FREE
THE
JENA 6.

NOW.

The most chilling quote of this story is, “Women are being killed because they are women.”

This is happening. Right now. The violence against immigration is escalating.
via bfp
Here is a first-hand account of the police response to the peaceful
demonstration on May 1 in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. It is written by
Jennifer Snow. She is Associate Director of Progressive Christians Uniting,

a very effective ecumenical social justice consortium on whose Board I have
been for 10 years. She has a PhD in Religious Studies, is in her late 20s
and describes herself as five feet tall and completely unarmed. Read it and
weep.
–

May 1: Violence in MacArthur Park

This is what happened.

The march ended at Wilshire and Alvarado, and the last organization
in the march was a Native American drumming and dancing troupe. They stopped in
the street to dance, and a huge circle, mostly of families with small children,
gathered around them to watch, cheer, and clap. It was peaceful and jubilant, a
celebration, not a protest. The police were there, but no one was
paying any attention to them. Suddenly there were sirens, very loud and close.
Police motorcycles drove into the crowd around the dancers. There was no
announcement – or if there was, no one could hear it over the sirens.

Imagine the deafening noise of many sirens only a few feet from you,
the motorcycle driving towards you, pushing you forward. Imagine the panic of
women with small children in strollers. People tried to get away from the
motorcycles, but the police would not allow you to walk through them. When
I tried, I was pushed roughly back in front of the motorcycles. I saw three
middle school girls standing hugging each other in front of a motorcycle,
the wheel pushing against their feet and legs, the sirens blasting in their
ears, the policeman screaming at them. I saw people being pushed off their
feet.

When I saw the police start striking someone, I ran over to try to
put myself between them. I saw people dragging their friends away from the
police. Eventually they pushed us back onto the sidewalk. No one knew why
they were doing this or what was happening. A line of police in riot gear
faced us as we crowded on the sidewalk, bewildered and bruised and angry.
We hadn’t been doing anything wrong. They hadn’t asked us to move, or tried
to communicate with us in any way other than violence. The noise was
deafening, terrifying, disorienting. Teenagers with piercings yelled at the
police. I pointed at the ground, trying to tell the police, look, I’m on
the sidewalk. The police yelled at us. You had to yell to be heard. But
the tension faded.

The National Lawyers Guild passed the word along that as
long as we stayed on the sidewalk, there would be no problems. Most of the
teenagers had calmed down. There was nothing to see – just the people lined
up on the sidewalk, the police in the street. People
were a little bewildered. Why were the police here? What were they doing? Why
were there so many of them? Why did they have guns and canisters? But no one
was doing anything. We just stood there, talking, laughing, drinking water,
eating corn, taking pictures. We wondered what on earth there were so many
police for. And then suddenly the kids – the same teenagers that had been
yelling at the police – ran along the sidewalk, yelling get back, get back,
they’ve declared unlawful assembly, they’re going to arrest everyone. We
heard shots. Within the park, from the corner of Alvarado and 7th, I saw

people running. I ran towards them. I wanted to make sure that people were
not responding violently to the police, that no one was being hurt. No one
was violent, but people were indeed being hurt.

Keep in mind that there had been no announcement – or at least, no
effective announcement. I had been in the front the
entire time, less than two feet from the police. Surely I would have heard an
announcement if there was one. The only announcement had been rumor. Later on, I
would hear a completely unintelligible announcement from a helicopter. I could
tell that it was in English. Even if I had been able to understand it, many in
the crowd would not have.

There were no requests to disperse. There was no warning to the crowd.

There was no explanation. There was no effort to communicate.

The police entered the park shooting gas or smoke canisters. People
panicked,running in all directions. I saw a couple, bewildered, start walking in
the wrong direction. I held up my hands and said to the police, I’m going to get
those people, I am going to help those people there, and went down to them,
guiding them in front of the line and towards the exit. They didn’t speak
much English. I continued to walk slowly in front of the police.
Suddenly I saw a homeless man, sleeping under a tree. The police line \
approached, screaming at him. He woke up, confused. Someone with a camera tried
to help him, but was beaten off. He tottered to his feet, trying to grab his
suitcase and blanket. The police screamed at him. He held out his hands to
them. Perhaps that seemed threatening. I saw two policemen start hitting
him with their batons, one to his legs, one to his chest. I started back
towards him, thinking I could put myself between him and the police, but
that’s all I saw, because then the police had me. I was thrown to the
ground. A policeman screamed move! move!, pushing me and hitting me with
the baton. Every time I tried to stand, I fell back down – he was dragging
me, I couldn’t get to my feet. A girl, one of the teenagers, came over,
tried to help me up, and the policeman started hitting her with the baton as
well.

Even with everything I had
seen, something in me instinctively
turned to the police to help. Surely they would stop those people from beating
the homeless man. I kept saying to the policeman dragging me, look, they’re
beating that man, reaching back towards him. The last I saw of the homeless
man, they were putting plastic handcuffs on him. I later heard that one
“demonstrator” was arrested. Maybe that was him. When I got to my feet, I
continued to walk slowly in front of the police, my hands raised, very
slowly. They were shooting on my left side. There seemed no point in
trying to get out from in front of them, or running. I felt sure that my
only safety was to be slow, calm, and clearly unarmed. I walked slowly
across Wilshire in front of the police line, hands up. We came to the
corner of Wilshire and Alvarado, where Wilshire runs through the park.

We approached a hot dog vendor and his wife and daughters, sitting
behind their carts on the low stone wall. The vendor had the hopeful, friendly
smile of someone who has no idea what is going on. He had brought his family to
keep him company while he sold hot dogs. I tried to get his daughters to move,
but it wasn’t fast enough. The police were on us. One of them grabbed the
vendor by his t-shirt and screamed “Move! Move!” while striking him the
chest with his baton over and over again. The policeman was standing
between the vendor and any hope of his moving – the vendor was trapped
between the cart, the wall, his family, and the policeman. I stood with his
daughters, my arm around one of them, all of us frozen. Eventually the
policeman must have realized that the man was not able to move, and he left.

The vendor was still smiling, as though to say, I mean no trouble, do not
hurt me, I’m just a hot dog vendor. We were all in shock. The police were
still coming, still screaming. I helped the family move their
carts across the street, and they started walking up Wilshire, away from that corner.

I could see, though, that the police had already strung a line
across Wilshire. Although they were screaming to people to get out, they were

beginning to block all the exits. By now the helicopter was hovering. It
was complete pandemonium. There was a deafening message from the
helicopter, but no one could understand it. Someone was trying to speak

from the rally stage. People were crowding around the news vans, as though
they would be safe there. The police were entering the park, shooting.
Women ran with their strollers and their babies and their children, trying

to get away. Men sat on picnic tables or wandered in groups, not knowing
where it was safe to go. I ran out at the corner of 6th and Alvarado. The
police were starting to block the corner, yelling at people who ran towards
them. I ran, a woman running beside me with
her three children, running
away from the police. In the parking lot of a store on Maryland and
Alvarado, I passed a young woman cradling an infant wrapped in a blanket,
sitting on the curb, dazed, hiding behind a van. Are you OK? I asked.
Yes, she said, and we nodded at each other, and I kept walking.

My courage was gone. I was glad to get out. I was glad to get out
because I had no doubt that, if the police had had real bullets instead of
rubber ones, they would have used them. For no reason at all. As we were walking
earlier in the march, my friend said, “This is why I am proud to be an
American.” We

saw peaceful people, laughing, singing, dancing, holding banners. We were
protesting, but we were also celebrating. We were celebrating our
constitutional right to come together in popular assembly, to make our needs

and concerns known to our government. I was surrounded by people who
believe in America, in being
here, in becoming citizens. What prouder thing
can you say of your country that people the world over want to be one of us,
to join our community, to have the rights and privileges and safety and
trust in our institutions that we do? This is what democracy is.

As I walked in front of the police line, my hands held up, I thought
about being an American, about being free. I am five feet tall. I was completely
unarmed. I had made no hostile move towards anyone. I could have been shot
at any time. It was unreal. It was not America, and yet it was.

The hot dog vendor smiled at the police, hopeful, friendly. This is
what happened.

Jennifer Snow
Associate Director, Progressive Christians Uniting
Please distribute widely…

Return to the Park:
Community Mobilizes for Thursday, May 17th March to MacArthur Park

PROCESSION AND VIGIL

FOR JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS, LIBERTY,
AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

WHEN: Thursday, May 17th

5:00pm

WHERE: Starting at Immanuel Presbyterian Church
3300 Wilshire Blvd (corner of Berendo)
Ending at MacArthur Park

For more information, please contact:
(213) 353.3921 (Spanish/English)
(213) 385.7800 x131 (Spanish/English)
(213) 738.9050 (Korean/English)

SPONSORED by CARECEN, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of

Los Angeles (CHIRLA), COFEM, Garment Worker Center (GWC), Instituto

Popular de Educacion del sur de California (IDEPSCA), Koreatown
Immigrant Worker Association (KIWA), Los Angeles Archdiocese Social
Justice Committee, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the Multi-
ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON), Pilipino Worker

Center (PWC), SEIU 1877, and the We Are America Coalition.

–

SERIOUSLY, is anyone surprised that this happens?

Bank of America sued for race discrimination

By Jonathan Stempe

Five black current and former employees of Bank of America Corp. have sued the second-largest U.S. bank, accusing it of racial discrimination by steering lucrative clients to their white counterparts.

The 29-page complaint, filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Boston, contends that the bank discriminates against African-Americans in pay, promotions, training and support services.

It said the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank regularly teams African-American workers together and assigns them to largely minority neighborhoods and low net-worth clients.

When the workers complained, according to the lawsuit, the bank said it believed that clients are more “comfortable” dealing with bankers and brokers of their own race.

A spokeswoman for the bank was not immediately available for comment.

“There is a perception at the bank that predominantly white, wealthy customers in high net-worth neighborhoods are only going to be comfortable with Caucasian financial advisers and bankers,” said Darnley Stewart, a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP who represents the plaintiffs, in an interview. “It’s a complete stereotype.”

The complaint covers April 2003 to the present, and seeks class-action status. It seeks a halt to the alleged improper practices, back pay and compensatory and punitive damages.

According to the complaint, Bank of America’s investment services unit employs 4,400 “premier bankers” and 3,000 brokers in 30 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. It is unclear how many African-Americans might be covered by the lawsuit.

Other brokerages have also faced bias lawsuits accusing them, among other issues, of steering wealthy clients to particular groups of workers.

Merrill Lynch & Co. faces an 18-month-old lawsuit in Chicago by African-American brokers and trainees. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, last month agreed to pay $46 million to settle bias accusations by six former female brokers.

The Bank of America plaintiffs work or have worked for the bank in the Atlanta, St. Louis and south Florida areas, according to the complaint.

Stewart said that while the alleged discrimination differs from accusations other brokerages have faced of creating hostile work environments, she said “it’s equally pernicious.”

“The tone from the top needs to be that the bank will treat professionals equally, and that is not happening,” she said. “Too many decisions are left to people at the local level.”

This article was taken from Racialicious.

HBO’s “Sopranos” and the VT Massacre

by guest contributor Jenn Fang, originally published on Reappropriate

(Hat-tip to reader A.) Last night on HBO’s Sopranos, an episode entitled “Remember When” aired in which the character of Junior Soprano, who has been institutionalized, befriends a young, mentally-ill Asian American man named Carter Chong, and played by Ken Leung (Quill in X-Men: The Last Stand).

According to the Wikipedia write-up of this episode, Carter ultimately feels betrayed by Junior when Junior decides to take his meds, and attacks him.

In A.’s email, he writes:

The internet is already abuzz with the fact that last night’s episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” featured a young, mentally disturbed Asian male with violent tendencies. People are drawing all sorts of ignorant “parallels” to the Virginia Tech massacre, all weighted on the fact that the character was an Asian male. If it had been a white male or a black male, of course there would be no such “comparisons” made.

Keep an eye on this story. The episode was written and filmed six months ago, and I guess the broadcast timing is unfortunately coincidental ONLY if the viewer connects ALL Asian males with ONE violent Asian male they’ve seen in the news. A lot of ignorance and racism is coming out from many just because of this one episode. Let’s address this.

Of course, this character has nothing to do with the Virginia Tech massacre last week, and Carter Chong couldn’t possibly be a reflection of Seung Cho; as A. points out, this episode was written and shot several months ago and only aired last night due to a coincidence of timing.

And yet, some viewers seem to insist that the episode and the shooting are related, as an eerie “not connected but I insist they are karmically related” kind of way. On the forum, “Television Without Pity”, one viewer summed up the subplot as ”young Asian man with severe anger management problems and a history of gunplay”, while another commented “[t]he Asian having deep seated aggression problems was just too spooky.” Gotta love how in that second quote, Carter Chong is “the” Asian. One viewer commented, “I think most of us, even with no direct link to the horrific shootings, felt a little uncomfortable watching tonight. Whether fiction or not it was reminiscent enough of what happened to serve as a memory cue for an event that is probably hard to stop thinking about even without direct reminders.” However, a fourth viewer wrote:

A member of my immediate family was taken from us this week in the VATech thing, and I debated on whether or not I wanted to watch Sopranos tonight (ultimately I did since I’m a grown man and can realize that this is fiction). I did find the young asian male to be terrifyingly similar to what I envisioned the man who murdered my cousin to be, so it did weird me out for most of the episode. I just kept telling myself that I was overreacting because it’s barely been a week, so this is one of those episodes I’ll probably have to wait a while to rewatch. I’m sure it was unintentional, just unfortunate timing.

Other than both Seung Cho and Carter Chong being Asian: what’s the connection? Oh yes: a racially Asian man with mental illness is automatically associated with violent mass shooting sprees because Asian craziness is a factor of one’s skin colour, whereas the countless depictions of White men with mental illness are non-threatening because White craziness has nothing to do with Whiteness.

Again we see the inability of mainstream america to distinguish between a person of colour’s race and his actions, be the actions positive or negative. Seeing one Black man dunk a basketball or rap a song is proof positive that all Black men are capable of such feats, and an example of one Korean American man who succumbed to the violent nature of his mental illness is evidence that all Asian Americans with mental illness will be Seung Cho re-incarnated. (Even more telling the conflation of a Korean American with a character who is ostensibly Chinese American). Such irrational connections are never made when the targets are White.

I don’t have to watch last night’s episode of The Sopranos to know that Carter Chong and the Virginia Tech Massacre are not related. But, of course, there are those who see one Asian face and think they’re seeing us all.

I stayed up late last night despite a monstrous headache, intolerable of loud noise and bright lights. I watched the special reports of what is going on at Virgina Tech and the global reactions.

Not surprisingly, the blogosphere is blowing up. What’s happening at VT, appropriately, has the world reacting. In my natural tendencies with tragedy and deep events, I observe and take in the event before I really have an opinion. The two things I can see at this point is that there is still so much unknown and people are debating as to whether race is at all a part of this.

The young woman who was first killed in the residence hall is speculated NOT to have any relationship with the gunman. The young man who was killed trying to help was a resident assistant. He apparently had no relation to her, except being her RA, or the gunman either. All the news is covering is why why why and there is no connection yet found. I, like, everyone else am simply broken by this senselessness and am quiet with sorrow. Thirty three people died and through witness testimony, I cannot fathom the level of hysteria and fear that University must have experienced that day.

As for the debate around race, well, really, is there any surprise? All different kinds of asian groups and representatives, including the governement of South Korea have issued some form of an statement which includes some apologies. Is it just me, or is that slightly flabbergasting? We’re ALL sorry, we’re ALL reacting to this together, but because the gunman was originally born in South Korea, but has lived in the US for 15 years and was a legal citizen, an entire country is expected to issue a statement? Or perhaps they were fearful of what the US might do if they did not?

The bottom line, for me, is that you must read between the lines of the Asian diaspora to understand that race is an issue. You must be able to read the fine print even though so many will claim you are reading something that is not there. Trust me, it’s there. Race is alluded to the lives of people of color every damn day of their lives and once it’s in conversation and you bring us race the response is usually,”Why does race always have to be a part of it? It has nothing to do with it.”

I don’t know. Ask the folks in charge (even though I guarantee they’ll have a lame answer), or ask the media why it allows racially charged articles to be printed that are anti-asian, anti-immigration, and think immediately of terrorism. Ask the folks who asked random asians for comment. Ask yourself.

The actions of Seung-Hui Cho are as dispicable, tragic, sad, and horrific as a human can do. My reaction is not singular. I do see race, but I also see it mixed with questions surrounding mental wellness, isolation, assimilation, community, and an unknown family background.

It’s a time for mourning, and I don’t doubt there are enough people trying to accuse, blame, and propose negative stereotypes. Really, is that any different from any other day in the USA after tragedy?