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IN THIS ISSUE

Table of Contents

Letter from the President: Connecting the Dots

Notes on the Right: The Enduring Importance of Strategy

EJS December 8 Fundraiser Features Harriet Tubman Jazz Oratorio

Vote Yes on 89: 'Clean Money' Initiative

First California, Now Michigan: Putting Race up for a Vote

Supreme Court to Revisit Brown v. Board in School Cases

EJS, CTA Look at Unconscious Bias in Schools

U.N. Committee Criticizes Racism in U.S.

New Voting Rights Act Under Attack

A First Look at the Roberts Court

Latina/o Law Student Symposium

Foundations Support EJS Efforts to Balance Racial Justice Debate

Farewell from our Irmas Fellow

Staff News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldón

Email Feedback

 From Eva Paterson

Letter from the President:
Connecting the Dots

When you were a kid, did you like to play connect the dots? You'd look at a bunch of seemingly random dots and, as you slowly connected them, a clear pattern emerged.

That game guides my thinking about politics and law and social change. EJS embodies that way of thinking. Here are some random occurrences - some dots, if you will. An unpopular war goes on despite widespread public disapproval.

Black and brown people continue to suffer from bias and discrimination. The public schools of our country are under-funded.

Ward Connerly is in Michigan in support of a regressive measure entitled the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Right wing conservatives attack Supreme Court Justices O'Connor and Ginsburg for looking to international law as a guide for how the United States adjudicates cases. The Senate confirms two ultra-conservative Justices who now sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Progressives feel beleaguered and under the gun. Immigrants from Mexico are targeted for punitive treatment. Renewal of the Voting Rights Act is an uphill battle because of resistance by recalcitrant Southerners who chose to forget the long sordid history of suppression of the Black vote. Poor and Black residents of New Orleans and the Gulf are left to starve and die by an ineffective federal government. The federal deficit is growing to such an extent that social programs will be cut. Brown v Board of Education's mandate to desegregate the nation's schools is under attack in the Louisville and Seattle cases now before the Supreme Court.

Several years ago, EJS staff members gathered with other activists, law professors, social scientists and media experts to discuss how we might come together to work more effectively. We learned that the radical right has been working for decades to advance its agenda. Components of their dream world include a disdain for government, a fondness for the notion of a colorblind society where racism is a relic of the past, a belief that lavish gifts to politicians entitle the donors to dictate public policy, a willingness to be as ruthless as possible in obtaining political goals. If you connect these ideological dots, you will see that the dots form the picture painted above.

What are we do to? Some of the answers are laid out in articles included in this newsletter. EJS is part of a group of attorneys and scholars including Professors Ian Haney Lopez, john powell and Andy Barlow who are submitting an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court supporting the ability of local school districts to voluntarily desegregate their schools. Those efforts are described in an article by Kimberly Thomas Rapp, our Director of Law and Public Policy. An article by international human rights expert Professor Cindy Soohoo of Columbia School of Law explains our efforts to advance the rights of those caught by the intentional ineptitude of FEMA as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The right wing does not believe that government should be used to solve societal problems so what happened -- or more accurately what did not happen -- in New Orleans was a natural consequence of that philosophy.

Another vital tenet of right wing ideology is that racism is a thing of the past: they claim that we live in a colorblind society, or at least that is the goal we should be seeking. Professor Michelle Alexander has skillfully debunked the notion of colorblindness in her assertion that we should celebrate our color and ethnicity rather than ignoring them. Ward Connerly, the sponsor of California's notorious Proposition 209 that eliminated affirmative action, is the drum major for the opposing view and has taken his California show on the road. He's hoping the state of Michigan will also ban the use of race in making decisions about employment, education, and public contracting.

Many political decisions are made that do not serve the interests of the electorate. Why? EJS feels that the impact of campaign contributions accounts for the disconnect between public opinion and public policy. Consequently, we have endorsed the Clean Money Initiative which is on the November ballot in California and hope for the day when there is full public finance for all elections.

Finally, I know you will learn a lot from our columnist Lee Cokorinos's "Notes on the Right," where he dissects the methods the Right has used successfully to create a well-funded infrastructure that connects groups as disparate as anti-immigration campaigners, "free market" libertarians, and the religious right into a stable, long-term movement.

Well, I hope from this short discourse you will agree that the strategic vision and tactics of the right if connected, produce the situation we find ourselves today. But there is another side of that coin: if we progressives articulate and advance our own positive vision, the dots we connect will result in a more just world.

Some of my recent experiences have lifted my spirits and given me hope for the future. David Salniker, our Director of Administration and Finance, Kimberly Thomas Rapp, and I were well received when we spoke at the National Education Association about our Unconscious Bias project. The national teachers' union has also invited us to come to Georgia to describe the project. We will soon start working with the NEA on our Scholar Advocate Program which will help law students learn to be effective attorneys and activists.

EJS was also represented on a panel in Detroit at the national convention of the National Bar Association. African American attorneys from around the country learned about how affirmative action and equal opportunity were advanced in this country, as well as how programs designed to help people of color and women can be defended at the ballot box. In Ohio, just across the river where our ancestors had to cross to escape slavery in the South, EJS Board Chair, Professor Charles Ogletree, moderated a panel on civil rights at the biennial conference of the Just the Beginning Foundation (JTBF). This innovative Foundation brings together Black federal judges every two years, and EJS has been represented at three of the last four conferences. Ogletree did his usual masterful job of stimulating discussion and thought, and was joined by john powell, Ted Shaw of the NAACP LDF, Saul Green, Court Monitor for an agreement seeking to help stop the disproportionate killing of Blacks by the Cincinnati Police Department, and myself.

And speaking of connections, we at EJS love being connected with so many of you. We hope you will join us on December 8, 2006, when the brilliant jazz composer Marcus Shelby will present his new oratorio honoring Ms. Harriet Tubman Ross, the brave woman, who did not let fear and the might of the Confederate Army stop her from doing what was right. I have her picture on my desk and look at her when my strength wavers. Stay strong! Stay connected!

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