Poverty & Race POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL

January/February 2002 Volume 11: Number 1

Help Us Find a New Executive Director for PRRAC – see page 4

After Durban – A Symposium

The August-September 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, in Durban, South Africa, was an event of epic proportions, despite the Bush Administration’s disgraceful decision first to send a low-level delegation, then to walk out. Follow-up work by NGOs in the US (and elsewhere) was of course deeply impacted by the events of September 11 and their aftermath. We asked a number of people who attended – some PRRAC Board members (past as well as present) and other friends of PRRAC – to offer their reflections on the meaning of these events for race issues and work in the US. We welcome further observations by other readers who attended the Conference, as well as readers’ commentaries on the 12 essays offered here; we’ll consider all for publication in our next issue. The UN has prepared a Sept. 19, 2001 document – “Declaration, Adopted on 8 September 2001 in Durban, South Africa,” accompanied by this note: “This text has been put together by the secretariat on the basis of its notes. It is now being submitted to the principal officers of the Conference for their review and will subsequently go through the process of formal editing. We’ll be happy to send you a copy of this 32-page document if you’ll send us a self-addressed label and $1.33 in postage. - CH

Reflections on Durban and 9/11 CONTENTS: by Linda Burnham After Durban: A Symposium Those of us who participated in past. Part of the struggle is to find our Linda Burnham ...... 1 the United Nations World Conference bearings in the these deeply unsettling Samuel L. Myers, Jr.... 3 Against Racism did so in the hopes that times, to cull some of the lessons of Cathi Tactaquin ...... 5 we could help create new conditions, Durban and link them, as best we can, Eric Mann...... 7 new understandings and new strategies to current circumstances. Makani Themba ...... 9 for the struggle against racism; that we If it was about anything, Durban Gary Delgado ...... 10 could help move the international com- was about how the past bears down Marisa J. Demeo ...... 12 upon the present, about how unevenly munity another step forward in its fit- john powell ...... 14 ful efforts to eradicate racism, ethnic the weight of history is borne. The James Counts Early . 15 conflict and xenophobia. Our time in battle over reparations was central. It South Africa was intense, and we widened out from compensatory mea- Esmeralda Simmons. 18 came home intending to work together sures for descendants of the African Howard Winant ...... 19 to evaluate what was gained and what slave trade in the Americas — an issue Wade Henderson ...... 22 was lost, and to share our rich experi- that made its way in from the outer National Low Income ences with all of you here at home. margins of political discourse, due Housing Coalition ....24 But the UN Conference was rapidly principally to the dogged persistence Resources ...... 27 overshadowed, relegated to a dim, of African American activists in the possibly irrelevant pre-September 11th (Please turn to page 2)

Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200 • Washington, DC 20008 202/387-9887 • FAX: 202/387-0764 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (BURNHAM: Continued from page 1) past in the service of preserving rac- for 15 years, developed their own fear- ist, profoundly unequal relations be- some agenda. US – to include the full legacy of co- tween nations and peoples in the Ruth Manorama, a fierce advocate lonialism in Africa, Asia, Latin present and far into the future. The for the rights of India’s Dalits, spoke America, the Middle East, the Carib- US and Israel, unprepared to face the with passion at a Women of Color bean and the islands of the Pacific. horrendous consequences of past or Resource Center workshop in Durban. The yawning, ever-widening gap present policy, turned on their heels The Dalits were a huge presence at the between the nations of the North and and walked out. Convened in South UN Conference, insisting that thou- the nations of the South raised the ques- Africa, guests of the people whose re- sands of years of caste discrimination tion of debt relief – who owes what to cent triumph over a most egregious be brought to an end. Ruth and other whom, and why. In Durban, the ques- form of 20th century racialism we all Dalit leaders reminded us that while tion was asked: Having been robbed celebrate, it was not lost on many of religion may bring solace, comfort and for centuries, are not the nations of us that the US and Israel had also stood a moral compass to some, it can be, at the South due restitution from their as- arm in arm – until the bitter end – in the very same time, an instrument of sailants? Can the appetite for gobbling providing support and encouragement repression and degradation for others. up the wealth of other nations and to the terrorists of the apartheid state. Those others may be co-religionists, peoples to support the ill-gotten pros- those of other faiths or secularists. And perity of North America and Europe often enough it is women who suffer. ever be curbed? And the answer from Durban was about how Millions of crimes against women are the North: The US, fattened on the unequally the weight of committed each day in the name of land, lives and liberty of conquered history is borne. religion, custom and tradition. Reli- nations and enslaved peoples, said no gious fundamentalism – whether – not today, not tomorrow, not in this Christian, Islamic, Judaic or Hindu – millennium. What is on offer is not What has this to do with Septem- constitutes a mortal threat to women. compensation, restitution, reparations ber 11th and its aftermath? The US Neither the gated communities of and heartfelt regrets but new forms of impulse to “rule and rule without end, the upper classes, nor the star wars global plunder. And Belgium, head of forever and ever” (the phrase is missile defense shield, nor the omi- the European Union, its hands still W.E.B. Dubois’) is not an impulse to nous Office of Homeland Security can damp and sticky with the blood of the dominance simply for its own sake, protect us from the consequences of a Congo, said no, we don’t want to talk but dominance for the sake of the pro- world overflowing with men, women about it: The legacy of colonialism is tection of wealth – wealth already sto- and children whose fate, from cradle not relevant to our discussion of cur- len and wealth anticipated. If that to grave, is grinding poverty, crush- rent-day racism, and we won’t have it dominance requires alliance with un- ing labor and crippling disease. Let us mentioned in the final document. savory despots, corrupt regimes and remember that within two weeks of the This was not simple recalcitrance. fanatical reactionaries, so be it. Twin Towers tragedy, the airline in- It was willful, shameful denial of the The deal struck with the Taliban, dustry had managed to squeeze $15 through Pakistan and the CIA, must billion out of the federal budget. The have seemed like a thousand others Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075- insurance industry is in line to get its made ‘round the world: We will turn 3591) is published six times a year share, and others line up at the trough by the Poverty & Race Research a blind eye to the imposition of re- – the very same trough that can’t pro- Action Council, 3000 Conn. Ave. pressive, theocratic decrees. We will vide funds for women on welfare or NW, #200, Washington, DC turn a deaf ear to the torment of girls, free medical care for seniors on fixed 20008, 202/387-9887, fax: 202/ women and homosexuals. We will en- incomes. 387-0764, E-mail: info@prrac. sure that the American public remains $15 billion. Could the US not sur- org. Chester Hartman, Editor. comfortably ignorant of the bargain vive the demise of one or two of our Subscriptions are $25/year, $45/ struck and its terrible toll on the suf- multiple airline carriers? What if that two years. Foreign postage ex- fering Afghan people. And in ex- $15 billion were devoted to eliminat- tra. Articles, article suggestions, change, with the abundance of arma- ing infant and maternal mortality letters and general comments are ments our taxpayers provide, you will welcome, as are notices of publi- worldwide? Or to AIDS treatment and keep at bay any and all forces viewed cations, conferences, job open- prevention. Or to water, sanitation and ings, etc. for our Resources Sec- as hostile to US interests in the region. electrification. Or to eliminating tion. Articles generally may be Though the details may differ, such school fees, raising teachers’ salaries, reprinted, providing PRRAC deals are operative worldwide, backed building schools and buying books and gives advance permission. by massive military presence on every computers. To the education of the © Copyright 2002 by the Pov- continent and all the seas. But this deal girls of Afghanistan. Or to adequately erty & Race Research Action turned sour as fundamentalist tyrants, house the homeless and those who find Council. All rights reserved. encouraged, armed and emboldened shelter in the shanty towns, favelas and

2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 migrant shacks around the world. ethnic and religious minorities. Our include Women’s Education in the What if that $15 billion and another hopes were raised and our vision ex- Global Economy, a popular education $15 billion after that were devoted to panded in intense exchanges of expe- workbook on the impact of the global finding a truly just solution to the un- riences and strategies with dedicated economy on women, co-authored with ending crisis in the Middle East. activists from around the world whose Miriam Louie, and Time to Rise: US Our time in Durban did give us lives are committed to the struggle for Women of Color – Issues and Strate- hope, despite the actions of the US justice. So Durban was both an en- gies, co-edited with Jung Hee Choi and government and others who refused to counter with the ugly face of racist Maylei Blackwell. She recently led a honestly engage the struggle against resistance and a source of sorely needed delegation of 25 women of color ac- racism. We marched through the optimism. tivists and scholars to the UN Confer- streets with thousands upon thousands ence. of energized, organized, politically Linda Burnham (info@coloredgirls. This article is an edited version of conscious South Africans determined org) is co-founder and executive di- a speech delivered at WCRC’s 3rd An- to hold their government accountable rector of the Women of Color Resource nual Sisters of Fire Awards (the speech to their needs. We met with incred- Center, a non-profit education, com- in its entirety can be found at ible women in Durban and munity action and resource center com- www.coloredgirls.org); the Award Johannesburg — women who are lead- mitted to developing a strong, institu- was given to Congresswoman Barbara ers in their communities and nations, tional foundation for social change Lee (D-CA), who cast the sole House leading the fight for the rights of girls activism by and on behalf of women of vote against the blank check war pow- and women, for the rights of racial, color. Her most recent publications ers given to President Bush. ❏

The Economic Implications of WCAR by Samuel L. Myers, Jr. There are significant economic as- among the major sources and may in fact be wide racial differences pects of the final outcomes of the manifestations of racism, racial in human capital, family structure and Durban World Conference Against discrimination, xenophobia and family background, ownership of Racism. Two sets of outcomes are of related intolerance, and that Af- homes and businesses, access to credit, relevance for people of color in the ricans and peoples of African performance on standardized test United States. One can be found in the descent, Asians and people of scores, income, wages, earnings, and official documents, or at least the ver- Asian descent and indigenous net assets, there is no conclusive proof sions of the official documents in wide peoples were victims of these that current differentials stem wholly circulation, adopted on September 8 acts and continue to be victims or in part from the transatlantic slave and distributed on September 19. of their consequences. (Declara- trade, slavery, or its aftermath. In- Another can be found in the Durban tion, p. 10) deed, if there were such proof, black experience itself. efforts to extract reparations from gov- ernment or private bodies would be far At last, there is interna- more vigorous and immensely more Declaration and tional acknowledgement successful than they have been. Programme of Action that current racism and One reason for the conventional eco- racial discrimination nomic wisdom that there is no direct History was made with the publication has its roots in prior linkage between slavery, the slave and acknowledgement that slavery and slavery. trade and current racism and racial dis- its aftermath are partly the cause of crimination is that much analysis of current racism, racial discrimination racial gaps in current economic out- and related intolerance. It is worth re- This historic language explicitly comes is ahistorical. Take, for ex- peating the relevant language that has contradicts the prevailing economic ample, the problem of racial dispari- such economic significance: wisdom in America. The overwhelm- ties in credit markets. No one disagrees ing view among economic analysts is that blacks are more likely to be turned We … acknowledge that slavery that there is no direct empirical link- down for loans than whites. No one and the slave trade are crimes age relating the slave trade, slavery disagrees that blacks, on average, have against humanity and should al- and its aftermath to current disadvan- less impressive credit records than ways have been so, especially the tages faced by African Americans and whites – or at least no one who has transatlantic slave trade, and are other people of color. Whereas there (Please turn to page 4)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol.11, No. 1 • 3 (MYERS: Continued from page 3) 19th century through the early 20th cen- and applied economists will be influ- tury, establishing more concretely the enced to explore historical data sets linkages between prior racism and cur- and the linkages between government seen the published data on these indi- rent racial inequality. actions and policies conceived and cators disagrees. The language in the UN Declara- implemented under slavery and the There seems to be, however, a tion will tremendously aid efforts to current inequality in access to govern- widely held perception that all of this move into a genuine understanding of ment outlays. has always been so. Sheila Ards and I how the slave trade and slavery trans- At last, there is a broad-scale, in- point out in our recent paper in the mitted racism and racial discrimination ternational acknowledgement that cur- October 2001 American Behavioral into the current era and will provide rent racism and racial discrimination Scientist (“The Color of Money”) that has its roots in prior slavery. things have not always been so, and that specific credit institutions evolved The Durban experience after slavery that excluded black par- has galvanized dozens The Durban Experience ticipation and directly contributed to of American-based differences in black and white savings organizations to pursue The remedies section of the final behaviors. One can even point to such version of the Programme of Action thriving traditional credit institutions remedies arising from is a weakened and largely ceremonial in West Africa as the susu that largely slavery and the slave series of statements. There is no spe- failed to survive the transatlantic jour- trade. cific call for reparations for prior ney of black Americans, as evidence wrongs associated with the transatlan- that slavery destroyed the ability of tic slave trade, slavery or its aftermath. African Americans to produce cred- new economic justifications for spe- Persons looking either to the Declara- ible behaviors in the credit market. To cific remedies based on these direct tion or the Programme of Action for say that differences in consumption and linkages. An example relates to the guidance on pursuing claims of repa- savings behaviors explain poor black underrepresentation of minority busi- rations for the wrongs of slavery and credit in the current era ignores how nesses in procurement and contracting. the slave trade will be disappointed. those differences came about in the From the Supreme Court’s Croson de- But there was more to Durban than first place. Amazingly, studies and cision on, it has been presumed that the official document. Most compel- data from the post-Reconstruction era evidence of “general societal” discrimi- ling was the convening of a wide ar- have survived, permitting reexamina- nation was insufficient to warrant ray of Non-Governmental Organiza- tion of the proximate relationship be- implementation of a race-based set- tions that have created a new, visible tween actions and policies rooted in aside program or similar affirmative and powerful international lobby ca- slavery and its aftermath and current action initiative designed to enhance pable of forcing the remedies ques- outcomes. A wealth of data will be- the opportunities for minority firms to tion into the open. Whether you are come available shortly through the contract with state or local govern- in favor of or opposed to reparations University of Minnesota’s Integrated ments. But the language of the Decla- as the appropriate remedy for current Public Use Microsample (IPUMS) ration opens a novel approach to ex- racism and racial discrimination Project for examining individual asset amining what lies behind “general so- rooted in prior slavery and the slave and business ownership from the late cietal discrimination.” Policy analysts trade, the matter is now before us. And it is before us in the most compelling of ways. There is a better understand- A New Executive Director for PRRAC ing now than ever of the global and persistent pattern of current racism and From Chester Hartman: I’m not going anywhere – just want to spend racial discrimination; there is better 100% of my time on substantive work. We need someone who is: a) A documentation now than ever before senior person with an outstanding track record on race and poverty work, of the linkages of the slave trade en- who is: B) A good administrator as well, and who: C) Can oversee some terprise across national and interna- modest growth in our organization. tional boundaries. If you are interested or know of someone we should try to recruit, American economists have for about please contact PRRAC right away ([email protected]). A detailed job 20 years conducted a largely obscure description will be available shortly; all inquiries will be treated in confi- intellectual debate about the measure- dence. The Board would like to make this hiring decision in early 2002. ment of the costs of slavery and the (PRRRAC will consider relocating the organization to accommodate an computation of the foregone wages ideal candidate.) It goes without saying that we are an aggressive affirma- (appropriately discounted and cali- tive action employer. brated) experienced by slaves them- selves. This extended exercise has

4 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 yielded a variety of estimates of the debt owed African Americans. My Standing Together for Migrant Rights favorite number is based on the work of University of North Carolina and by Cathi Tactaquin Duke University economist William Darity. The number is in the trillions Despite the negative media reports theless, the scope of the issues, the of dollars. Until now, however, the about the World Conference Against presence of NGOs in lobbying on both discussion has been largely an abstract Racism and Xenophobia (WCAR) – broad and highly specific language, one of little practical importance to and the as yet unresolved official out- and stated commitments for follow-up poor African Americans themselves. come documents – the South Africa mechanisms – which had not been But now, with poor Afro-Brazilians, conference and the preparatory process specified in the two previous world poor Afro-Peruvians, and peoples of provided a unique opportunity for conferences on racism — should be African descent in the Caribbean, Cen- highlighting the critical role of migra- taken as gains and potential organiz- tral America and throughout Latin tion in the globalized economy, and ing tools for the international move- America explicitly calling for repay- for establishing broad guidelines for ment against all forms of racism. ment for prior misdeeds from slavery, rights protections for a broad cross- The World Conference was espe- the stakes have risen for settlement of section of people in migration. More- cially significant for the migrant and the African American debt as well. over, the conference process helped to refugee rights movement. In light of Put differently, the Durban experi- engage and bring together a much the conference’s focus on racism and ence has galvanized dozens of Ameri- more representative gathering of the xenophobia, migrant rights advocates can-based organizations to pursue rem- fledgling international migrant and edies arising from slavery and the slave refugee rights movement, including trade. Economic analysis shows that US participants from community- The conference provided these debts are huge. Political analy- based, labor, legal and advocacy a unique opportunity for sis shows, though, that, until recently, groups around the country. highlighting the critical there was no hope at all for putting The backlash and repression against role of migration in the this issue into the national agenda. But immigrants and people of Middle East- globalized economy. the Durban experience and the inter- ern backgrounds in the wake of the national and global perspective af- September 11 terrorist attacks has re- forded the US participants strength- inforced the need to step up interna- internationally had identified the con- ened diverse local and national efforts tional awareness of and commitments ference as an important vehicle for rais- to forge a reparations initiative. to rights protections, such as those ar- ing the profile of the migration issue, On two different levels – the offi- ticulated in Durban. Energized by their and for bringing together far-flung cial documents and the Durban expe- experience in South Africa, many im- organizers and advocates for migrant rience – there has been a transforma- migrant rights activists had returned rights. In the end, while the 45+ para- tion that has significant economic im- home not only to the horror of the Sep- graphs pertaining to migrants, refu- plications. The power of an interna- tember 11 tragedy, but to communi- gees, asylum seekers and internally tional statement linking slavery and the ties fearful for their own safety from displaced persons that were included slave trade to current racism and the an anti-immigrant backlash and in the governmental conference docu- force of an international coalition of heightened national security measures ments fell short of the stronger and peoples of color may well lead to seri- to protect American borders. When more inclusive language favored by ous and sustained efforts to place on public officials announced that civil rights advocates, the provisions estab- the national agenda repayment of liberties would have to be sacrificed lished a solid baseline of protections America’s debt stemming from sla- in order to effectively fight terrorism, for a broad range of people in migra- very. it was clear that not everyone would tion, and contributed to more clearly have to “sacrifice” civil liberties; as defining the range of international pro- Samuel L. Myers, Jr. (smyers@hhh. in decades past, the civil liberties of tections. umn.edu) is the Roy Wilkins Profes- targeted groups – especially defined Going into the conference, migrant sor of Human Relations and Social along lines of nationality, racial or and refugee rights advocates had iden- Justice at the Hubert H. Humphrey immigration status – would simply be tified a number of goals for the con- Institute of Public Affairs, University taken away. ference documents, such as: inclusion of Minnesota. Formerly, he was Pro- Migrant and refugee rights NGOs of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers fessor of Economics and Director, from the US and elsewhere had shared and internally displaced persons as spe- Afro-American Studies Program, Uni- with colleagues from other arenas the cific references wherever possible; versity of Maryland, College Park. He frustration and disappointment of rights protections for all migrants, re- received his Ph.D. in economics from WCAR’s failure to solidly address gardless of immigration or legal sta- MIT. ❏ today’s varied issues of racism. None- (Please turn to page 6)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 5 (TACTAQUIN: Continued from page 5) from immigrant and refugee rights or- Mexico border have escalated hu- ganizations in the US traveled to man rights abuses of migrants and tus; specific reference to the link be- Durban as a delegation coordinated by people of color in the Southwest and tween racism and xenophobia; and the the National Network for Immigrant other regions; call for more state ratifications and and Refugee Rights. An Immigrant • Immigrants and refugees suffer un- bringing into force the International Rights Working Group, which had equal treatment within the legal and Convention of the Protection of Rights come together in the year prior to the criminal justice systems and face for All Migrant Workers and Mem- WCAR to organize preparations and standards of evidence and punish- bers of Their Families. A number of mobilize participants, developed a ment unequal to those of citizens; these issues had been lobbied in prepa- “shadow report” for the conference, • Immigrants and refugees are the ratory conferences, particularly in the coordinated trainings and participated fastest-growing incarcerated popu- Americas preparatory meeting in in conference preparatory activities, lation in the US. Santiago, Chile. Preparatory meetings including meetings in Santiago, Quito in Europe, Asia and Africa identified and Geneva. Referring to the Universal Declara- a similar range of concerns. Released in the U.S. prior to the tion of Human Rights and US ratifica- Moreover, during the governmen- Durban trip, the shadow report, “From tion of the Convention Against Racial tal conference and the preceding NGO the Borderline to the Colorline: A Re- Discrimination in 1996, obligating the Forum, as well as in various prepara- protection of individuals against human tory activities leading up to the Sep- rights abuses and racial discrimination, tember events, NGOs working on mi- An Immigrant Rights specifically in the realm of civil and grant and refugee issues came together Working Group devel- human rights, the shadow report states: for the first time as an international oped a “shadow report” “Despite these international guarantees, NGO Caucus on Migrants and Refu- for the conference. U.S. immigration policies engender gees, and worked closely in preparing racism and xenophobia against immi- a conference lobby document and in grants, particularly undocumented im- coordinating a variety of activities in port on Anti-Immigrant Racism in the migrants. Racist and xenophobic hos- Durban. For many of the poorly- United States,” was based on a survey tility directed at immigrants, refugees, resourced organizations around the of conditions for immigrant commu- asylum-seekers and other non-nation- world working on migrant issues un- nities conducted by 25 community- als in the U.S. demonstrates that cur- d der often desperate conditions, the con- based organizations. It provided an rent policy fails to provide these pro- . ference provided a vehicle for network- overview assessment of a wide range tections, and in many cases, legalizes ing and for developing the seeds of an of issues in the areas of immigration a program of racial discrimination and international strategy. For example, out enforcement, employment, women’s human rights violations.” of the preparatory process in the Ameri- rights, welfare, housing and hate vio- For a number of the delegates, the cas, a new South American migrant lence, among others, and attempted to trip to South Africa was their first in- rights network has emerged, and in articulate the “race edge” to anti-im- ternational trip or their first interna- Africa, a pre-Durban conference migrant policies and practices. The tional conference. For many of the brought together migrant and refugee report found that: delegates who had themselves migrated NGOs, many meeting for the first to the US, the South Africa experience time. • Immigrants are increasingly the tar- was particularly unique, as they found Over 60 diverse representatives gets of racial profiling by law en- themselves among other migrants from forcement officials; countries around the world. At Durban, the delegates organized work- Want to Present Your • Immigrants of color are often vic- tims of hate crimes, and anti-immi- shops, were active in caucusing, held Work to a Washington a successful press conference and rally grant racism imperils lives – often Audience? on the grounds of the WCAR – much as a result of biased immigration to the consternation of conference se- We’ll be glad to host and help policies; you publicize a presentation of curity personnel – and were among the • Immigrants, and those perceived as active NGO lobbyists in the conference your research and/or advocacy immigrants due to their race, con- work on race and poverty issues. itself. Let us know well in advance when tinue to suffer from employment dis- In a recent post-Durban assessment, you’ll be in Washington, give us crimination, are vulnerable to US migrant and refugee rights del- guidance on whom or what kinds workplace abuse and often face egates reaffirmed their commitment to of people to invite, and we’ll send greater challenges in fighting for fair pursue the aims of the Immigrant out the notices and sponsor your working conditions; Rights Working Group in preparing for talk (usually best held during • Heightened military presence and the South Africa conference: to con- lunchtime). law enforcement along the US- tinue to raise grassroots community

6 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 awareness of international protections, is Director of the National Network for Caucus on Migrants and Refugees for and to remain connected to and engaged Immigrant and Refugee Rights, an al- the WCAR. with international migrant and refugee liance of community-based, advocacy, “From the Borderline to the rights colleagues in pressuring for the labor, faith, legal and other groups and Colorline: A Report on Anti-Immigrant broad range of protections spelled out coalitions working for fairness and jus- Racism in the U.S.” (81 pp., 2001) is in the Durban conference documents. tice in immigration policy. She is a available ($18 individuals, $38 librar- founding member of the Geneva-head- ies/institutions) from the Natl. Network Catherine Tactaquin (ctactaquin@ quartered Migrant Rights Interna- for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, 310 nnirr.org), a PRRAC Board member, tional, and participated in the NGO 8th St., #303, Oakland, CA 94607. ❏

WCAR’s Challenge to the Anti-Racist Left by Eric Mann

The World Conference Against attack on the demands of Africans, as SNCC, CORE, M.L. King and the Racism was a dress rehearsal for a weak Blacks in the US and throughout the Panthers once did? New anti-racist for- anti-racist movement trying to con- world for reparations to atone for the mations, among youth, low-income front the most powerful common en- European/US trans-Atlantic slave working-class communities of color, emy—the US government, the most trade. Obviously, the Bush Adminis- environmental justice groups and advanced capitalist state in its imperi- tration had already calculated the women of color organizations played alist phase, the primary source of rac- “costs” of its walk-out, well aware that leadership roles in the protests against ism and national oppression in the the US. Still, those groups function at world. The US makes a principle of very low levels of coordination, let boycotting and wrecking international The US government is alone strategic collaboration. There conferences on anything progressive— the primary source of are discussions going on nationally to boycotting the two previous anti-rac- try to develop common approaches to ist conferences in Geneva, trying to racism and national anti-war and anti-racist work among subvert the 1992 UN Conference on oppression in the world. grassroots groups that have built an Environment and Development in Rio, actual grassroots base—but there is a refusing to sign the Kyoto accords, still long way to go before reaching even refusing to sign even the watered-down even before September 11 the US was minimal levels of functional unity of governmental resolutions at Durban. in the throes of a 30-year white back- strategy and tactics. I went to WCAR as part of a di- lash. Durban, however, still exposed verse and spirited delegation, orga- a structural weakness in US imperial- Reparations Takes Center Stage. nized by the Applied Research Cen- ism—that in any international arena, At Durban, the Reparations Movement ter, and we joined with 10,000 Non- any arena in which the struggle against demonstrated its historical potential to Governmental Organization (NGO) racism and colonial domination is taken become the central defining political delegates. For many of us, it was a seriously, the US empire, US imperi- issue of the 21st century. As several politically decisive experience. We alism, is singled out, or often self- African speakers argued, reparations were given the great gift of conversa- nominates, as the main cause of orga- does not begin, or even end, with a tions, forums, strategic debates, nized racism and national oppression focus on monetary, material and struc- marches and demonstrations with the in the world. At Durban, a broad tural economic and political demands many forces and factions of the South united front of US NGO delegates, on the West (although of course such African Left, which shaped the entire some rather conservative under other demands will be essential to the context of WCAR. circumstances, sharply criticized the movement’s tactical plan), but rather US role in the world and its walk-out— will be driven by years or even de- The US Walks Out. The pre- and presaged a new anti-racist coali- cades of a world “crimes against hu- Durban US threats and US govern- tion. manity” tribunal, with European and mental walk-out were a slap in the face The challenge after Durban is both US imperialist civilization on trial. to WCAR’s South African hosts, to political and organizational: Is it pos- This campaign would challenge the the UN, to anyone even debating sible to coalesce an anti-imperialist very legitimacy of the US to exist as a Israel’s aggression against the Pales- tendency in the anti-racist movement nation state, and call into question its tinian people and the denial of their that can effectively contend with the settler state history of genocide against right to self-determination. It was an more establishment civil rights groups, (Please turn to page 8)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 7 (MANN: Continued from page 7) colonial nations throughout the world render, attacking civil rights and civil won the most concrete and structural liberties at home, and now issuing un- both Indigenous peoples and Blacks. civil rights in US history. The Repara- provoked threats against the Iraqis, This movement, led by Black peoples tions Movement can provide a similar against whom the US is already carry- throughout the world, would docu- spark—not just for the Black movement, ing out a brutal blockade. There is no ment centuries of transatlantic Euro- but for all oppressed nationality people chance to build a successful anti-racist pean capitalist barbarism, and chal- inside the US and for a world anti-im- movement without making anti-war lenge anti-racist whites and Western- perialist Left. organizing an integral component, and ers to investigate the genocidal prac- again, placing that work in an anti- tices and complicity of their nation The UN and International Anti- imperialist framework. Just as many states, churches, companies, unions, racist Work. For those who are civil rights groups felt, at first, that universities and their own families. guided by an internationalist, anti-im- they could “sit out” the Vietnam War, The threat of the Reparations Move- perialist strategy for US anti-racist only to understand, to their credit, that ment was reflected in the US walk- work, the United Nations offers an Vietnam had become the central focus out and the heavy-handed efforts by important structural arena. It provides of the world anti-racist, anti-imperial- European states to suppress strong opportunity for US anti-racists to meet ist movement, it is becoming clear that resolutions on reparations in order to with Third World revolutionaries and there is a similar moral and strategic cover up their own role in mass mur- imperative to directly challenge the US der and genocide. Still, the resolutions war machine. Right-wing forces in both finally passed by the NGOs, declar- The nascent movement parties have seized upon the Septem- ing the transatlantic slave trade “crimes ber 11 events as a pretense for acceler- against humanity,” and the backlash for reparations offers an ating a pre-existing plan to escalate US generated by the US walk-out are posi- historical opportunity to world domination. If we don’t con- tive steps in what will be a very long revitalize anti-racist front the clear and present danger of and tumultuous process. organizing in the US. permanent war, there is no chance for The nascent movement for repara- any progressive/Left strategy. tions offers an historical opportunity A week after the end of WCAR and to revitalize anti-racist organizing in progressives from Europe and the the September 11 events, we had an the US, not as an isolated “issue,” but West, and for individual organizations open mike discussion at the Los Ange- as a conceptual frame to drive many to learn the intricacies of the UN — les Bus Riders Union monthly mem- other tactics and shape the entire dis- joining with other human rights, envi- bership meeting—in English, Spanish cussion of Left, anti-imperialist strat- ronmental justice, women’s liberation and Korean. We began with a motion egy. The Reparations Movement can and anti-racist organizations that have to oppose US government policies at- provide ideological coherence and made the UN a key arena of their orga- tacking immigrants, cutting social pro- greater historical possibility for the nizing work. The forthcoming World grams, and restricting civil rights and courageous but often isolated Summit on Sustainable Development civil liberties in the name of the war grassroots workplace, community and in Johannesburg and UN conferences against terrorism. But our main goal urban battles in the US. on women’s rights in Uganda and Swe- was to let the members speak openly Historically, we have seen that den are important arenas in which anti- about the war. A Salvadorean mem- anti-racist movements with a compre- racist organizers in the US can meet ber told of how she was raped and tor- hensive and compelling vision can beforehand to try to hammer out con- tured by the right-wing forces in her energize actual grassroots resistance. crete proposals that tie women’s lib- country and how the CIA organized Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa eration and environmental justice to an the murders and mutilations. A Gua- movement transformed an entire gen- explicit anti-imperialist program—a temalan woman yelled that to this day eration of Black consciousness and program that will of necessity, again, she is outraged at the US for overthrow- anti-racist debate; the US Communist place us on a collision course with the ing the democratically elected Arbenz Party’s focus on a Black nation in the US government, Republicans and government and how much murder, South drove the work of the Scottsboro Democrats alike. torture and genocide has been brought boys campaign and the sharecroppers to her nation and the Indigenous union; SNCC’s demands for Black Anti-War Organizing and peoples and revolutionaries by US-sup- Power; Malcolm’s demands that Black Grassroots Movements. The Bush ported dictators. A Korean grand- people as a people take their demands Administration has made it clear that it mother told how the discussion had for human rights to the UN; the Pan- intends to move the US into a perma- brought up repressed memories of her thers’ demands that Black people hold nent war footing—dropping massive torture by the Japanese during their a plebiscite to determine their relation- bombs on Afghanistan that are human occupation of Korea. Several Black ship to the United States; and King’s rights and ecological assaults, demand- members angrily denounced how the proposal that Blacks in the US ally with ing nothing less than unconditional sur- US government has opportunistically

8 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 seized upon the unique and symbolic of the world progressive movements, of progressive politics in the US. The value of the 5,000 people who lost their provided an opportunity for US groups international united front we got a brief lives tragically in the World Trade to learn about UN structures, to meet glimpse of in Durban offers our only Center when the government doesn’t great intellectuals, revolutionaries and hope. The historical challenge is give a damn about 2 million mainly mass leaders from the Third World, whether we can reconstruct a viable Black and Latino men and women and, ironically, to meet many new “we” before the Right moves to sup- locked up, many for the rest of their people in the US movements and to press all of us. lives, in US prisons. In this real life spend more time with each other than movement of L.A. bus riders fighting we had to in the US. There is no way Eric Mann (ericmann@mindspring. “transit racism,” we saw that the US that US anti-racists can go to com) has been a movement organizer government’s assertion that the Johannesburg, Durban, Beijing and Rio for more than 35 years, with the Con- “American people” support its barbaric and see the world suffering caused by gress of Racial Equality, SDS, and for attacks on Afghanistan really refers to our own government, and then come ten years as a shop floor worker in the a far smaller sub-set of the population, back to fight for “democratic rights” United Auto Workers. He is presently mainly the white middle and upper inside the US without the most explicit director of the Labor/Community Strat- classes. There is great possibility to strategic commitment to a world move- egy Center and a member of the Plan- organize an effective anti-war move- ment against racism, national oppres- ning Committee of the L.A. Bus Rid- ment if it is rooted in the lower-in- sion, world war and imperialism. ers Union. He has recently completed come, working class of color, and tied From the stealing of an election to de- a longer analysis of the conference— to a progressive anti-racist internation- fiance of international law to the bold “WCAR: A Strategic Sum-Up” as part alism in opposition to US great power assertion of a state of permanent war, of his Dispatches from Durban, avail- chauvinism and xenophobia. the Bush Administration and its will- able at www.thestrategycenter.org. ❏ WCAR, with its many internal ing Democratic accomplices is threat- weaknesses reflective of the actual state ening to crush even the last remnants

Durban: More Than Its Media Coverage by Makani Themba

I don’t think the UN Conference closed at nearly 1 am on the last day The excitement was so palpable that could ever simply be “The Confer- of the NGO Forum, most of these is- the crowd literally gasped in unison ence” after the events of September sues were not only understood – they when Fidel finally made it to the stage. 11th. How could we know how the received unanimous support. The space reserved up front for the world would change in just one day Cuban delegation filled up instead with after the conference officially closed? supporters worldwide. Ugandans, Chi- Thinking back, I left Durban feel- There’s a lot of unity nese, Mexicanos, Samoans were ing good about the new networks and among us NGOs. among the folk who simply brushed understandings that were forged past the usher charged with control- among progressive NGOs worldwide. ling admittance to the area, and said My twelve days in Durban showed me If there was ever a moment that I in their best English, “I am Cuban.” that, at the core, there’s a lot of unity knew NGOs had really forged some One Ugandan woman said ceremoni- among us NGOs. common ground, it was during the ously, “We are all Cuban.” It sure didn’t start out that way. We closing ceremony. We were all wait- Most of us agreed that there are cen- all had some stretching to do. Two ing for Fidel. After two days of ru- tral issues of injustice – poverty, rac- years ago, few of us knew the oppres- mors about his possible appearance at ism, sexism, marginalization among sion facing the 250 million Dalits in the forum, delegates packed the them; that globalization has meant a India. We never heard of the Cricket Stadium as they awaited the (Please turn to page 10) Bhutanese or contemporary slavery in beloved Cuban leader. For nearly half Niger. Many of our colleagues came an hour before his arrival, the group Please get your library into this process unsure about repara- sang liberation songs, rocked politi- to subscribe to P&R. tions for slavery and colonialism, and cal chants and waved makeshift Cu- We can provide a a significant number had little clue ban flags. His Excellency was easily complete set of back about present-day racism in the US. the indisputable star of the proceed- issues. By the time the final plenary session ings.

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 9 (THEMBA: Continued from page 9) It’s hard not to wonder how things Makani Themba (mthemba@igc. might have been different if our gov- org) writes and works on issues of great deal of escalation of these and ernment chose to lead a process for race, media and policy. Her latest book other challenges; and that we must take peace rather than choosing to simply is Making Policy, Making Changes on both the market and our govern- walk away. (Chardon Press). ❏ ments if we hope to make a difference. Durban also reinforced my disap- pointment in mainstream news media. As usual, they were more interested Bridging the Racial Justice Chasm in covering the same old hopelessness than new stories of hope. The debate by Gary Delgado related to Israel’s treatment of the Pal- estinian people dominated coverage. Since September 11 we have en- that Arabs should be put under special A black woman was among the net- tered a new era of racial politics. We surveillance, while 31% of respondents work reporters refusing to attend a have internationalized US racism. to a Harris CNN/Time poll thought press conference on reparations less President Bush has used the insidious that Arab-Americans should be held than 20 feet away, in order to film yet imagery of an evil (though not god- in camps. another hour of verbal conflict be- less) enemy against whom, we are told, Media reaction has not exactly been tween Israelis and Palestinians. The we must unite. Only this time, instead unbiased. The New York Times, for press also mostly ignored the quiet of the “godless communists” of the instance, has gone out of its way to group of rabbis that protested along- ‘50s and ‘60s, our enemy is “fanatical publish quotes from people of color side Palestinians in their effort to forge fundamentalist terrorists.” Are the who think that racial profiling might new definitions of Zionism. Perhaps Taliban bad news? Yes. But they were most importantly, they missed the already bad news back in May when truth – and given the fact that main- we were still providing them with fi- Instead of stemming the stream media outlets conducted few nancial support. tide of race-baiting, the interviews with attendees, it didn’t The US assertion of a unilateral Bush Administration has seem as if the truth really mattered to right to attack both terrorists and the them all that much. It all made me states that harbor them is an important fanned the flames. even more grateful for the ethnic and framework for the responses to Sep- independent media that worked tire- tember 11. Building on this frame- lessly to tell the many stories of the work, the enemy lives in not one but be acceptable. And, instead of stem- gathering. many nation states, may be assisted by ming the tide of race-baiting, the Bush And there were many stories. Too co-conspirators in any country (includ- Administration has fanned the flames. many to tell in one sitting, to be sure. ing the US), and is so nefarious that Bush has not only pushed his “dead or There was the one about how the US the public release of proof linking these alive” rhetoric for our new enemies dominated the conference in terms of enemies to the September 11 attacks abroad, he has also supported Attor- attendees but found collaboration as a is, Bush says, too threatening to US ney General Ashcroft’s efforts to: delegation nearly impossible. The pro- “assets.” cess exposed our lack of relationships What does this have to do racism? • Indefinitely detain without with each other, and there was no hid- The most obvious effect abroad is that charge over 1200 people, most of Arab ing it. Yet the shock was therapeutic. framing the enemy as both Muslim descent, refuse to release their names, Before September 11th, there was even and terrorist opens the opportunity for and deny them access to their families hope that groups were intent on the US to attack Iraq, Syria and Leba- or attorneys; change, repair, on reaching out to one non. Within the US, reactions to the • Sanction the Justice Depart- another. We were all abuzz with how attack have increased targeting of ment’s eavesdropping on conversations we’d “bring Durban home.” people of color. Republican Congress- between lawyers and detainees when Unfortunately, far more tragic and man Darrell Issa was not allowed to “national security” is at stake; unsavory events have hit home instead. board a flight to Saudi Arabia because • Reactivate the FBI’s and CIA’s And it is these events that rightly pull he “fit the profile” – he is Arab- domestic spying procedures — our political attention. Yet, so much American. Issa’s story is not unique. Cointelpro is back; of what has unfolded from September Gallup found 58% of Americans be- • Promise to extend the stay of 11th is rooted in the debates and ten- lieve that Arab-Americans should be non-citizens who “critically and reli- sions that framed Durban. The issues subject to more intensive security ably” snitch on other immigrants. that occupy the world stage now are checks, and 49% wanted them to have the same issues the United States boy- special i.d. cards. A third of respon- As chilling as these policies are, cotted in South Africa. dents to a PSA/Newsweek poll thought they come as no surprise to those of us

10 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 who attended the World Conference Durban to Port Elizabeth, I sat next to peoples like the Palestinians were sub- Against Racism in South Africa. Less a white man who explained how he ject to. So, while most people attend- than three weeks before the attacks, was leading a “freedom train” of white ing the conference came with their own the US made a statement to the world South Africans out of the country by issue, South Africa provided us all about our government’s position on helping to place professionals in with a rich historical context of racism: Withdrawing the US delega- Canada, Australia, the United States struggle — and gave us a vision of the tion sent a loud and clear message — and Europe. While our stay in democratic debate that we often talk it wasn’t worth talking about. KwaZulu Natal was markedly differ- about but seldom see. Despite the absence of the US gov- ent from the violent clashes between ernment, the conference taught several the Inkatha Freedm Party and African lessons that might prove valuable as National Congress in 1991, the racial Making a Political Point we enter into a pitched battle over ef- stratification was quite evident, the ten- at the WCAR forts to limit civil liberties, challenge sion palpable. Our stops along the Gar- civil rights and subvert democratically- den Route from Port Elizabeth to Cape Because many racial and ethnic based opposition to US policies. Town put us in contact with whites groups from around the world have The first lesson about the UN con- who had fled Johannesburg to the per- been shut out of other UN conferences, ference has to do with context: While ceived safety of the country, while our WCAR was their first opportunity on the stage leading up to the WCAR had Cape Town discussions with profes- the world stage. And because the been set by Western governments ma- sional and working class “coloreds” framework for the conference was rac- neuvering to ensure that making a po- yielded guarded criticisms of the ANC. ism and intolerance, broadly defined, litical point about race and racism many groups reframed their grievances would be difficult, holding the con- and struggles to fit into a frame of ference in South Africa made a sub- South Africa gave us a structural racism. So caste, national stantive difference. South Africa itself vision of the democratic origin, a number of forms of religious is a political point about racism. debate that we often repression, efforts to promote indig- I visited South Africa first in 1991, enous rights, and anti-colonial again in 1999, and once more at the talk about but seldom struggles were all framed racially. conference. Each time, it seemed like see. This had its pluses and minuses. It a new country. My visit in ’91 was was mostly positive, because many re- right after the government had ligious and anti-colonial struggles do “unbanned” many groups, including Though my visit to the WCAR was have a racial dimension. However, the ANC. As a projection of future the shortest, I found that the country’s because “racism” was stretched to in- racial solidarity, almost every organi- social climate was different—again. clude many different types of struc- zation we visited met us with tri- With Mandela no longer President, tures and behaviors, seeing common racial leadership — black, white and criticism of the ANC was more open. ground was more difficult. Emphasiz- colored. The locally-based “civics” Rebukes ranged from disapproval ing commonalties, however, was not demonstrated a degree of political so- about the distribution of resources, to the primary agenda for many groups. phistication that I’d hoped we in the the state of the country’s health care Most wanted to publicize and legiti- US could learn to emulate. and education systems, to complaints mate their issue. The two groups that My visit in ’99 was a little more about the ANC’s plan to privatize parts in my view succeeded best were the sobering. My son was studying at the of the public sector. Dalits (Indian people who many West- University of Natal, and my wife, my It was most interesting that mem- erners know as “untouchables”) and father and I spent three weeks touring bers of the ANC debated these criti- the Palestinians. The Dalits employed the country and seeing the new South cisms both privately and publicly. an “insider” strategy. Their large and Africa through his eyes. Many things They listened to the critiques, laid out well-organized delegation assessed had changed. Much of the leadership their situation, delivered their ratio- every panel, committee and potential of the civics had been drawn into gov- nale for a particular course of action, gathering, and used each opportunity ernment. The pre-election anti-apart- and actually engaged the possibility to carry their message – that the caste heid coalition appeared to be fraying that there might be other legitimate system is racial oppression. In re- around the edges. On a plane from perspectives. They even dealt with the sponse, the Indian government took the off-the-wall doctrinaire posturing of position that whereas second-class citi- some US delegates with intelligence zenship was a problem, they were deal- Be sure to send and good humor, pointing out that, yes, ing with it. This position was articu- us items for our they had made some compromises, but lated through front groups that activ- Resources they had decided that political com- ists from around the world called promise was preferable to the constant GONGOS (government-organized Section. state of siege that other colonized (Please turn to page 12)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 11 (DELGADO: Continued from page 11) recognition, due to both the pre-con- to recommend it; ference stance of the US and Israel and • Finally, it is very clear that we were non-governmental organizations). A the support they’d received from the unprepared for the rapidity, sever- number of Western governments sup- South Africans, was the Palestinians. ity and broad swath of the Bush/ ported GONGOS, but so did some of Reflection on both the WCAR and Ashcroft post-September 11 bar- the larger countries from the East. reactions to September 11 suggests a rage. African American and Latino China, for instance, had audience shills number of lessons: organizations were tackling issues claiming that representatives from Ti- • First, the Bush Administration’s of profiling and political represen- bet were exaggerating the case of reli- domestic attacks on civil liberties tation, immigrant rights groups gious repression—“and besides,” they and the racialized attacks abroad are were focused on legalization, lan- claimed, “it’s a matter of national sov- one set of policies. Bush and guage rights and the reinstitution of ereignty.” Company’s efforts to fan the flames public benefits, and civil rights ad- The Palestinians employed a differ- of racism, aggregate power to the vocates confronted the traditional ent strategy, utilizing their connections government as a result of the fear arena of racial discrimination and with the South African government to they generate, and ignore the nega- civil liberties violations. So, when raise the profile of their plight. Thus, tive impacts, both domestic and glo- push came to shove, we lacked both while the Dalits focused on conferees bal, of US policies and procedures, the organizational mechanisms and as their primary target audience, the constitute a consistent modus oper- the political solidarity to mount a Palestinians used their connections to andi; response. Our lesson is that our en- the host country to amplify their mes- • Second, South Africa has much to emies have consolidated their sage in the world press. For instance, teach us. A society where issues of strength. Our challenge is to bridge the big anti-privatization march had a race and racism are seriously “on the chasm that divides us. pro-Palestinian component, and thou- the table” and where the govern- sands of South Africans attended a ment is honestly grappling with is- Gary Delgado ([email protected]), a Palestinian support rally outside the sues of equity and uneven develop- former PRRAC Board member, is Ex- conference. So, although the liveliest ment is an important model. While ecutive Director of the Applied Re- contingents inside were the Dalit and the South African government is not search Center in Oakland, CA and the Roma peoples (who most people perfect, a government with leaders scholar-in-residence at the Inst. for the in the US know as “gypsies”), the willing to engage in real debate Study of Social Change, University of group that received the biggest press about policies and ideas has much California-Berkeley. ❏ Latinos, the WCAR and 9/11 by Marisa J. Demeo

In the months leading up to the would be important or controversial While it was important for the US to WCAR, the media in the United States for the US also would inevitably be- be a player on both of the issues of covered stories regarding two issues come dominant issues at the World controversy, the US government’s that would be considered controver- Conference. The US government position and role resulted in neglect- sial topics at the conference — repara- early began threatening to pull out of ing many other issues that are impor- tions to remedy the wrongs caused by the conference over these two issues. tant to discussions about race, racial slavery and whether certain countries discrimination, xenophobia and related would be successful in characterizing intolerance. Zionism as a form of racism. Rela- The terrorist attacks of I returned from South Africa on tions between African-Americans and September 11 actually September 10. On September 11, 19 whites have always dominated discus- make it even more terrorists hijacked four planes, crash- sions about race in this country because important to deal with ing two into the World Trade Center, of our country’s history of slavery and racism and xenophobia. one into the Pentagon, and one in a Jim Crow laws. As to the second topic, field in Pennsylvania, once passengers the US has a significant Jewish popu- prevented them from causing more de- lation and a special relationship with The US government eventually fol- struction. Because the US has been Israel, so issues related to Israel, and lowed through with its threat to pull focused necessarily on finding the per- Zionism have taken on a special im- out, primarily due to the issues related sons connected to the terrorists and portance for the US government. to discussions that were taking place fighting terrorism, there has been little Because of the US’s powerful role at the conference characterizing time to reflect on the World Confer- in the United Nations, issues that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. ence and what happened there as it re-

12 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 lates to our own struggles in the US to example, to integrate to the same level In the end, Congress realized it should fight racism and xenophobia. The ter- as other ethnic groups, such as Ger- not distinguish between persons who rorist attacks of September 11 do not mans or the Irish. have been citizens for less than five remove the need to deal with these is- Many people in the US have viewed years and those who have been citi- sues; they actually make it even more the terrorist attacks of September 11 zens for more than five years, but it important to face them. as bringing the country together, but, kept the distinction between citizens Upon reflection, the context of the and noncitizens. World Conference may not have been Members of the US National Guard the best place to explore the discrimi- The World Conference are stationed in some US airports in nation faced by Latinos in the US. The may not have been the military fatigues with machine guns. issues related to racism and racial dis- best place to explore Legal permanent residents are required crimination at the world level focused the discrimination faced by law to register for the military on the issues of how people of Afri- by Latinos in the US. draft. Many noncitizens serve volun- can descent and indigenous peoples are tarily in the National Guard as well as treated, and to a lesser extent how per- other branches of the military. The sons of Asian descent are treated. in fact, some might argue it has united military trusts noncitizens to guard our Many Latinos in the US were indig- some in the US against others. Be- airports as well as to fight and die, if enous peoples in their native countries cause the 19 terrorists were from Arab necessary, in our war against terror- before either they immigrated to the countries and were noncitizens, much ism, but Congress and the President US or before the US took possession of the hostility and restrictions that do not trust them to screen a bag at an of the land where they were living. have been directed at and placed on airport. The policy of preventing all Many other Latinos are of African individuals residing in the US have noncitizens from holding jobs as bag- descent, European descent, Asian de- been directed at persons who are or gage screeners is not based on a ratio- scent or often some combination of who are perceived to be from Arab nal basis and on facts, but rather on being indigenous and one or more of countries, as well as anyone who is not xenophobia and scapegoating. This the other racial groups. Despite this a citizen. Some strategies that have policy will cause Latino and other non- varied racial heritage within the Latino cast the net too wide are restricting the citizens to be fired from their jobs, and community, Latinos are perceived by civil rights and civil liberties not only prevent others who could perform the many in the US as a distinct racial of Arabs, but of many others who are job from being considered in the fu- group, which was not discussed at all perceived to be Arab, as well as all ture. at the World Conference. As a result, noncitizens. A discussion of the confluence of the discussion on race that occurred at By way of example, recently Con- racism and xenophobia was needed in the conference only partially addressed gress passed an airline security bill. It the context of the World Conference the type of racism felt by Latinos in certainly was important to increase our in order to address the discrimination the US. airline security in light of the events faced by Latinos in the US. Such a The issues related to xenophobia at of September 11, but one of the pro- discussion is still needed in our coun- the World Conference focused on how visions casts the net too far. Before try to address the issues facing 35 mil- governments and societies in one coun- Congress passed the bill, there were lion Latinos who reside on the US try treat migrants coming from another two versions. The House passed The mainland and another 3.8 million who country. While this discussion impacts Secure Transportation for America Act reside in Puerto Rico. The discussion a significant percentage of the Latino (H.R. 3510), which would have re- could also shed light on which strate- community, many Latinos in the US quired all airport baggage screeners to gies we, as a nation, are adopting in are not migrants, so this discussion be US citizens. The Senate passed The our war on terrorism that are neces- only partially addressed the issues fac- Aviation Security Act (S. 1477), sary to fight terrorism and which ones ing Latinos in the US. which would have required all airport are driven more by the intersection of When the US government and oth- baggage screeners to be US citizens for racism and xenophobia. ers in the US discriminate against a minimum of five years. These pro- Latinos, it is some combination of rac- visions passed quickly and with little Marisa J. Demeo (MDemeo@ ism and xenophobia. It stems not just dissent, because it was considered ac- maldef.org) formerly worked as an at- from being perceived perpetually as ceptable to consider anyone who is not torney in the Department of Justice’s foreign or “not American,” it is this a citizen as suspect. Members of Con- Civil Rights Division and currently perception in combination with treat- gress found this belief acceptable even serves as the Regional Counsel in ing those who look racially different though the noncitizens who currently charge of national public policy for the – i.e., darker – as inferior or suspect. work as baggage screeners are here le- Mexican American Legal Defense and It is this combination that has made it gally, are legally authorized to work Educational Fund (MALDEF), a na- much harder for persons who are of and have been serving in their posi- tional Latino civil rights organization. Mexican or Puerto Rican descent, for tions for many years without incident. ❏

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 13 Post-Durban Implications for the US Civil Rights Agenda by john powell

There are many ways to think UN preparatory meetings. The NGO tistical capacity. These concerns were about the importance of the UN and UN programs of action provide recognized in both the NGO and UN WCAR and the impact it will have on the US social justice movement with programs of action as preeminent in the United States and the world. To an emancipatory framework for gaug- the global challenge to ending racism. make a clear assessment of the confer- ing local and national efforts, and pro- As important as these indicators are, ence will take time. It will also de- vide it with a tool to engage in the glo- it would be more than naïve to believe pend on the work we do and events bal movement to eliminate all forms that such improvements would be suf- that unfold. of racial discrimination. ficient to begin to address racism as a Although the WCAR was preceded Since its adoption in 1968, ICERD global problem. by 50 years of UN activity on com- has been an available, but substantially A number of additional things have bating racism and two related world ineffective, political lever for fight- to be done to move this important conferences, the Durban conference ing racial discrimination. The effec- project. Many of the opportunities for was the first international forum to tiveness of the Convention has been this, as well as the impediments, are focus closely on specific and practical limited by a number of factors, in- here in the United States. The impor- steps to eradicate racism, and most im- tance of the role of the United States portantly, marked a historic break- government and the NGOs was driven through for non-governmental orga- As John Lennon said, home at the conference. We are used nizations (NGOs), which mobilized for the United States is the to thinking about the United States as the first time to address racism on a Roman Empire. the most powerful country in the global level from the bottom up. An world. As John Lennon said, the estimated 10,000 delegates represent- United States is the Roman Empire. ing NGOs from around the world con- It is troubling to think that progress verged on Durban for three days of cluding the lack the lack of political on this issue is dependent on what the caucusing preceding the UN forum. will; confusion as to what is racism; United States does. One can hardly The NGO caucuses worked on final- the structure of having a country do believe that we will make substantial izing an NGO program of action, its own reporting; and the absence of progress on eliminating racism if lead- which had been revised over the course universal measures of structural rac- ership must come from either the Bush of the two preceding years in caucus ism to guide the implementation of its Administration or from most Demo- leadership meetings, held parallel to political mandates. Our role at the con- cratic administrations. It is well six UN preparatory meetings leading ference was focused on helping to known now that the Administration up to the WCAR. The final NGO pro- bring attention to the lack of adequate tried to derail the conference even be- gram of action was ceremoniously car- measures. fore it started. As the world leader, ried through the streets of Durban in a Universal measures are critical in with a substantial and growing popu- global march of over 20,000 persons two respects: They allow for an evalu- lation of color, our actions before and to the opening ceremonies of the UN ation of meta or transformative struc- during the conference can only be forum, where it was presented to Mary tures and their influence on maintain- called shameful. It is also not surpris- Robinson, the UN High Commissioner ing racial disparities in fundamental ing that while the ICERD covers both for Human Rights. Copies of the NGO human rights; and they provide the intentional acts of racism as well as program of action were subsequently basis for evaluating affirmative action racist effects, the US has refused to provided to all 168 government del- strategies, in terms of measuring address the issues of racist effects. But egations representing the signatory progress in democratizing the struc- the power in the United States is not countries to the International Conven- tures and providing a basis for valu- limited to the government. The NGOs tion on the Elimination of All Forms ing and quantifying claims of repara- in the US are also in a privileged and of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). tions – that is, measuring progress in powerful position. And if this power The UN forum constituted the conclud- closing disparity gaps. can be used in appropriate ways in con- ing process for reconciling the NGO There are two significant challenges cert with others throughout the world, program of action with a UN program to establishing universal measures. there is no reason to despair. Unfor- of action, which, like the NGO docu- The first is the need to establish a glo- tunately, it is not clear that this power ment, had been revised over the course bal norm for defining race. The sec- will be harnessed. of the preceding two years through the ond is the need to address gaps in sta- NGOs left Durban having estab-

14 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 lished a foundation for a global coali- end. Fighting to end racism and build dizing the sustainability of the fledg- tion and an emancipatory framework a nation and world where social, po- ling global coalition. to dismantle structural racism world- litical and economic resources are not The message that needs to be wide. Whereas it is commonly per- correlated to race is not un-American brought back to the US race relations ceived that globalization is a phenom- or unpatriotic. US NGOs constituted agenda can be summarized as follows: enon capable of being harnessed only almost a third of the NGO delegations Seven categories of meta or transfor- by superpower governments and in Durban. They brought not only mative structures present the turning transnational corporations, Durban their voices, but also the resources and point for ending racism, which can be demonstrated that advances in technol- strategic placement to amplify and sus- realized only through multiracial and ogy, such as the internet and cell tain the collective message from multinational coalition strategies to phones, have created new opportuni- Durban before the global community. achieve their democratization. These ties for networking and global collabo- If the message from Durban to glo- seven categories of capabilities and op- ration. The insight that capital is mo- balize the fight against racism is to portunities are financial, legislative, bile while people are rooted appears move forward and reach its potential regulatory, juridical, policing, com- to be overstated. The new millen- of mobilizing a sustainable global coa- municative and prestige structures, nium, with the recognition that glo- lition, it will be critical for US NGOs which exist in relationship at the in- balization is the ultimate meta-struc- ternational, national and local levels, ture, is capable of being democratized to comprehensively shape the distribu- from the bottom up, as the critical so- The NGOs in the US tive human rights paradigm, as well lution to eliminating racism world- are in a privileged and as help define who we are. Establish- wide. This recognition set in motion powerful position. ment of a Global Racial Empowerment the agenda of national and regional Index provides the basis for uniform NGOs to bring back to their constitu- measures of structural racism and a ents: that their national and regional to re-engage in the mission to bring platform for maintaining the post- movements must be linked to the the message to their constituents. Durban global coalition, both of which emerging global movement, not out There is a need for a national NGO are essential to ending all forms of ra- of strategic preference, but because of conference from which to establish a cial discrimination. necessity predicated by the era of glo- US NGO program of action. In turn, balization. this action can be leveraged as a model john powell ([email protected]. But the momentum and potential of to support regional conferences in edu), a PRRAC Board member, holds Durham, which was already suffering South American, Africa, Asia and the Earl R. Larson Chair of Civil Rights from the United States role before and Europe. As the distance between and Civil Liberties Law and is execu- during the conference, has suffered Durban and these actions grows, the tive director of the Institute on Race another setback since the conference. momentum weakens behind the foun- and Poverty at the University of Min- In the aftermath of September 11, the dation established in Durban, jeopar- nesota Law School. ❏ US public mood has been captured in a managed fervor, where individuals and groups fighting for racial equality Post Durban: have been subjugated into a category of suspects – distractors from the pa- Where Will We Stand? triotic duty of vigilance to homeland security. The public is being led to by James Counts Early believe that there is no patriotic space to discuss the contradictions that exist Many deliberate disparaging in- Idealistic hopes aside – what between the ideals of democracy for terpretations about what happened lead- should, could or might have been – which it is being asked to go to war ing up to and in Durban at the United the Realpolitik of every stage of con- and the domestic tolerance being ex- Nation’s-convened World Conference ference proceedings reflected substan- hibited for social exclusion produced Against Racism, Racial Discrimina- tial fault lines between governments by globalized predatory economic and tion, Xenophobia and Related Intol- and NGOs over fundamental theoreti- cultural exploitation. In the midst of erances have been widely propagated cal, ethical and policy approaches to- this fog of war, US NGOs have slipped through the media. Surely, one intent wards defining and eliminating racism into a self-imposed exile from carry- is that dismal assessments will extend and discrimination. The promising ing the message of Durban back to their to future post-Durban work in the US. news is that some productive collabo- communities. This silence is an Some progressive anti-racist activists ration, forged mostly among NGOs, unaffordable luxury, which, reflect- also summarized the Conference in less and to a limited extent between NGOs ing on the lessons of Durban, we must than positive terms, if not as a com- and governments, portends advances plete failure. (Please turn to page 16)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 15 (EARLY: Continued from page 15) Latinos. with and struggles against racism was The US government, in collusion evident in collaborations among de- in the period ahead. with allies, and a complicit mainstream scendants of enslaved Africans. Afri- The Durban conference confirmed media, tried to define issues and terms can and African Diaspora nations and that history is always an active, if not of debate and resolutions, and to in- communities in the Americas (includ- easily discernible, force loaded with validate specific policy recommenda- ing Afro-Cubans) readily identified social meanings and struggles that in- tions proposed by affected communi- historic heritage connections, but situ- form and shape life destinies. Facing ties (i.e., proposed actions steps re- ated their distinct but related present- history, in this case the history of rac- garding reparations and affirmative day struggles against racism and ra- ism and related intolerances, first and action as means to address historical cial discrimination in the context of foremost involved governments mak- ills of racism and contemporary racial global Neo-Liberal economic and gov- ing a choice between honest and just discrimination, and the doctrinaire slo- ernance regimes that are undermining reckoning, or continued denial of in- gan “Zionism is racism.”). The con- national sovereignty, self-determina- justice. The most powerful states chose stant US threat and eventual walk-out tion and democracy, and wreaking calculated confrontation with civil so- from the conference failed to derail the particular havoc on the lives of the ciety groups that are committed to de- positive influence and to some extent most marginalized and vulnerable citi- feat of racism and discrimination, and the negative impact of NGO agendas zens and communities— the Indig- to demands upon governments and about which it objected. enous, Afro-Descendants, the poor, multilateral bodies for full achieve- and women and children. Africa- ment of civil, cultural and economic Diaspora nations and communities justice. In particular cases, civil soci- Some productive col- achieved that level of analysis and unity ety groups also avoided honest and just laboration, forged in action, despite challenges of lan- reckoning in favor of unqualified soli- mostly among NGOs, guage and cultural differences and re- darity. portends advances in lated spats, as well as differences over The achievements of civil society the period ahead. terminology and yet to be determined groups with strained financial re- strategies and tactics (e.g., Repara- sources, brimming competing passions tions vs. A Marshall Plan for Africa). and widely uneven political experi- In general, struggles and collabo- ences should not be undervalued. In Against great odds, the global in- rations engaged in Durban indicate a less than two years of preparation, citi- fluence of US African-American probability of ongoing linkage and co- zens from all across the world navi- NGO’s was made apparent in the ordination of country or group-specific gated barriers imposed by distance, widely discussed policy positions on issues with like and similar regional economics, language, cultural-reli- reparations and affirmative action and global counterparts. Action poli- gious differences and emotions, and adopted by some African nations and cies adopted by African NGOs and the burdensome, at times alienating, Diaspora communities, particularly Afro-Descendant NGOs in Latin protocol of the United Nations and na- Afro-Descendientes in Central and America and the Caribbean have di- tion-states, in order to arrive in Durban South America and the Caribbean. rect implications for the post-Durban sufficiently prepared and coordinated Despite fractious, but generally con- US anti-racist agendas that African- to engage the resources, rules and le- tained, encounters between more ac- Americans initiate (including Afro- verage of state power. tivist and conventional anti-racist Latino Americans in the US), and Powerful states that were often the forces in the US Black community, which non-African-Americans and historical architects of racism, and adoption of positions pioneered and/ other people of color pursue in the which now influence national and glo- or proposed by African-Americans future. bal administration of justice and gen- was accomplished through disciplined, Post-Durban anti-racist work in the eral welfare and security of citizens, consistent hard work, and steely ne- African-American community will re- chose to use the World Conference to gotiations exhibited by individual US quire continued development of a obfuscate or outrightly deny the grav- anti-racist activists who forged collec- more inclusive and/or differentiated ity of their complicity in racial crimes tives throughout the preparatory meet- socio-cultural definition of “Black”/ against humanity, and resulting related ings and late-night caucuses, and ex- ”African-American,” reflected in or- advantages and disadvantages in life hausting drafting sessions. Disputes ganized politics and specific policies chances. This decision, more so than among African-Americans will, no that include common and distinct con- any controversial positions or actions doubt, surface in the period ahead, and cerns of Afro-Latino citizens and resi- advanced by NGOs, foreshadows the in respective relations between some dents, as well as new African immi- configuration of related issues and ob- African-American groups with poten- grant citizens and residents whose num- stacles that in the near future will oc- tial White and Jewish-American allies. bers and ethnic and cultural diversity cupy US anti-racist groups, particu- The interconnectedness of African- have increased tremendously since the larly African-Americans and Afro- American hemispheric experiences 1965 Immigration Act. To that end,

16 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 important openings were made, espe- ciency. A major challenge will be foot- grievances related to those repulsive cially by US Afro-Latinos, with tra- ing the bills for sustained future work. events. Officially sanctioned state vio- ditional civil rights organizations, to The contributions from the Ford Foun- lence, curtailment of civil liberties and consider the ethnic, national and cul- dation were unquestionably pivotal to the “robust assertion of the moral su- tural complexities of Black communi- the advances made by NGOs up to and periority of America’s political and ties in addressing racism and discrimi- during the Durban Conference, espe- cultural institutions and mores” by the nation. cially given the pittance provided by likes of pundit George Will, in re- Consolidation of US anti-racist the United States government. NGOs sponse to the terror of 9-11, certainly forces of all racial, ethnic and cultural will have to become more self-suffi- will make it extremely difficult, but backgrounds in the months ahead will cient in this next period, when the war not impossible, to pursue post-Durban require candid discussion and clear-cut against terrorism will demand “na- action programs. action steps to directly address and rec- tional unity” and divert attention from The unjustifiable, abominable 9-11 oncile around a just approach to the other pressing matters of justice. attacks by atavistic terrorists generated splitting issue of Israeli occupation of Looking to the future of US-based resurgence of a conservative ideologi- Palestinian territory, and unjustified anti-racist work, we should understand cal and political offensive in the terrorist violence against Israeli Jews. that the Durban World Conference was United States that is intended to chill, This will be a particularly pressing more than a gathering of separate na- if not censor, critics of US govern- and challenging responsibility, because tion states and local, racial, ethnic and ment domestic and foreign policies and the Palestinian cause, like the South cultural perspectives related to domes- African Anti-Apartheid struggle, has Adoption of positions tic and global grievances and injus- become a symbol of global injustice tices. Backward-looking conservative and US complicity for many across pioneered and/or pro- groups like the American Council of racial, ethnic and ideological identi- posed by African-Ameri- Trustees and Alumni (founded by “bi- ties in the United States and around cans was accomplished partisans” Sen. Joseph Lieberman and the world. Dealing with Israeli occu- through disciplined, Lynne Chaney, former Humanities pation of Palestinian land is further consistent hard work. Council head and wife of the Vice complicated by anti-Semitism in the President) have been emboldened to ranks of US progressives and the gen- command all citizens to an ultra-pa- eral US population, differences among gender groups organized to address and triotism and to attack or dismiss the Jews and African-Americans on affir- negotiate resolutions of problems contributions of multiculturalism to the mative action policies, and the lin- wrought from distinct histories of dis- advancement of domestic and global gering ill feelings among many Black crimination. Rather, preparatory democracy. Others on the right, like activists about past Israeli government meetings and two weeks of discussion, Irving Kristol, use the events of 9-11 support of the South African apartheid heated debate and hard-hitting nego- to advocate “an American liberal, im- regime. tiations in Durban demonstrated that perial role” around the globe. This The planned US civil society court resolution of historical and related enveloping ideological and political challenge to governments and corpo- present-day conflicts is in fact signifi- environment will test the mettle of lib- rations on reparations for slavery will cantly linked to the more systemic civil eral and left progressives and fair- be a defining strategy, closely watched society global justice movement to minded people of all persuasions to around the globe. The case will cer- harness and redirect new worldwide confront and eliminate racial injustice, tainly attract lawyers from Afro-De- economic, political and military (po- overt and covert forms of terror, and scendant communities in Brazil and lice included) power which makes and/ stand forward in the creation of new other countries in the Americas, and or extracts life-defining decisions and democratic visions and practices. open another stage of collaboration courses of action on a global scale. among Black and other civil rights and None of the NGO conference par- James Counts Early (earlyj@ progressive lawyers broached in the ticipants could have predicted the spe- folklife.si.edu), Board Chair of the Chile Prep Com and the Durban Con- cific horrific acts of 9-11. However, Institute for Policy Studies, Director ference. while condemning the attacks, many of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Although organizing and delibera- have strongly inferred that the impe- Smithsonian Institution’s Center for tions leading up to the adoption of Con- rial and arrogant deportment exhibited Folklife and Cultural Heritage, served ference declarations and the in Durban by the US government and as a consultant on Cultural Democ- Programme of Action afforded NGOs many European governments and racy and Race to the International opportunities to learn about and de- Canada (reinforced by similar behav- Human Rights Law Group World Con- velop their skills in influencing state- ior in other forums to address preven- ference projects with Afro-Descendant craft, future implementation of par- tive measures and remedies to achieve communities in Latin America and the ticular action elements will require global human security and justice) Caribbean. ❏ more political maturity and profi- kindled the underlying complex of

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 17 Dismantling Racism at the WCAR by Esmeralda Simmons

Question: Will reparations by the Durban because I felt deeply compelled United Front, another organization that US for the descendants of enslaved Af- to bring to the attention of the UN the I respected. The coalition amassed the ricans in the US follow closely on the treatment of Africans during our en- largest single NGO delegation, several heels of the WCAR? slavement to and in the Americas. (My hundred people of African descent Answer: The US currently main- ancestors, commencing only two gen- from the US, to participate in the del- tains an official policy of denial in re- erations precedent, were so enslaved.) egate conference of the WCAR. Each gard to this entire issue. To date, the I understood that UN world confer- member of the delegation, dubbed the US government is fighting against the ences, and international human rights “Durban 400,” had traveled to South agreed-upon wording contained within declarations and conventions, are Africa at her/his own expense and vol- the declaration of Durban. But, in my largely verbal and demonstrative unteered to work. opinion, the current has already rhetoric. But although the UN has no The Durban 400 forwarded three changed. The tide against racism is enforcement power, the UN shapes linked platform positions for delegate coming in. My ancestors are smiling. world opinion. A strong resolution action in Durban: (1)The Trans-Atlan- on this issue, therefore, would be a tic Slave Trade was a crime against humanity; (2) Economics is the basis Background of racism; and (3) Reparations are due. My ancestors are smiling. In Durban, thousands of NGOs with For several eras in the 20th century, hundreds of variations on the confer- renowned leaders such as Marcus ences themes were present. Being in Garvey and Malcolm X, and activist major blow to racism as it is institu- the midst of so many diverse against- scholars such as the late John Henrik tionalized within US society, as well racism progressives was exhilarating Clarke, advocated in the US, Africa, as to the enduring concept of “White and affirming. Despite the language the Caribbean, South America and (European) supremacy/Black (Afri- handicap of most members of the Europe. Their advocacy called for a can) inferiority.” Those who profit Durban 400, we exchanged messages human rights review of the historical from this racist concept and systemic with the impressive Dalit and Roma enslavement of Africans as chattel by white privilege still have a negative groups and hundreds of old and new Europeans and their American colo- impact on Africans and other people acquaintances. The resistance move- nies, later nations. The call by Afri- of color worldwide. So I was off to ment against racism and racial intol- cans worldwide for reflection on the Durban. erance is vividly active across the infamous European trade in Africans planet. Activists from across the globe, as slaves of the last millennium nations and people of color who had steadily increased in the final decades WCAR been colonized or enslaved, stated how of the past century. (The European they saw racism as an active concept trade in Africans as slaves is generally The WCAR was an important his- and as an institutionalized system em- referenced in non-descriptive terms torical event. Dozens of progressive bedded within their societies. The com- such as the “Slave Trade,” the “Trans- groups and Non-Governmental Orga- mitment of the advocates, especially Atlantic Slave Trade,” or the “Afri- nizations (NGOs) were going to South the NGOs, to erase the global plague can Slave Trade.”) With the end of Africa. With deliberation and care, I of racism was passionate, reasoned and apartheid, the focus on racist human chose to work with the December 12th relentless. Rallies, participating in a rights violations turned to the histori- International Secretariat, a small but 10,000-person labor demonstration cal trade of Africans as slaves and to focused group out of New York City. march through the streets of downtown reparations for such acts. Against the For over twelve years, to their credit, Durban, plus the oratory talents of wishes of the US government and its they had been participating in the an- Kofi Annan, Fidel Castro, Bishop ally states, demand for holding a third nual meetings of the UN Commission Desmond Tutu,WCAR President World Conference on Racism contin- on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzer- Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, High Com- ued to grow within the structures of land. They were following the man- missioner for Human Rights Mary the UN. date of Malcolm X — to bring the in- Robinson, and many state delegations, As an African, and a descendant of ternational issue of the mistreatment such as Barbados, fueled our determi- enslaved Africans, I have spent my of Black people to the UN: “It’s not a nation, even when we were physically young adult and adult life addressing civil rights issue, it’s a human rights exhausted. the scourges of racism against African issue.” They were going to Durban The Durban 400 delegation was ex- descendants within the US. I went to in coalition with the national Black tremely organized in our advocacy;

18 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 ours was a group that worked 15-hour days from the first day of the delegate Durban, Globalization, and the World conference (August 31) until its last After 9/11: Toward a New Politics day (September 7). During this time, we conferred with the African Group, by Howard Winant other NGOs and our allies in the Afri- can Descendants Group. In addition, scores of our delegation regularly but- The UN World Conference for he had already assured the loyalty ton-holed official state delegates and Against Racism was a very American of the corporate fat cats by enacting hammered home our positions. US event. About 40% of the delegates massive regressive income and wealth opposition and its theatrical departure accredited to the NGO forum were redistribution. Disowning the confer- did not deter this world of advocates North American; at Durban, one had ence had an extra benefit for the who came to work on eliminating rac- the constant experience of running into Bushies, too: it provided a “wedge is- ism and related issues. Although the old movement comrades and friends, sue” to divide two key Democratic conference was scheduled to end on as well as seeing a new and younger Party constituencies, blacks and Jews. September 7, when we departed for generation of US activists coming to- Then came September 11, and our remote lodgings a final document gether. Durban was swept into the dustbin of was still being negotiated between the The WCAR was American in an- history. What had seemed to us — the African Group and the European other way, too: It was anti-American. NGO delegates — such a crucial event Union Group. On the morning of Sep- Just as the first two WCARs (1978 and was now yesterday’s news, if people tember 8, before the Durban 400 de- 1983) were focused on anathematiz- could remember it at all. A massive parted for the US, we returned to the ing and ending the South African world crisis will do that to you. convention site in time to receive the apartheid regime, the 2001 Durban conference sought to challenge the US freshly minted final conference decla- The 2001 Durban con- ration. The fruit of our labor was vic- empire, the hegemonic position the US tory: our two main points had made it occupies in a post-colonial, post-Cold ference sought to chal- into the world document! War, post-apartheid and post-civil lenge the US empire. Notwithstanding this major rhetori- rights world. cal victory, the significance of the Of course, the US government was Durban Conference will be measured well aware of this situation. The os- And indeed, the 9/11 event was a by its effects. As a proud participant, tensibly pro-civil rights Clinton Ad- rupture in US politics and world poli- I see it as a watershed in a resistance ministration coquetted with the con- tics. The actual assaults — horrifying movement against racism that is cen- ference throughout its planning stages, and tragic as they were — were not turies old. Our crowning achievement: worrying about the oppositional and themselves the source of such dramatic In 2001, African people world-wide activist orientation being developed in political shifts. Rather, the US garnered enough political power to its various “Prepcoms” and NGO state- government’s response to the attacks, have a world body declare our ances- ments, but at the same time hoping to the reactionary counteroffensive that tors to be humans, and, as well, to moderate and coopt the conference, to Bush and his minions have undertaken declare that the incomparable suffer- secure a role for the US as a reform- against civil society both within the US ing committed by the hands of Euro- oriented official participant. Aware and against a range of perceived and peans and US citizens for purpose of of the malign implications of turning real enemies around the world, was profit to be crimes against humanity – their back on the conference, espe- decisive in kicking off the political cri- specifically, the slave trade industry cially among their already estranged sis that democratic and egalitarian so- and colonialism. Finally, member domestic constituents on the Demo- cial movements now face. The emer- states were called upon to compensate cratic Party’s left, the Clintonites were gency conditions confronting our group victims and state victims of these unwilling entirely to repudiate the con- movements derive from several acts. ference. That task was left to the Bush sources: My ancestors are smiling. Administration, whose domestic po- litical priorities were the converse of • The widespread fear of “terrorism,” Esmeralda Simmons (ESLYJJ@ Clinton’s. Bush was a creature of the a panicky response that the Bush aol.com), a former PRRAC Board Republican right, a Southern president regime has effectively abetted and member, is a civil rights and human (in the US sense of the word), a cultivated, much as its right-wing rights attorney. She serves as the Ex- usurper who owed his office in large progenitors fomented anti-commu- ecutive Director of the Center for Law part to anti-black voting rights fraud. nist hysteria in the Cold War years and Social Justice at Medgar Evers He sought by attacking the conference (and before that in the 1920s as College, City University of New York. to shore up his key lower-strata “so- well); ❏ cially conservative” constituencies — (Please turn to page 20)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 19 (WINANT: Continued from page 19) — the apparent “common-sense” of service in many Southern countries much of the Bushies’ rhetoric would amounts to more than 50% of state rev- • A resurgent reactionary nationalism be much easier to challenge. enue per year. Assaults on the world’s that continues to garner widespread So here are some contributions to- poor via the global financial system – popular adherence by drawing on ward that alternative political stance. notably, the debt and its policing by familiar old tropes: “fortress I hope that these ideas, in concert with the IMF through “structural adjust- America,” “the land of the free and those of many other radical activists ment policies” — result in the deaths the home of the brave,” the emer- and intellectuals, will help reinvigo- of tens of millions every year. This gency measures necessitated by rate the movement we so desperately can readily be understood in terms of “wartime,” etc.; need. racism and terrorism: The world’s poor • A racially-based identification of are largely peasants and super-ex- “the enemy” as Arab or Arab- Radical Globalism: In the era of ploited workers, dark-skinned share- American, Muslims in general the internet, of diaspora, of AIDS and croppers and peons of a global corpo- (even those, whether Muslim or resurgent tuberculosis, of tidal waves rate plantation. Transnational Simon not, who resemble Arabs), and be- of migration, globalization is not the Legrees now seek to sell their South- yond this, the incipient domain only of corporations and capi- ern darkies the water they drink, the demonization of the Islamic world, tal; it is also a popular domain. crops they have traditionally planted which hints at a series of very old Exclusivist concepts of citizenship are and harvested, and the weapons their scores: the Crusades, the “clash of over. “Fortress” America (or Fortress corrupt governments will use to kill civilizations,” the Reconquista, etc. Europe, or Fortress anywhere else) is the peons of bordering countries. A thus far minor but interesting an unworkable and repressive politi- Health care or AIDS medicines for wrinkle in this ideological complex these subhumans? Not unless they can is the Bush Administration’s selec- pay our fees at the country club! tive cooptation of feminist criticism We confront a very of the repression of women in some disturbing political Colonialism is Not Over: The Eu- (but certainly not all) fundamentalist situation: the near-pa- ropean colonial powers could not sus- Islamic regimes. ralysis of oppositional tain their empires after WWII, a fact politics. they sometimes had to be taught the As a result of these developments, hard way, through armed revolutions. we confront a very disturbing politi- But they learned by the 1960s that in- cal situation: the near-paralysis of op- cal construct. Interdependence should direct rule works better than explicit positional politics. The movements be recognized as a potential source of empire anyway. Setting up spheres that seemed renascent before 9/11 — strength, not weakness. Ethnoglobality of influence throughout the now- “in- notably the anti-globalization, anti- has replaced ethnonationality. Huge dependent” global South allowed for WTO movement and the resurgent expatriate and post-colonial popula- a level of pillage and depredation un- anti-racist movement represented by tions in the world’s North represent a imaginable during the bad old days of Durban, by reparations initiatives, by tremendous resource for development overt colonialism. After WWII, the resistance to racial profiling, and by and democratization, if they can be US became the chief neocolonialist critiques of the prison-industrial com- afforded full citizenship rights, not power, carrying on its decades-long plex — have now been put on hold. demonized and super-exploited. Al- schizophrenia about whether it was Though not completely stymied, they ready private remittances from “devel- more properly the “big stick” imperi- have been set back considerably. De- oped” countries to poor ones consti- alist or the isolationist avoider of “for- nying this is whistling in the dark. tute a major source of “foreign aid,” eign entanglements.” Defeat in Viet- Current support for the Bush regime totalling about $75 billion/year. nam and the regime’s subsequent dif- is driven by two factors: the sense of ficulty in mounting interventions (the crisis and the failure of any credible Greed Kills: One message of both so-called “Vietnam syndrome”) show political alternative. Rather than sink- Durban and 9/11 is that the world’s that this conflict continues in our own ing into the slough of despond, we North, for its own security, needs to day, although after 9/11 and the Af- should be working on developing a terminate its ceaseless exploitation of ghanistan triumphs, the “Vietnam syn- movement-oriented explanation of the the global South. The consumerism drome” may well be dead: further present situation. In the absence of of “McWorld” is built on a planetary cause for worry. mass opposition, ideas really count. In sweatshop. The global “debt trap” Proxy colonialism also should be fact, if there were available to us a now engulfs not only impoverished na- mentioned, notably in the Middle East, radical democratic, anti-racist, anti- tions, but fairly developed ones like where Israel operates as the favorite apocalyptic alternative account — al- Argentina, Mexico and South Korea. US gendarme. Israel seems to have ternative to the standard rhetoric of the African debt/GNP ratios have reached decided that this is the proper moment “A Nation Challenged” sort, I mean the obscene level of 125%, and debt for an all-out war with the Palestin-

20 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 ians, and Bush seems to have signed we must be careful: The politics of in- called a counterrevolution) of 1877. on. At Durban, I thought, laudable come and wealth distribution are Beyond reparations, anti-racist condemnation of Israeli colonialism “double-entry” bookkeeping items. practice can be understood macro-po- was vitiated by real anti-semitism. Not only the allocation of resources is litically in terms of social citizenship That the Bushies used this as a poor involved, but also the derivation of and micro-politically in terms of ac- excuse for leaving the conference revenues. Thinking about the prob- culturation and socialization. Very doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a real lem on the US (national) level, for briefly, the concept of social citizen- problem. example: If reparations were to be paid ship was proposed by T.H. Marshall for the crime against humanity (an as the obligation of the post-WWII Racism and Anti-Racism as Prac- important point from Durban) that was welfare state, the proximate stage in tice: In a recent book (The World Is a African slavery, it would be impor- the achievement of popular sover- Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since tant to look at both the inflow and the eignty. Rights, Marshall argued, had World War II), I have argued that rac- outflow side of the process. On the been acquired by the populace in ism must be understood in terms of its outflow side, reparations should take stages: first economic, then political. consequences, not as a matter of in- the form of social investment (for ex- The time had now come for the tentions or beliefs. Today, racism has ample, a “Marshall Plan for the cit- achievement of social rights. Of been largely — though not entirely, to ies” or something similar). Payments course, this formulation was offered be sure — detached from its perpetra- to individuals or families would be when the British flag still flew over tors. In its most advanced forms, in- Lagos and Singapore and Jim Crow deed, it has no perpetrators; it is a still flourished in the US; it was pro- nearly invisible, taken-for-granted, We need a radical demo- posed when postmodern criticism of “common-sense” feature of everyday cratic, anti-racist, anti- the limits of “rights talk” (in critical life and global social structure. This apocalyptic alternative race theory, for example) had not yet is the situation that allows US courts account of the present been made; and it certainly did not en- and mainstream political discourse to situation. compass the diasporic and globalized overturn affirmative action, to pro- issues anti-racists face today. Yet we claim the US a “color-blind” society, can make use of it to think of political etc. But if we define racism as the inclusion, social provision, even world routinized outcome of practices that problematic: Slavery was far more citizenship. create or reproduce hierarchical social centrally a collective wrong than an By acculturation and socialization structures based on essentialized racial individual depredation. Its historical I mean the reawakening of the 1960s categories, then we can see better how outcome in structural racism is the concept that “the personal is political” it extends from the transnational to the main evil we want to annul, and the as a key principle of anti-racist per- national to the experiential and per- negative effects of past slavery for sonal practice. No one — no matter sonal, from the global debt burden to present-day individuals are hard to as- what their racial identity is — can be racial profiling, from Negrophobia to sess. On the inflow side, there is a free of racism in their heads or hearts; Islamophobia. Racism is a deeply en- danger that reparations would be paid as I have said, it is too deeply ingrained trenched social structure, largely con- out of general revenues, unduly assess- a social structure. Yet a great deal of gruent with the rise of capitalism, the ing present-day working people for the thought and action has been devoted rise of democracy (for some), and the crimes of past colonialists and elites, to the problem of fostering anti-racist triumph of Enlightenment concepts of perpetuating rather than attenuating practice at the individual and experi- identity and culture. racial conflicts, and allowing new vari- ential level. Developing these skills, Since racism is so large, combat- ants of the “color-blind” argument to fostering the interruption and interro- ing it must also be a large-scale prac- loom up in the future. An alternative gation of racism, and extending its tice. The reparations idea provides a revenue-oriented strategy would raise reach in family, school and cultural valuable guidepost here. Reparation the money by means of a wealth tax, work, is an important dimension of the means repair, making whole, making thus recognizing how many present- practice we want to foster. good what was evil. As a sociopolitical day capital hoards had their origins in project, reparations can be seen to ex- slavery. Insurance companies indem- Democracy is Inseparable from tend from the large to the small, from nified slaveowners if their slaves es- Pluralism: Both Durban and the cur- the institutional to the personal. caped or shipbound Africans revolted, rent world crisis (of 9/11, globaliza- Clearly, abolishing the debt (not “for- for example. British slaveowners were tion, and the Afghan war) teach us once giving,” for who is to forgive and who compensated for their “losses” in 1833 again that hegemony is inherently un- is to be forgiven?) fits within the repa- when Parliament abolished slavery, stable and conflictual. But they also rations logic, as does affirmative ac- and North American slavocrats re- demonstrate that embattled hegemo- tion. gained their autarchic local autonomy nies demonize their oppositions. The Redistribution fits as well, but here in the “Compromise” (which Du Bois (Please turn to page 22)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 21 (WINANT: Continued from page 21) by another) past and present, about of women. The right of all human trafficking in women’s and children’s beings to control over their own bod- standard practice here is to rely upon (particularly girls’) bodies, AIDS and ies is a fundamental democratic de- racial and religious differences to unify other diseases as racial phenomena, and mand. supporters and stigmatize critics: about the multiform linkages between You’re either with us or against us, a sex/gender and race. It is not news In Lieu of a Conclusion: These are loyal subject or a “terrorist.” These that racism derives much of its energy only tentative thoughts on the enormous tactics remain effective, especially dur- from sexism, from the efforts of men challenge we — our movement, our ing “wartime,” but they are also newly to possess and control women’s bod- radical democratic commitments — vulnerable to internal divisions. The ies. Nor is it surprising that authori- face in the post-Durban, and especially diasporic world, the many millions of tarian and anti-democratic rule takes post-9/11, era. But this work will con- post-colonial immigrants now in the tinue; it is part of a larger project. Northern countries, and the legacy of Numerous activists and writers are anti-racist and civil rights movements, Through the aggrega- struggling with these issues. Not all potentially undermine such authori- tion and synthesis of through any one set of ideas, but tarian appeals. The dimension of reli- many efforts to make through the aggregation and synthesis gious pluralism is especially important sense of the current of many efforts to make sense of the now. Why? Because racial and reli- crisis, we will advance current crisis, will we advance toward gious profiling are converging. Be- a new politics. Ultimately, while ideas cause Islamophobia is threatening to toward a new politics. may be important, what we all rely polarize the globe once again, this time upon most is the great unfulfilled de- in a nuclear age. And because reli- sire for freedom that exists in human gious fundamentalism — North and women as its first hostages. Whether beings. Our task as a movement is to South, East and West — is itself a di- traditional or modern, whether reli- interpret and help organize that desire. rect threat to democracy. gious or corporate, whether opposing the burqua, demanding the right to Howard Winant (hwinant@nimbus. The Body is the Person: The body abortion, or resisting the maquilas and ocis.temple.edu) is Professor of Soci- was a key topic at Durban, because sweatshops that dot the globe, a cen- ology at Temple University. His most racial identity is always about the body. tral thread of democratic movements recent book is The World is a Ghetto: At Durban, there was discussion about — anti-racist, anti-globalization and Race and Democracy Since World War enslavement (ownership of one’s body anti-authoritarian — is the liberation II (Basic Books). ❏

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye: Durban and Beyond by Wade Henderson

It’s been only a few months since neously fighting a bio-terrorist attack questions in the immediate aftermath the tragedy of September 11, but it’s of anthrax, which may be related to of the September 11 attack was, “Why already cliché to suggest to those of us these events or may be from a domes- do the terrorists hate us?” And not who live in this country how deeply tic source? unexpectedly, the immediate reaction the events of that day have affected our America is at war; and Americans of many Americans seemed based on lives and seared our psyches. We know are on edge! Not surprisingly, public anger and patriotic pride, not analy- firsthand that the magnitude of loss is attention is turned to the economic re- sis: “There can be no adequate expla- a grievous blow, both in lost lives and cession and important questions of na- nation for such a heinous act!” “We lost political innocence. And as if that tional security and the newly designated stand for freedom, and they resent it.” weren’t disconcerting enough, we now homeland defense. Unfortunately, There is truth in these statements, but find ourselves thrust into the global questions regarding civil liberties, hu- being right is not always enough. If “war against terrorism,” a new kind man rights and policies affecting the our nation is to overcome the chal- of conflict with uncertain targets and broader domestic agenda are being lenges of the moment and move to a even more uncertain consequences be- forced into the back of the bus at their long-term solution to the problem of yond the borders of Afghanistan. Did time of greatest need. global terrorism, we will need a I forget to mention that we’re simulta- One of the most frequently asked deeper, more perceptive analysis to

22 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 help explain the hostility we encoun- the United States, the issue of slavery desire for bolder policy on eradicat- ter in many parts of the developing continues to haunt any serious discus- ing the continuing effects of racial dis- world. sion about contemporary questions of crimination; the publication of Randall Among the casualties of September race relations, both in the black/white Robinson’s The Debt, which is stimu- was a serious examination of an issue context, but also in the shifting racial lating debate on college campuses; and that may have helped to answer the paradigm brought about by immigra- lastly, a proposed lawsuit by Harvard difficult question of “why they hate tion and the emergence politically of Law Professor Charles Ogletree and us,” and more importantly, to point the Latino and Asian communities. his legal brain-trust on behalf of an the way to solutions to the problem. The WCAR was quite simply the first as yet unspecified class of black plain- The United Nations World Confer- UN-sponsored proceeding to formally tiffs. ence Against Racism, Racial Discrimi- recognize the Trans-Atlantic slave trade One might legitimately ask if nation, Xenophobia, and Related In- and slavery itself as crimes against hu- Durban was such a positive experi- tolerance (WCAR) ended in Durban, manity. This extraordinary develop- ence, why has press coverage of the South Africa, just two days before that ment sets the stage for internal chal- event been so decidely negative? And fateful September morning. Contro- lenges by citizens against their own what about race relations in the United versial from its inception, marred by countries for the continuing depriva- States? How have they been affected a walk-out of the United States and tions caused by slavery and race-based by Durban? Israeli delegations because of disagree- discrimination. A nascent political Mary Robinson, United Nations ments over the language in the pro- movement in support of reparations for High Commissioner for Human posed conference texts, the WCAR slavery was already under way in the Rights, and the principal organizer of nonetheless defied expectations by se- United States and elsewhere, but thanks the WCAR, spoke to this issue at a curing an agreement among the over to the WCAR, real fuel has now been recent UN Forum titled “News vs. 160 nations present to tackle the glo- added to the fire. Propaganda: The Gatekeeper’s Di- bal phenomenon of racial and ethnic lemma.” Ms. Robinson responded to discrimination and xenophobia. There was great hypoc- criticism of the WCAR, which she Over a two-week period in late risy among many mem- said had been described as a well-in- August, thousands of civil and human tentioned, but ultimately flawed, rights activists, together with govern- ber nations that were event. She noted that the conference mental leaders from around the world, able see discrimination had been an empowering tool for many assembled in Durban with the express in the lands of their groups, but that their stories had been purpose of tackling one of the most neighbors, but were overshadowed by the media’s cover- intractable global barriers to the ful- blind to the problems at age of the Middle East issue that domi- fillment of universal human rights. home. nated the conference. Karen Curry, This was the third UN world confer- Vice-President and New York Bureau ence to examine problems of racial dis- Chief of CNN said CNN, made great crimination, but only the first one to efforts to cover the conference in its examine issues internal to each mem- While few in the United States ex- breadth. That breadth, however, in- ber nation. As might be imagined, pect the reparations movement to bear cluded coverage of a very legitimate there was great hypocrisy among many fruit quickly (some skeptics say, if at new story: the walk-out of the United member nations that were able see dis- all), its intensity is growing, driven by States and Israeli delegations and the crimination in the lands of their neigh- a convergence of events that have added issue of Zionism. However, Hafez bors, but were blind to the problems legitimacy and urgency to the debate. Al Mirazi, Washington Bureau Chief at home. Slavery in the Sudan, for These include the precedents set by of Al Jazeera, said he felt some of the example, comes readily to mind. government reparations to Japanese Western media coverage was decid- Nonetheless, the WCAR was a boon Americans for their internment during edly biased, matching the attitudes of to previously marginalized groups World War II and the over $7 billion their governments that the situation in across a broad spectrum. Groups like in compensation paid to Jewish, Roma, the Middle East should not have been the Dalits of India and South Asia, the gay and other victims of the Nazi geno- discussed specifically in Durban. Roma of Europe, the Afro-Brazilians cide; the historic findings of state leg- As a “non-governmental organiza- and other African-descendent Latinos, islatures in Florida and Oklahoma for tion” (NGO) representative in Durban and Indigenous peoples of North and the destruction of black communities on behalf of the Leadership Confer- South America all benefited from this by racist vigilantes in Rosewood, FL ence on Civil Rights (LCRR), I be- new global exposure. and Tulsa, OK in the early 1920’s; the lieve there is general agreement with Durban was also a significant ad- general frustration in the African Mary Robinson’s observations. How- vancement for African-descendent American community over continuing ever, the problems of the WCAR were peoples from around the globe. As attacks and erosion of race-based af- not merely inventions of the press. The we know from our own experience in firmative action policies and the strong (Please turn to page 26)

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 23 Director’s Report

The National Low Income Housing Coalition by Sheila Crowley

The National Low Income Hous- fax), Memo to Members, is widely Solving the Affordable ing Coalition, founded in 1974 by regarded as the primary source of Housing Crisis Cushing N. Dolbeare, is dedicated national housing policy information solely to ending the affordable hous- relied on by housing advocates NLIHC promotes a three-pronged ing crisis in America. This is not just across the country. Our website strategy to solve the affordable hous- a lofty slogan, but a strong conviction (www.nlihc.org) offers extensive ing crisis. First, we support policies that the affordable housing crisis in the information about all low-income that directly improve incomes of low- United States is a solvable problem. housing issues, as well as links to income people, so that they can better We do not lack the technology; we virtually all other sources of infor- compete in the private housing mar- know how to build housing. We do mation on housing and poverty is- ket. This means increasing the mini- not lack capacity; we have a strong sues. mum wage, establishing living wage housing industry and an ever-growing • Research and policy analysis sup- requirements, supporting labor poli- non-profit housing sector. We do not ports the public education program cies that elevate wages, and strength- lack resources; we are a wealthy na- with timely analyses of housing data ening income assistance programs. tion with a healthy Federal Treasury. and preparation of reports that shed Low-income people’s access to ex- What we lack is the public will and light on current policy issues. isting housing can also be improved political courage to commit the level NLIHC’s flagship research product, by directly subsidizing their housing of investment that is needed. Solving Out of Reach, is an annual analysis costs. Approximately 1.5 million the affordable housing crisis is not cur- of the relationship between incomes households receive housing vouchers rently a public priority, despite com- and rents in every city, town and that pay the difference between the mon agreement along the political spec- county in the nation. Out of Reach “fair market rent” and 30% of their trum about the depth and extent of the is used extensively by members of household income. Increasing the housing affordability problem. A sub- Congress, the media and housing number of new “incremental” vouch- stantial increase in federal spending on advocates to document the extent of ers each year in the federal housing low-income housing assistance is the affordable housing crisis. budget is generally understood these NLIHC’s primary goal. • Field work and organizing focus on days as the primary indicator of The Coalition is a membership or- services to NLIHC members, en- progress, even though the number of ganization. Our members include non- gagement of members in shaping new vouchers each year is dwarfed by profit housing providers, homeless federal housing policy decisions, the need. In the face of millions of service providers, fair housing orga- and coordination of joint activities needy households, the FY2002 HUD nizations, state and local housing coa- of member state housing coalitions. budget provides just 17,000 new litions, public housing agencies, pri- NLIHC has affiliate housing coali- vouchers. vate developers and property owners, tions in some 30 states and is work- There are some housing analysts housing researchers, local and state ing to establish similar efforts in who maintain that adding more hous- government agencies, social justice several other states. ing vouchers is the only viable hous- organizations, faith-based organiza- • Policy advocacy is the work ing policy today. If only that were tions, residents of public and assisted NLIHC does in Washington to com- true, our task would be much simpler. housing and their organizations, and municate our members’ perspective But vouchers only work if there is concerned citizens. to the Administration and members housing stock where they can be used. NLIHC’s work is organized around of Congress. Policy positions of Increasing problems with voucher uti- four discrete, but interactive functions: NLIHC are developed by policy lization in recent years indicate that a committees formed around NLIHC “voucher-only” low-income housing • Public education includes confer- policy priorities: housing produc- policy is inadequate. NLIHC supports ences, meetings, publications and tion, vouchers, preservation of as- a range of strategies to improve website, media relations, and infor- sisted housing, public housing and voucher utilization, including making mation and referral. NLIHC’s housing plus services. discrimination on the basis of source weekly newsletter (by email or of income a fair housing violation.

24 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 However, in most communities, lack is well-managed and is an invaluable much of the decision-making about the of stock remains the most serious im- resource to poor families. NLIHC future of public housing to local pub- pediment to voucher use. works on several fronts to promote lic housing authorities and the com- The second prong of the solution is policy solutions to preserve this hous- munities where they operate. As an an- to prevent further loss of existing sub- ing, including transfer of ownership tidote to more autonomy for public sidized housing. Public housing and to non-profit housing organizations housing agencies, significant rights assisted housing (privately owned, but that are committed to maintaining and responsibilities are now vested in publicly subsidized) together comprise affordability over the long term. the residents to ensure that the best in- nearly 3 million units of affordable One of the most effective strategies terests of residents are represented in housing. Federal policy in recent years for preserving this housing stock is the decisions about the future of their has accelerated the loss of this hous- empowerment of residents to be ad- homes. Together with the Public ing. Some housing is in bad condition vocates on their own behalf. Recent Housing Residents National Organiz- and should not be preserved. But most changes to public housing law devolve ing Committee and HUD, NLIHC has been engaged in an 18-month project to train public housing resident lead- The Affordable Housing Crisis ers to take on this new role. Finally and ultimately, solving the Of all basic human needs, hous- not white – is widespread and, affordable housing crisis requires ing may be the one that is most ad- more often than not, sanctioned building more housing. In particular, versely affected by racial and eco- by local officials. we need to construct new rental hous- nomic inequality. It is also the ba- ing that is affordable to the lowest-in- sic need, even more than food or The federal investment in come households, those who have the health care, for which people must housing is starkly inequitable and most acute housing cost burdens. To compete in the marketplace and for so bifurcated that the most richly that end, NLIHC is currently engaged which government fails to assure a subsidized have little consciousness in a multi-year campaign to establish social minimum. Today: that they benefit from a federal a National Housing Trust Fund. entitlement – the mortgage inter- • More than 16 million very low- est and other federal income tax de- income American households ductions that accrue to The National Housing (15% of all households) pay pre- homeowners. In 1976, the budget Trust Fund Campaign cariously high percentages of authority (BA) for assisted hous- their income for housing, live in ing (that is, approved direct expen- Together with several other national poor quality housing or are ditures for housing aid for low in- partners, NLIHC launched the Na- homeless. come people) was $77 billion (ad- tional Housing Trust Fund campaign • While two-thirds of all Ameri- justed for inflation). In the same in early 2001, with the goal of pass- can households are homeowners, year, the cost to the Federal Trea- ing federal legislation to provide re- over half of racial minority sury for homeowner tax deductions sources to produce 1.5 million units households are renters (53% of (and other minor tax expenditures) of housing over a ten-year period. This black households, 55% of Latino was $29.4 billion. By 2001, the is a level of low-income housing in- households and 50% of all other low- income housing assistance BA vestment unlike what we have seen for racial minorities). Racial minori- had declined to $24.6 billion, while many years. The campaign includes a ties are over-represented among the value of housing-related tax strong field component, a communi- the lowest-income renters, and breaks had skyrocketed to $121.1 cations and media strategy, and an ac- under-represented among the billion. Of course, the more expen- tive lobbying effort in Washington. highest-income homeowners. sive one’s mortgage is, the bigger Bills introduced in 2001 in the • Access to safe, quality housing one’s tax break. Had the level of House and Senate now have 124 and not only is limited by the lack of federal investment in low-income 20 co-sponsors, respectively. Each income to pay for it, but by per- housing of the mid-1970s just been bill proposes to use profits earned by sistent and rampant racial dis- maintained, the wave of home- the Federal Housing Administration’s crimination in the housing mar- lessness that swept over the coun- single-family homeowner insurance ket, even after 40 years of fed- try in the 1980s and continues to program, projected to be billions of eral fair housing laws. the present day could have been dollars for several years out, and redi- • NIMBYism (Not In My Back prevented. Indeed, much of today’s rects them primarily to support pro- Yard) – discrimination in the sit- affordable housing crisis could have duction of new rental housing afford- ing of housing against people been avoided. able for extremely low-income people. who are poor, disabled, and/or These profits now are counted as rev- (Please turn to page 26

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 25 (HOUSING: Continued from page 25) range of religious, labor and social ser- Sheila Crowley([email protected]), vice organizations, and more endors- a PRRAC Board member, is president enue to the Federal Treasury and used ers sign on every day. The NHTF of the National Low Income Housing for other purposes. Campaign is now focusing on gaining Coalition. She previously served as The National Housing Trust Fund endorsements of mayors and other lo- executive director of The Daily Planet, Campaign has over 1,700 endorsing cal elected officials, as well as news- a multipurpose homeless service/advo- national, state and local organizations, paper editorial endorsements. cacy organization in Richmond, VA, an unprecedented number of endors- Complete information about the and was a Social Work Congressional ers for housing legislation. This list National Housing Trust Fund Cam- Fellow on the Democratic staff of the has grown beyond housing and home- paign can be found on the campaign’s Housing Subcommittee of the Senate less advocates and includes a wide website, www.nhtf.org. Banking Committee. ❏

(HENDERSON: Continued from page 23) the end, the official governments’ nizations, whose quest for progress on Statement of Principles and Plan of the reparations issue caused them to rising tide of incivility at the WCAR Action contained none of the offend- fully embrace the WCAR, and repre- that focused largely on the Middle East ing language that had been the stated sentatives of Jewish organizations, conflict between Israelis and Palestin- basis of the US–Israeli withdrawal. whose concerns about anti-Semitism ians was destructive and contributed This fact alone has caused some in the and the delegitimization of Israel greatly to the problems of the confer- African-descendent Diaspora to be- caused them to discredit it, continue ence. Moreover, anti-Semitic state- lieve that the real motivation for the to reverberate in post-Durban conver- ments and activities, particularly in the US action was its deeply held refusal sations about where we go from here. NGO forum, were repugnant and to discuss reparations for slavery. What is needed is an honest dialogue should have been broadly condemned What does this entire debate mean and rapprochement that recognizes the by the NGOs. The failure to do so for race and ethnic relations among differences in perspectives on Durban only served to legitimize the US groups in the United States? After all, and seeks to repair the potential breach. government’s decision to walk out of thousands of US NGOs came to After all, who should better understand the WCAR. Secretary of State Colin Durban with measured expectations of the important concept of reparations L. Powell, for example, said he had progress. In fact, the LCCR’s multi- than the American Jewish community; instructed the US delegation to return racial, multi-ethnic delegation re- and who should better understand the home, citing “hateful language” pro- fear and anxiety of anti-Semitism than posed for the final conference state- African Americans, who have experi- ment. He said they had made the de- The rising tide of inci- enced among the worst forms of rac- cision “with regret,” but had become vility that focused on ism and discrimination? convinced that a successful conference the conflict between And if, in the final analysis, when “would [will] not be possible.” Israelis and Palestin- looking through the prism of Septem- The NGO coordinators of the con- ians was destructive. ber 11, the United States can shift from ference failed to understand and to its position as a unilateralist super- guarantee that while vigorous and open power that rejected the value of the debate on important civil and human flected not only the diversity of United Nations into becoming a rights issues is vital, it must be con- America today, it was a bold effort multilateralist state that works in coa- ducted in a manner that is respectful built on the coalition model to advance lition with others, then surely anything of the rights of others and of the un- a global civil and human rights agenda. is possible, even a shared view of the derlying spirit of the WCAR. In this And, as previously noted, some issues WCAR between blacks and Jews. regard, the NGO organizers failed mis- enjoyed a major breakthrough, not- erably in their responsibility to pro- withstanding the US walk-out. How- Wade Henderson (Henderson@ tect the integrity of the WCAR. ever, the WCAR did leave the repre- civilrights.org), a former PRRAC In the final analysis, however, sentatives of two allied groups with a Board member, is the Executive Di- some continue to believe that the US need to deconstruct what happened in rector of the Leadership Conference on withdrawal from the WCAR was pre- Durban and with an eye toward future Civil Rights and Counsel to the Lead- mature and unwarranted. In fact, the action. ership Conference Education Fund. US departure foreclosed our nation’s Blacks and Jews remain close allies The LCCR is the nation’s premiere civil ability to be a part of the ongoing pro- in the social justice movement in the and human rights coalition. Henderson cess to improve conference language United States. However, the tensions was instrumental in sending a delega- at the time when our intervention unleashed in Durban between repre- tion of leading civil rights experts to might have proven fruitful. And in sentatives of African-descendent orga- the WCAR. ❏

26 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 Resources

When ordering items from • Amerasia Journal, the Resources Section, published by the UCLA Please drop us a line letting us know how useful our please note that most Asian Amer. Studies Ctr. Resources Section is to you, as both a lister and listings direct you to contact (headed by PRRAC Board requester of items. We hear good things, but only an organization other than member Don Nakanishi), sporadically. Having a more complete sense of the PRRAC. Prices include the has released its 30th effectiveness of this networking function will help us shipping/handling (s/h) anniversary issue (Fall greatly in foundation fundraising work (and is awfully charge when this informa- 2001). Articles cover good for our morale). Drop us a short note, letting us tion is provided to PRRAC. dialogue on race & the know if it has been/is useful to you (how many “No price listed” items color line; Asian-Amer. requests you get when you list an item, how many often are free. art & photography; a items you send away for, etc.) Thank you. retrospective look at When ordering items from China’s Great Proletarian PRRAC: SASE = self- Cultural Revolution M. Sheie, Thad source of information on addressed stamped (1966-76); & new writ- Williamson & John this important issue. The envelope (34¢ unless ings by Asian-Amer. Foster-Bey (86 pp., first bulleted point on otherwise indicated). writers. $17 from the 2001), is available ($20) their announcement Orders may not be placed Center, 3230 Campbell from Rainbow Research, reads: “Find our how by telephone or fax. Hall, UCLA, LA, CA 621 W. Lake St., #300, campaign finance reform Please indicate which 90095-1546, 310/825- Mpls., MN 55408, 612/ is linked to civil rights.” issue of P&R you are 2968, [email protected]; 824-0724, www. [4147] ordering from. www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc. rainbowresearch.org. [4101] [3925] Race/Racism Poverty/ • “Voices, Voices, • “The Assault on • Yellow: Race in Voices” is a 109-page, Diversity: Behind the Welfare America Beyond Black & Dec. 2001 Special Challenges to Racial & White, by Frank H. Wu, Forum, from the UN Gender Remedies,” by • Representing the has just been published World Conf. Against Lee Cokorinos & Connie Poor & Homeless: by Basic Books. $26 Racism, available (possi- Montoya (22 pp., 2001), Innovations in Advocacy (20% discount if you bly free) from the profiles 5 orgs. that are is a compilation of mention Code U921, 800/ Internatl. Human Rights using affirmative action articles written by law 386-5656). Prof. Wu Law Gp., 1200 18th St. as a wedge issue to professors & advocates on (Howard Law School) will NW, #602, Wash., DC promote a broader, anti- a range of issues, includ- be on a book tour in Jan. 20036, 202/822-4600, diversity agenda. $10 ing the causes of home- & Feb. 2002: DC, HumanRights@HRLawGroup. from the Inst. for Demo- lessness, affordable Dayton, Seattle, SF, Palo org., ww.hrlawgroup.org. cratic Studies, 177 E. 87 housing, human rights, Alto, Berkeley, Pasadena, [3911] St., #501, NYC, NY welfare & microenterprise Santa Monica, Boston, 10128, 212/423-9237, development. $10 from NYC (all definite), with • “In a Time of www.idsonline.org. the ABA Commn. on Broken Bones: A Call to Columbus, Phila., [4080] Homelessness & Poverty, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Dialogue on Hate 202/662-1694, www. Violence & the Limita- Parkerburg, St. Louis, • “Changing of the abanet.org/homeless. Chapel Hill & Chi. tions of Hate Crimes Guard: Generational [4022] Legislation,” tentatively planned. by Differences Among Contact him at fwu@ Katherine Whitlock, is a Black Elected Officials,” • “New Opportunities? law.howard.edu for 45-page, 2001 Justice by David A. Bositis (34 Public Opinion on details. [4020] Visions Working Paper, pp., 2001), is available Poverty, Income Inequal- available (no price given) (no price listed) from the ity & Public Policy: • The Burning: Massa- from the Amer. Friends Jt. Ctr. for Political & 1996-2001” is a 26-page, cre, Destruction & The Service Comm., 1501 Econ. Studies, 1090 Nov. 2001 Background Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Cherry St., Phila., PA Vermont Ave. NW, Paper, available, free, by Tim Madigan (297 19102, 215/241-7126, #1100, Wash., DC from Demos: A Network pp., 2001), has been [email protected]. [3914] 20005-4928, 202/789- for Ideas & Action, 155 published by St. Martin’s 3500. Website: www. Ave. of the Americas, 4th Press; $24.95. A novel • “Improving Race jointcenter.org [4141] flr., NYC, NY 10013, Relations & Undoing treating the same event is 212/633-1405, www. Fire in Beulah, by Rilla Racism: Roles & Strate- • The Natl. Voting demos-usa.org. [3912] gies for Community Askew (Viking, 2001, Rights Inst. website, $25.95). [4103] Foundations,” by David www.nvri.org, is a good

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 27 • “What Cities Needs [4090] Alan Berube & Benjamin articles, by Ron Haskins/ from Welfare Reform Forman (15 pp., Sept. Rebecca Blank, Mark Reauthoriztion,” by Paul • “How Can We 2001), is available Greenberg, Lawrence M. Leonard & Maureen Encourage Job Retention (possibly free) from the Mead, Eloise Anderson, Kennedy (45 pp., Nov. & Advancement for Brookings Inst. Ctr. on Robert Moffitt, Bruce A. 2001), is available (likely Welfare Recipients?,” by Urban & Met. Policy, Weber. Likely free from free) from The Brookings Harry Holzer & Douglas 1775 Mass. Ave. NW, the Jt. Ctr., 2046 Inst. Ctr. on Urban & Wissoker, is an Oct. 2001 Wash., DC 20036-2128, Sheridan Rd., Northwest- Met. Policy, 1775 Mass. Policy Brief, available 202/797-6139. Website: ern U., Evanston, IL Ave. NW, Wash., DC (free) from The Urban www.brookings.edu 60208-4108, 773/271- 20036-2138, 202/797- Inst., 2100 M St NW, [4142] 0611. Downloadable from 6000, www.brookings. Wash., DC 20037, 202/ www.jcpr.org. [4161] edu. [3913] 833-7200, bnowak@ui. • “How Well Have urban.org [4092] Rural & Small Met. • “Changes in Eco- • “Policies Affecting Labor Markets Absorbed nomic, Work, Welfare & NYC’s Low-Income • “The Poverty Despite Welfare Recipients?,” a Barrier Status 15 Months Families,” by Hugh Work Handbook” (2001) HHS study (2001), is Post-Baseline,” by Lisa O’Neill, Kathryn Garcia, has data showing the available at aspe.hhs.gov/ K. Dasinger, Robin E. Virginie Amerlynck & extent of work among hsp/rural_1m01/index. Miller, Jean Norris & Barbara Blum, is a 7- poor families in each htm, or by faxing your Richard Speiglman (74 page, Oct. 2001 Exec. state, including factors mailing address to 202/ pp., Nov. 2001), is Summary, available causing poverty among 690-6562. [4153] Report #4 on the (likely free) from the workers & policies states Alameda Cty. CalWORKS Research Forum on can implement. $7 (+ tax • “Red Flags: Research Needs Assessment & Children, Families & the for DC, MA, MD resi- Raises Concerns About Outcomes Study; avail- New Federalism, 154 dents) from the Ctr. on the Impact of ‘Welfare able (possibly free) from Haven Ave., NYC, NY Budget & Policy Priori- Reform’ on Child the Public Health Inst., 10032-1180, 212/304- ties, 202/408-1080, Maltreatment,” by 2168 Shattuck Ave., #300, 7150, info@ [email protected]. [4095] Rutledge Hutson, a Ctr. Berkeley, CA 94704, 510/ researchforum.org. Full for Law & Social Policy 649-1987, ldasinger@ report available on their • “Recent Changes in report, is available at phi.org. [4209] website: www. Colorado Welfare & www.clasp.org, rhutson@ researchforum.org. [3915] Work, Child Care & clasp.org, 202/328-5166. • “Microenterprise as Child Welfare Systems” [4158] a Welfare to Work • “Tracking the by Jeffrey Capizzano, Strategy: Client Charac- Progress of Welfare Robin Koralek, Christo- • “Leaving Welfare, teristics” is a 6-page, Reform Quickly: A pher Botsko & Roseana Left Behind: Employ- June 2001 research brief, Model for Measuring Bess (Oct. 2001), is ment Status, Income & available (likely free) Neighborhood Health & available (free) from The Well-being of Former from The Aspen Inst., 1 Change” by Lois M. Urban Inst., 2100 M St. TANF Recipients” is an Dupont Circ. NW, #700, Quinn & John Pawasarat NW, Wash., DC 20037, Oct. 2001 report from the Wash., DC 20036, 202/ (25 pp., Oct. 2001), 202/833-7200, bnowak@ Natl. Campaign for Jobs 736-5800, fieldus@ describes the Milwaukee ui.urban.org [4107] & Income Supports aspeninstitute.org, neighborhood indicators (directed by PRRAC www.fieldus.org. The full project. Available, likely • “Welfare Reform, Board member Deepak research report is avail- free, from the Brookings the Next Phase: The need Bhargava), analyzing 18 able as well. [4217] Inst. Ctr. on Urban & to apply the lessons of state “leaver” studies Met. Policy, 1775 Mass. human development,” by from 2000-2001. Avail- • The Hard-to-Employ Ave. NW, Wash., DC Susan Wagner & Daria able at www. & Welfare Reform is a 20036-2188, 202/797- Zvetina, is the lead article nationalcampaign.org/ Research Inst., sponsored 6000, www.brookings. in the Summer 2001 issue Download/ by the Jt. Ctr. for Poverty edu. [3927] of Applied Research in LEAVINGWELFARE.doc, Research (Northwestern Child Development, the or from Tyler Press, 202/ U. & Univ. Chi.), Feb. • “A Public Benefits semi-annual publication 518-8047, tyler@ 28-March 1, 2002 in Outreach Kit,” designed of the Erikson Inst., 420 publicinterestpr.com. NYC. Inf. from 847/491- for agencies, orgs. & N. Wabash Ave., 6th flr., [4160] 4145, jcpr @uchicago. professionals who work Chicago, IL 60611, 312/ edu [4162] with low-income indi- 755-2250. Website: • “Welfare Reform viduals & families, is www.erikson.edu [4140] Authorization” is the available (free) from theme of the Nov./Dec. Community AARP Fulfillment, Public • “A Local Ladder for 2001 issue of Poverty Benefits Outreach Kit, the Working Poor: The Research News, published Organizing D16851, 601 E St. NW, Impact of the Earned by the Jt. Ctr. for Poverty Wash., DC 20049, 202/ Income Tax Credit in US Research of Northwestern • “Community Action 434-2277, www.aarp.org. Metropolitan Areas,” by Univ. & Univ. of Chi. 6 Agencies & Faith-Based

28 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 Organizations: A Legacy available. Jan. 15 applic. (2002) conf. of the Community Colleges in of Productive Partner- deadline; training@ctwo. Neighborhood Funders the Knowledge ships” (50 pp., 2001) is org, 510/594-4046. Group, March 14-16 in Economy,” by Anthony available (no price listed) [4157] SF. Inf. from NFG, 1 P. Carnevale & Donna M. from the Natl. Assn. of Dupont Circ., #700, Desrochers (108 pp., Comm. Action Agencies, • Standing Our Wash., DC 20036, 202/ 2001), is available, free, 1100 17th St. NW, #500, Ground: A Stronger 833-4690, x3. Website: from Educ. Testing Wash., DC 20036, 202/ Voice, A Better Boston: www.nfg.org [4155] Service, 1800 K St. NW, 265-7546, info@nacaa. Urban Renewal & #900, Wash., DC 20006, org, www.nacaa.org. Community Control of 202/659-8056. [3930] Development in Boston, Education www.ets.org. [3917] 1948-74 is a 24-min. slide • “Faith-Based Com- show on video. $30 • The Connected • “Closing the Achieve- munity Organizing in indivs., $40 insts. from School: Technology & ment Gap: Improving the Action: 5 Stories of [email protected], 310/ Learning in High School, Educational Outcomes Comm. Change [DART 392-2076. [4220] by Barbara Means, for African American in Fla.; Louisiana William R. Penuel & Children” is a 33-page, Interfaith Together; Christine Padilla (244 Nov. 2001 report from ISAIAH in Minn.; Criminal pp., Jossey Bass, 2001), is the Natl. Black Caucus of Project SAC-So. Calif. a Joyce Foundation- State Legislators. On their Af.-Am. Church-Based Justice funded study. $27. [3916] website: www.nbcsl.com, Org. Proj.; Valley or from 444 N. Capitol Interfaith in TX]” (26 • “Prisoner Reentry in • Learning While St., #622, Wash., DC pp., Oct. 2001) available Perspective,” by James Black: Creating Educa- 20001, 202/624-5457; (free) from Interfaith Lynch and William Sabol, tional Excellence for likely free. [3918] Funders, 366 N. Broad- is Crime Policy Report 3 African American way, #410, Jericho, NY (2001), available on The Children, by Janice E. • “Trying to Stay 11753, 516/364-8922, Urban Inst. website: Hale (2001?), has been Ahead of the Game: [email protected]. www.urban.org, paffairs published by Johns Superintendents & [3935] @ui.urban.org. [4099] Hopkins Univ. Press, Principals Talk about 800/537-5487. www. School Leadership” is a • “Faith-Based Com- jhupbooks.com; $15.95 50-page, 2001 report, munity Organizing: The Economic/ [4097] available (possibly free) State of the Field,” by from Public Agenda, 6 E. Mark R. Warren & Community • “False Choices: 39 St., NYC, NY 10016- Richard L. Wood (61 pp. Development Vouchers, Public Schools 0112, 212/686-6610, + Apps./Tables), is & Our Children’s [email protected], available (possibly free) • “Displacement: The Future: Lessons from www.publicagenda.org. from Interfaith Funders, Dismantling of a Com- Milwaukee” is a 4-page, [3921] 366 N. Broadway, #410, munity” (49 pp., Sept. Fall 2001 tabloid, Jericho, NY 11753, 1999) is available (no available (no price listed) • “Raising Minority 516/364-8922, price listed) from the from Rethinking Schools, Academic Achievement: interfaithfunders Coal. for a Livable 1001 E. Keefe Ave., A Compendium of @yahoo.com. [3936] Future, 1220 SW Milwaukee, WI 53212, Education Programs & Morrisson, #535, Port- 414/964-9646, Practices,” by Donna • Community Organiz- land, OR 97205, 503/ [email protected]. Walker James, Sonia ing & Family Issues has a 294-2889, jill@ Also available: “Selling Jurich & Steve Estes (190 brochure describing the clfuture.org, www. Out Our Schools: Vouch- pp., n.d.), is available organization’s work & clfuture.org. [3939] ers, Markets & the Future ($10) from Amer. Youth programs. Contact them of Public Education” (98 Policy Forum, 1836 at 954 W. Washington • The Community pp., $7.50); 800/669- Jefferson Pl. NW, Wash., Blvd., 4th flr., Box 42, Development Venture 4192. [4015] DC 20036-2505, 202/ Chicago, IL 60607, 312/ Capital Alliance annual • “Alignment of 775-9731, aypf@aypf. 226-5141, COFI@ (2002) conf. will be held Standards & Assessments org, www.aypf.org. mindspring.com [4230] March 4 in Orlando. Inf. as an Accountability [3928] from CDVCA, 330 7th Criterion,” by Paul M. • The Movement Ave., 19th flr., NYC, NY La Marca, appeared in • “Education in Crisis: Activist Apprenticeship 10001, 212/594-6747, Vol. 7, #21 (2001) of The State Budget Crunch Program, a project of the x10. Website: www. Practical Assessment, & Our Nation’s Schools” Ctr. for Third World cdvca.org [4156] Research & Evaluation. is an 18-page, Nov.(?) Organizing, is holding Available at ericae.net/ 2001 report from the organizer training • “A More Perfect pare. [4146] House Comm. on Educ. programs for people of Union: Charting a & the Workforce; avail- color, Spring and Sum- Strategy for Economic • “Help Wanted... able, free, from Rep. mer 2002. Stipends Justice” is the annual Credentials Required: George Miller (D-CA),

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 29 202/225-3725. [3938] Students” is a 2-page, NECA, 202/588-7219. Schools Network, 1807 Sept. 2001 digest, Research on the roles/ W. Sunnyside, #1D, • “Desegregation & available (likely free) relationships for families Chicago, IL 60640, 773/ Black Dropout Rates,” from the ERIC Clearing- & schools in children’s 728-4030. [4010] by Jonathan Guryan, is a house on Urban Educ., education has been 61-page, June 2001 Box 40, Teachers Col- published in “Between • “Promoting Employ- Working Paper, available lege, Columbia Univ., Families & Schools: ment in Public Housing from the Natl. Bureau of NYC, NY 10027, 800/ Creating Meaningful Communities: Learning Econ. Research, 1050 601-4868. Website: eric- Relationships,” available from the Jobs-Plus Mass. Ave., Camb., MA web.tc.columbia.edu from NECA. [4059] Demonstration” is a 6- 02138, www.nber.org/ [4224] page, Nov. 2001 Policy papers/w8345. The paper • The Campaign for Brief, available (likely shows that deseg. plans of • “School Choice as African American free) from the Manpower the 1970s reduced high Education Reform: What Achievement is a 2001 Demonstration Research school dropout rates for Do We Know?” is a 2- Natl. Urban League Corp., 16 E. 34 St., blacks. [3941] page, Aug. 2001 digest, project. Inf. from Leslie NYC, NY 10016, 212/ available (possibly free) Dunbar, NUL, 120 Wall 532-3200, www.mdrc. • “Overlooked & from ERIC Clearinghouse St., NYC, NY 10005, org. [4018] Underserved: Immigrant on Urban Educ., Box 40, 212/558-54538, Students in US Secondary Teachers College, [email protected]. [4221] • “Coming Up Short: Schools,” by Jorge Ruiz- Columbia Univ., NYC, Current unemployment de-Velasco, Michael Fix NY 10027, 800/601- insurance benefits fail to & Beatriz Chu Clewell 4868. Website: eric- Employment/ meet basic family (102 pp., Dec. 200), is web.tc.columbia.edu needs,” by Heather available (no price listed) [4225] Jobs Policy Boushey & Jeffrey from The Urban, Inst, Wenger, is a 6-page, Oct. 2100 M St. NW, Wash., • “Gender Differences • Central Labor 2001 Issue Brief, avail- DC 20037, 202/833-7200 in Educational Achieve- Councils & the Revival of able (possibly free) from [4013] ment within Racial & American Unionism: the Econ. Policy Inst., Ethnic Groups” is a 2- Organizing for Social 1660 L St. NW, #1200, • “NAACP Call for page digest, available Justice in Our Communi- Wash., DC 20036, 202/ Action in Education” (possibly free) from ERIC ties, eds. Immanuel Ness 775-8810, www.epinet. (40 pp., Nov. 2001) is Clearinghouse on Urban & Stuart Eimer (248 pp., org. [4078] available from the Educ., Box 40, Teachers 2001), has been published NAACP: www.naacp.org. College, Columbia Univ., by ME Sharpe, 800/541- • “Who Will Care for [4087] NYC, NY 10027, 800/ 6563; classroom examina- Us? Addressing the 601-4868. Website: eric- tion copies available. Long-Term Care • “Evaluating School web.tc.columbia.edu [4102] Workforce Crisis,” by Violence Programs,” ed. [4226] Rebecca Stone & Joshua Erwin Flaxman (2001), is • “Roadblock on the Wiener (2001), is avail- available ($12) from the • “Are Latino Students Way to Work: Driver’s able on The Urban Inst. ERIC Clearinghouse on Being Prepared for the License Suspension in website: www.urban.org, Urban Educ., 525 W. 120 MCAS? Access to NJ,” by Ken Zimmerman [email protected]. St., Box 40, Teachers Educational Opportuni- & Nancy Fishman, is a [4100] College, Columbia Univ., ties for Latinos in Four 21-page, Oct. 2001 NYC, NY 10027. A list Mass. School Districts” is report, available (possibly • “Workforce Invest- of EIRC publications is a 2001 report, available free) from the NJ Inst. for ment Act: Better Guid- available at eric- (no price given) from the Social Justice, 973/624- ance Needed to Address web.tc.columbia.edu. Gaston Inst. for Latino 9400, njisj.kz@verizon. Concerns Over New [4222] Comm. Dev. & Public net. [3923] Requirements” is an Oct. Policy, Univ. Mass., 100 2001 GAO report, • “Latinos in School: Morrissey Blvd., Boston, • “Labor Market available at www.gao. Some Facts & Findings” MA 02125-3393, 617/ Conditions Among 16-24 gov, click on “GAO is a 2-page, Feb. 2001 287-5790, Gaston. Year Old Adults in the Reports,” then “Today’s digest, available (possibly [email protected], www. US, Illinois & the Reports,” then “Oct. 4, free) from the ERIC gaston.umb.edu. [4228] Chicago Area at the End 2001” — it’s 2nd report Clearinghouse on Urban of the 1990s: Progress, listed. [4159] Educ., Box 40, 525 W. • The Tellin’ Stories Problems & Future 120 St., NYC, NY 10027, Project, a parent-school Policy Options,” by • “Labor Market 212/678-3436, wcs7. initiative sponsored by Andrew M. Sum, Neal Dropouts & the Racial columbia.edu. [4223] the Network of Educators Fogg, Robert Taggert & Wage Gap, 1940-90” on the Americas, has won Sheila Palma, is a 28- recently won the W.E. • “School Practices for an award at the Natl. page, June 2001 report, Upjohn Inst. Dissertation Equitable Discipline of Symposium on Partner- available (possibly free) Award competition. African American ships in Educ. Inf. from from the Alternative Author is Amitabh

30 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 Chandra (Univ. of KY, 20005-4928, 202/789- Health Lisa Dubay & Alshadye now at Dartmouth). 3500. [4148] Yemane, is a Nov. 2001 According to the Oct. 21 • “Health as a Na- Policy Brief from The issue of Upjohn’s Employ- • “Early Care & tional Asset: Can This Urban Inst., 2100 M St. ment Research, Chandra Education: Work Perspective from Finland NW, Wash., DC 20037, “demonstrates that Support for Families & Help Us Reform our 202/833-7200, literture on the racial Developmental Opportu- Health Sector?,” by newfederalism.urban.org/ wage gap has systemati- nity for Young Chil- Phyllis Freeman & html/series_b/b39/b39/ cally overstated the dren,” by Kathryn Tout, Anthony Robbins, is a html. [4023] economic gains of Angela Romano Papillo, 39-page, Oct. 2001 African-American men by Martha Zaslow & Sharon report, available (likely • “Medicaid-Eligible ignoring their withdrawal Vandivere (27 pp., Sept. free) from the McCormick Adults Who Are Not from the labor market.” 2001), is available (likely Inst. of Public Affairs, Enrolled: Who Are They [4144] free) from The Urban Univ. Mass., Boston, MA & Do They Get the Care Inst., 2100 M St. NW, 02125-3393, phyllis. They Need?,” by Amy J. Wash., DC 20037, 202/ [email protected]. Davidoff, Bowen Garrett Environment 833-7200, paffairs@ [3922] & Alshadye Yemane, is ui.urban.org, www.urban. an Oct. 2001 Urban Inst. • Approaches to org. [3934] • “Mobilizing to Fight Policy Brief, available Sustainable Development: HIV/AIDS in the African- (likely free) from the The Public University in • “Running to Keep in American Community,” Inst., 2100 M St. NW, the Regional Economy, Place: The Continuing eds. Jennifer C. Friday, Wash., DC 20037, 202/ by Robert Forrant, Jean Evolution of Our Marsha Lillie-Blanton & 833-7200, bnowak@ L. Pyle, William Nation’s Child Welfare Jennifer Kates, is a 48- ui.urban.org; Lazonick & Charles System,” by Karin Malm, page, April 2001 Supple- newfederalism.urban.org/ Levenstein (434 pp., Roseana Bess, Jacob ment to Minority Health html.anf_a48.html. [4024] 2001), has been published Leos-Urbel, Robert Geen Today. Available, likely by Univ. of Mass. Press & Teresa Markowitz (26 free, with a Survey of • “Minorities in (Box 429, Amherst, MA pp., Oct. 2001), is Black Elected Officials Minnesota More Likely 01004); $24.95. www. available (likely free) Chartpack, from the to Lack Health Insur- umass.edu/umpress. from The Urban Inst., Kaiser Family Fdn., 800/ ance” was the headline of [4011] 2100 M St. NW, Wash., 656-4533. [3926] an item in a recent issue DC 20037, 202/833- of the Amer. Public 7200, paffairs@ • “Getting Health Care Health Assn. newsletter. Families/ ui.urban.org, www.urban. When You Are Unin- The report it refers to is org. [3937] sured: A Survey of “Final Report to the Women/ Uninsured Patients at Secretary, Health Re- Children • “Downtown Women’s Inova Alexandria sources & Services Needs Assessment: Hospital in Alexandria, Administraton, State of • Where Are All the Findings & Recommen- VA,” by Dennis Andrulis, Minn. Dept. of Health” Young Men & Women of dations” is an Oct. 2001 Christina An & Carol (65 pp., Oct. 2001). Color?, by Melvin report from the Down- Pryor (32 pp. + Apps., Available from the Health Delgado (292 pp., 2001?, town Women’s Action Dec. 2000), is available Economics Prog. at the $22.50), has been Coal., identifying the (no price listed) from The Dept., 121 E. 7th Place, published by Columbia needs & characteristics of Access Proj., 30 Winter #400, St. Paul, MN Univ. Press, 61 W. 62 women living in the Skid St., #930, Boston, MA 55101, 651/282-6367. St., NYC, NY 10023, Row/Central City East 02108, 617/654-9911, Website: www.health. 212/459-0600, www. area of downtown LA. www.accessproject.org. state.mn.us [4210] columbia.edu/cu/cup. Available at www. [3931] [4093] shelterpartnership.org. [4150] • “Urban Indian Homelessness • “The Incarceration Health,” by Ralph Generation: When • “Imagine a Nation Forquera (19 pp., Nov. • Advancing the Parents Go to Prison, Without Child Abuse: 2001), is available (free) Research Agenda on What Happens to Their Combining Our from the Henry J. Kaiser Homelessness: Politics & Children?” by Vesla M. Strengths for Preven- Family Fdn., 800/656- Realities, ed. Paula W. Weaver, is a 2-page tion,” a natl. conf. 4533, www.kff.org. Dail, is the special Sept. article in the Sept. 2001 sponsored by Prevent [4019] 2001 (Vol. 45, No. 1) issue of Focus, the Child Abuse America, issue of American monthly magazine of the will be held March 2-5, • “Patterns of Child- Behavioral Scientist (8 Jt. Ctr. for Political & 2002 in Dallas. Inf. from Parent Insurance Cover- articles). Subs. to the Econ. Studies, 1090 the org., 200 S. Michigan age: Implications for monthly are $130 indivs., Vermont Ave. NW, Ave., 17th flr., Chicago, Coverage Expansions,” $865 insts; unclear #1100, Wash., DC IL 60604, 312/663-3520, by Amy J. Davidoff, whether you can purchase x221. [4216] Genevieve M. Kenney, a single issue. Contact

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 31 Sage Pubs., 800/818- Grand Ave., #306, 11-30-01hous.htm. [4021] Miscellaneous 7243, order@sagepub. Oakland, CA 94610, 510/ com, www.sagepub.com. 251-9400, ganders@ • “The State of • Defying Corpora- [4143] nhlp.org. [4110] Minority Access to Home tions, Defining Democ- Mortgage Lending: A racy: A Book of History • “Homeless in Cali- • “Meeting the Housing Profile of the NY Met. & Strategy, by Dean Ritz fornia,” by John M. Needs of People in Area” (2001) is available (336 pp., 2001), from Quigley, Steven Raphael Poverty: Findings from a from the Brookings Ctr. POCLAD (the Program on & Eugene Smolensky, is Natl. Survey of Comm. on Urban & Met. Policy, Corporations, Law & an Oct. 2001 Public Action Agencies” (82 pp., 1775 Mass. Ave. NW, Democracy), is available Policy Inst. of Calif. Oct. 2001) is available Wash., DC 20036, 202/ ($17.95) from Apex Press, report, available at (no price listed) from the 797-6139, www. 777 UN Plaza, #3C, www.ppic.org/#ppic151. Natl. Assn. of Comm. brookings.edu/urban. NYC, NY 10017, 800/ [4017] Action Agencies, 1100 [4066] 316-2739. POCLAD has 17th St. NW, #500, other publications as Wash., DC 20036, 202/ • “Quantifying the well, and is reachable at Housing 265-7546, info@nacaa. Economic Cost of PO Box 246, S. org, wwww.sacaa.org. Predatory Lending,” by Yarmouth, MA 02664- • “Increasing Afford- [3929] Eric Stein (July 2001), is 0246, 508/398-1145. able Housing & Regional available (no price given) [4012] Housing Opportunity in • “Expanding Afford- from the Self-Help Credit 3 New England States able Housing Through Union, PO Box 3619, • “Bridging the [CA, CT, RI] and NJ,” is Inclusionary Zoning: Durham, NC 27702- Organizational Divide: the title of the 2001 Lessons from the Wash- 3619, 800/476-7428. Toward a Comprehen- Symposium of the ington Met. Area,” by Website: www.self- sive Approach to the Western New England Karen Brown (35 pp., help.org [4215] Digital Divide” (31 pp., Law Review. Among the 7 Oct. 2001), is available 2001) is available (likely articles (+ Biblio) are: (likely free) from the free) from PolicyLink, “Opening the Suburbs to Brookings Inst. Ctr. on Immigration 101 Broadway, Oakland, Racial Integration: Urban & Met. Policy, CA 94607, 510/663- Lessons for the 21st 1775 Mass. Ave. NW, • Caught in the 2333; downloadable from Century” (49 pp.), by Wash., DC 20036-2188, Middle: Border Commu- www.policylink.org. PRRAC Board member 202/797-6139; nities in an Era of [3932] Florence Roisman; downloadable from Globalization, by “Fairly Sharing Afford- www.brookings.edu/ Demetrios Papademetriou • “A Seat at the Table: able Housing Obligations: urban. [3933] & Daniel Meyer (340 pp., Keeping the Public in The Mt. Laurel Matrix” Oct. 2001), has been Public Policy” is a 2001 (15 pp.), by John M. • “Can Money Solve published by the report available (no price Payne. The 307-page the Problem?” is a 15- Carnegie Endowment for given) from The Neigh- volume is available ($10) page, Nov. 2001 Section Internatl. Peace; $24.95 borhood Funders Gp., 1 from the W. New Eng. 8 Report #7 on accep- +s/h; 800/275-1447, Dupont Circle, #700, College School of Law, tance of vouchers in 3 www.ceip.org/files/ Wash., DC 20036, 202/ 1215 Wilbraham Rd., MN counties. Available Publications/ 833-4690; online at Springfield, MA 01119, (likely free) from Home CaughtinMiddle.asp. www.nfg.org. [4096] 413/782-1406. [3920] Line, 3455 Bloomington [4068] Ave., Mpls., MN 55407, • “Bringing Human • The Housing Law 612/728-5770, charliew@ • “From the Border- Rights Home: Linking Bulletin is published homeline.org. [3943] line to the Colorline: A Individual Dignity with monthly by the Natl. Report on Anti-Immi- Mutual Destiny” is the Housing Law Project. • “Separate & Un- grant Racism in the US” 1996-2000 program $100 first-year sub. price equal: Predatory Lend- is a 81-page, 2001 report activities report of the for new subscribers. ing in America” (232 pp. from the Natl. Network Natl. Ctr. for Human Contact the Project at 614 + Tables, Nov. 2001) is for Immigrant & Refugee Rights Education, PO Box available (no price listed) Rights (headed by 311020, Atlanta, GA from ACORN, 739 8th St. PRRAC Board member 31131, 404/344-9629, SE, Wash., DC 20003, Cathi Tactaquin), pre- [email protected], Remember 202/547-2500, www. pared for the UN World www.chre.org. [4145] to send us acorn.org. [4014] Conf. Against Racism. Available ($18 indivs., • “Building Capacity items • “Sources of Data on $38 libraries, insts.) from in Nonprofit Organiza- for our State & Local Housing NNIRR, 310 8th St., tions,” eds. Carol J. De Needs” is a Nov. 2001 #303, Oakland, CA Resources Vita & Cory Fleming memorandum from the 94607, [email protected], (2001), is available (no Section Ctr. on Budget & Policy www.nnirr.org. [3924] price listed) from The Priorities, www.cbpp.org/

32 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002 Urban Inst, 877/ • The National • ACLU of Illinois gov/grants/guide/rfa-files- UIPRESS, pubs@ui. Women’s Law Center has Fellowships: Racial RFA-ES-02-005.htm1. urban.org; also on their the following positions: Justice Project & Civil [4083] website: www.urban.org. Advocate for its Women’s Liberties: Resume, ltr., [4218] Health & Reproductive list of refs, legal writing • Natl. Network of Rights Prog.; Senior sample by Jan. 15 to Grantmakers Directory • Design for Social Counsel for its Education ACLU of Illinois, 180 N. is available at a 50% Impact is a graphic Prog.; Counsel for its Michigan Ave., #2300, discount: $25. NNG is designer/activist firm Employment & Family Chicago, IL 60601, 312/ the organization of working for public Economic Security Prog. 201-9740. Website: progressive, social interest gps. Clients Resume to NWLC, 11 www.aclu-il.org [4061] change-oriented include ACLU-Penn., Dupont Cir. NW, # 800, grantmakers. 1717 Educ. Law Ctr., Natl. Wash., DC 20036, • Environmental Kettner Blvd., #110, San Voting Rights Inst., [email protected]. Justice: Partnerships to Diego, CA 92101, 619/ Public Educ. Network. [4192] Address Ethical Chal- 231-1348, nicole@nng. 524 S. 4th St., #589, lenges in Environmental org, www.nng.org. [4085] Phila., PA 19147, 215/ • The American Health is a grant program • Sydney S. Spivack 922-7303, www. Legacy Foundation of the Natl. Inst. of Env. Comm. Action Research designforsocialimpact.org. makes grants for anti- Health Sciences. Letter of Initiative enables sociolo- [4072] tobacco work (research, intent deadline Feb. 25, gists to undertake comm. demonstration projects, 2002. Inf. at grants.nih. action projects that bring marketing & education, technical asst. & train- Job ing). Contact them at Opportunities/ 1001 G St. NW, #800, PRRAC'S SOCIAL SCIENCE Fellowships/ Wash., DC 20001, 202/ ADVISORY BOARD 454-5555, info@ Grants americanlegacy.org. [4149] Richard Berk • The Univ. Mass. UCLA Department of Sociology Public Policy PhD • The Southern Pov- Program is seeking to fill erty Law Center is Frank Bonilla a faculty position at the seeking a Staff Attorney. CUNY Department of Sociology advanced asst., assoc. or Resume/ltr. to PO Box full prof. level. Review of 2087, Montgomery, AL Heidi Hartmann applics. will begin Jan. 36102-2087, Fax 334/ Inst. for Women’s Policy Research (Wash., DC) 15, 2002. C.v., sample 956-8481, pubs., teaching evals. & 3 [email protected]. William Kornblum ltrs. of ref. to Dept. [4203] CUNY Center for Social Research Human Resources, Search #640, Univ. Mass.- • Association of Boston, 100 Morrissey Maternal & Child Health Harriette McAdoo Blvd., Boston, MA Programs needs an Michigan State School of Human Ecology 02125. Inf. from Randy Executive Director. Albelda, 617/287-6963, Resume/ltr. to AMCHP, Fernando Mendoza [email protected]. 1220 19th St. NW, Stanford Univ. Department of Pediatrics [4094] Wash., DC 20036, [email protected], Paul Ong • Union Jobs: DC-area www.amchp.org. [4204] UCLA Grad. School Architecture union job listings are & Urban Planning posted regularly by Chris • Environmental Garlock: dcstreetheat@ Health Coalition seeks a Gary Orfield earthlink.net. [4154] Neighborhood Revitaliza- Harvard Univ. Grad. School of Education tion Project Director. • American Civil Resume/ltr. to EHC Attn: Gary Sandefur Liberties Union Founda- Stephanie Kaupp, 1717 Univ. Wisconsin Inst. for Poverty Research tion is hiring a Guardian Kettner Blvd., #100, San of Liberty Coordinator Diego, CA 92101, Margaret Weir StephanieK@ to work in the Member- Dept. of Political Science, ship Dept. (min. salary environmentalhealth.org, Univ. of California, Berkeley $25,537). Resume/ltr. to Fax: 619/232-3670, ACLU, 125 Broad St. www.environmentalhealth. 18th flr., NYC, NY org. [4205] 10004. [4190]

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 33 social science knowl- • The Cultural Heri- lished by the UCLA of Communications & a edge, methods & exper- tage & Educ. Inst., a Asian-Amer. Studies Ctr., Membership Acquisition tise to bear in addressing small Native-led non- headed by PRRAC Board Coordinator. For former, community-identified profit, has available an member Don Nakanishi.) ltr./resume to S. Ashton, issues & concerns. Alaska internship. Resume/writing sample/ ACLU, 125 Broad St. - Applics. accepted until Applic. deadline March ltr. by Jan. 20 to Russell 18th fl., NYC, NY Feb. 1, 2002. Contact 15, 2002; chei2@ Leong at the Ctr., 3230 10004, 212/549-2585; for Amer. Sociol. Assn., mosquitonet.com. [4152] Campbell Hall, UCLA, latter, ltr./2 cc of resume 1307 NY Ave. NW, LA, CA 90095-1546, to HRJOBS/ACLU.ORG #700, Wash., DC 20005, • The State Strategies 310/206-9844, or to address above. www.asanet.org/student/ Fund supports state-based [email protected] (but email commact.html. [4089] strategies to increase civic applics. not accepted). • William J. Brennan participation in political First Amendment • Environmental life, empower disadvan- • The Assn. of Mater- Fellowship is offered by Justice Grants are taged constituencies & nal & Child Health the ACLU to 3rd year law available from EPA to promote political reform. Progs. is hiring a Policy students & recent grads. community nonprofits & Inf. from them at 264 N. Analyst. Mid-$40s. $35-37,000. Ltr./resume/ tribes. Feb. 21, 2002 Pleasant St., 2nd flr., Resume/ltr. to AMCHP, 2 ltrs. of recc./at least 1 deadline. Contact Sheila Amherst, MA 01002, 413/ 1220 19th St. NW, #801, writing sample, post- Lewis, 202/564-0152, 256-0349. [4219] Wash., DC 20036. marked by Jan. 18, 2002, es.epa.gov/oeca/oej/ to ACLU, 125 Broad St., grlink1.html. [4091] • Amerasia Journal is • The ACLU Founda- 18th flr., NYC, NY seeking an Associate tion is hiring a Director 10004-2400. Editor. $33,240. (Pub-

34 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002

POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL Board of Directors

CHAIR Deepak Bhargava Don Nakanishi [Organizations listed for John Charles Boger Center for Community Change University of California identification purposes only] University of North Carolina Washington, DC Los Angeles, CA School of Law Sheila Crowley Florence Wagman Roisman Chester W. Hartman Chapel Hill, NC National Low Income Indiana University President/Executive Director Housing Coalition School of Law VICE-CHAIRS Washington, DC Indianapolis, IN Denise Rivera Portis Kati Haycock Thomas Henderson Anthony Sarmiento Office Manager/ The Education Trust Lawyers' Committee for Civil AFL-CIO Latino Outreach Coordinator Washington, DC Rights Under Law Washington, DC José Padilla Washington, DC Theodore M. Shaw Tracy Jackson California Rural Legal Judith Johnson NAACP Legal Defense Administrative Assistant Assistance Peekskill City School District & Educational Fund San Francisco, CA Peekskill, NY New York, NY Elizabeth Julian Cathi Tactaquin SECRETARY Dallas, TX National Network for john powell S.M. Miller Immigrant & Refugee Rights Univ. of Minnesota The Commonwealth Institute Oakland, CA Institute on Race & Poverty Cambridge, MA William L. Taylor Minneapolis, MN Washington, DC

Poverty & Race Research Action Council Nonprofit 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW • Suite 200 U.S. Postage Washington, DC 20008 PAID 202/387-9887 FAX: 202/387-0764 Jefferson City, MO E-mail: [email protected] Permit No. 210 Website: www.prrac.org

Address Service Requested 1-2/02