their ethnic studies programs: Asian American Studies and Cal State Los Angeles and American Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Late last year Dean James Henderson at CSULA offered students and faculty a grim holiday gift – notification that he had decided to suspend Asian American Studies, indefinitely. To date, the only explanation Henderson has offered is lack of faculty, student, and community support – which he announced at a November 29 meeting to a roomful of concerned faculty, students, and community members. Since then, a grassroots movement in support of retaining the program has been swelling both on and off campus (check out Immigrant Rights blogger Gabriel Garcia's post on it).

CSULA is located in the San Gabriel Valley, which holds one of the largest Chinese populations in the country. Asian American Studies – which was just established in 2005 – failed in the Dean's eyes to meet enrollment numbers. However, the decision of a Dean to dismantle the program without prior discussion with students and faculty is a threat to more than just one department on one campus.

"Cutting AAAS is an attack on the university’s diversity and threatens the already tenuous support of the campus’ Chicano, Latin American, and Pan African Studies programs as well," explains a grassroots website launched in opposition to the suspension. In light of Arizona's recent ethnic studies ban, CSULA's decision is another threat toward the demolition of valuable ethnic studies programs throughout the country – and this isn't just a theory.