As Abhi posted earlier, here’s how the Orlando Sentinel reported the results of the Don Sherrill – Tom Abraham election. You’ll recall this is the race where Sherrill called his Indian-American opponent a potential embed and 9/11 terrorist, purely because of Abraham’s ethnicity:

With a difference of less than two dozen votes, a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday. [Link]

The ‘off-color’ statements in question:

“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.” [Link]

Statements calling an Indian-American an embed and a 9/11 terrorist: ‘off-color.’ Same statements about blacks or Hispanics: ‘racist’ and ‘bigoted.’ The difference? Visibility. Those ethnicities show up on the cultural radar. This kind of revisionist euphemism in the press is itself a kind of racism.

Send your own email now:

To: Charlene Hager-Van Dyke (reporter), chagervandyke@orlandosentinel.com
Cc: Manning Pynn (public editor), mpynn@orlandosentinel.com; Letters to the Editor, insight@orlandosentinel.com

Subject: Re: Sherrill wins by 19 — Mahoney waltzes in

I enjoyed your story about the results of the Don Sherrill – Tom Abraham election. However, I am dismayed by the story’s inappropriate use of the phrase “off-color”:

“… a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-voc09_105nov09,0,673927.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-volusia

The statements which Don Sherrill made:

“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.”
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Neighbors/West/03WVolV01POL102805.htm

Let’s call it what it is. These statements aren’t “off-color,” they’re openly racist.

Previous posts: My opponent is undecipherable and probably an “embed”, Abraham vs. Sherrill to the Supreme Court???

Continue reading →

A desi immigrant rights activist is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging pseudorandom bag searches on the NYC subway. The trial began yesterday:

Partha Banerjee… fears he will be wrongly targeted, regardless of an NYPD policy prohibiting racial profiling. “I came from India 20 years ago, yet immigrants like me are seen as an enemy,” he said. [Link]

Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties union’s top lawyer in the case, said, “The only people being searched under this program are innocent New Yorkers.” The searches have not uncovered any terrorist plot, or even contraband… A third plaintiff, Partha Banerjee, said he had felt humiliated when his bag was searched at a political rally several years ago. [Link]

Mr. Banerjee was searched under the subway search policy on October 7, 2005… Mr. Banerjee objects to the subway search policy because under it, the decision to search someone is not founded on criminal suspicion. In addition, he fears that police officers could unlawfully interrogate and detain him because of written [political] materials in his bag that they might find objectionable and is concerned that he may be targeted to be searched because of his dark eyes and skin and his beard. [Link]

The government’s argument:

Gail Donoghue, the city’s lead lawyer in the case, said the searches were part of a rational strategy calculated to “keep terrorist planning and operations off balance.” By adding an element of unpredictability, she said, the policy “effectively hardens New York City targets and drives terrorist planning elsewhere.” [Link]

Continue reading →

In a few days, adorable little humans all over the U.S. are going to wander door-to-door begging, as my parents derisively referred to trick or treating for Halloween. Along with torturously sour candy and milk chocolate-coated sugar, some of those costumed tykes will be looking for money.

It’s true; after screeching their customary greeting requesting candy bribes while exhorting you to “smell (their) feet” and give them something good to eat, some of the more earnest Princesses and Vampires will carefully navigate the following schpiel– can you hear them now, angelic voices pronouncing

30¢ provides lifesaving antibiotics for a child suffering from pneumonia.
$1 immunizes a child against the deadly disease measles.
$2.50 buys basic school supplies for one child.
$10 provides enough high-protein biscuits to feed three hungry children for one month.
$150 pays for a small well to provide clean water for an entire village.

They learned all of those stats from UNICEF, who has sponsored the charitable Halloween program “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” for 55 years.

When first graders are going to canvas their ‘hoods for charity, when victims of the South Asian Tsunami are giving after losing almost everything, when nearly every person who is reading this can afford to do even more than the two groups I just mentioned in this sentence, then yes, we have no excuse.

I wrote that accusatory sentence a few days ago, as I posted about those selfless Tsunami-survivors who are sending supplies to people who have been devastated by the earthquake. I asked, “What if we could do good?”, specifically in the context of blogging as a way to encourage fundraising, since we had all come together in a breath-taking, powerful way to stand up for truth, freedom and justice. Could we also unite to fight apathy? Disaster fatigue? Inertia?

I think we can.

Thankfully, people with more energy than me seized my flicker of an idea and ran with it. They heard the tentative call I put out after a fold. And they are doing good.

DesiPundit, predictably, is at the center of this movement. Sepoy at Chapathi Mystery was a pioneer when it came to quake relief. Even Instapundit, the big, bad, brand-name blog I quoted, along with TTLB, picked up on Blog Quake Day.

Now, it is our turn and after you read this, it is your turn. Today is Blog Quake Day. Do something. Give. Write. Post. Comment. Link. Give some more. Think. Do. Tag (“Blog Quake Day”). Continue reading →

…when those who have so little are giving so much. That’s what I’m left thinking, after reading the BBC before bedtime:

People in India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands are yet to recover from last year’s tsunami, but they are now helping South Asia quake victims.

…A senior official of the Andaman and Nicobar Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Mohammed Jadvet, said the first consignment of relief materials included 200 tents, over a 1,000 blankets and three tonnes of biscuits.

So, while Kofi Annan slams countries for only committing to about a tenth of what quake victims need, victims of the tsunami–who are still suffering from their own tragedy which stole 200,000 lives all over Asia– have donated to local quake relief efforts. Maybe the world is suffering from “disaster fatigue”.

“The islanders could not come out of the trauma of the 26 December tsunami. Thousands are still staying in intermediate shelters. Still they have decided to help the quake-hit people of Kashmir,” the official said.

“This shows the true spirit of the islanders.”

Reading such news takes me back in time, to other words read before bed that were so different and yet, similar. They taught me about the significance of small gestures:

“And he looked, and saw rich men putting their donations into the treasury. And he also saw a certain poor widow donating two mites. And he said Truly, I tell you, that this poor widow has cast in more than all of them: for they have all given but a portion of their great wealth, as an offering to God, while she, in her poverty, has given all that she had.”~ Luke:21

Continue reading →