Colorlines Magazine articles from March 2009

Colorlines Magazine archives from March 2009

The crime? Humanitarian aid: an activist is charged with littering after leaving water for immigrants.
March 1, 2009... DAN MILLIS IS A VOLUNTEER with the border humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, which regularly leaves water and sets up aid camps in the Arizona desert for immigrants. Last February, Millis was issued a $175 ticket for littering in a section...

Colorblind no more: a growing number of states assess the racial impact of drug laws.(NEWS)
March 1, 2009... LEGISLATION PASSED IN IOWA and Connecticut will now require politicians in both states to consider how proposed drug laws may impact communities of color. Minnesota hasn't passed a law, but its sentencing commission has already begun taking...

HIV + immigrants still banned.(NEWS)
March 1, 2009... BEFORE CHECKING into lame-duck status last year, former President Bush signed legislation amending immigration law to stop banning HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country. The catch? U.S. Health and Human Services still has HIV on its...

Civil rights groups condemn hate crimes.(NEWS)
March 1, 2009... SEVERAL NATIONAL civil rights organizations stepped up to denounce a spate of hate crimes against Latinos. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The collective action--headed by the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, the...

Locked out of college.(RANTS & RAVES)
March 1, 2009... While students are desperate to get into college, higher ed officials are working hard to keep them out. 'That's right. The president and board of the California State University system approved changes to the application process that will make...

Insurance doesn't cover racism.(RANTS & RAVES)
March 1, 2009... Taneka Talley was stabbed to death in 2006 at the Dollar Tree store where she worked in Fremont, CA, but the store's insurance company, Specialty Risk Services, is denying Talley's 11-year-old son, Larry, his mother's death benefits. According...

The source of those racist superbowl ads.(RANTS & RAVES)
March 1, 2009... The U.S. is a few years from becoming a country where so-called minorities are the majority, but some industries still run as if people of color don't exist. The Department of Labor reported that the ranks of the advertising industry are 5...

Racial equity for liver transplants.(RANTS & RAVES)
March 1, 2009... It used to be that Blacks on waiting lists for a liver transplant were 50 percent more likely than whites to die or become too sick to even take a new liver. But thanks to a system overhaul in 2002 that prioritizes the sickest patients, the...

Racial profiling tapering off.(RANTS & RAVES)
March 1, 2009... At the beginning of 2008, nearly 100 percent of Sikh passengers were being pulled aside for secondary screenings at the San Francisco International Airport. The Sikh Coalition spent months filing complaints and meeting with Transportation...

Armando Robles: the union leader shares lessons from the six-day occupation of a Chicago factory by more than 250 workers.(Q&A)(Interview)
March 1, 2009... You're president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in Chicago. How did the sit-in at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in December of 2008 begin? It all started one night when the plant manager...

A fragile union: why racial justice matters in the fight for gay marriage.(COVER)
March 1, 2009... YOU CAN LEARN A GREAT DEAL about the state of gay politics by walking along Manhattan's West Side Highway late in the day on the first Sunday of any June. Like the surrounding West Village neighborhood, the highway's promenade will be packed,...

The war on terror fuels racial bullying: community advocates demand policy changes as Sikh kids face more violence.(FEATURE)
March 1, 2009... ADJUSTING TO HIGH SCHOOL always takes time, especially when you're the new kid on the block. But for Jagmohan Singh Premi, a practicing Sikh with quiet, almond-shaped eyes, school only became scarier and more dangerous the more time he spent...

Targeting another generation of Black men: despite lawsuits, review boards and more, Oakland fails to reform its police department.(FEATURE)
March 1, 2009... GARY KING SR. TRIES TO AVOID idle moments. When he's not working as a drywaller, he keeps himself busy refurbishing his tidy, single-family house on Congress Avenue in Oakland, California. Sometimes he drums for hours, his hands a blur as they...

Comedy to end racism in an hour.(SPOTLIGHT: KAMAU BELL)
March 1, 2009... BY THE TIME COMEDIAN KAMAU BELL made it to the Samuel L. Jackson bit in his one-man act, The W. Kamau Bell Curve Show: Ending Racism In About An Hour, he had already managed to touch on Prop. 8, the dearth of men of color on People magazine's...

The art of protest: an artists' collective puts the power of messaging in the hands of community members.(CULTURE)
March 1, 2009... TALIA HERRERA DIDN'T CONSIDER herself an artist when she designed her first protest poster. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An immigrant from central Mexico, Herrera enjoyed drawing as a pastime but had never worked with materials other than...

Chronicling gay Muslim life: filmmaker Parvez Sharma recounts the perils and rewards of producing the documentary a Jihad for love.(PROFILE)
March 1, 2009... How did your personal experience inform your vision for the film and your relationship with the people you interviewed for it? If I'd not been a Muslim filmmaker, I do not think I would have had the amount of access and the depth of...

Black Gay Men Of The South.
March 1, 2009... Culled from interviews during travel across 15 southern states, North-western University performance studies chair E. Patrick Johnson's Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press) profiles 63 gay Black men ranging...

The Mind Body Culture Connection.
March 1, 2009... Speaking From the Body: Latinas on Health and Culture (University of Arizona Press) is hardly a "how-to" guide on cultural sensitivity and health. Instead, editors Angie Chabram-Dernersesian and Adela de la Torre have collected the stories of...

Race Records.(Sound recording review)
March 1, 2009... GIRL IN A COMA Both Before I'm Gone (Blackheart Records Group) GIRL IN A COMA'S FIRST WIDELY AVAILABLE recording has been long anticipated by fans fortunate enough to have caught one of their shows. The resulting product from the...