Category Archives: Issues

Baby, Baby…

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In the realm of health policy, the low birth weight of babies is used as a primary measure in infant health as well as welfare in economic research.

Low birthweight affects about one in every 13 babies born each year in the United States. It is a factor in 65 percent of infant deaths. [link]
[R]esearch has found that [low birth weight] infants tend to have lower educational attainment, poorer self-reported health status, and reduced employment and earnings as adults, relative to their normal weight counterparts…[B]irth weight has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of social policy. Research on the benefits of largescale social programs–including welfare and health insurance for the poor–typically use birth weight as the primary indicator of infant welfare. [link]

I would like to point out at this moment that I was a healthy 9 pound baby when I was born, well above low birth weight levels, thank you very much. Unfortunately when the time comes for me to have a baby, as a ‘U.S.-born Asian Indian woman’, I run a high risk of having a low birth weight infant, according to recent research coming out of Stanford.

U.S.-born Asian-Indian women are more likely than their Mexican-American peers to deliver low birth weight infants, despite having fewer risk factors, say researchers at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford’s School of Medicine. The finding confirms previous research that showed a similar pattern in more recent immigrants, and suggests that physicians should consider their patients’ ethnic backgrounds when planning their care…They found that Asian-Indian women were more than twice as likely to have low birth weight infants as were white women. These infants weigh 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds) or less at birth, either because they grew poorly in the womb or were born prematurely.[link]

These results are important in the realm of South Asian American health policy and are significant, at least should be significant, as to how prenatal care for desi women are implemented. As a desi woman, it is important to be informed of this issue and as a policy maker, it has inherent long term effect in our community.

“You might ask, ‘What’s so bad about being small?'” said Madan, who points out that the growth curves used for this and other similar studies are based on white infants. “Is this just normal for Asian Indians? But we’re concerned because we know that abnormally small babies run a higher risk of fetal distress and often require more intensive medical care and longer hospital stays after birth.”

In addition, unusually small babies are known to be at higher risk for a variety of medical problems in adulthood, including diabetes, hypertension and an increased risk of heart disease – conditions that some studies have reported to be higher in Asian Indians. [link]

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Sounds like a protest to me

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Yesterday Taz brought you an account of desis representing at the immigration protests here on the West Coast. SM tipster “Mann” let’s us know about some desi representation on the East Coast in the form of some “rebel music.” The band Outernational was playing a protest in NYC. Sonny Suchdev (pictured right) plays the trumpet, vocals, dhol, and bongos for Outernational. I get the impression that conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wasn’t feelin’ the t-shirt that Sonny wore to the protest. According to her sources they “…provided music, including a song dedicated to the Muslims who rioted in France last year called ‘Riviera Uproar’.” Here is a clip which appears to be recorded from Monday’s concert. Alternet.org has a profile of the band who sat down to be interviewed by Naeem Mohaiemen in March:

Suchdev wearing a shirt on Monday that reads: “America is scary”

I’ve been following the band Outernational — with their fearless melange of punk, rap, ska, bhangra and afrobeat — since 2003. While still not a household name, the group began to make waves at 2004’s Republican National Convention protests in New York. That’s where they played (at the “Axis of Justice” concert organized by Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine) to a large crowd of pissed-off activists, many of them Critical Mass bike riders who had just watched the NYPD target and arrest scores of their own (the Bloomberg administration claimed that “anarchists” had infiltrated the group bike ride). The repercussions of that day’s mass arrests and police mistreatment continue to reverberate in Outernational’s NYC home base.

Even before Outernational’s breakout performance at the RNC protests, they had fans — like me — regularly attending their shows for a political floor-stomping fix. In 2000, as the New York Times pondered the possible death of “protest music”, older anti-establishment voices like Consolidated, Public Enemy, Fugazi, and Negativland were dimming, and fans needed something new. Into the gap stepped Outernational, which came together in late 2003 with a heady mix of radical politics and furious beats. [Link]

Sonny describes how he got started with the band:

I had been an activist since I was a teenager and had been playing the trumpet since I was nine, but I had never found the right group of people to combine music and politics in a band. One day that fall, I was at dinner with some friends after a meeting (about post-9/11 detentions of immigrants), and Jesse [the bassist] was also there. He commented on the Skatalites T-shirt I was wearing, and we of course started talking about music. He told me about his friend Miles [vocals, lyrics] and how they were getting together and jamming with different people in the basement. I asked him what kind of music they were into, and he replied, “We’re on an outernationalist rebel music tip.” I had a good feeling about this. [Link]

Did anyone see them at the protest on Monday? The band’s website has both music and video clips you can check out, as does their MySpace page.

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The Gangs of Vancouver

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A recent poll in Vancouver suggests that many residents blame South Asians in general and Indo-Canadians specifically for the violence and crime in their city:

According to the Vancouver Sun, Nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Ipsos Reid poll believe some ethnic groups are more responsible for crime than others, and they put Indo-Canadian and Asians at the top of their lists.

Of those in the poll who held ethnic groups most responsible, 56 per cent specifically identified “Indian/East Indian” and 45 per cent listed “Asian/Oriental,” the newspaper reported March 16.

By comparison, five per cent of the same group singled out “Caucasian/white” and only one per cent were worried about “Afro-American/Black,” “Middle Eastern/Arabs/Muslims” and “Italians.”

An Ipsos Reid spokesman said people were allowed to give more than one racial group in their answers, and all the responses were gathered into groups that best reflected the responses. [Link]

The reality, as you will see below, is different from perceptions, but in issues such as crime it rarely matters. Indo-Canadians may cite this poll as evidence that they are the victims of a racist Canadian society. Playing the victim will of course help to delay the need to change their community from within and will leave many parents in their state of denial. On the other side you may see an increase in hate crimes against Indo-Canadians.

…in an interview, Vancouver Police Insp. Kash Heed, commanding officer of the department’s district 3 — southeast Vancouver — said actual statistics show the reverse of the poll findings.

“In the Lower Mainland, the majority of crimes are committed by Caucasians,” he said.

“That’s a true figure, it’s a reliable and valid figure based simply on arrest statistics.”

He said public perceptions are swayed by media coverage of criminal events, including the Air India bombing, which involve members of South Asian and Sikh communities. [Link]

Regardless of the accurate statistics, nobody can deny that many Indo-Canadian youths are out of control. Stories like the following seem to have become all too common in Canadian media and are disturbing even given the media bias:

Everyone was having a good time until the fight began and someone started shooting. When a 29-year-old Surrey man exchanged insults with four young Indo-Canadian men at Garry T’s pub at 72 Avenue and Scott Road, the confrontation escalated and one of the Indo-Canadians produced a handgun and started shooting, inflicting multiple wounds – one of them fatal. The Dec. 8, 2005 incident is just one of many in Surrey and other Lower Mainland communities where a gunfight has erupted in a public place, with bullets being sprayed indiscriminately with no concern for innocent bystanders.

According to police, the number of shooting incidents nearly doubled last year, fuelled by a “bad boy” mentality that sees young men with no criminal past packing handguns to bolster a tough-guy image.

As a result, disputes that would have ended in a fistfight or an exchange of insults are turning into potentially fatal encounters… Everyone was having a good time until the fight began and someone started shooting. [Link]

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Inqilab Zindabad, Si Se Puede!

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Inqilab Zindabad, Inqilab Zindabad!
Si Se Puede, Si Se Puede!

My ears are still ringing from last night’s Los Angeles rally on immigration… Ghetto birds hovered over head as I walked through the barren streets of Chinatown (barren that is, except for the motorcycle cops that lined the perimeter) to head to where the rally was taking place. Two things struck me as I entered the mass of people listening to the speakers at Olvera Street; the first is the overwhelming amount of red, white and blue flags I saw being waved. There was a Mexican flag here and there, but overwhelmingly it was brown fists holding American flags. The second was the air of festivity- the ladies were selling bacon wrapped death dogs by the rally route, the cotton candy man was walking around, and everyone was whooping and hollering. It was a celebration of the diversity that is America.

South Asian Representin’

As I stood to the side, I saw every kind of ethnicity represented; Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos. And then, I saw them. A group of the other brown immigrants, our brown immigrants marching down the street. South Asian Network, the premier organization serving the South Asian community of Southern California were the main organizers of this contingent of desis. On Sunday, they had organized a town hall meeting on the issue of immigration in ‘Little India’. About 300 people showed up with a diverse representation of age, class, nationalities, and races. The forum was broadcasted on a live feed on KPFK and everyone there was given a chance to speak on why this issue is important to them, leading to a dynamic far-ranging discussion. Last night at the Los Angeles rally, SAN was there marching the streets with a representation of South Asians Americans.

There’s always a thrill of excitement when marching in any rally, but there was the additional spark of walking with a group of people chanting in Bangla, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil in a sea of “Si se puede!” At one point, the two uncle-aged taxi workers started dancing around in circles in front of the Mexican-American teens drumming. No doubt it was great to walk in solidarity with every other immigrant out there, but to be able to chant “Inqilab Zindabad” finally made it feel like mine.

The immigrant issue is a South Asian issue, despite, as Abhi pointed out in the earlier post, the lack of framing in the media. We are after all, if not immigrants ourselves, the son or daughter of immigrants.

”All of what is happening around immigration reform in the country is not a Latino-originated movement at all,” said Deepa Iyer, executive director of the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, based in Silver Spring, Md. ”There are also Asian and African groups working together. From where I stand, I feel that our community is greatly invested in the issue.” [link]

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The man the SEALS left behind

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Last July I blogged with admiration about the exploits of Gulab the Shepherd. Gulab helped rescue a U.S. Navy SEAL from certain death. Then, his whole village stood up against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters because of a code of honor that could not allow them to let harm come to a guest. As we could have guessed at the time, no good deed goes unpunished. Newsweek updates us on the fate of the brave shepherd:

Even with all the troubles that followed, Mohammad Gulab says he’s still glad he saved the U.S. Navy SEAL. “I have no regrets for what I did,” the 32-year-old Afghan told NEWSWEEK recently. “I’m proud of my action.” Nevertheless, he says, “I never imagined I would pay such a price…”

Gulab has been paying for his kindness ever since. Al Qaeda and the Taliban dominate much of Kunar’s mountainous backcountry. Death threats soon forced Gulab to abandon his home, his possessions and even his pickup truck. Insurgents burned down his little lumber business in Sabray. He and his wife and their six children moved in with his brother-in-law near the U.S. base at Asadabad, the provincial capital. Three months ago Gulab and his brother-in-law tried going back to Sabray. Insurgents ambushed them. Gulab was unhurt, but his brother-in-law was shot in the chest and nearly died. The threats persist. “You are close to death,” a letter warned recently. “You are counting your last days and nights…” [Link]

It is fairly common knowledge that guerrilla wars such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be won unless the hearts and minds of the people are won first. A substantial reward or even an offer of asylum to Gulab would be a small price to pay for the hearts and minds of the 300+ villagers that protected the SEAL. Al Qaeda certainly knows how to spread around a little money to win the hearts and minds that we let slip away:

Gulab’s story says a lot about how Al Qaeda and its allies have been able to defy four and a half years of U.S. efforts to clear them out of Afghanistan. The key is the power they wield over villagers in strongholds like Kunar, on the Pakistani frontier. For years the province has been high on the list of suspected Osama bin Laden hideouts. “If the enemy didn’t have local support, they couldn’t survive here,” says the deputy governor, Noor Mohammed. Since the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, jihadists have been amassing influence through scare tactics, tribal loyalties and cash. A little money can purchase big leverage in an area where entire villages sometimes subsist on a few thousand dollars a year, and many foreign jihadists have insinuated themselves into the Pashtun social fabric by marrying into local families.

The SEAL who Gulab saved hasn’t been able to break his silence (active SEALS don’t talk) but he seems upset that Gulab didn’t receive more of a reward from the U.S. government. Judging by the type of attorney he has I wouldn’t be surprised if both him and Gulab end up as characters in a Hollywood movie (like this one) soon:

The SEAL, who remains on active duty, declined to comment via his attorney, Alan Schwartz, an “entertainment lawyer” in Santa Monica, Calif. Gulab only shakes his head: “Why would anyone else want to cooperate with the U.S. now?“

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Coolie.uk

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This week, the UK implemented two anti-globalization regulations so anti-Indian in effect that they could’ve been written by the BNP.

First, they’re making Indian companies pay off British workers who lose their jobs to overseas outsourcing — but not to those who lose jobs to Ireland or to automation. Who’s really going to end up paying for this incredible, extrajudicial bit of socialism: British consumers.

New rules on BritainÂ’s existing Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulation or TUPE, will now slap overseas contractors with legal and financial responsibility for the British workers who lost their livelihood when jobs were transferred overseas…

Indian contractors accepting outsourcing contracts from British companies would now be forced to negotiate a proper indemnity against legal challenges for redundancy payments.

… the Indian firm would have to build into its cost structure the risk of being sued in a British court by redundant employees or unions.

The new rules on BritainÂ’s Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulation (TUPE) would result in Indian outsourcing contracts becoming more expensive, thus hacking at IndiaÂ’s definite cost-advantage. [Link]

Hey, I just read a good blog post from London which competes with us for reader attention. Who do I sue for my check?

Second, they’ve banned the National Health Service from training Indian doctors without work permits, unless the NHS proves it couldn’t find a Brit. And the ban is immediate with no phase-in, hosing doctors already in training:

… doctors from outside the EU, including from India, were able to take up NHS jobs under what was called ‘[work] permit free training’ schemes. Their jobs were considered part of training that did not require work permits.

Thousands of Indian doctors were employed under the permit free training scheme and were usually hired for short-term periods of one or two years.

… employers now need to obtain work permits before employing these doctors after making a case to prove that no British or EU doctor can perform the same job. This rule effectively rules out any chance of employment for non-EU doctors. [Link]

In the new coolie economy, you can hire ’em, use ’em and dump ’em the same day. Continue reading →

Sudafed-ing is not a crime

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The ACLU just filed sworn informant testimony in the Georgia meth merchant case showing law enforcement targeted Gujarati shopkeepers because they spoke poor English, entrapped them, then selectively prosecuted based on race (thanks, technophobicgeek):

Documents filed by the A.C.L.U. yesterday include a sworn statement from an informant in the sting, saying that federal investigators sent informants only to Indian-owned stores, “because the Indians’ English wasn’t good.” The informant said investigators ignored the informant’s questions about why so many South-Asian-owned stores were visited in the sting.

Other filings said prosecutors had several tips that more than a dozen white-owned stores were selling the same ingredients, but failed to follow up on them. According to a sworn statement from a witness, law enforcement officials tipped off a white store owner about the investigation and recommended ways to avoid scrutiny…

Of 629 convenience stores in the six-county area in the sting, 80 percent are owned or operated by whites, according to the A.C.L.U.’s court filing, but fewer than 1 percent of the stores in the sting are white-owned or operated. The filing said the clerk at the only white-operated store was known widely as a methamphetamine addict whose husband was in prison for making the drug. [Link]

I think we have a new rallying cry:

“Selling Sudafed while South Asian is not a crime,” said Christina Alvarez, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. “The U.S. Constitution requires police to investigate people based on evidence, not ethnicity…”

By the time Operation Meth Merchant was completed, almost 20 percent of the South-Asian-owned stores in the area were indicted, while only 0.2 percent of stores owned by whites or other ethnic groups were similarly accused. All in all, South-Asian-owned stores were nearly 100 times more likely to be targeted…

“They only sent me to Indian storesÂ…they wanted me to say things like ‘I need it to go cookÂ’ or ‘Hurry up, IÂ’ve got to get home and finish a cookÂ’,” said an undercover informant in a sworn statement attached to the ACLUÂ’s legal papers. “The officers told me that the IndiansÂ’ English wasnÂ’t good, and they wouldnÂ’t say a lot so it was important for me to make these kinds of statements…”

“Northwest Georgia is made no safer by police targeting a particular racial group while giving a free pass to those they have good reason to believe are actually making and selling meth,” said Deepali Gokhale, organizer of the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant… [Link]

The facts aren’t all on the table yet, but from a distance it smells like Tulia all over again, and both times in the South. I can’t muster much sympathy for people who knowingly supplied tweak traffickers, selective prosecution or no. But if it turns out the cops entrapped shop clerks with poor English proficiency by using inscrutable drug jargon, it would be ethically disgusting.

What also bothers me is that all the first-gen Gujarati shopkeepers I’ve met seem socially conservative and anti-drugs at a visceral level. If I were to play ‘Name the Criminal Mastermind,’ anything drug-related would be pretty far down the list. Continue reading →

National Sexual Assault Awareness Month

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April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. To promote this important issue Lifetime Channel has descended upon Washington DC for “Stop Violence Against Women Week” going on now (April 3rd-7th) with a list of events worthy of Capitol Hill. This past summer, Lifetime dedicated a week around issues of human trafficking and they are interestingly using their media access to promote issues affecting women. I think this is great. It is rare that a television channel will make that kind of a commitment to their viewers. Violence against women is not just important to Lifetime viewers, but is an important issue in the upcoming midterm election as well:

According to a new “Lifetime Women’s Pulse Poll,” conducted for the network by Roper Poll, when women and men vote in the mid-term elections this fall, expected issues such as homeland security, jobs and the economy and the war in Iraq will be very important, but an issue that receives far less attention — preventing violence against women and girls — will be just as, if not more, important to them.[link]

As we all have read, violence against women can often hit closer to home than can ever be expected. It takes a powerful woman to live through the experience and an even more powerful woman to be able to share their personal story. In addition to the personal experiences, the statistics out there on violence against women are alarming:

  • One in three women worldwide will be beaten, raped, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.[link]
  • One in four girls will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18.[link]
  • An estimated 1 million women are stalked each year in the US, with about 1/4 of them reporting missing an average of 11 days of work as a result of the stalking.[link]
  • Researchers Anita Raj and Jay Silverman discovered that more than 40% of the 160 South Asian women living in Greater Boston they surveyed indicated that they were victims of intimate partner violence, and only 50% of women who experienced intimate partner violence were aware of services available to help. [link]

What is unfortunate to see is the taboo in the South Asian American community when there is violence against our women. But the important thing is, you are not alone. There is a national network of South Asian women’s organizations out there to support our survivors of the trauma of sexual assault.

Sakhi, based in New York City and a partnering organization to the Lifetime campaign, provides language specific culturally sensitive services to South Asian women because..

  • Abused immigrant women may hesitate to reach out to police, shelters, courts, and mainstream violence agencies due to barriers of language, financial constraints, and fear of deportation;
  • Women that reach out to Sakhi may be abused not only by their husbands, but also by in-laws and other family members; and,
  • Survivors may face the cultural stigma and shame of divorce in the community, and be told that it is their “duty” to keep the family and marriage intact, despite abuse. [link]

But New York City isn’t the only place with with access to these South Asian specific organizations, there is a national network of organizations listed here, and for our Canadian sisters here, here, and here. In Chicago, there’s Apn Ghar which has served over 5400 clients since 2000. SAHELI Boston is working on a newly launched Men’s Initative, to bring men into the dialogue. Maitri in the San Jose area has volunteers that speak Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Marwari, Oriya, Punjabi, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. ASHA in the DC area has recently intitated a partnership to find employment for survivors of domestic abuse. There are a lot of resources out there specifically towards our community, and almost all of these organizations have a toll-free hotline, multi-lingual support, assistance to find shelter, and referral to social, legal and mental health services.

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Whoever You Are, You’re Not Alone.

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9pm. Café Mishka’s on 2nd street, Davis, CA . 1995.

One week in to the fall quarter of my senior year and I’m already stressed. I want to finish the Poli-sci incomplete which hangs over my head, stealing peace of mind and calm. This requires writing a 15-page paper on feminism, abortion and single-issue voters. I’ve made some progress, but much remains to be done and since Shields Library is either social central or a morgue, I can’t get it done there. So I have come to the newest and brightest spot in the tiny constellation of “third-places” which dot Davis ‘ downtown area. Mishka’s is just quiet enough, especially on a Friday night, and it also has excellent food. I order a sandwich, the name of which escapes me over a decade later. It has pesto and roasted red peppers, a detail I will never forget, because of what happens later on that night.

I’m halfway through my dinner and it’s 8:30pm. My cell phone rings and I answer, filled with trepidation. My father’s voice barks profanely over the line, “Where the HELL are you? What kind of life do you think you have? One where you can go as you please, party, take drugs? What have I told you about this world, kunju? It is a dangerous place and if you are not careful, you will end up abducted, raped and murdered somewhere and I will have to identify your body and then I will kill myself and then your sister will be without sibling or father. All because you want to PARTY.”

Sigh.

“Daddy, I’m actually-“

“What? You’re actually WHAT? You’re about to lie to me, I know you better than you know yourself. Save your BS for someone else, edi.”

“I’m not lying, I’m studying. I have a huge paper due-

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Taxi-Wallahs of America

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I spent my spring break last week interviewing taxi drivers about their working conditions, at taxi stands all across Los Angeles. It was my first week of conducting this research and we found handfuls of South Asian taxi drivers, far fewer in proportion to the taxi drivers in other metropolitan cities. I did get the chance to talk to a royal looking Sikh man with expansive white beard, who answered our questions predominantly in proverbs. Mostly though from what I saw, L.A. taxi drivers are immigrants from all over the world all working together in a not so forgiving career.

Taxi-Wallah

Luckily, the research we are doing here in L.A. is based on the success of the taxi worker alliances in New York City and the San Fransisco Bay. If you are in the Berkeley area this week, I highly suggest attending this talk (via The Seemamachine).

On April 5th at 7p, join Biju Mathew, an Associate Professor in the College of Business Administration at Rider University in New Jersey. Biju worked as a lead organizer for one of my all-time favorite organizations, New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance. NYTWA… is headed up by the wondrous Bhairavi Desai, whose leadership and commitment have resulted in health and legal services for NY’s taxi drivers, relief from burdensome and inefficient TLC practices, and a true spirit of organized power for the people that make the Big Apple move. Mathew’s book–Taxi! Cabs & Capitalism in New York City–canvasses the struggles drivers have faced within the taxi cab industry. His lecture will address same.

The lecture will be following the photography exhibit opening of “Taxi-Wallahs of Berkeley: Photographs and Narratives by Aditya Dhawan” hosted by the Center for South Asia Studies. You can see his taxi worker photos online and his exhibit will be running through June. Both events will be on the UC Berkeley campus. In the meantime down here in Los Angeles, I will continue to talk to as many taxi drivers as possible.

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