May Day - march for Immigrant and Workers’ Rights
ASATA members marched in San Francisco with the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian Immigrant Rights Coalition along side Chinese Progressive Association and Bayan.
May day!
ASATA will join the May Day march in San Francisco with the AMEMSA Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Where: AROC Office 522 Valencia
When: 2:30PM
We’ll distribute signs and join the march through San Francisco!
Protest at the GAP: End Sweatshop Death Traps NOW!
ASATA members join a Bangladeshi factory fire survivor and local labor rights activists to call on Gap to pay 10 cents more per garment to save workers’ lives!
Since 2006, more than 600 garment workers have died in fires while sewing clothing for companies like Gap, H&M, and Walmart. These deaths could have been prevented, but Gap and others are refusing to pay for reforms and join with other companies in a binding safety agreement that includes worker representation. Until there is real change, any day there could be another fire with workers locked inside. Join us at the Gap to call on the company to join with Tommy Hilfiger and adopt real fire safety now!
Sponsors: Corporate Action Network, International Labor Rights Forum, San Francisco Jobs with Justice, SumOfUs, SweatFree Communities, and United Students Against Sweatshops. For more info: bit.ly/EndDeathTrapsTour | LaborRights.org/GapPetition
photos by Barnali Gosh
Women’s Magazine: Solidarity and Survival
We talk about the rise of hate violence and Islamophobia with two members of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, and we’ll hear a discussion of the recent highly publicized gang rape in India and the protest movement around that, provided by Asia Pacific Express. And we remember two of our fierce cultural warriors: La Brava, poet, activist and producer on La Onda Bajita here at KPFA, and historian Gerda Lerner, who founded one of the nation’s first women’s studies programs.
A Boundless Future, Together
By S. Nadia Hussain
I have been a participant of the CEF convenings for a little over a year now as a member of ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action. For ASATA, the coming together of organizations at the grantee convenings — as well as our Immigrant Rights learning circle, which includes ASATA, Narika, AROC (Arab Resource and Organizing Center), Omid Advocates and African Advocacy Network— has been a very enriching experience and valuable resource for our work as an activist organization. Working alongside the diversity of groups has helped us, as an organization to look at our own framework of coalition building, organizing and spreading information in a way that empowers our communities.
AAMEMSA Immigrant Rights Workshop
On November 2, 2012 ASATA helped organize an immigrant rights workshop with our coalition partners (AROC, Narika, Omid Advocates, and African Advocacy Network). The workshop included information on visas, background checks, and asylum and refugee status. The discussion focused on how Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities are uniquely affected by immigration policy in this climate of Islamophobia.
ASATA Response to Aftermath of Times Square Incident
Last week, Faisal Shahzad was arrested for allegedly trying to set off a car bomb in New York’s Times Square. Local and federal branches of U.S. government have responded by spreading hateful messages that feed into a renewed fear of immigrants. These messages put immigrant communities at risk of being targeted by racist violence in the U.S. and our homelands.
Letter to Amitav Ghosh: Reject the Dan David Prize
Boycott Israel? Amitav Ghosh & the Dan David Prize
Dear Amitav Ghosh,
We wish to express our deep disappointment in your decision to accept the Dan David prize, administered by Tel Aviv University and to be awarded by the President of Israel. As a writer whose work has dwelled consistently on histories of colonialism and displacement, your refusal to take stance on the colonial question in the case of Israel and the occupation of Palestine has provoked deep dismay, frustration, and puzzlement among readers and fans of your work around the world. Many admired your principled stand, and respected your decision not to accept the Commonwealth Writers Prize in rejection of the colonialist framework it represented.
Community Accountability and the Reddy Case
In 2000, Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy, owner of Pasand restaurant, the Shattuck Down Low and other businesses, was charged with bringing 25-100 people from his village in India to work for little or no pay in his restaurants and businesses. He was also convicted of trafficking at least 3 young women, some minors, for forced sex. ASATA focused on reframing the issues in the case from immigration fraud and sex scandal to issues of sexual and labor trafficking and exploitation, and urged the South Asian community to hold Reddy accountable for his exploitative actions.
The Reddy Case and the Transgender Day of Remembrance
The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.”
