Aug 30 2011
South Asian Americans Continue to Face Racism, Intimidation, Ten Years After 9/11
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As we approach the 10th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the United States, South Asian American communities throughout the country are reflecting on the decade long wave of fear and intimidation which they faced in the aftermath. During the week immediately following September 11th 2001, there were 645 reported incidents of bias or violence directed toward Americans perceived to be of Middle Eastern descent. South Asians were highly targeted because of their appearance and were involved in 81 percent of the reported incidents. One of the most egregious hate crimes was the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi a turban-wearing Sikh and gas station owner in Mesa Arizona who was gunned down by Frank Roque on the morning of September 15, 2001. The Bush Administration’s Justice Department contributed to the …
Israel continues a military build-up, sending two more warships to its southern border with Egypt in the Red Sea. As many as 1500 Egyptian troops have been deployed to the Sinai Peninsula along the boarder between Southern Israel and Gaza, a move coordinated and approved by the Israeli government. Stationing troops in the Sinai region violates the Camp David accords, however Israel is warning of an attack on its southern region, launched from inside Israel by militant Palestinians. On August 18th, 7 Israelis were killed on a desert road in the South when gunmen identified as Palestinian opened fire on military and civilian vehicles. Israel immediately retaliated with airstrikes over the Gaza strip, killing at least 26 Palestinians. Israeli officials blamed the Gazan Popular Resistance Committee for the August …
Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.
A two day shut down of Chile last week was set off by university students protesting the high cost of education, joined in solidarity by transport and public sector workers. Violence flared between protesters and police, particularly in the Chilean capital, Santiago. Since June hundreds of thousands of students, including those in high school, have been boycotting classes. At the center of the demonstrations is 23 year old Camila Vallejo, the head of the University of Chile’s student union, who has garnered major media attention as a leading figure in the protests. Vallejo has articulated demands being made of the conservative administration of President Sebastian Pinera for the right to education – she said, “[w]e do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing …
Dozens of Indigenous residents have turned out for protests and direct actions, and 26 participants have been arrested since July 26 in defense of the mountain known as the Peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona, d The Havasupai, Navajo, and Hopi Tribes are only three of many groups that are fighting to limit the environmental degradation of the Sacred San Francisco Peaks, in Northern Arizona, a significant state landmark and ancestral land for the Hopi. On August 19th the Hopi Tribe filed a lawsuit against the City of Flagstaff, challenging the legality of selling reclaimed waste water to the Snowbowl ski resort, which will be made into artificial snow. The Hopi tribe and its supporters say the contract violates state laws regarding the handling of waste water because contamination of areas around Snowbowl …
