Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

This article has appeared in India West and The Voice of the Turtle.

Very American Crimes
by Raj Patel and Maninder Kahlon

This April, we witnessed that increasingly rare thing in Californian politics -- a good day. On Wednesday 7 April, the mostly African-American and Hispanic residents of Inglewood in Southern California were faced with a ballot measure sponsored by Wal-Mart, an attempt by the corporation to buy its way around democracy, and drop a "supercenter" into the center of Inglewood's community. The community said, overwhelmingly, no. On the same day in San Francisco, in Courtroom #9 of the U.S. District Court, we saw a rather more muted community victory in a civil suit against Lakireddy Bali Reddy. In 1999, when Reddy was Berkeley's richest landlord with an estate valued at $100m, Chanti Pratipatti, a 17 year old girl whom he had trafficked into the country, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in one of his properties. On 7 April, the suit brought by Pratipatti's estate was settled for an undisclosed sum.