IN THIS ISSUE

Letter from the President: Putting Race Back on the Table

Notes from the Right: Race and Poverty —Getting a Legal Burial

Law Review Summaries: Racial Lines and Property Rights

Funders Support Innovative Meeting on Intent Doctrine

EJS and California Teachers Association Collaborate on Unconscious Bias Project

EJS Argues Admissions Policy of Hawai'i Private School for Native Hawaiian Children Does Not Violate Civil Rights

New Chief Justice: Where Will He Stand on Civil Rights?

Staff/Board News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldon

Email Feedback

 From Eva Paterson

Putting Race Back on the Table

When did you first realize that the majority of people trapped in the Superdome were African-Americans? How many tears did you cry when you saw the grandmothers in their wheelchairs looking dazed and bewildered on the streets of New Orleans? How did you feel when you heard that Bill Bennett spoke casually of aborting Black babies as a way to control crime? Or when the Forty-Niners used blatant anti-Asian caricatures in their training video? How do you feel when vigilantes patrol the borders with Mexico to keep Latinos out of the country that was once Mexico? How angry are you about the persistence of racism in our country?

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Notes from the Right: Race and Poverty — Getting a Legal Burial?

By Lee Cokorinos

Even Fox News reporters bellowed with rage at the injustice of it all, interrupting Sean Hannity's thieves-and-looters tirades. Newsweek blared on its cover "Poverty, Race and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame." For a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina, it appeared as if the spectacle of poor African Americans bearing the brunt of disaster in New Orleans without any help from a Federal government whose disaster response capacity had been "drowned in the bathtub" by Grover Norquist's allies, was going to put the issues of poverty and race on the front burner.

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Law Review Summaries: Racial Lines and Property Rights


By Kimberly Thomas Rapp

While unemployed evacuees from the Gulf Coast find themselves vulnerable to foreclosures, notices demanding rent, and the redevelopment rumor mill, concerns about heeding the property interests of displaced victims in rebuilding efforts soar. Progressive politicians and activists have cautioned about the use of eminent domain to redevelop devastated areas that housed largely poor African American neighborhoods. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) cautioned, "[w]e have to watch the redevelopment in New Orleans for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to make sure that the shadow government of the rich and the powerful does not end up abusing eminent domain to take property that belongs to poor people in order to get them out of the city." Waters' concern is one of many in the ongoing debate about the exercise of eminent domain and the impact of its misuse on poor and minority communities.

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Funders Support Innovative Meeting on Intent Doctrine

By Miguel Gavaldon

The Equal Justice Society hosted a unique conference on Race and the Intent Doctrine, with both financial support and active participation from the Open Society Institute. In September, EJS brought together a core group of activists-litigators, social scientists, legal scholars, and communications experts to create a multi-pronged strategy for dismantling the Intent Doctrine, a principle established by the 1976 case of Washington v. Davis where the Supreme Court mandated that an aggrieved party must prove that the discrimination they suffered was "intentional" in order to win a discrimination suit. READ MORE

EJS and California Teachers Association Collaborate on Unconscious Bias Project

By David Salniker

The "Unconscious Bias Project" - a unique collaboration with California Teachers Association to look at racial bias in our classrooms and school environment and its impact on student achievement - grew out of the innovative EJS conference at Stanford University in 2003. READ MORE

EJS Argues Admissions Policy of Hawai'i Private School for Native Hawaiian Children Does Not Violate Civil Rights

By Keith Kamisugi

The Equal Justice Society has joined efforts to defend a private school for Native Hawaiian children from a lawsuit now being reviewed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - a lawsuit with potential impact for all people of color in this country. The suit, Doe v. Kamehameha, claims that Kamehameha Schools, a private educational institution, cannot give preference to children of Hawai'i's indigenous people. READ MORE

New Chief Justice: Where Will He Stand on Civil Rights?

By Keith Kamisugi

John Glover Roberts Jr. was sworn in Sept. 29 as the 17th chief justice of the United States only hours after the Senate confirmed him by a 78 to 22 vote. Throughout Roberts' nomination and confirmation process, Eva Paterson and the Equal Justice Society helped lead the Californians for Fair and Independent Judges (CFIJ) coalition in evaluating and eventually opposing his confirmation. READ MORE

Staff/Board News & Notes

Read more about our staff changes, and honors and recognitions bestowed on EJS board members. READ MORE