Eva Paterson on ABC7’s ‘Profiles of Excellence’
EJS President Eva Paterson was profiled on the latest installment of the Emmy Award-winning “Profiles of Excellence,” hosted by Carolyn Johnson and produced by the ABC 7 Public Affairs Department to celebrate the cultural and ethnic diversity of the Bay Area. Mimi Kwan and Laura Kutch produce the series.
Transitioning Our Site
I’m moving our site over to the Wordpress platform so you’ll see an incomplete site for a few days. The rest of our site is still live and you can access our old home page here. If you’re looking for information on our Dec. 5 gala, click here.
Eva Paterson on Lateefah Simon in the Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Leslie Fulbright covers Lateefah Simon, the new executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, in today’s edition. Leslie quotes Eva Paterson on her meeting Lateefah for the first time:
She said the two were at a function meant to unite older leaders of the civil rights community with the new generation. “We were getting older and graying and felt like it was important to talk to younger activists and pass the baton,” said Paterson, 59. “Lateefah was in this group of young people who told us they knew what they were doing, that they didn’t need our baton. ”It was humbling, but good. I instantly liked her, and we have stayed close.”
Civil Rights Groups Ask California Supreme Court to Stop Prop. 8
Civil rights groups on Nov. 14 filed a petition (PDF) with the California Supreme Court to stop the enactment of Proposition 8 because it would mandate discrimination against a minority group and did not follow the process required for fundamental revisions to the California Constitution.
In the petition, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Equal Justice Society, California NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. argue that in order to protect the fundamental rights of all Californians, a higher standard is required to overturn the right to marry. Minority communities cannot be stripped of their fundamental rights by a simple majority vote.
“We would be making a grave mistake to view Proposition 8 as just affecting the LGBT community,” said Eva Paterson, president of the Equal Justice Society. “If the Supreme Court allows Proposition 8 to take effect, it would represent a threat to the rights of people of color and all minorities.”
Blog Phenomenon: Social e-Movements
Join me at “Blog Phenomenon: Social e-Movements,” a panel on Wednesday, December 3, from 6-7:30 p.m. at the San Francisco Public Library’s Main Branch (Koret Auditorium) 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco. RSVP on our Facebook event listing.
Sin Yen Ling at the Asian Law Caucus put together this discussion about the role of blogs in our community, how they change they way which we receive information, and their role in social justice advocacy and organizing. Blogging plays a significant role in mainstream media allowing the average individual to partake in journalism.
Joining me on the panel: Jeff Chang, Vibe, Huffington Post, 2008 USA Ford Fellow; Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle; James Rucker, Huffington Post, Colorofchange.org;(invited); Tim Jones, Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Neela Banerjee, New American Media (invited).
Last April, the Huffington Post reported at a closed fundraising event in San Francisco, that Obama believed that small-town voters “clung to their guns and their religion.” The Huffington Post blogger challenged the campaign’s image of reuniting blue states with red states and allowed opponents to portray Obama as an elitist. Blogs have become an effective form of communicating to a worldwide audience on various subject matters such as politics, technology and current events.
Colorado Voters Reject Ward Connerly’s Attack on Opportunity
OCT. 7 UPDATE: We may see the end of the Ward Connerly anti-opportunity initiatives.
The Rocky Mountain News reported yesterday that voters in Colorado have rejected Amendment 46, Ward Connerly’s ballot initiative to destroy equal opportunity programs and policies in that state.
Coloradans soundly defeated this attack on equal opportunity because they know that thriving cities and states are built on strong and diverse communities and equal opportunity helps make that possible.
The Equal Justice Society was part of a broad coalition of groups supporting our allies on the ground in Colorado working to defeat the initiative. The defeat of Colorado’s Amendment 46 is the second time that a state’s electorate has rejected Ward Connerly’s deceptive and misleading anti-opportunity movement, and offers hope that Proposition 209 in California may be living on borrowed time.
The election of Sen. Barack Obama as our nation’s first Black president shows that we’ve made tremendous progress as a country. But to have that type of gain at the national level only to suffer setbacks to equal opportunity at the state level (as we’ve seen in Nebraska) shows that we’ve still got a long way to go.
This is a huge victory for Coloradans and for the country. Ward Connerly planned to bring anti-opportunity initiatives to five states with his dishonest tactics, but working with our allies in Colorado and across the country we kept him off three state ballots. And we’ve now defeated him in Colorado, one of the final two.
With victory in Colorado and a setback in Nebraska, we must continue our battle for equal opportunity everywhere.
Ward Connerly won’t stop. And we won’t either.
Support the Equal Justice Society’s efforts to continue our collective struggle for equal opportunty.
Join us at our 2008 EJS Annual Gala on Friday, December 5, from 6 p.m. to Midnight at The Regency Center, 1290 Sutter Street, San Francisco (click here for more details) or make a contribution today. Your support for our event or your donation will enable us to continue our work in expanding opportunity.
