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.

ASATA members marched in San Francisco with the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian Immigrant Rights Coalition along side Chinese Progressive Association and Bayan.

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!

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
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.

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.
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.