Category Archives: News

So Long. Farewell. Go Vote.

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This past week, I flew in and out of NYC for a conference on the civic engagement of immigrant youth, which incidently, also included U.S.-born to immigrant parents. Considering the political climate this month, this roundtable was very interesting to be a part of. Electoral youth organizing is something I’ve been doing for the past 8 years, and working on the civic engagement of desi youth has been my passion for the past few years. In 2004, the youth vote turned out in significant successful numbers, as well as the South/Asian American youth vote.

According to the Youth Vote 2004 Fact Sheet released by CIRCLE, no other age group increased turnout by more than 5 percentage points. The 2004 campaign brought out the largest percentage of young voters in 32 years. Studies suggest that once a young person is involved in the political process, they are more likely to continue to be involved in it. 35.5 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Asian American citizens turned out to vote in 2004, the largest percentage since data started being collected in 1972. [link]

Couple of the big questions asked, and the ones I keep mulling over is, “What is civic engagement? What is political?” Though the traditional ideas are out there of voting and volunteering, there is a whole ‘alternative’ form of civic engagement that youth today take part in.

Back in our grandparents’ generation, being “political” meant you had to go to a rally or a protest, or join a union. Today’s youth has a whole new definition, according to this survey; 22 percent have worn a wristband, 36 percent have signed an online petition, and 30 percent have written an email or letter advocating a position. Eighteen percent have contributed to a political blog. i.e., 918,000 young people are “political bloggers,” which is fascinating since the blogs are a product of only the past few years. 34 percent of [college youth] say they turn to blogs [to get their news].[link]

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Permanent Bloggers: Amardeep Singh and Siddhartha Mitter

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I’ve been AWOL for the past few days on a big-time mission for Sepia Mutiny. I was tasked by the bunker-mates to try and sign Kaavya Viswanathan to a contract to blog for us here at SM. I even offered her a $500,000 advance and a TWO-month guest slot (as opposed to the standard one month) at our bunker. I know that she has never blogged before and is pretty young, but a team of monkeys in our basement were ready to help in “packaging” her stuff so that it would fit the tone and content of our website. Alas, I just couldn’t close the deal due to some legal issues.

There was no way I was going to come back empty handed however. As a back-up we made an offer to both Amardeep Singh and Siddhartha Mitter. Details of the contract? No advance, no movie deal, no Couric interview. Just disgruntled comment leavers and a shot at fomenting mutiny. They agreed only once we said we’d throw in a hair and make-up person (and put a star on their door). Just to be clear, if they end up plagiarizing we had nothing to do with it.

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Kudos a Todos

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In today’s NYT online, an article by Tom Zeller called In Internet Age, Writers Face Frontier Justice begins:

WRITING last Monday at SepiaMutiny.com, a Web log dedicated to the Southeast Asian [sic] diaspora, a user called RC declared that “there is no scientific way to compare works of literature.” [Link]

Hopefully, I don’t sound like the TOI quoting the Harvard Independent (not even Harvard’s main daily) quoting the TOI I believe this is the first time that I’ve seen the Grey Lady use Sepia Mutiny in a leadoff quote, with a link and everything. I was so excited that I forgave the author his confusion between “South Asian” and “SouthEast Asian” (to be fair, my Mom has been known to do that too …)

SM is quoted again in the middle of the article, with the quote taking up the entire fifth paragraph:

“Viswanathan might have plagiarism issues with more than McCafferty’s books,” wrote Janak Ramakrishnan, another blogger [sic] at Sepia Mutiny. Mr. Ramakrishnan had noticed a similarity between pious aphorisms scribbled onto posters by a character in Ms. Viswanathan’s book (“If from drink you get your thrill, take precaution, write your will” and “All the dangerous drug abusers end up safe as total losers”) and passages from the 1990 book “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” by Salman Rushdie. A chapter titled “The Mail Coach” in Mr. Rushdie’s book depicts a series of rhyming road signs, including two that read, “If from speed you get your thrill, take precaution, make your will” and “All the dangerous overtakers end up safe at the undertaker’s.” [Link]

Again, I was so excited about the extended quote that I forgave the author his confusion between bloggers (those on the masthead) and commenters – the rest of the mutiny family writing large. As a matter of fact, I think this is the first time I’ve seen SM quoted by the MSM in a situation where all of the quotes were taken from readers, and none from the MastheadMutineers. As all of you out there in cyberia know, it takes a village to raze a topic, and so I wanted to say thank you to you all. Without your efforts the Mutiny would literally not have been quoted.

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Come Home

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Singer-songwriter Shaheen Sheik, a friend from college, just signed with Times Music in Bombay and is on a promo tour here this week. (Watch her video.) Last night she sang on a TV show with a name that’s a paragon of ridiculously nontransitive branding, the Tuscan Verve Zoom Glam Awards. Other nights she slums with the plebeians. That’s usually when I get to see her.

A few of us went to see her first performance at a downtown Bombay club called Prive, which is around the corner from the Gateway of India. It’s decorated like a Southern strip club (black lacquer ceilings, gold bead curtains and lap dance seats), albeit one with floating roses. It was an odd venue for folk-pop ballads, but Shaheen sang four gorgeous melodies and encored with a cover of ‘In Your Eyes.’ Like most desis of a certain age, the duet guitarist provided by the label knew Pink Floyd, the Eagles and Led Zep but was baffled by Peter Gabriel.

There’s an interesting tradeoff when Indians in the diaspora come back to promote their wares (Apache Indian, Salman Rushdie…) On one hand, the potential market is huge with a built-in cultural interest. On the other, the middle class is limited in size, and you earn less per unit than in your home market after currency conversion.

Ballads at Prive

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ToIletries

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The Times of India paper edition, while better than its ad-littered Web site, still runs a few howlers:

In this story, Rang De Basanti cutie Soha Ali Khan wears a baby tee with a Lenovo logo next to a story written like ad copy which pimps the latest Thinkpad. This ran last week as straight editorial with no ‘advertisement’ label. And these paid-for stories are apparently common practice (thanks, Amit).

When a student newspaper quotes the ToI, it apparently qualifies as three-column news. Have some freakin’ self-respect. They call themselves the Times of India, not the Times of Podunkville Elementary.

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A Day Without a South Asian American: Boycott May 1st

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All across the country May 1, people will be wearing white shirts and not buying things- That’s right, Monday is the Day Without an Immigrant Boycott. With over 2 million strong, will South Asian Americans make a difference if we all boycotted? A doctor that calls in sick, a taxi worker that stays home, a professor that cancels class? Though not as numerous as other immigrant communities, these days we can be positive that there is a South Asian American representing in almost all lines of business and a boycott by our people will make a mark in a lot of industries.

Choosing May Day for this boycott is significant in itself – it is International Workers Day, and 120 years ago was the mark of bloody riots for workers rights.

In 1884, the U.S. Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions had passed a law declaring that, as of May 1, 1886, an eight hour workday would be the full and legal workday for all U.S. workers – the administration had that much time to recognize this new law and put into effect. The factory, workplace and corporation owners refused.

On May 1, 1886, workers took to the streets in a general strike throughout the entire country to force the administration to recognize the eight-hour working day. Over 350,000 workers across the country directly participated in the general strike, with hundreds of thousands of workers joining the marches.

In what they would later call the Haymarket riots, during the continuing strike action on May third in Chicago, the epicenter of the U.S. labor movement at that time, the Chicago police opened fire on the unarmed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works, killing six workers and wounding untold numbers.[link]

May 1st here in Los Angeles, there will be a group of South Asians taking part in the boycott at MacArthur Park at 3:00pm – listen for the sounds of the dhol to see where the desis at. I highly encourage you to organize (& post in SM events tab if you do!) your own posse of desis to take part in the activities all across the nation. Take pictures and send them to us. If you are able to take off work or school, please do it on behalf of the rest of the desi immigrants who can’t because a day without work would be too big of a loss. I know we’ve been discussing the debate here for the past few weeks, but it’s because when Congress goes back into session this week, this will be at the top of their agenda. Let’s make sure the South Asian voice is heard in the debate.

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The Dark Mark

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No, not the kind Voldemort spreads in the sky in eerie green only to have it dissipate without a trace. We are discussing the kind that sticks ugly in people’s minds and in history. Can-do Canada’s past is no stranger to such impressions, no stranger to xenophobia. In the early part of the last century the Canadian government imposed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants that began at $50 in 1885 and increased to $500 by 1903. Out of the around 80, 000 Chinese in Canada who paid that tax, 15, 000 were working to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and around 4000 of them died during construction. The head tax kept families apart for decades, sometimes for good, and kept them in a state of economic depression while they made it possible for goods to travel across Canada’s enormous land mass.

In April, the Chinese Canadian National Council’s mission to gain a formal apology and remuneration for the estates of Chinese-Canadians who paid the tax came closer to status ‘accomplished’. At the end of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s throne speech there was mention of an agenda item concerning a formal apology for Chinese Canadians. This type of dialog has prompted hope among many in the Indo-Canadian community of a similar apology, with possibility of redress, with regard to the Komagata Maru incident:

The Conservative government should issue an apology and compensation to Indo-Canadians over the Komagata Maru incident if it is going to give both to Chinese-Canadians over the head tax paid by Chinese immigrants in the early 20th century, B.C. Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal said… “If the government is going to apologize to one group of Canadians, they should also have a similar line for other groups of Canadians who have suffered discrimination” [Link]

Harper is said to be “looking into the matter”.

The Komagata Maru was carrying passengers who were Sikh by a large majority but the “white, please” immigration policies of the Canadian government at the time saw only brown. Passengers were not allowed to disembark, were left on board for two months in miserable conditions and were ultimately forced to return to India where they were persecuted by the British as participants in the Independence Movement. All because the Canadian government was afraid of some hardworking brown folk. This episode is as much a part of our history as Indian-Canadians as it is a part of Sikh history. Early immigrants to Canada were largely Sikh but they came here as Indians and they were discriminated against as Indians. Continue reading →

Driving Miss Desi

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Making fun of the driving skills of New York City taxi drivers is an easy snark. In NYC, over 80% of taxi drivers are third world men from countries which are not known for their sedate and obedient styles of driving. Since there are large numbers of brown cabbies (in 1999, 40% of cabbies were from the subcontinent, although that number has probably gone down), this easily turns into a joke about desi drivers. You know, a roll of the eyes, a hand gesture to indicate the erratic path a screeching yellow cab took, etc.

What was that address again? Don’t worry, this is just a shortcut, Amber fort is on the way.

It turns out, however, that riding a cab in New York is considerably safer than being in a private vehicle:

according to … [a recent] study… based on state motor vehicle records of accidents and injuries across the city… taxi and livery-cab drivers have crash rates one-third lower than drivers of other vehicles. [Link]

This is very different from what people think, but it makes sense:

The lower crash rates for cabbies are not so surprising given that taxi drivers are far more experienced than other drivers. They are behind the wheel up to 3,000 hours a year. Their driving records are scrutinized by the Taxi and Limousine Commission and auto insurance carriers. They risk losing their livelihood if they have too many crashes or get too many tickets. [Link]

They’ve also gotten safer over time, as a result of both market forces and government regulation:

… crashes declined 12 percent from 2003 to 2004, and 30 percent since 1999. These declines are attributable to the City’s strict ceilings on the number of DMV points drivers can accumulate and improved auto insurance underwriting practices. Cab drivers have also been staying in the industry longer, a significant fact given that less-experienced drivers are more crash-prone. [Link]

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Ice cream truck driver 1, Government 0 (updated)

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In a case which I have been following daily for the past week, a Federal judge in Sacramento has declared a mistrial in the “terror” case against a Pakistani American ice cream truck driver. His son’s (accused of attending a terrorist training camp) jury is still deliberating but may also end up hung (see previous posts for backstory 1, 2, 3). This is a huge defeat for the government. CNN reports:

Umer Hayat, 48, and his 23-year-old son were tried at the same time but given separate juries. The son’s jury was still deliberating Tuesday.

The announcement of a mistrial in the father’s case came one day after the jurors told U.S. District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. they could not reach an unanimous decision after nearly two weeks of deliberations.

“The jury declared that it was hopelessly deadlocked this morning,” deputy court clerk Carol Davis said Tuesday. Burrell questioned each juror and then discharged them…

“They couldn’t prove it because it didn’t happen,” Umer Hayat’s attorney, Johnny Griffin III, said outside court Tuesday. “He’s not a terrorist. There is no evidence to demonstrate he is a terrorist…” [Link]

What makes the government’s loss particularly embarrassing is that jurors were shown a taped confession but STILL didn’t find him guilty. I’ll bet you this case is used as a teaching tool in law schools for years to come. That’s what happens when you try to manipulate someone who doesn’t have mastery over the English language (see my previous post #3 linked above). The manipulation seems like it was evident to the jury but we will have to wait until they are interviewed in the coming days.

The Hayat case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave separately last June to FBI agents and a government informant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense.

Defense lawyers’ biggest hurdle was trying to persuade jurors to discount the men’s videotaped confessions. They argued that the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night… .

The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued. [Link]

The case against the son was considered stronger by the government but the fact that the jury has been out this long is a good sign for him as well.

Update: The jury convicts the son after all. Continue reading →

LGBT Asian Americans enter immigration debate

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At first I wondered why the Asian American LGBT community would be speaking out as a group against the House’s immigration bill. Surely individuals in the Asian American LGBT will have a diversity of opinions on this issue since it doesn’t seem to be related to discrimination or a denial of rights based on one’s sexual identity. They have written a letter to President Bush, Dennis Hastert, and Bill Frist however, which explains their opposition to the bill:

(1) We urge you to address the detention and deportation of immigrants. Many Muslim, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans have been improperly racially profiled and have not been afforded constitutional due process protections.

(2) We urge you undo the requirement that local police enforce complicated immigration laws. LGBTs have already encountered many problems with police misconduct and police brutality. There are insufficient assurances and resources to make this workable.

(3) We urge you to support the reunification of immigrant families and binational same-sex couples and ease the highly restrictive process to apply for political asylum.

We hope you will show compassion and will take our views into your consideration. [Link]

I support members of the LGBT community and their right to speak out on any issue. I also agree that the House’s immigration bill is just plain wrong and should be scrapped. I can’t however understand the intent behind this statement or how they think it will increase any kind of political pressure. In fact, it seems kind of opportunistic to me (especially point 3). Are they conflating separate issues just to get noticed? A joint statement by the group also contained the following as a possible explanation to my question:

…the House bill makes being an undocumented immigrant a felony. The same was true for LGBTs. Sexual relations between same-sex couples were criminal until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws. So they wrote, ‘To love and show compassion should never be criminal.'” [Link]

Still seems like a weak connection to me. I am pointing this out because I often see various organizations (e.g. non-profits, non-partisan PACs, etc.) advocating for idealogies peripheral to their apparent mission, which results in an ultimately less effective/powerful organization. In this case I agree with their stance but I feel that by taking a position as a group they may be pigeonholing themselves into irrelevance for future debates.

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