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Will Virginia Tech 'College Columbine' Massacre Lead to Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant Sentiments?
 The 10,000 School Board Members meeting here in San Francisco for our National School Boards Association or NSBA conference are observing moments of silence and reflection on the horrifying Virginia Tech massacre yesterday morning. But many Asian Americans around the country are already bracing for a potential anti-immigrant or anti-Asian backlash. The Associated Press reported this morning: "A Virginia Tech senior from South Korea killed at least 30 people locked inside a school building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, the university and police told a news conference Tuesday... Officers identified the classroom shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department at Virginia Tech and lived in a different dorm on campus. Cho committed suicide after the attacks, and there was no indication Tuesday of any motive. “He was a loner, and we’re having difficulty finding information about him,” school spokesman Larry Hincker said." The 'beware of young Asian male" hysteria is already spreading - see Radical Hapa's recent post - VTU Shooting: Targetting the Asian. Jenn's Excellent Reappropriate Blog gives more of the anti-Asian backlash and info on the killer - a 23-year-old South Korean born permanent resident of the United States since 1992 when he immigrated as an eight-year-old. Numerous websites and blogs are calling the shooter everything from "foreign looking" to "nerdy Asian guy" to even more racist desciptions. Although many Asian Americans share the horror of the killings and many of us will be working to help the families of those who were injured or killed, we also have to be supportive of Korean and Korean-American communities. In addition, we should also be supportive of the immigrant communities around the Virginia Tech campus and the region to ensure that our communities and all immigrant communities, in particular, are not blamed for the actions of one person. Keith Kamisugi of the Equal Justice Society says that we have to monitor the mainstream media closely - The Asian American Journalists Association yesterday issued a press release urging media covering the tragedy to “avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason.”“There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people. The effect of mentioning race can be powerfully harmful. It can subject people to unfair treatment based simply on skin color and heritage,” said the release....AAJA reminded members of the media that the standards of news reporting should be universal and applied equally no matter the platform or medium, including blogs. It seems to me that the recent killings at Virginia Tech and the upcoming 8th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre on April 20th both serve as a wake up call to end our culture of violence or what Michael Moore and other media watchers call our 'American Gun Culture' and the growing alienation of many young people in our schools and colleges. Hopefully, after the families have been conforted and supported and we have taken a step back from the media hysteria, we can get back to our work supporting our public schools and reinvesting in our communities so that we can prevent any future Columbine or VTech Massacres. Labels: asian american, immigrant, racism, students
Opposing surveilance cameras
The city of San Francisco has lately been installing surveilance cameras. However, studies, including this British study (pdf) show that by and large, such cameras are ineffective at reducing crime. The police commission has already aproved a number of cameras. A proposed camera at 16th and Mission is to be discussed on Wednesday's Police Commission meeting. It seems likely that a camera at that location would simply push activity into the surrounding neighborhood. There will be a meeting in advance of the Police Commission meeting on Monday, December 4 at 6 p.m. at Marshall Elementary School cafeteria (1575 15th Street , 15th and Capp). There is further information on reasons to oppose video surveilance at the website of the ACLU of Northern California.
We're Off to See the Wizard - Michael Franti/Spearhead - 911 Power to the Peaceful - SF Golden Gate Park
 My 6 year old and I are off to the annual Power to the Peaceful Concert organized by grassroots activists and peace and justice loving folks from our neighborhoods. Props to Michael Franti, all the bands and organizers here for making it family friendly and doing their thing for peace and justice in our City and throughout the world. SF Power to the Peaceful Sat Sept 9 Speedway Meadow - GG Park - SF Last month I posted this on my myspace blog area - I just heard spearhead's new song - I know I'm not alone - title cut from the new film/cd bundle - i hope they may have a hit on their
hands, lots of hooks, kind of U2-sounding with typical spearhead soulful/reggae backdrop.
the free power to the peaceful fest in golden gate park is coming up fast on Sept. 9th - PPTTP i think is really is the closest gathering we have to the 'be-ins' and summeroflove-ish free festivals we have had over the years here in Golden Gate Park.
Senate Approves CAFTA
OK, so we're done with the preliminaries. The Full Senate has approved CAFTA. Now the real fight begins. In the House. Global Exchange has a "Get Involved" page. I noticed that one of the Democrats who caved in to big business crossed the aisle was California's own Dianne Feinstein. I wrote her a letter: Dear Senator Feinstein,
I would like to know your justifications for voting in favor of the Central American Free Trade Act (CAFTA).
As a Californian, I am proud of our state's legacy of environmental and labor protections. CAFTA, like NAFTA before it, at best gives lip service to those concerns. In addition, the investor rules of CAFTA represent a serious barrier to our ability to continue to protect our environment and our people.
Although I have supported you in the past, and have distributed literature advocating your election, I will be hard-pressed to do so in your upcoming re-election campaign.
Please help me understand your position. If I had had more coffee before I wrote this I would have mentioned the report critical of CAFTA's labor protections that the Bush Administration tried to suppress.
The budget is done!
I spent the last two weeks, and almost all of the last three days in City Hall in the budget hearings and the budget is finally done. I look forward to seeing how the reporters view what happened tomorrow since I can't be totally objective at this point. Plus I'm too tired to even try to form sentences. There were a ton of victories for the community, privatization efforts were staved off, and public health nurses got restored. Sup Ammiano pledged to find money to stop the closure of the worker's comp clinic and then the budget was put to rest. Tempers were definitely flaring in the last few hours of the budget battle and I am really pleased it is all over, but one really great thing happened. Public Defender Jeff Adachi was there waiting to hear about the fate of several new positions for his office and I talked him into giving me one of his t-shirts from the Pride Parade which read, "SF Public Defender--Getting You Off Since 1921." Angela Calvillo staffed Sup Ammiano for the budget committee and did a great job, as did Tom. Also, props to Betty Chan, aide to Sup McGoldrick for her excellent, persistent advocacy for the public health nurses and to Boris, aide to Mirkarimi, who got up to speed very quickly on key issues. Mirkarimi was solid on all the progressive items on the budget and also fought to stave off privatization efforts. And McGoldrick? Well, I love the guy. And man did he do some heavy lifting over the last 24 hours. And on a final note, John Avalos, aide to Sup Daly, did a fantastic job of herding all the progressive/labor/non-profit cats into a good coalition--Coleman Advocates, Senior Action Network, HSN, ACORN, and SEIU Local 790 all worked very well together to bring about a balanced budget.
CAFTA creeps forward. Other folks weigh in.
As the House Ways and Means Committee passes CAFTA, s couple of Democratic Congresspeople weigh in: Democratic rising star Senator Barack Obama: Globalization is not someone's political agenda. It is a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing the world's economy, producing winners and losers along the way. The question is not whether we can stop it, but how we respond to it. It's not whether we should protect our workers from competition, but what we can do to fully enable them to compete against workers all over the world.
So far, America has not effectively answered these questions and American workers are suffering as a result. I meet these workers all across Illinois, workers whose jobs moved to Mexico or China and are now competing with their own children for jobs that pay 7 bucks an hour. In town meetings and union halls, I've tried to tell these workers the truth--that these jobs aren't coming back, that globalization is here to stay and that they will have to train more and learn more to get the new jobs of tomorrow.
But when they wonder how they will get this training and this education, when they ask what they will do about their health-care bills and their lower wages and the general sense of financial insecurity that seems to grow with each passing day, I cannot look them in the eyes and tell them that their government is doing a single thing about these problems.
That is why I won't vote for CAFTA. In the Black Enterprise, Congresswoman Maxine Waters: According to one CBC member, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), CAFTA is a bad deal for both American workers and entrepreneurs. “These trade agreements simply are allowing the exportation of jobs to third-world countries and cheap markets. For all of the jobs that leave these industries, African Americans get fewer jobs. They are not able to be employed because we're losing our manufacturing base in particular.” Waters says that the North American Free Trade Agreement, passed in 1994, has had a devastating impact on American workers, exporting almost one million manufacturing jobs to Mexico and turning a $2 billion trade surplus with that country into a $45 billion trade deficit.
Willie Brown to "mediate" between Badlands and ...And Castro for All
According to the Examiner today, Gavin Newsom has called in Willie Brown to "mediate" (which likely means "make go away") between Badlands and ...And Castro for All. I'm not sure what's likely to happen with this, but I guarantee that we'll hear more accusations that all the folks taking issue with Badlands are part of some evil plot in behalf of Greg Bronstein, another bar owner. That seems to be the strategy of Les Natali and crew: Attack their critics rather than actually focus on the issue (hey, it works for Karl Rove). I will say, though, that the insistence by the ...And Castro For All folks that Natali "apologize" for calling them (essentially) tools of the other bar owner is perplexing to me. I mean, the guy's a racist sleazeball, who the hell cares what he says?
The Daily Dirt: Sandoval and Dufty
How low can they go? Over the last few days, I have been astounded at the sleazy tactics people have been employing. Last week I commented on how repulsive I found it that some political consultants are going after Supervisor Sandoval's home. After a bruising battle where he faced some pretty egregious mailers that tried to depict him as anti-Semitic by utilizing a swastika, Supervisor Sandoval, in the heat of the election battle, filed a lawsuit against the political consultants who were creating the mailers that were funded by an anonymous source. Sandoval lost the lawsuit and now the consultants who sent out this disgusting, vile so-called political mail are suing him for their legal fees. Yesterday there was a rally of his supporters and even people who were not his supporters to demand that the consultants back off stealing his home. Today the SF Bay Guardian wrote: In the end, what's going on here is a billionaire power broker and a greedy consultant trying to destroy a politician who defied them. After the election, Sandoval was ready to let the matter lie; he even waived the right to ask for any damages from his suit. But Sutton, Fisher, and Baughman whose obnoxious, giddy remarks to the Chronicle demonstrate how pleased he is to be squeezing Sandoval won't let go.
This is now a political issue, not a legal one. Mayor Gavin Newsom, who hired Sutton to advise his campaign and who is friendly with Fisher, needs to let these attack dogs know that their conduct is not acceptable and that, if they continue to poison the atmosphere of local politics, they will have no future in this town. Right on! Leftinsf agrees. Moreover, we hear through the grapevine that there will be a resolution passed at the SF Labor Council saying that any candidate using Baughman or Sutton for their campaign will not be elible for endorsement by the SF Labor Council. It has been done before and was successful in reigning in consultants. And then DuftyOn another sleazy note, The SF Weekly picked up a repulsive story that Les Natali and his PR people have been spreading to try minimize the impact of a resolution by the SF Board of Supervisors. Last month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a unanimous resolution condemning discrimination at the Badlands bar in the Castro, per the SF Human Rights Commission's April Finding, and urging City and State agencies to impose penalties on discriminatory bar owner Les Natali to the fullest extent of the law. Right afterwards, Natali's PR person tried to suggest that the Supervisors voted for it because they were afraid of being called racists. Now they are suggesting that it is all a plot by a competing bar owner that is a friend of Sup Dufty. These tactics smack of desperation and leave me wondering, how low can they go? This is truly the underbelly of politics. Distasteful is an understatement. Repulsive is more like it.
Politics is not a spriint-it's a marathon. Louise Renne to the Youth Commission Well gang, the battle in the War for the Kids for SFUSD is over. Battle was not won by the kids. Cuts were made to Child Development, school sites,, 111 teachers were laid off and over 50 paraprofessionals were laid off. The youth of YMAC were shut down when they tried to get funding for their project of funding toilet seats for all students at the District's 18 high schools. And classified personnel (janitors, secretaries, gardeners and others-mainly represented by Local 790) will have to take three unpaid furlough days during the next fiscal year. But there were some upsides: Kudos to Commissioner Sarah Lipson for trying to cut money from the Central Office in the Superintendent's, Chief Academic Office's, Chief Development Office's and Legal Offices and put it back in the classroom. Kudos to President Eric Mar who repeatedly stated the goal "To make cuts as far as away from the classroom as possible" with several possible cuts to the Central Office and for fighting for the Local 790 people who will now have three unpaid furlough days. (He suggested that the managers at the Central Office take the three unpaid furlough days.) Kudos to Commissioner Mark Sanchez who pointed out that the officers under the JROTC is being paid more than teachers at the top step. Kudos to Jeremiah Jeffries for bringing attention that the California Education Code requires that the budget must include expenditures from the previous year. Congratulations to Rick Reynolds, parent of an Aptos scholar, showing that the budget didn't show how the cuts from the weighted student averages were going to be applied-or if they were going to be applied equally. Thanks for everyone who attended!! Sigh-we may have lost this budget battle. But we can't let this stop us-we have a lot of work to do to help the students of SFUSD. And thanks to Mar, Lipson and Sanchez (and Yee), the cuts to the Child Development Program was not as deep as was orginally proposed. And the word is getting out that we have a tough battle on our hands-in getting money to the kids and the classroom. And with these cuts, we are becoming allied with one thought-we need to work together in order to make sure that we have an education system that includes successful students-and employees who are treated with respect and honored for their work with the students (and that includes everyone in the School District). We can't forget why we are here-to help 55,000 students at every school have a quality education. We don't want to focus on the noise around the Superintendent. We don't want to react to SFSOS-unless it is about that our message is about the students. We want to focus on how we can improve SFUSD for the students.So what do we want to do in the next six months? What do we want to work on? We want to hear from you. Should we work on: Child Development School Sites Professional Development Rolling Back the Furloughs YMAC's issue on toilet seats Something Else Email me at kimberleyknox@hotmail.com by Sunday-and we email your ideas in a post! Step by step, we will create a better school district for San Francisco's future leaders.
More lies
As the Senate Finance Committee approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the AP reported that the Bush Administration has suppressed a study they paid for that concluded "countries proposed for free-trade status have poor working environments and fail to protect workers' rights." This is no suprise to those of us who have been following the "Free Trade" movement over the last few years. What is a surprise is that they Labor Department would even commission a study. They did, though, and didn't like what they heard. Behind the scenes, the Labor Department began as early as spring 2004 to block public release of the country-by-country reports.
The department instructed its contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it could not discuss the studies with outsiders.
The department has now worked out a deal with the contractor to make the reports public, provided there is no mention of the federal agency or government funding.
At the same time, the administration began a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study's conclusions.
Used as talking points by trade-pact supporters, a Labor Department document accuses the contractor of writing a report filled with "unsubstantiated" statements and "biased attacks, not the facts." I mentioned last month that CAFTA looks to be as bad for working folks--in the US and abroad--as its ancestor NAFTA was. The so-called "side agreements" to NAFTA, which covered those areas, have been an unmitigated disaster for the decade plus since the treaty's signing. They are even more pathetic under CAFTA.
CAFTA limits penalties for failure to enforce labor laws to $15 million – while sanctions for breaches of commercial provisions are unlimited. Fines will be given back to the country that fails to enforce its own labor laws. Ironically, I also said then, "It's interesting, though, to see that even the biggest boosters of CAFTA don't mention any safeguarding of labor or environmental rights." Now, I think we know why. We'll return to the CAFTA question soon, as it comes before the full Senate, but in the meantime, I'd like to give a shoutout to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-No Clue): "Step by step, we're making good progress and building momentum for its successful passage," said U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, who has led the effort to sway undecided lawmakers.
He picked up a key vote Wednesday when Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., a Finance Committee member, announced his support after receiving a pledge from Portman of increased spending to protect Central American workers and farmers.
Portman, in a letter to Bingaman, said the administration was committed to spending $160 million over four years to promote labor and environmental laws, as well as $150 million over five years to help subsistence farmers in three Central American countries who might be displaced by an increase in U.S. agriculture imports. 'Cause it's always smart to believe the Bush Administration, Jeff, you win the Treaties of Mass Destruction award. Which of your contributors has a stake in this?
the payback continues
As polls continue to show that Arnold Schwarzenegger is marginally less popular than the average meter maid, it's amusing (to me, anyway) to see that disappointment with him is dragging down the political futures of even A-movie actors The growing disappointment with Schwarzenegger may be pulling down the numbers of the two actors rumored as Democratic candidates, Rob Reiner and Warren Beatty. Potential Democratic primary voters put the pair behind Angelides and Westly, although neither Hollywood figure is an announced candidate.
"The public is a bit turned off, or at least a little less interested in bringing an actor or an outsider into office," DiCamillo said. "That initial burst of enthusiasm for someone outside the system, someone different, has waned." What is less amusing is the appointment of an industry lobbyist to the California Air Research Board (CARB). "As a lobbyist for major oil companies and the power plant industry, who has opposed every major air quality law passed by the Legislature in recent years, Ms. Tuck is not the right person to help the board carry out its mission of protecting the air our families breathe," [State Sen. Don] Perata said in a brief statement. CARB has been an impressive force against air pollution in California for years. But more importantly, it is part of the system that makes California the leader in environmental regulation. In many ways, we set the standard that the rest of the country follows. Appointing an industry stooge to CARB is not the way to carry on this legacy, especially as environmental protections are under attack. Tuck, a Sacramento lobbyist for nearly 20 years, has for the last eight years worked with a coalition of business and labor interests that focuses on environmental issues.
The group, called the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, opposed several bills important to clean-air advocates, including a first-in-the-nation effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions from cars and one to override an effort by the Bush administration to undo a requirement for environmental upgrades on some power plants. What worries me is that if people think Arnie's a short-timer, they'll start demanding payback now, even as they pour money into his initiatives. There will be plenty of important positions left to fill. Wonder what the going price is?
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