Coalition Urges Congress Not to Confirm Sharon Browne to Legal Services Corporation Board
UPDATE2: New posts on Huffington Post and Think Progress.
UPDATE: Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle covers the opposition to Browne in a Feb. 3, 2010, article and join us for a Feb. 11 briefing by Alliance for Justice on the Browne nomination.
A coalition of more than seventy civil rights, women’s rights, consumer, fair housing and legal organizations – including the Equal Justice Society – this week sent a letter to Congress urging the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (“HELP”) Committee to reject the nomination of Sharon Browne to the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”).
“Sharon Browne’s nomination is highly troubling because she has spent her entire career advocating against the very constituencies the Legal Services Corporation serves, said Nan Aron, Alliance for Justice. “After extensively reviewing her record, I have seen nothing to indicate that she is committed to supporting women, people of color, or the poor – the very people LSC was created to support.”
When creating the LSC, Congress established that members of the legal services board should be committed to the development of legal assistance for the poor and supportive of the principal that this population have access to adequate and effective legal services.
Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society indicated, “At a time when inadequate funding means that legal services turns away nearly half of those who seek its help, LSC needs leadership from those dedicated to its core mission: serving society’s neediest.”
“Sharon Browne’s nomination defies the basic criteria that Congress established in identifying LSC board members,” continued Paterson. “She would not contribute to making the LSC board representative of those who provide, use, and support legal services. She is not committed to keeping politics out of the LSC’s work. And, her track record reveals a long history of political efforts against the LSC’s basic mission of providing equal justice for the poor.”
“AFJ and the more than 70 organizations who have signed onto this letter urge Congress and the HELP committee to reject Browne’s nomination and ask that another nominee – with a personal and professional commitment to providing equal justice for the poor – be identified,” concluded Nan Aron.
NCLR Expresses Profound Disappointment with Saenz Decision
Janet Murguía, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, today expressed profound disappointment today that distinguished civil rights attorney Thomas Saenz is no longer a candidate to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
(Also see EJS’s statement here.)
“Thomas Saenz was a great choice to oversee a department tasked with enforcing federal statutes to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. He follows the law meticulously and is one of the best litigators our country has. He has dedicated his entire career to the fight for justice, equal opportunity, and dignity for those who have no voice,” said Murguía.
Calif. Transportation Dept. to Reinstate Race-Conscious Contract Goals
The Coalition for Economic Equity (CEE) on Friday announced that after a nearly three-year hiatus, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is poised to reinstate race-conscious goals for federally funded transportation contracts in California.
CEE is an umbrella coalition of associations serving diverse minority- and women-owned businesses that was first formed in 1982 in response to an almost total exclusion of MBEs and WBEs from San Francisco’s public contracting system. In 1984, the Coalition succeeded in securing enactment of San Francisco’s first contracting equity ordinance introduced by Supervisors Doris M. Ward and Willie B. Kennedy. Since that time, the Coalition has worked to strengthen and defend contracting equity programs throughout the Bay Area, as well as at the state and federal levels.
CEE has confirmed with the Federal Highway Administration that the Caltrans’ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program needs no further approvals to set goals for improving the awarding of these contracts.
Kate Kendell, Eva Paterson: ‘Standing Together and Continuing the Conversation’
Next Thursday, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments in our legal challenge to Proposition 8. As we seek to overturn Prop 8, we have the broadest array of support ever seen on an LGBT issue before any California Court. This support speaks directly to the relationships and coalition work that many in the LGBT, religious, business, and civil rights communities have been doing for years. However, there is another truth motivating the breadth of voices calling on the court to invalidate Prop 8. Prop 8 is an assault on the California Constitution and the most fundamental principal of any functioning democracy: all people will be treated equally under the law.
Day Without A Gay: Protesting Prop. 8 by Donating to Causes
Conceived by Sean Hetherington of West Hollywood, the day of protest is modeled after A Day Without Immigrants, which took place on May 1, 2006.
Individuals participating can call in sick and donate their time to a cause and buy nothing that day to show again how important the LGBT community is to this country. The organizers have FAQs here. And their Facebook event listing is here.
Read more about how EJS has been involved in the ongoing fight for equality.
Feedback on Immigration and the Black Community
I wanted to say thank you to our audience, panelists, and cosponsors for coming out last night. In the next days and weeks we are hoping to continue the discussion on these important topics, and will be providing additional information, resources and commentary. We really hope that as many people and as many different viewpoints participate in the debate and we encourage your participation. Please, let me know what you thought of the event, what was useful, what could have been done better, and what still needs to be talked about. Also, please stay tuned as in the next few days we will continuing with blog entries based on some of the discussions from the event, providing related materials, speaker’s bios, the audio recording, and much more.
Nico
Update I
We have been getting commentary that, while the event was an important first step, more needs to be done. On that note, we would really appreciate it if you could help us understand what the next steps should be. What format should they take? Who needs to be at the table?
Gary Sheffield, Baseball and Latinos
When Gary Sheffield recently made comments about MLB teams preferring players from Latin America to African Americans because the Latinos are seen as being less likely to stand up for themselves, many took it to be insulting to both Latinos and African Americans. However, King Kaufman has pointed out in his that Sheffield’s comments should be taken as an indictment about the way in which discrimination and exploitation relies on the ability to break minorities and other disadvantaged groups into areas where the ability to make rights claims are undermined by the disempowerment of another group. By pointing out that MLB teams prefer Latinos because they will not stand up for themselves because they are not aware of how they should be treated, and are afraid of the dire consequences if they get sent back home, Sheffield and Kaufmann are pointing to a much larger problem facing minorities in this country.
The laws in this country that were put in place to protect against exploitation and discrimination have been under constant attack, leading to situations where the precarious ability of one group to make rights claims (to not be discriminated against in the amount of money you are paid or in your workplace conditions, or to be able to go to court and claim what you are owed) means that everybody is harmed.
In recent years the Supreme Court has severely undermine the protections of workers. In Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc., v. NLRB the Supreme Court held that undocumented workers are not entitled to back pay (the only monetary remedy available) under the National Labor Relations Act when they are illegally fired for attempting to unionize and stop exploitative practices.
Further, just this year, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. the new Court under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, undermined the ability to bring claims of pay discrimination. In that case, Lilly Ledbetter, who worked her entire career at lower pay than men doing the same job, could not recover the money she was wrongfully denied because she did not complain about it at the time she was hired, despite the fact she probably did not know at that time she was being discriminated against.
It is precisely these issues that that create the atmosphere where Latino players are preferred over African American ones. From the standpoint of those in power, it is advantageous to keep those who you are seeking to maximize profit from as powerless as possible. It not only is it easy to keep those groups in control, but it also keeps groups who are relatively more empowered, but still vulnerable, in a precarious position.
When over a million people took to the street last year to demand to that undocumented people should be given legal status in this country, some legitimated this call on the basis that undocumented immigrants “do work that no one else is willing to do.”
In truth, Sheffield’s comments are closer to the mark. Essentially, his point exemplifies the reality that that it is undocumented immigrants, because of their legal vulnerability, are doing work under conditions that no one should have to put up with, for pay that is unjust, with little in the way of legal recourse or protection. This is a result of their de jure subordinate legal status, and the conservative retrenchment of the Courts who are dismantling a host of protections for vulnerable groups. Likewise, African Americans, who have long struggled against racial discrimination in the workplace and in other social institutions find their ability to make rights claims in a similar predicament. If they argue too much and demand their rights too vehemently, there is the reality that they could be replaced by another group that will not be able to “cause as much trouble.”
From Jackie Robinson to Mohamed Ali to the rhetoric that now surrounds the NBA and its players, sports have given us insights into our race relations. Now, Sheffield’s comments do the same in the context of changing racial demographics and global economic conditions, and what it means for the fight for social justice. Sheffield and Kaufman are on to something, that reveals the way in which the struggle for dignity and fairness is no longer a national issue, even in the context of our national past time. It for this reasons that the immigrants’ rights struggle is a struggle for all those facing discrimination. In fighting so that everyone working here and living here we ensure decent conditions for all.
