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January/February 2002 Volume 11: Number 1

CONTENTS:After Durban:A SymposiumLinda Burnham ...........1Samuel L. Myers, Jr....3Cathi Tactaquin ..........5Eric Mann...................7Makani Themba ..........9Gary Delgado ........... 10Marisa J. Demeo ......12john powell .............. 14James Counts Early . 15Esmeralda Simmons. 18Howard Winant ........ 19Wade Henderson ......22

National Low IncomeHousing Coalition ....24

Resources ..................27

After Durban – A SymposiumThe August-September 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia

and Related Intolerance, in Durban, South Africa, was an event of epic proportions, despite the Bush Administration’sdisgraceful decision first to send a low-level delegation, then to walk out. Follow-up work by NGOs in the US (andelsewhere) was of course deeply impacted by the events of September 11 and their aftermath. We asked a number of peoplewho attended – some PRRAC Board members (past as well as present) and other friends of PRRAC – to offer theirreflections on the meaning of these events for race issues and work in the US. We welcome further observations by otherreaders who attended the Conference, as well as readers’ commentaries on the 12 essays offered here; we’ll consider all forpublication in our next issue.

The UN has prepared a Sept. 19, 2001 document – “Declaration, Adopted on 8 September 2001 in Durban, SouthAfrica,” accompanied by this note: “This text has been put together by the secretariat on the basis of its notes. It is nowbeing submitted to the principal officers of the Conference for their review and will subsequently go through the process offormal editing. We’ll be happy to send you a copy of this 32-page document if you’ll send us a self-addressed label and$1.33 in postage. - CH

(Please turn to page 2)

Reflections on Durban and 9/11by Linda Burnham

Those of us who participated inthe United Nations World ConferenceAgainst Racism did so in the hopes thatwe could help create new conditions,new understandings and new strategiesfor the struggle against racism; that wecould help move the international com-munity another step forward in its fit-ful efforts to eradicate racism, ethnicconflict and xenophobia. Our time inSouth Africa was intense, and wecame home intending to work togetherto evaluate what was gained and whatwas lost, and to share our rich experi-ences with all of you here at home.

But the UN Conference was rapidlyovershadowed, relegated to a dim,possibly irrelevant pre-September 11th

past. Part of the struggle is to find ourbearings in the these deeply unsettlingtimes, to cull some of the lessons ofDurban and link them, as best we can,to current circumstances.

If it was about anything, Durbanwas about how the past bears downupon the present, about how unevenlythe weight of history is borne. Thebattle over reparations was central. Itwidened out from compensatory mea-sures for descendants of the Africanslave trade in the Americas — an issuethat made its way in from the outermargins of political discourse, dueprincipally to the dogged persistenceof African American activists in the

Help Us Find a New Executive Director for PRRAC – see page 4

Poverty & RacePOVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL

(BURNHAM: Continued from page 1)

2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • January/February 2002

Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075-3591) is published six times a yearby the Poverty & Race ResearchAction Council, 3000 Conn. Ave.NW, #200, Washington, DC20008, 202/387-9887, fax: 202/387-0764, E-mail: [email protected]. Chester Hartman, Editor.Subscriptions are $25/year, $45/two years. Foreign postage ex-tra. Articles, article suggestions,letters and general comments arewelcome, as are notices of publi-cations, conferences, job open-ings, etc. for our Resources Sec-tion. Articles generally may bereprinted, providing PRRACgives advance permission.

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Durban was about howunequally the weight ofhistory is borne.

US – to include the full legacy of co-lonialism in Africa, Asia, LatinAmerica, the Middle East, the Carib-bean and the islands of the Pacific.

The yawning, ever-widening gapbetween the nations of the North andthe nations of the South raised the ques-tion of debt relief – who owes what towhom, and why. In Durban, the ques-tion was asked: Having been robbedfor centuries, are not the nations ofthe South due restitution from their as-sailants? Can the appetite for gobblingup the wealth of other nations andpeoples to support the ill-gotten pros-perity of North America and Europeever be curbed? And the answer fromthe North: The US, fattened on theland, lives and liberty of conquerednations and enslaved peoples, said no– not today, not tomorrow, not in thismillennium. What is on offer is notcompensation, restitution, reparationsand heartfelt regrets but new forms ofglobal plunder. And Belgium, head ofthe European Union, its hands stilldamp and sticky with the blood of theCongo, said no, we don’t want to talkabout it: The legacy of colonialism isnot relevant to our discussion of cur-rent-day racism, and we won’t have itmentioned in the final document.

This was not simple recalcitrance.It was willful, shameful denial of the

past in the service of preserving rac-ist, profoundly unequal relations be-tween nations and peoples in thepresent and far into the future. TheUS and Israel, unprepared to face thehorrendous consequences of past orpresent policy, turned on their heelsand walked out. Convened in SouthAfrica, guests of the people whose re-cent triumph over a most egregiousform of 20th century racialism we allcelebrate, it was not lost on many ofus that the US and Israel had also stoodarm in arm – until the bitter end – inproviding support and encouragementto the terrorists of the apartheid state.

What has this to do with Septem-ber 11th and its aftermath? The USimpulse to “rule and rule without end,forever and ever” (the phrase isW.E.B. Dubois’) is not an impulse todominance simply for its own sake,but dominance for the sake of the pro-tection of wealth – wealth already sto-len and wealth anticipated. If thatdominance requires alliance with un-savory despots, corrupt regimes andfanatical reactionaries, so be it.

The deal struck with the Taliban,through Pakistan and the CIA, musthave seemed like a thousand othersmade ‘round the world: We will turna blind eye to the imposition of re-pressive, theocratic decrees. We willturn a deaf ear to the torment of girls,women and homosexuals. We will en-sure that the American public remainscomfortably ignorant of the bargainstruck and its terrible toll on the suf-fering Afghan people. And in ex-change, with the abundance of arma-ments our taxpayers provide, you willkeep at bay any and all forces viewedas hostile to US interests in the region.Though the details may differ, suchdeals are operative worldwide, backedby massive military presence on everycontinent and all the seas. But this dealturned sour as fundamentalist tyrants,encouraged, armed and emboldened

for 15 years, developed their own fear-some agenda.

Ruth Manorama, a fierce advocatefor the rights of India’s Dalits, spokewith passion at a Women of ColorResource Center workshop in Durban.The Dalits were a huge presence at theUN Conference, insisting that thou-sands of years of caste discriminationbe brought to an end. Ruth and otherDalit leaders reminded us that whilereligion may bring solace, comfort anda moral compass to some, it can be, atthe very same time, an instrument ofrepression and degradation for others.Those others may be co-religionists,those of other faiths or secularists. Andoften enough it is women who suffer.Millions of crimes against women arecommitted each day in the name ofreligion, custom and tradition. Reli-gious fundamentalism – whetherChristian, Islamic, Judaic or Hindu –constitutes a mortal threat to women.

Neither the gated communities ofthe upper classes, nor the star warsmissile defense shield, nor the omi-nous Office of Homeland Security canprotect us from the consequences of aworld overflowing with men, womenand children whose fate, from cradleto grave, is grinding poverty, crush-ing labor and crippling disease. Let usremember that within two weeks of theTwin Towers tragedy, the airline in-dustry had managed to squeeze $15billion out of the federal budget. Theinsurance industry is in line to get itsshare, and others line up at the trough– the very same trough that can’t pro-vide funds for women on welfare orfree medical care for seniors on fixedincomes.

$15 billion. Could the US not sur-vive the demise of one or two of ourmultiple airline carriers? What if that$15 billion were devoted to eliminat-ing infant and maternal mortalityworldwide? Or to AIDS treatment andprevention. Or to water, sanitation andelectrification. Or to eliminatingschool fees, raising teachers’ salaries,building schools and buying books andcomputers. To the education of thegirls of Afghanistan. Or to adequatelyhouse the homeless and those who findshelter in the shanty towns, favelas and

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol.11, No. 1 • 3

At last, there is interna-tional acknowledgementthat current racism andracial discriminationhas its roots in priorslavery.

migrant shacks around the world.What if that $15 billion and another$15 billion after that were devoted tofinding a truly just solution to the un-ending crisis in the Middle East.

Our time in Durban did give ushope, despite the actions of the USgovernment and others who refused tohonestly engage the struggle againstracism. We marched through thestreets with thousands upon thousandsof energized, organized, politicallyconscious South Africans determinedto hold their government accountableto their needs. We met with incred-ible women in Durban andJohannesburg — women who are lead-ers in their communities and nations,leading the fight for the rights of girlsand women, for the rights of racial,

ethnic and religious minorities. Ourhopes were raised and our vision ex-panded in intense exchanges of expe-riences and strategies with dedicatedactivists from around the world whoselives are committed to the struggle forjustice. So Durban was both an en-counter with the ugly face of racistresistance and a source of sorely neededoptimism.

Linda Burnham ([email protected]) is co-founder and executive di-rector of the Women of Color ResourceCenter, a non-profit education, com-munity action and resource center com-mitted to developing a strong, institu-tional foundation for social changeactivism by and on behalf of women ofcolor. Her most recent publications

include Women’s Education in theGlobal Economy, a popular educationworkbook on the impact of the globaleconomy on women, co-authored withMiriam Louie, and Time to Rise: USWomen of Color – Issues and Strate-gies, co-edited with Jung Hee Choi andMaylei Blackwell. She recently led adelegation of 25 women of color ac-tivists and scholars to the UN Confer-ence.

This article is an edited version ofa speech delivered at WCRC’s 3rd An-nual Sisters of Fire Awards (the speechin its entirety can be found atwww.coloredgirls.org); the Awardwas given to Congresswoman BarbaraLee (D-CA), who cast the sole Housevote against the blank check war pow-ers given to President Bush. ❏

The Economic Implications of WCARby Samuel L. Myers, Jr.

There are significant economic as-pects of the final outcomes of theDurban World Conference AgainstRacism. Two sets of outcomes are ofrelevance for people of color in theUnited States. One can be found in theofficial documents, or at least the ver-sions of the official documents in widecirculation, adopted on September 8and distributed on September 19.Another can be found in the Durbanexperience itself.

Declaration andProgramme of Action

History was made with the publicationand acknowledgement that slavery andits aftermath are partly the cause ofcurrent racism, racial discriminationand related intolerance. It is worth re-peating the relevant language that hassuch economic significance:

We … acknowledge that slaveryand the slave trade are crimesagainst humanity and should al-ways have been so, especially thetransatlantic slave trade, and are

among the major sources andmanifestations of racism, racialdiscrimination, xenophobia andrelated intolerance, and that Af-ricans and peoples of Africandescent, Asians and people ofAsian descent and indigenouspeoples were victims of theseacts and continue to be victimsof their consequences. (Declara-tion, p. 10)

This historic language explicitlycontradicts the prevailing economicwisdom in America. The overwhelm-ing view among economic analysts isthat there is no direct empirical link-age relating the slave trade, slaveryand its aftermath to current disadvan-tages faced by African Americans andother people of color. Whereas there

may in fact be wide racial differencesin human capital, family structure andfamily background, ownership ofhomes and businesses, access to credit,performance on standardized testscores, income, wages, earnings, andnet assets, there is no conclusive proofthat current differentials stem whollyor in part from the transatlantic slavetrade, slavery, or its aftermath. In-deed, if there were such proof, blackefforts to extract reparations from gov-ernment or private bodies would be farmore vigorous and immensely moresuccessful than they have been.

One reason for the conventional eco-nomic wisdom that there is no directlinkage between slavery, the slavetrade and current racism and racial dis-crimination is that much analysis ofracial gaps in current economic out-comes is ahistorical. Take, for ex-ample, the problem of racial dispari-ties in credit markets. No one disagreesthat blacks are more likely to be turneddown for loans than whites. No onedisagrees that blacks, on average, haveless impressive credit records thanwhites – or at least no one who has



The Durban experiencehas galvanized dozensof American-basedorganizations to pursueremedies arising fromslavery and the slavetrade.

seen the published data on these indi-cators disagrees.

There seems to be, however, awidely held perception that all of thishas always been so. Sheila Ards and Ipoint out in our recent paper in theOctober 2001 American BehavioralScientist (“The Color of Money”) thatthings have not always been so, andthat specific credit institutions evolvedafter slavery that excluded black par-ticipation and directly contributed todifferences in black and white savingsbehaviors. One can even point to suchthriving traditional credit institutionsin West Africa as the susu that largelyfailed to survive the transatlantic jour-ney of black Americans, as evidencethat slavery destroyed the ability ofAfrican Americans to produce cred-ible behaviors in the credit market. Tosay that differences in consumption andsavings behaviors explain poor blackcredit in the current era ignores howthose differences came about in thefirst place. Amazingly, studies anddata from the post-Reconstruction erahave survived, permitting reexamina-tion of the proximate relationship be-tween actions and policies rooted inslavery and its aftermath and currentoutcomes. A wealth of data will be-come available shortly through theUniversity of Minnesota’s IntegratedPublic Use Microsample (IPUMS)Project for examining individual assetand business ownership from the late

19th century through the early 20th cen-tury, establishing more concretely thelinkages between prior racism and cur-rent racial inequality.

The language in the UN Declara-tion will tremendously aid efforts tomove into a genuine understanding ofhow the slave trade and slavery trans-mitted racism and racial discriminationinto the current era and will provide

new economic justifications for spe-cific remedies based on these directlinkages. An example relates to theunderrepresentation of minority busi-nesses in procurement and contracting.From the Supreme Court’s Croson de-cision on, it has been presumed thatevidence of “general societal” discrimi-nation was insufficient to warrantimplementation of a race-based set-aside program or similar affirmativeaction initiative designed to enhancethe opportunities for minority firms tocontract with state or local govern-ments. But the language of the Decla-ration opens a novel approach to ex-amining what lies behind “general so-cietal discrimination.” Policy analysts

and applied economists will be influ-enced to explore historical data setsand the linkages between governmentactions and policies conceived andimplemented under slavery and thecurrent inequality in access to govern-ment outlays.

At last, there is a broad-scale, in-ternational acknowledgement that cur-rent racism and racial discriminationhas its roots in prior slavery.

The Durban Experience

The remedies section of the finalversion of the Programme of Actionis a weakened and largely ceremonialseries of statements. There is no spe-cific call for reparations for priorwrongs associated with the transatlan-tic slave trade, slavery or its aftermath.Persons looking either to the Declara-tion or the Programme of Action forguidance on pursuing claims of repa-rations for the wrongs of slavery andthe slave trade will be disappointed.But there was more to Durban thanthe official document. Most compel-ling was the convening of a wide ar-ray of Non-Governmental Organiza-tions that have created a new, visibleand powerful international lobby ca-pable of forcing the remedies ques-tion into the open. Whether you arein favor of or opposed to reparationsas the appropriate remedy for currentracism and racial discriminationrooted in prior slavery and the slavetrade, the matter is now before us. Andit is before us in the most compellingof ways. There is a better understand-ing now than ever of the global andpersistent pattern of current racism andracial discrimination; there is betterdocumentation now than ever beforeof the linkages of the slave trade en-terprise across national and interna-tional boundaries.

American economists have for about20 years conducted a largely obscureintellectual debate about the measure-ment of the costs of slavery and thecomputation of the foregone wages(appropriately discounted and cali-brated) experienced by slaves them-selves. This extended exercise has

(MYERS: Continued from page 3)

From Chester Hartman: I’m not going anywhere – just want to spend100% of my time on substantive work. We need someone who is: a) Asenior person with an outstanding track record on race and poverty work,who is: B) A good administrator as well, and who: C) Can oversee somemodest growth in our organization.

If you are interested or know of someone we should try to recruit,please contact PRRAC right away ([email protected]). A detailed jobdescription will be available shortly; all inquiries will be treated in confi-dence. The Board would like to make this hiring decision in early 2002.(PRRRAC will consider relocating the organization to accommodate anideal candidate.) It goes without saying that we are an aggressive affirma-tive action employer.

A New Executive Director for PRRAC

January/February 2002 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 11, No. 1 • 5

The conference provideda unique opportunity forhighlighting the criticalrole of migration in theglobalized economy.


yielded a variety of estimates of thedebt owed African Americans. Myfavorite number is based on the workof University of North Carolina andDuke University economist WilliamDarity. The number is in the trillionsof dollars. Until now, however, thediscussion has been largely an abstractone of little practical importance topoor African Americans themselves.But now, with poor Afro-Brazilians,poor Afro-Peruvians, and peoples ofAfrican descent in the Caribbean, Cen-tral America and throughout LatinAmerica explicitly calling for repay-ment for prior misdeeds from slavery,the stakes have risen for settlement ofthe African American debt as well.

Put differently, the Durban experi-ence has galvanized dozens of Ameri-can-based organizations to pursue rem-edies arising from slavery and the slavetrade. Economic analysis shows thatthese debts are huge. Political analy-sis shows, though, that, until recently,there was no hope at all for puttingthis issue into the national agenda. Butthe Durban experience and the inter-national and global perspective af-forded the US participants strength-ened diverse local and national effortsto forge a reparations initiative.

On two different levels – the offi-cial documents and the Durban expe-rience – there has been a transforma-tion that has significant economic im-plications. The power of an interna-tional statement linking slavery and theslave trade to current racism and theforce of an international coalition ofpeoples of color may well lead to seri-ous and sustained efforts to place onthe national agenda repayment ofAmerica’s debt stemming from sla-very.

Samuel L. Myers, Jr. ([email protected]) is the Roy Wilkins Profes-sor of Human Relations and SocialJustice at the Hubert H. HumphreyInstitute of Public Affairs, Universityof Minnesota. Formerly, he was Pro-fessor of Economics and Director,Afro-American Studies Program, Uni-versity of Maryland, College Park. Hereceived his Ph.D. in economics fromMIT. ❏

Standing Together for Migrant Rightsby Cathi Tactaquin

Despite the negative media reportsabout the World Conference AgainstRacism and Xenophobia (WCAR) –and the as yet unresolved official out-come documents – the South Africaconference and the preparatory processprovided a unique opportunity forhighlighting the critical role of migra-tion in the globalized economy, andfor establishing broad guidelines forrights protections for a broad cross-section of people in migration. More-over, the conference process helped toengage and bring together a muchmore representative gathering of thefledgling international migrant andrefugee rights movement, includingUS participants from community-based, labor, legal and advocacygroups around the country.

The backlash and repression againstimmigrants and people of Middle East-ern backgrounds in the wake of theSeptember 11 terrorist attacks has re-inforced the need to step up interna-tional awareness of and commitmentsto rights protections, such as those ar-ticulated in Durban. Energized by theirexperience in South Africa, many im-migrant rights activists had returnedhome not only to the horror of the Sep-tember 11 tragedy, but to communi-ties fearful for their own safety froman anti-immigrant backlash andheightened national security measuresto protect American borders. Whenpublic officials announced that civilliberties would have to be sacrificedin order to effectively fight terrorism,it was clear that not everyone wouldhave to “sacrifice” civil liberties; asin decades past, the civil liberties oftargeted groups – especially definedalong lines of nationality, racial orimmigration status – would simply betaken away.

Migrant and refugee rights NGOsfrom the US and elsewhere had sharedwith colleagues from other arenas thefrustration and disappointment ofWCAR’s failure to solidly addresstoday’s varied issues of racism. None-

theless, the scope of the issues, thepresence of NGOs in lobbying on bothbroad and highly specific language,and stated commitments for follow-upmechanisms – which had not beenspecified in the two previous worldconferences on racism — should betaken as gains and potential organiz-ing tools for the international move-ment against all forms of racism.

The World Conference was espe-cially significant for the migrant andrefugee rights movement. In light ofthe conference’s focus on racism andxenophobia, migrant rights advocates

internationally had identified the con-ference as an important vehicle for rais-ing the profile of the migration issue,and for bringing together far-flungorganizers and advocates for migrantrights. In the end, while the 45+ para-graphs pertaining to migrants, refu-gees, asylum seekers and internallydisplaced persons that were includedin the governmental conference docu-ments fell short of the stronger andmore inclusive language favored byrights advocates, the provisions estab-lished a solid baseline of protectionsfor a broad range of people in migra-tion, and contributed to more clearlydefining the range of international pro-tections.

Going into the conference, migrantand refugee rights advocates had iden-tified a number of goals for the con-ference documents, such as: inclusionof migrants, refugees, asylum seekersand internally displaced persons as spe-cific references wherever possible;rights protections for all migrants, re-gardless of immigration or legal sta-


An Immigrant RightsWorking Group devel-oped a “shadow report”for the conference.

(TACTAQUIN: Continued from page 5)

Want to Present YourWork to a Washington

Audience?

We’ll be glad to host and helpyou publicize a presentation ofyour research and/or advocacywork on race and poverty issues.Let us know well in advance whenyou’ll be in Washington, give usguidance on whom or what kindsof people to invite, and we’ll sendout the notices and sponsor yourtalk (usually best held duringlunchtime).

tus; specific reference to the link be-tween racism and xenophobia; and thecall for more state ratifications andbringing into force the InternationalConvention of the Protection of Rightsfor All Migrant Workers and Mem-bers of Their Families. A number ofthese issues had been lobbied in prepa-ratory conferences, particularly in theAmericas preparatory meeting inSantiago, Chile. Preparatory meetingsin Europe, Asia and Africa identifieda similar range of concerns.

Moreover, during the governmen-tal conference and the preceding NGOForum, as well as in various prepara-tory activities leading up to the Sep-tember events, NGOs working on mi-grant and refugee issues came togetherfor the first time as an internationalNGO Caucus on Migrants and Refu-gees, and worked closely in preparinga conference lobby document and incoordinating a variety of activities inDurban. For many of the poorly-resourced organizations around theworld working on migrant issues un-der often desperate conditions, the con-ference provided a vehicle for network-ing and for developing the seeds of aninternational strategy. For example, outof the preparatory process in the Ameri-cas, a new South American migrantrights network has emerged, and inAfrica, a pre-Durban conferencebrought together migrant and refugeeNGOs, many meeting for the firsttime.

Over 60 diverse representatives

from immigrant and refugee rights or-ganizations in the US traveled toDurban as a delegation coordinated bythe National Network for Immigrantand Refugee Rights. An ImmigrantRights Working Group, which hadcome together in the year prior to theWCAR to organize preparations andmobilize participants, developed a“shadow report” for the conference,coordinated trainings and participatedin conference preparatory activities,including meetings in Santiago, Quitoand Geneva.

Released in the U.S. prior to theDurban trip, the shadow report, “Fromthe Borderline to the Colorline: A Re-

port on Anti-Immigrant Racism in theUnited States,” was based on a surveyof conditions for immigrant commu-nities conducted by 25 community-based organizations. It provided anoverview assessment of a wide rangeof issues in the areas of immigrationenforcement, employment, women’srights, welfare, housing and hate vio-lence, among others, and attempted toarticulate the “race edge” to anti-im-migrant policies and practices. Thereport found that:

• Immigrants are increasingly the tar-gets of racial profiling by law en-forcement officials;

• Immigrants of color are often vic-tims of hate crimes, and anti-immi-grant racism imperils lives – oftenas a result of biased immigrationpolicies;

• Immigrants, and those perceived asimmigrants due to their race, con-tinue to suffer from employment dis-crimination, are vulnerable toworkplace abuse and often facegreater challenges in fighting for fairworking conditions;

• Heightened military presence andlaw enforcement along the US-

Mexico border have escalated hu-man rights abuses of migrants andpeople of color in the Southwest andother regions;

• Immigrants and refugees suffer un-equal treatment within the legal andcriminal justice systems and facestandards of evidence and punish-ment unequal to those of citizens;

• Immigrants and refugees are thefastest-growing incarcerated popu-lation in the US.

Referring to the Universal Declara-tion of Human Rights and US ratifica-tion of the Convention Against RacialDiscrimination in 1996, obligating theprotection of individuals against humanrights abuses and racial discrimination,specifically in the realm of civil andhuman rights, the shadow report states:“Despite these international guarantees,U.S. immigration policies engenderracism and xenophobia against immi-grants, particularly undocumented im-migrants. Racist and xenophobic hos-tility directed at immigrants, refugees,asylum-seekers and other non-nation-als in the U.S. demonstrates that cur-rent policy fails to provide these pro-tections, and in many cases, legalizesa program of racial discrimination andhuman rights violations.”

For a number of the delegates, thetrip to South Africa was their first in-ternational trip or their first interna-tional conference. For many of thedelegates who had themselves migratedto the US, the South Africa experiencewas particularly unique, as they foundthemselves among other migrants fromcountries around the world. AtDurban, the delegates organized work-shops, were active in caucusing, helda successful press conference and rallyon the grounds of the WCAR – muchto the consternation of conference se-curity personnel – and were among theactive NGO lobbyists in the conferenceitself.

In a recent post-Durban assessment,US migrant and refugee rights del-egates reaffirmed their commitment topursue the aims of the ImmigrantRights Working Group in preparing forthe South Africa conference: to con-tinue to raise grassroots community

d.


The US government isthe primary source ofracism and nationaloppression in the world.

awareness of international protections,and to remain connected to and engagedwith international migrant and refugeerights colleagues in pressuring for thebroad range of protections spelled outin the Durban conference documents.

Catherine Tactaquin ([email protected]), a PRRAC Board member,

is Director of the National Network forImmigrant and Refugee Rights, an al-liance of community-based, advocacy,labor, faith, legal and other groups andcoalitions working for fairness and jus-tice in immigration policy. She is afounding member of the Geneva-head-quartered Migrant Rights Interna-tional, and participated in the NGO

Caucus on Migrants and Refugees forthe WCAR.

“From the Borderline to theColorline: A Report on Anti-ImmigrantRacism in the U.S.” (81 pp., 2001) isavailable ($18 individuals, $38 librar-ies/institutions) from the Natl. Networkfor Immigrant & Refugee Rights, 3108th St., #303, Oakland, CA 94607. ❏

WCAR’s Challenge to the Anti-Racist Leftby Eric Mann

The World Conference AgainstRacism was a dress rehearsal for a weakanti-racist movement trying to con-front the most powerful common en-emy—the US government, the mostadvanced capitalist state in its imperi-alist phase, the primary source of rac-ism and national oppression in theworld. The US makes a principle ofboycotting and wrecking internationalconferences on anything progressive—boycotting the two previous anti-rac-ist conferences in Geneva, trying tosubvert the 1992 UN Conference onEnvironment and Development in Rio,refusing to sign the Kyoto accords, stillrefusing to sign even the watered-downgovernmental resolutions at Durban.

I went to WCAR as part of a di-verse and spirited delegation, orga-nized by the Applied Research Cen-ter, and we joined with 10,000 Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)delegates. For many of us, it was apolitically decisive experience. Wewere given the great gift of conversa-tions, forums, strategic debates,marches and demonstrations with themany forces and factions of the SouthAfrican Left, which shaped the entirecontext of WCAR.

The US Walks Out. The pre-Durban US threats and US govern-mental walk-out were a slap in the faceto WCAR’s South African hosts, tothe UN, to anyone even debatingIsrael’s aggression against the Pales-tinian people and the denial of theirright to self-determination. It was an

attack on the demands of Africans,Blacks in the US and throughout theworld for reparations to atone for theEuropean/US trans-Atlantic slavetrade. Obviously, the Bush Adminis-tration had already calculated the“costs” of its walk-out, well aware that

even before September 11 the US wasin the throes of a 30-year white back-lash. Durban, however, still exposeda structural weakness in US imperial-ism—that in any international arena,any arena in which the struggle againstracism and colonial domination is takenseriously, the US empire, US imperi-alism, is singled out, or often self-nominates, as the main cause of orga-nized racism and national oppressionin the world. At Durban, a broadunited front of US NGO delegates,some rather conservative under othercircumstances, sharply criticized theUS role in the world and its walk-out—and presaged a new anti-racist coali-tion.

The challenge after Durban is bothpolitical and organizational: Is it pos-sible to coalesce an anti-imperialisttendency in the anti-racist movementthat can effectively contend with themore establishment civil rights groups,

as SNCC, CORE, M.L. King and thePanthers once did? New anti-racist for-mations, among youth, low-incomeworking-class communities of color,environmental justice groups andwomen of color organizations playedleadership roles in the protests againstthe US. Still, those groups function atvery low levels of coordination, letalone strategic collaboration. Thereare discussions going on nationally totry to develop common approaches toanti-war and anti-racist work amonggrassroots groups that have built anactual grassroots base—but there is along way to go before reaching evenminimal levels of functional unity ofstrategy and tactics.

Reparations Takes Center Stage.At Durban, the Reparations Movementdemonstrated its historical potential tobecome the central defining politicalissue of the 21st century. As severalAfrican speakers argued, reparationsdoes not begin, or even end, with afocus on monetary, material and struc-tural economic and political demandson the West (although of course suchdemands will be essential to themovement’s tactical plan), but ratherwill be driven by years or even de-cades of a world “crimes against hu-manity” tribunal, with European andUS imperialist civilization on trial.This campaign would challenge thevery legitimacy of the US to exist as anation state, and call into question itssettler state history of genocide against



The nascent movementfor reparations offers anhistorical opportunity torevitalize anti-racistorganizing in the US.

both Indigenous peoples and Blacks.This movement, led by Black peoplesthroughout the world, would docu-ment centuries of transatlantic Euro-pean capitalist barbarism, and chal-lenge anti-racist whites and Western-ers to investigate the genocidal prac-tices and complicity of their nationstates, churches, companies, unions,universities and their own families.The threat of the Reparations Move-ment was reflected in the US walk-out and the heavy-handed efforts byEuropean states to suppress strongresolutions on reparations in order tocover up their own role in mass mur-der and genocide. Still, the resolutionsfinally passed by the NGOs, declar-ing the transatlantic slave trade “crimesagainst humanity,” and the backlashgenerated by the US walk-out are posi-tive steps in what will be a very longand tumultuous process.

The nascent movement for repara-tions offers an historical opportunityto revitalize anti-racist organizing inthe US, not as an isolated “issue,” butas a conceptual frame to drive manyother tactics and shape the entire dis-cussion of Left, anti-imperialist strat-egy. The Reparations Movement canprovide ideological coherence andgreater historical possibility for thecourageous but often isolatedgrassroots workplace, community andurban battles in the US.

Historically, we have seen thatanti-racist movements with a compre-hensive and compelling vision canenergize actual grassroots resistance.Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africamovement transformed an entire gen-eration of Black consciousness andanti-racist debate; the US CommunistParty’s focus on a Black nation in theSouth drove the work of the Scottsboroboys campaign and the sharecroppersunion; SNCC’s demands for BlackPower; Malcolm’s demands that Blackpeople as a people take their demandsfor human rights to the UN; the Pan-thers’ demands that Black people holda plebiscite to determine their relation-ship to the United States; and King’sproposal that Blacks in the US ally with

colonial nations throughout the worldwon the most concrete and structuralcivil rights in US history. The Repara-tions Movement can provide a similarspark—not just for the Black movement,but for all oppressed nationality peopleinside the US and for a world anti-im-perialist Left.

The UN and International Anti-racist Work. For those who areguided by an internationalist, anti-im-perialist strategy for US anti-racistwork, the United Nations offers animportant structural arena. It providesopportunity for US anti-racists to meetwith Third World revolutionaries and

progressives from Europe and theWest, and for individual organizationsto learn the intricacies of the UN —joining with other human rights, envi-ronmental justice, women’s liberationand anti-racist organizations that havemade the UN a key arena of their orga-nizing work. The forthcoming WorldSummit on Sustainable Developmentin Johannesburg and UN conferenceson women’s rights in Uganda and Swe-den are important arenas in which anti-racist organizers in the US can meetbeforehand to try to hammer out con-crete proposals that tie women’s lib-eration and environmental justice to anexplicit anti-imperialist program—aprogram that will of necessity, again,place us on a collision course with theUS government, Republicans andDemocrats alike.

Anti-War Organizing andGrassroots Movements. The BushAdministration has made it clear that itintends to move the US into a perma-nent war footing—dropping massivebombs on Afghanistan that are humanrights and ecological assaults, demand-ing nothing less than unconditional sur-

render, attacking civil rights and civilliberties at home, and now issuing un-provoked threats against the Iraqis,against whom the US is already carry-ing out a brutal blockade. There is nochance to build a successful anti-racistmovement without making anti-warorganizing an integral component, andagain, placing that work in an anti-imperialist framework. Just as manycivil rights groups felt, at first, thatthey could “sit out” the Vietnam War,only to understand, to their credit, thatVietnam had become the central focusof the world anti-racist, anti-imperial-ist movement, it is becoming clear thatthere is a similar moral and strategicimperative to directly challenge the USwar machine. Right-wing forces in bothparties have seized upon the Septem-ber 11 events as a pretense for acceler-ating a pre-existing plan to escalate USworld domination. If we don’t con-front the clear and present danger ofpermanent war, there is no chance forany progressive/Left strategy.

A week after the end of WCAR andthe September 11 events, we had anopen mike discussion at the Los Ange-les Bus Riders Union monthly mem-bership meeting—in English, Spanishand Korean. We began with a motionto oppose US government policies at-tacking immigrants, cutting social pro-grams, and restricting civil rights andcivil liberties in the name of the waragainst terrorism. But our main goalwas to let the members speak openlyabout the war. A Salvadorean mem-ber told of how she was raped and tor-tured by the right-wing forces in hercountry and how the CIA organizedthe murders and mutilations. A Gua-temalan woman yelled that to this dayshe is outraged at the US for overthrow-ing the democratically elected Arbenzgovernment and how much murder,torture and genocide has been broughtto her nation and the Indigenouspeoples and revolutionaries by US-sup-ported dictators. A Korean grand-mother told how the discussion hadbrought up repressed memories of hertorture by the Japanese during theiroccupation of Korea. Several Blackmembers angrily denounced how theUS government has opportunistically

(MANN: Continued from page 7)


There’s a lot of unityamong us NGOs.

seized upon the unique and symbolicvalue of the 5,000 people who lost theirlives tragically in the World TradeCenter when the government doesn’tgive a damn about 2 million mainlyBlack and Latino men and womenlocked up, many for the rest of theirlives, in US prisons. In this real lifemovement of L.A. bus riders fighting“transit racism,” we saw that the USgovernment’s assertion that the“American people” support its barbaricattacks on Afghanistan really refers toa far smaller sub-set of the population,mainly the white middle and upperclasses. There is great possibility toorganize an effective anti-war move-ment if it is rooted in the lower-in-come, working class of color, and tiedto a progressive anti-racist internation-alism in opposition to US great powerchauvinism and xenophobia.

WCAR, with its many internalweaknesses reflective of the actual state

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of the world progressive movements,provided an opportunity for US groupsto learn about UN structures, to meetgreat intellectuals, revolutionaries andmass leaders from the Third World,and, ironically, to meet many newpeople in the US movements and tospend more time with each other thanwe had to in the US. There is no waythat US anti-racists can go toJohannesburg, Durban, Beijing and Rioand see the world suffering caused byour own government, and then comeback to fight for “democratic rights”inside the US without the most explicitstrategic commitment to a world move-ment against racism, national oppres-sion, world war and imperialism.From the stealing of an election to de-fiance of international law to the boldassertion of a state of permanent war,the Bush Administration and its will-ing Democratic accomplices is threat-ening to crush even the last remnants

of progressive politics in the US. Theinternational united front we got a briefglimpse of in Durban offers our onlyhope. The historical challenge iswhether we can reconstruct a viable“we” before the Right moves to sup-press all of us.

Eric Mann ([email protected]) has been a movement organizerfor more than 35 years, with the Con-gress of Racial Equality, SDS, and forten years as a shop floor worker in theUnited Auto Workers. He is presentlydirector of the Labor/Community Strat-egy Center and a member of the Plan-ning Committee of the L.A. Bus Rid-ers Union. He has recently completeda longer analysis of the conference—“WCAR: A Strategic Sum-Up” as partof his Dispatches from Durban, avail-able at www.thestrategycenter.org. ❏

Durban: More Than Its Media Coverageby Makani Themba

I don’t think the UN Conferencecould ever simply be “The Confer-ence” after the events of September11th. How could we know how theworld would change in just one dayafter the conference officially closed?

Thinking back, I left Durban feel-ing good about the new networks andunderstandings that were forgedamong progressive NGOs worldwide.My twelve days in Durban showed methat, at the core, there’s a lot of unityamong us NGOs.

It sure didn’t start out that way. Weall had some stretching to do. Twoyears ago, few of us knew the oppres-sion facing the 250 million Dalits inIndia. We never heard of theBhutanese or contemporary slavery inNiger. Many of our colleagues cameinto this process unsure about repara-tions for slavery and colonialism, anda significant number had little clueabout present-day racism in the US.By the time the final plenary session

closed at nearly 1 am on the last dayof the NGO Forum, most of these is-sues were not only understood – theyreceived unanimous support.

If there was ever a moment that Iknew NGOs had really forged somecommon ground, it was during theclosing ceremony. We were all wait-ing for Fidel. After two days of ru-mors about his possible appearance atthe forum, delegates packed theCricket Stadium as they awaited thebeloved Cuban leader. For nearly halfan hour before his arrival, the groupsang liberation songs, rocked politi-cal chants and waved makeshift Cu-ban flags. His Excellency was easilythe indisputable star of the proceed-ings.

The excitement was so palpable thatthe crowd literally gasped in unisonwhen Fidel finally made it to the stage.The space reserved up front for theCuban delegation filled up instead withsupporters worldwide. Ugandans, Chi-nese, Mexicanos, Samoans wereamong the folk who simply brushedpast the usher charged with control-ling admittance to the area, and saidin their best English, “I am Cuban.”One Ugandan woman said ceremoni-ously, “We are all Cuban.”

Most of us agreed that there are cen-tral issues of injustice – poverty, rac-ism, sexism, marginalization amongthem; that globalization has meant a


Instead of stemming thetide of race-baiting, theBush Administration hasfanned the flames.


great deal of escalation of these andother challenges; and that we must takeon both the market and our govern-ments if we hope to make a difference.

Durban also reinforced my disap-pointment in mainstream news media.As usual, they were more interestedin covering the same old hopelessnessthan new stories of hope. The debaterelated to Israel’s treatment of the Pal-estinian people dominated coverage.A black woman was among the net-work reporters refusing to attend apress conference on reparations lessthan 20 feet away, in order to film yetanother hour of verbal conflict be-tween Israelis and Palestinians. Thepress also mostly ignored the quietgroup of rabbis that protested along-side Palestinians in their effort to forgenew definitions of Zionism. Perhapsmost importantly, they missed thetruth – and given the fact that main-stream media outlets conducted fewinterviews with attendees, it didn’tseem as if the truth really mattered tothem all that much. It all made meeven more grateful for the ethnic andindependent media that worked tire-lessly to tell the many stories of thegathering.

And there were many stories. Toomany to tell in one sitting, to be sure.There was the one about how the USdominated the conference in terms ofattendees but found collaboration as adelegation nearly impossible. The pro-cess exposed our lack of relationshipswith each other, and there was no hid-ing it. Yet the shock was therapeutic.Before September 11th, there was evenhope that groups were intent onchange, repair, on reaching out to oneanother. We were all abuzz with howwe’d “bring Durban home.”

Unfortunately, far more tragic andunsavory events have hit home instead.And it is these events that rightly pullour political attention. Yet, so muchof what has unfolded from September11th is rooted in the debates and ten-sions that framed Durban. The issuesthat occupy the world stage now arethe same issues the United States boy-cotted in South Africa.

It’s hard not to wonder how thingsmight have been different if our gov-ernment chose to lead a process forpeace rather than choosing to simplywalk away.

Makani Themba ([email protected]) writes and works on issues ofrace, media and policy. Her latest bookis Making Policy, Making Changes(Chardon Press). ❏

(THEMBA: Continued from page 9)

Bridging the Racial Justice Chasmby Gary Delgado

Since September 11 we have en-tered a new era of racial politics. Wehave internationalized US racism.President Bush has used the insidiousimagery of an evil (though not god-less) enemy against whom, we are told,we must unite. Only this time, insteadof the “godless communists” of the‘50s and ‘60s, our enemy is “fanaticalfundamentalist terrorists.” Are theTaliban bad news? Yes. But they werealready bad news back in May whenwe were still providing them with fi-nancial support.

The US assertion of a unilateralright to attack both terrorists and thestates that harbor them is an importantframework for the responses to Sep-tember 11. Building on this frame-work, the enemy lives in not one butmany nation states, may be assisted byco-conspirators in any country (includ-ing the US), and is so nefarious thatthe public release of proof linking theseenemies to the September 11 attacksis, Bush says, too threatening to US“assets.”

What does this have to do racism?The most obvious effect abroad is thatframing the enemy as both Muslimand terrorist opens the opportunity forthe US to attack Iraq, Syria and Leba-non. Within the US, reactions to theattack have increased targeting ofpeople of color. Republican Congress-man Darrell Issa was not allowed toboard a flight to Saudi Arabia becausehe “fit the profile” – he is Arab-American. Issa’s story is not unique.Gallup found 58% of Americans be-lieve that Arab-Americans should besubject to more intensive securitychecks, and 49% wanted them to havespecial i.d. cards. A third of respon-dents to a PSA/Newsweek poll thought

that Arabs should be put under specialsurveillance, while 31% of respondentsto a Harris CNN/Time poll thoughtthat Arab-Americans should be heldin camps.

Media reaction has not exactly beenunbiased. The New York Times, forinstance, has gone out of its way topublish quotes from people of colorwho think that racial profiling might

be acceptable. And, instead of stem-ming the tide of race-baiting, the BushAdministration has fanned the flames.Bush has not only pushed his “dead oralive” rhetoric for our new enemiesabroad, he has also supported Attor-ney General Ashcroft’s efforts to:

• Indefinitely detain withoutcharge over 1200 people, most of Arabdescent, refuse to release their names,and deny them access to their familiesor attorneys;

• Sanction the Justice Depart-ment’s eavesdropping on conversationsbetween lawyers and detainees when“national security” is at stake;

• Reactivate the FBI’s and CIA’sdomestic spying procedures —Cointelpro is back;

• Promise to extend the stay ofnon-citizens who “critically and reli-ably” snitch on other immigrants.

As chilling as these policies are,they come as no surprise to those of us


South Africa gave us avision of the democraticdebate that we oftentalk about but seldomsee.

Be sure to sendus items for our

ResourcesSection.

who attended the World ConferenceAgainst Racism in South Africa. Lessthan three weeks before the attacks,the US made a statement to the worldabout our government’s position onracism: Withdrawing the US delega-tion sent a loud and clear message —it wasn’t worth talking about.

Despite the absence of the US gov-ernment, the conference taught severallessons that might prove valuable aswe enter into a pitched battle over ef-forts to limit civil liberties, challengecivil rights and subvert democratically-based opposition to US policies.

The first lesson about the UN con-ference has to do with context: Whilethe stage leading up to the WCAR hadbeen set by Western governments ma-neuvering to ensure that making a po-litical point about race and racismwould be difficult, holding the con-ference in South Africa made a sub-stantive difference. South Africa itselfis a political point about racism.

I visited South Africa first in 1991,again in 1999, and once more at theconference. Each time, it seemed likea new country. My visit in ’91 wasright after the government had“unbanned” many groups, includingthe ANC. As a projection of futureracial solidarity, almost every organi-zation we visited met us with tri-racial leadership — black, white andcolored. The locally-based “civics”demonstrated a degree of political so-phistication that I’d hoped we in theUS could learn to emulate.

My visit in ’99 was a little moresobering. My son was studying at theUniversity of Natal, and my wife, myfather and I spent three weeks touringthe country and seeing the new SouthAfrica through his eyes. Many thingshad changed. Much of the leadershipof the civics had been drawn into gov-ernment. The pre-election anti-apart-heid coalition appeared to be frayingaround the edges. On a plane from

Durban to Port Elizabeth, I sat next toa white man who explained how hewas leading a “freedom train” of whiteSouth Africans out of the country byhelping to place professionals inCanada, Australia, the United Statesand Europe. While our stay inKwaZulu Natal was markedly differ-ent from the violent clashes betweenthe Inkatha Freedm Party and AfricanNational Congress in 1991, the racialstratification was quite evident, the ten-sion palpable. Our stops along the Gar-den Route from Port Elizabeth to CapeTown put us in contact with whiteswho had fled Johannesburg to the per-ceived safety of the country, while ourCape Town discussions with profes-sional and working class “coloreds”yielded guarded criticisms of the ANC.

Though my visit to the WCAR wasthe shortest, I found that the country’ssocial climate was different—again.With Mandela no longer President,criticism of the ANC was more open.Rebukes ranged from disapprovalabout the distribution of resources, tothe state of the country’s health careand education systems, to complaintsabout the ANC’s plan to privatize partsof the public sector.

It was most interesting that mem-bers of the ANC debated these criti-cisms both privately and publicly.They listened to the critiques, laid outtheir situation, delivered their ratio-nale for a particular course of action,and actually engaged the possibilitythat there might be other legitimateperspectives. They even dealt with theoff-the-wall doctrinaire posturing ofsome US delegates with intelligenceand good humor, pointing out that, yes,they had made some compromises, butthey had decided that political com-promise was preferable to the constantstate of siege that other colonized

peoples like the Palestinians were sub-ject to. So, while most people attend-ing the conference came with their ownissue, South Africa provided us allwith a rich historical context ofstruggle — and gave us a vision of thedemocratic debate that we often talkabout but seldom see.

Making a Political Pointat the WCAR

Because many racial and ethnicgroups from around the world havebeen shut out of other UN conferences,WCAR was their first opportunity onthe world stage. And because theframework for the conference was rac-ism and intolerance, broadly defined,many groups reframed their grievancesand struggles to fit into a frame ofstructural racism. So caste, nationalorigin, a number of forms of religiousrepression, efforts to promote indig-enous rights, and anti-colonialstruggles were all framed racially.

This had its pluses and minuses. Itwas mostly positive, because many re-ligious and anti-colonial struggles dohave a racial dimension. However,because “racism” was stretched to in-clude many different types of struc-tures and behaviors, seeing commonground was more difficult. Emphasiz-ing commonalties, however, was notthe primary agenda for many groups.Most wanted to publicize and legiti-mate their issue. The two groups thatin my view succeeded best were theDalits (Indian people who many West-erners know as “untouchables”) andthe Palestinians. The Dalits employedan “insider” strategy. Their large andwell-organized delegation assessedevery panel, committee and potentialgathering, and used each opportunityto carry their message – that the castesystem is racial oppression. In re-sponse, the Indian government took theposition that whereas second-class citi-zenship was a problem, they were deal-ing with it. This position was articu-lated through front groups that activ-ists from around the world calledGONGOS (government-organized


non-governmental organizations). Anumber of Western governments sup-ported GONGOS, but so did some ofthe larger countries from the East.China, for instance, had audience shillsclaiming that representatives from Ti-bet were exaggerating the case of reli-gious repression—“and besides,” theyclaimed, “it’s a matter of national sov-ereignty.”

The Palestinians employed a differ-ent strategy, utilizing their connectionswith the South African government toraise the profile of their plight. Thus,while the Dalits focused on confereesas their primary target audience, thePalestinians used their connections tothe host country to amplify their mes-sage in the world press. For instance,the big anti-privatization march had apro-Palestinian component, and thou-sands of South Africans attended aPalestinian support rally outside theconference. So, although the liveliestcontingents inside were the Dalit andthe Roma peoples (who most peoplein the US know as “gypsies”), thegroup that received the biggest press

recognition, due to both the pre-con-ference stance of the US and Israel andthe support they’d received from theSouth Africans, was the Palestinians.

Reflection on both the WCAR andreactions to September 11 suggests anumber of lessons:• First, the Bush Administration’s

domestic attacks on civil libertiesand the racialized attacks abroad areone set of policies. Bush andCompany’s efforts to fan the flamesof racism, aggregate power to thegovernment as a result of the fearthey generate, and ignore the nega-tive impacts, both domestic and glo-bal, of US policies and procedures,constitute a consistent modus oper-andi;

• Second, South Africa has much toteach us. A society where issues ofrace and racism are seriously “onthe table” and where the govern-ment is honestly grappling with is-sues of equity and uneven develop-ment is an important model. Whilethe South African government is notperfect, a government with leaderswilling to engage in real debateabout policies and ideas has much


(DELGADO: Continued from page 11) to recommend it;• Finally, it is very clear that we were

unprepared for the rapidity, sever-ity and broad swath of the Bush/Ashcroft post-September 11 bar-rage. African American and Latinoorganizations were tackling issuesof profiling and political represen-tation, immigrant rights groupswere focused on legalization, lan-guage rights and the reinstitution ofpublic benefits, and civil rights ad-vocates confronted the traditionalarena of racial discrimination andcivil liberties violations. So, whenpush came to shove, we lacked boththe organizational mechanisms andthe political solidarity to mount aresponse. Our lesson is that our en-emies have consolidated theirstrength. Our challenge is to bridgethe chasm that divides us.

Gary Delgado ([email protected]), aformer PRRAC Board member, is Ex-ecutive Director of the Applied Re-search Center in Oakland, CA andscholar-in-residence at the Inst. for theStudy of Social Change, University ofCalifornia-Berkeley. ❏

Latinos, the WCAR and 9/11by Marisa J. Demeo

In the months leading up to theWCAR, the media in the United Statescovered stories regarding two issuesthat would be considered controver-sial topics at the conference — repara-tions to remedy the wrongs caused byslavery and whether certain countrieswould be successful in characterizingZionism as a form of racism. Rela-tions between African-Americans andwhites have always dominated discus-sions about race in this country becauseof our country’s history of slavery andJim Crow laws. As to the second topic,the US has a significant Jewish popu-lation and a special relationship withIsrael, so issues related to Israel, andZionism have taken on a special im-portance for the US government.

Because of the US’s powerful rolein the United Nations, issues that

would be important or controversialfor the US also would inevitably be-come dominant issues at the WorldConference. The US governmentearly began threatening to pull out ofthe conference over these two issues.

While it was important for the US tobe a player on both of the issues ofcontroversy, the US government’sposition and role resulted in neglect-ing many other issues that are impor-tant to discussions about race, racialdiscrimination, xenophobia and relatedintolerance.

I returned from South Africa onSeptember 10. On September 11, 19terrorists hijacked four planes, crash-ing two into the World Trade Center,one into the Pentagon, and one in afield in Pennsylvania, once passengersprevented them from causing more de-struction. Because the US has beenfocused necessarily on finding the per-sons connected to the terrorists andfighting terrorism, there has been littletime to reflect on the World Confer-ence and what happened there as it re-

The terrorist attacks ofSeptember 11 actuallymake it even moreimportant to deal withracism and xenophobia.

The US government eventually fol-lowed through with its threat to pullout, primarily due to the issues relatedto discussions that were taking placeat the conference characterizingIsrael’s treatment of Palestinians.

lates to our own struggles in the US tofight racism and xenophobia. The ter-rorist attacks of September 11 do notremove the need to deal with these is-sues; they actually make it even moreimportant to face them.

Upon reflection, the context of theWorld Conference may not have beenthe best place to explore the discrimi-nation faced by Latinos in the US. Theissues related to racism and racial dis-crimination at the world level focusedon the issues of how people of Afri-can descent and indigenous peoples aretreated, and to a lesser extent how per-sons of Asian descent are treated.Many Latinos in the US were indig-enous peoples in their native countriesbefore either they immigrated to theUS or before the US took possessionof the land where they were living.Many other Latinos are of Africandescent, European descent, Asian de-scent or often some combination ofbeing indigenous and one or more ofthe other racial groups. Despite thisvaried racial heritage within the Latinocommunity, Latinos are perceived bymany in the US as a distinct racialgroup, which was not discussed at allat the World Conference. As a result,the discussion on race that occurred atthe conference only partially addressedthe type of racism felt by Latinos inthe US.

The issues related to xenophobia atthe World Conference focused on howgovernments and societies in one coun-try treat migrants coming from anothercountry. While this discussion impactsa significant percentage of the Latinocommunity, many Latinos in the USare not migrants, so this discussiononly partially addressed the issues fac-ing Latinos in the US.

When the US government and oth-ers in the US discriminate againstLatinos, it is some combination of rac-ism and xenophobia. It stems not justfrom being perceived perpetually asforeign or “not American,” it is thisperception in combination with treat-ing those who look racially different– i.e., darker – as inferior or suspect.It is this combination that has made itmuch harder for persons who are ofMexican or Puerto Rican descent, for

example, to integrate to the same levelas other ethnic groups, such as Ger-mans or the Irish.

Many people in the US have viewedthe terrorist attacks of September 11as bringing the country together, but,

In the end, Congress realized it shouldnot distinguish between persons whohave been citizens for less than fiveyears and those who have been citi-zens for more than five years, but itkept the distinction between citizensand noncitizens.

Members of the US National Guardare stationed in some US airports inmilitary fatigues with machine guns.Legal permanent residents are requiredby law to register for the militarydraft. Many noncitizens serve volun-tarily in the National Guard as well asother branches of the military. Themilitary trusts noncitizens to guard ourairports as well as to fight and die, ifnecessary, in our war against terror-ism, but Congress and the Presidentdo not trust them to screen a bag at anairport. The policy of preventing allnoncitizens from holding jobs as bag-gage screeners is not based on a ratio-nal basis and on facts, but rather onxenophobia and scapegoating. Thispolicy will cause Latino and other non-citizens to be fired from their jobs, andprevent others who could perform thejob from being considered in the fu-ture.

A discussion of the confluence ofracism and xenophobia was needed inthe context of the World Conferencein order to address the discriminationfaced by Latinos in the US. Such adiscussion is still needed in our coun-try to address the issues facing 35 mil-lion Latinos who reside on the USmainland and another 3.8 million whoreside in Puerto Rico. The discussioncould also shed light on which strate-gies we, as a nation, are adopting inour war on terrorism that are neces-sary to fight terrorism and which onesare driven more by the intersection ofracism and xenophobia.

Marisa J. Demeo ([email protected]) formerly worked as an at-torney in the Department of Justice’sCivil Rights Division and currentlyserves as the Regional Counsel incharge of national public policy for theMexican American Legal Defense andEducational Fund (MALDEF), a na-tional Latino civil rights organization.

❏

The World Conferencemay not have been thebest place to explorethe discrimination facedby Latinos in the US.

in fact, some might argue it has unitedsome in the US against others. Be-cause the 19 terrorists were from Arabcountries and were noncitizens, muchof the hostility and restrictions thathave been directed at and placed onindividuals residing in the US havebeen directed at persons who are orwho are perceived to be from Arabcountries, as well as anyone who is nota citizen. Some strategies that havecast the net too wide are restricting thecivil rights and civil liberties not onlyof Arabs, but of many others who areperceived to be Arab, as well as allnoncitizens.

By way of example, recently Con-gress passed an airline security bill. Itcertainly was important to increase ourairline security in light of the eventsof September 11, but one of the pro-visions casts the net too far. BeforeCongress passed the bill, there weretwo versions. The House passed TheSecure Transportation for America Act(H.R. 3510), which would have re-quired all airport baggage screeners tobe US citizens. The Senate passed TheAviation Security Act (S. 1477),which would have required all airportbaggage screeners to be US citizens fora minimum of five years. These pro-visions passed quickly and with littledissent, because it was considered ac-ceptable to consider anyone who is nota citizen as suspect. Members of Con-gress found this belief acceptable eventhough the noncitizens who currentlywork as baggage screeners are here le-gally, are legally authorized to workand have been serving in their posi-tions for many years without incident.



Post-Durban Implications for theUS Civil Rights Agenda

by john powell

There are many ways to thinkabout the importance of the UNWCAR and the impact it will have onthe United States and the world. Tomake a clear assessment of the confer-ence will take time. It will also de-pend on the work we do and eventsthat unfold.

Although the WCAR was precededby 50 years of UN activity on com-bating racism and two related worldconferences, the Durban conferencewas the first international forum tofocus closely on specific and practicalsteps to eradicate racism, and most im-portantly, marked a historic break-through for non-governmental orga-nizations (NGOs), which mobilized forthe first time to address racism on aglobal level from the bottom up. Anestimated 10,000 delegates represent-ing NGOs from around the world con-verged on Durban for three days ofcaucusing preceding the UN forum.The NGO caucuses worked on final-izing an NGO program of action,which had been revised over the courseof the two preceding years in caucusleadership meetings, held parallel tosix UN preparatory meetings leadingup to the WCAR. The final NGO pro-gram of action was ceremoniously car-ried through the streets of Durban in aglobal march of over 20,000 personsto the opening ceremonies of the UNforum, where it was presented to MaryRobinson, the UN High Commissionerfor Human Rights. Copies of the NGOprogram of action were subsequentlyprovided to all 168 government del-egations representing the signatorycountries to the International Conven-tion on the Elimination of All Formsof Racial Discrimination (ICERD).The UN forum constituted the conclud-ing process for reconciling the NGOprogram of action with a UN programof action, which, like the NGO docu-ment, had been revised over the courseof the preceding two years through the

UN preparatory meetings. The NGOand UN programs of action providethe US social justice movement withan emancipatory framework for gaug-ing local and national efforts, and pro-vide it with a tool to engage in the glo-bal movement to eliminate all formsof racial discrimination.

Since its adoption in 1968, ICERDhas been an available, but substantiallyineffective, political lever for fight-ing racial discrimination. The effec-tiveness of the Convention has beenlimited by a number of factors, in-

tistical capacity. These concerns wererecognized in both the NGO and UNprograms of action as preeminent inthe global challenge to ending racism.As important as these indicators are,it would be more than naïve to believethat such improvements would be suf-ficient to begin to address racism as aglobal problem.

A number of additional things haveto be done to move this importantproject. Many of the opportunities forthis, as well as the impediments, arehere in the United States. The impor-tance of the role of the United Statesgovernment and the NGOs was drivenhome at the conference. We are usedto thinking about the United States asthe most powerful country in theworld. As John Lennon said, theUnited States is the Roman Empire.It is troubling to think that progresson this issue is dependent on what theUnited States does. One can hardlybelieve that we will make substantialprogress on eliminating racism if lead-ership must come from either the BushAdministration or from most Demo-cratic administrations. It is wellknown now that the Administrationtried to derail the conference even be-fore it started. As the world leader,with a substantial and growing popu-lation of color, our actions before andduring the conference can only becalled shameful. It is also not surpris-ing that while the ICERD covers bothintentional acts of racism as well asracist effects, the US has refused toaddress the issues of racist effects. Butthe power in the United States is notlimited to the government. The NGOsin the US are also in a privileged andpowerful position. And if this powercan be used in appropriate ways in con-cert with others throughout the world,there is no reason to despair. Unfor-tunately, it is not clear that this powerwill be harnessed.

NGOs left Durban having estab-

As John Lennon said,the United States is theRoman Empire.

cluding the lack the lack of politicalwill; confusion as to what is racism;the structure of having a country doits own reporting; and the absence ofuniversal measures of structural rac-ism to guide the implementation of itspolitical mandates. Our role at the con-ference was focused on helping tobring attention to the lack of adequatemeasures.

Universal measures are critical intwo respects: They allow for an evalu-ation of meta or transformative struc-tures and their influence on maintain-ing racial disparities in fundamentalhuman rights; and they provide thebasis for evaluating affirmative actionstrategies, in terms of measuringprogress in democratizing the struc-tures and providing a basis for valu-ing and quantifying claims of repara-tions – that is, measuring progress inclosing disparity gaps.

There are two significant challengesto establishing universal measures.The first is the need to establish a glo-bal norm for defining race. The sec-ond is the need to address gaps in sta-


lished a foundation for a global coali-tion and an emancipatory frameworkto dismantle structural racism world-wide. Whereas it is commonly per-ceived that globalization is a phenom-enon capable of being harnessed onlyby superpower governments andtransnational corporations, Durbandemonstrated that advances in technol-ogy, such as the internet and cellphones, have created new opportuni-ties for networking and global collabo-ration. The insight that capital is mo-bile while people are rooted appearsto be overstated. The new millen-nium, with the recognition that glo-balization is the ultimate meta-struc-ture, is capable of being democratizedfrom the bottom up, as the critical so-lution to eliminating racism world-wide. This recognition set in motionthe agenda of national and regionalNGOs to bring back to their constitu-ents: that their national and regionalmovements must be linked to theemerging global movement, not outof strategic preference, but because ofnecessity predicated by the era of glo-balization.

But the momentum and potential ofDurham, which was already sufferingfrom the United States role before andduring the conference, has sufferedanother setback since the conference.In the aftermath of September 11, theUS public mood has been captured ina managed fervor, where individualsand groups fighting for racial equalityhave been subjugated into a categoryof suspects – distractors from the pa-triotic duty of vigilance to homelandsecurity. The public is being led tobelieve that there is no patriotic spaceto discuss the contradictions that existbetween the ideals of democracy forwhich it is being asked to go to warand the domestic tolerance being ex-hibited for social exclusion producedby globalized predatory economic andcultural exploitation. In the midst ofthis fog of war, US NGOs have slippedinto a self-imposed exile from carry-ing the message of Durban back to theircommunities. This silence is anunaffordable luxury, which, reflect-ing on the lessons of Durban, we must

end. Fighting to end racism and builda nation and world where social, po-litical and economic resources are notcorrelated to race is not un-Americanor unpatriotic. US NGOs constitutedalmost a third of the NGO delegationsin Durban. They brought not onlytheir voices, but also the resources andstrategic placement to amplify and sus-tain the collective message fromDurban before the global community.If the message from Durban to glo-balize the fight against racism is tomove forward and reach its potentialof mobilizing a sustainable global coa-lition, it will be critical for US NGOs

dizing the sustainability of the fledg-ling global coalition.

The message that needs to bebrought back to the US race relationsagenda can be summarized as follows:Seven categories of meta or transfor-mative structures present the turningpoint for ending racism, which can berealized only through multiracial andmultinational coalition strategies toachieve their democratization. Theseseven categories of capabilities and op-portunities are financial, legislative,regulatory, juridical, policing, com-municative and prestige structures,which exist in relationship at the in-ternational, national and local levels,to comprehensively shape the distribu-tive human rights paradigm, as wellas help define who we are. Establish-ment of a Global Racial EmpowermentIndex provides the basis for uniformmeasures of structural racism and aplatform for maintaining the post-Durban global coalition, both of whichare essential to ending all forms of ra-cial discrimination.

john powell ([email protected]), a PRRAC Board member, holdsthe Earl R. Larson Chair of Civil Rightsand Civil Liberties Law and is execu-tive director of the Institute on Raceand Poverty at the University of Min-nesota Law School. ❏

The NGOs in the USare in a privileged andpowerful position.

to re-engage in the mission to bringthe message to their constituents.There is a need for a national NGOconference from which to establish aUS NGO program of action. In turn,this action can be leveraged as a modelto support regional conferences inSouth American, Africa, Asia andEurope. As the distance betweenDurban and these actions grows, themomentum weakens behind the foun-dation established in Durban, jeopar-

Post Durban: Where Will We Stand?

by James Counts Early

Many deliberate disparaging in-terpretations about what happened lead-ing up to and in Durban at the UnitedNation’s-convened World ConferenceAgainst Racism, Racial Discrimina-tion, Xenophobia and Related Intol-erances have been widely propagatedthrough the media. Surely, one intentis that dismal assessments will extendto future post-Durban work in the US.Some progressive anti-racist activistsalso summarized the Conference in lessthan positive terms, if not as a com-plete failure.

Idealistic hopes aside – whatshould, could or might have been –the Realpolitik of every stage of con-ference proceedings reflected substan-tial fault lines between governmentsand NGOs over fundamental theoreti-cal, ethical and policy approaches to-wards defining and eliminating racismand discrimination. The promisingnews is that some productive collabo-ration, forged mostly among NGOs,and to a limited extent between NGOsand governments, portends advances



in the period ahead.The Durban conference confirmed

that history is always an active, if noteasily discernible, force loaded withsocial meanings and struggles that in-form and shape life destinies. Facinghistory, in this case the history of rac-ism and related intolerances, first andforemost involved governments mak-ing a choice between honest and justreckoning, or continued denial of in-justice. The most powerful states chosecalculated confrontation with civil so-ciety groups that are committed to de-feat of racism and discrimination, andto demands upon governments andmultilateral bodies for full achieve-ment of civil, cultural and economicjustice. In particular cases, civil soci-ety groups also avoided honest and justreckoning in favor of unqualified soli-darity.

The achievements of civil societygroups with strained financial re-sources, brimming competing passionsand widely uneven political experi-ences should not be undervalued. Inless than two years of preparation, citi-zens from all across the world navi-gated barriers imposed by distance,economics, language, cultural-reli-gious differences and emotions, andthe burdensome, at times alienating,protocol of the United Nations and na-tion-states, in order to arrive in Durbansufficiently prepared and coordinatedto engage the resources, rules and le-verage of state power.

Powerful states that were often thehistorical architects of racism, andwhich now influence national and glo-bal administration of justice and gen-eral welfare and security of citizens,chose to use the World Conference toobfuscate or outrightly deny the grav-ity of their complicity in racial crimesagainst humanity, and resulting relatedadvantages and disadvantages in lifechances. This decision, more so thanany controversial positions or actionsadvanced by NGOs, foreshadows theconfiguration of related issues and ob-stacles that in the near future will oc-cupy US anti-racist groups, particu-larly African-Americans and Afro-

Latinos.The US government, in collusion

with allies, and a complicit mainstreammedia, tried to define issues and termsof debate and resolutions, and to in-validate specific policy recommenda-tions proposed by affected communi-ties (i.e., proposed actions steps re-garding reparations and affirmativeaction as means to address historicalills of racism and contemporary racialdiscrimination, and the doctrinaire slo-gan “Zionism is racism.”). The con-stant US threat and eventual walk-outfrom the conference failed to derail thepositive influence and to some extentthe negative impact of NGO agendasabout which it objected.

with and struggles against racism wasevident in collaborations among de-scendants of enslaved Africans. Afri-can and African Diaspora nations andcommunities in the Americas (includ-ing Afro-Cubans) readily identifiedhistoric heritage connections, but situ-ated their distinct but related present-day struggles against racism and ra-cial discrimination in the context ofglobal Neo-Liberal economic and gov-ernance regimes that are underminingnational sovereignty, self-determina-tion and democracy, and wreakingparticular havoc on the lives of themost marginalized and vulnerable citi-zens and communities— the Indig-enous, Afro-Descendants, the poor,and women and children. Africa-Diaspora nations and communitiesachieved that level of analysis and unityin action, despite challenges of lan-guage and cultural differences and re-lated spats, as well as differences overterminology and yet to be determinedstrategies and tactics (e.g., Repara-tions vs. A Marshall Plan for Africa).

In general, struggles and collabo-rations engaged in Durban indicate aprobability of ongoing linkage and co-ordination of country or group-specificissues with like and similar regionaland global counterparts. Action poli-cies adopted by African NGOs andAfro-Descendant NGOs in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean have di-rect implications for the post-DurbanUS anti-racist agendas that African-Americans initiate (including Afro-Latino Americans in the US), andwhich non-African-Americans andother people of color pursue in thefuture.

Post-Durban anti-racist work in theAfrican-American community will re-quire continued development of amore inclusive and/or differentiatedsocio-cultural definition of “Black”/”African-American,” reflected in or-ganized politics and specific policiesthat include common and distinct con-cerns of Afro-Latino citizens and resi-dents, as well as new African immi-grant citizens and residents whose num-bers and ethnic and cultural diversityhave increased tremendously since the1965 Immigration Act. To that end,

(EARLY: Continued from page 15)

Some productive col-laboration, forgedmostly among NGOs,portends advances inthe period ahead.

Against great odds, the global in-fluence of US African-AmericanNGO’s was made apparent in thewidely discussed policy positions onreparations and affirmative actionadopted by some African nations andDiaspora communities, particularlyAfro-Descendientes in Central andSouth America and the Caribbean.Despite fractious, but generally con-tained, encounters between more ac-tivist and conventional anti-racistforces in the US Black community,adoption of positions pioneered and/or proposed by African-Americanswas accomplished through disciplined,consistent hard work, and steely ne-gotiations exhibited by individual USanti-racist activists who forged collec-tives throughout the preparatory meet-ings and late-night caucuses, and ex-hausting drafting sessions. Disputesamong African-Americans will, nodoubt, surface in the period ahead, andin respective relations between someAfrican-American groups with poten-tial White and Jewish-American allies.

The interconnectedness of African-American hemispheric experiences

important openings were made, espe-cially by US Afro-Latinos, with tra-ditional civil rights organizations, toconsider the ethnic, national and cul-tural complexities of Black communi-ties in addressing racism and discrimi-nation.

Consolidation of US anti-racistforces of all racial, ethnic and culturalbackgrounds in the months ahead willrequire candid discussion and clear-cutaction steps to directly address and rec-oncile around a just approach to thesplitting issue of Israeli occupation ofPalestinian territory, and unjustifiedterrorist violence against Israeli Jews.

This will be a particularly pressingand challenging responsibility, becausethe Palestinian cause, like the SouthAfrican Anti-Apartheid struggle, hasbecome a symbol of global injusticeand US complicity for many acrossracial, ethnic and ideological identi-ties in the United States and aroundthe world. Dealing with Israeli occu-pation of Palestinian land is furthercomplicated by anti-Semitism in theranks of US progressives and the gen-eral US population, differences amongJews and African-Americans on affir-mative action policies, and the lin-gering ill feelings among many Blackactivists about past Israeli governmentsupport of the South African apartheidregime.

The planned US civil society courtchallenge to governments and corpo-rations on reparations for slavery willbe a defining strategy, closely watchedaround the globe. The case will cer-tainly attract lawyers from Afro-De-scendant communities in Brazil andother countries in the Americas, andopen another stage of collaborationamong Black and other civil rights andprogressive lawyers broached in theChile Prep Com and the Durban Con-ference.

Although organizing and delibera-tions leading up to the adoption of Con-ference declarations and theProgramme of Action afforded NGOsopportunities to learn about and de-velop their skills in influencing state-craft, future implementation of par-ticular action elements will requiremore political maturity and profi-

ciency. A major challenge will be foot-ing the bills for sustained future work.The contributions from the Ford Foun-dation were unquestionably pivotal tothe advances made by NGOs up to andduring the Durban Conference, espe-cially given the pittance provided bythe United States government. NGOswill have to become more self-suffi-cient in this next period, when the waragainst terrorism will demand “na-tional unity” and divert attention fromother pressing matters of justice.

Looking to the future of US-basedanti-racist work, we should understandthat the Durban World Conference wasmore than a gathering of separate na-tion states and local, racial, ethnic and

grievances related to those repulsiveevents. Officially sanctioned state vio-lence, curtailment of civil liberties andthe “robust assertion of the moral su-periority of America’s political andcultural institutions and mores” by thelikes of pundit George Will, in re-sponse to the terror of 9-11, certainlywill make it extremely difficult, butnot impossible, to pursue post-Durbanaction programs.

The unjustifiable, abominable 9-11attacks by atavistic terrorists generatedresurgence of a conservative ideologi-cal and political offensive in theUnited States that is intended to chill,if not censor, critics of US govern-ment domestic and foreign policies andcultural perspectives related to domes-tic and global grievances and injus-tices. Backward-looking conservativegroups like the American Council ofTrustees and Alumni (founded by “bi-partisans” Sen. Joseph Lieberman andLynne Chaney, former HumanitiesCouncil head and wife of the VicePresident) have been emboldened tocommand all citizens to an ultra-pa-triotism and to attack or dismiss thecontributions of multiculturalism to theadvancement of domestic and globaldemocracy. Others on the right, likeIrving Kristol, use the events of 9-11to advocate “an American liberal, im-perial role” around the globe. Thisenveloping ideological and politicalenvironment will test the mettle of lib-eral and left progressives and fair-minded people of all persuasions toconfront and eliminate racial injustice,overt and covert forms of terror, andstand forward in the creation of newdemocratic visions and practices.

James Counts Early ([email protected]), Board Chair of theInstitute for Policy Studies, Directorof Cultural Heritage Policy at theSmithsonian Institution’s Center forFolklife and Cultural Heritage, servedas a consultant on Cultural Democ-racy and Race to the InternationalHuman Rights Law Group World Con-ference projects with Afro-Descendantcommunities in Latin America and theCaribbean. ❏


Adoption of positionspioneered and/or pro-posed by African-Ameri-cans was accomplishedthrough disciplined,consistent hard work.

gender groups organized to address andnegotiate resolutions of problemswrought from distinct histories of dis-crimination. Rather, preparatorymeetings and two weeks of discussion,heated debate and hard-hitting nego-tiations in Durban demonstrated thatresolution of historical and relatedpresent-day conflicts is in fact signifi-cantly linked to the more systemic civilsociety global justice movement toharness and redirect new worldwideeconomic, political and military (po-lice included) power which makes and/or extracts life-defining decisions andcourses of action on a global scale.

None of the NGO conference par-ticipants could have predicted the spe-cific horrific acts of 9-11. However,while condemning the attacks, manyhave strongly inferred that the impe-rial and arrogant deportment exhibitedin Durban by the US government andmany European governments andCanada (reinforced by similar behav-ior in other forums to address preven-tive measures and remedies to achieveglobal human security and justice)kindled the underlying complex of


Dismantling Racism at the WCARby Esmeralda Simmons

Question: Will reparations by theUS for the descendants of enslaved Af-ricans in the US follow closely on theheels of the WCAR?

Answer: The US currently main-tains an official policy of denial in re-gard to this entire issue. To date, theUS government is fighting against theagreed-upon wording contained withinthe declaration of Durban. But, in myopinion, the current has alreadychanged. The tide against racism iscoming in. My ancestors are smiling.

Background

For several eras in the 20th century,renowned leaders such as MarcusGarvey and Malcolm X, and activistscholars such as the late John HenrikClarke, advocated in the US, Africa,the Caribbean, South America andEurope. Their advocacy called for ahuman rights review of the historicalenslavement of Africans as chattel byEuropeans and their American colo-nies, later nations. The call by Afri-cans worldwide for reflection on theinfamous European trade in Africansas slaves of the last millenniumsteadily increased in the final decadesof the past century. (The Europeantrade in Africans as slaves is generallyreferenced in non-descriptive termssuch as the “Slave Trade,” the “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” or the “Afri-can Slave Trade.”) With the end ofapartheid, the focus on racist humanrights violations turned to the histori-cal trade of Africans as slaves and toreparations for such acts. Against thewishes of the US government and itsally states, demand for holding a thirdWorld Conference on Racism contin-ued to grow within the structures ofthe UN.

As an African, and a descendant ofenslaved Africans, I have spent myyoung adult and adult life addressingthe scourges of racism against Africandescendants within the US. I went to

Durban because I felt deeply compelledto bring to the attention of the UN thetreatment of Africans during our en-slavement to and in the Americas. (Myancestors, commencing only two gen-erations precedent, were so enslaved.)I understood that UN world confer-ences, and international human rightsdeclarations and conventions, arelargely verbal and demonstrativerhetoric. But although the UN has noenforcement power, the UN shapesworld opinion. A strong resolutionon this issue, therefore, would be a

United Front, another organization thatI respected. The coalition amassed thelargest single NGO delegation, severalhundred people of African descentfrom the US, to participate in the del-egate conference of the WCAR. Eachmember of the delegation, dubbed the“Durban 400,” had traveled to SouthAfrica at her/his own expense and vol-unteered to work.

The Durban 400 forwarded threelinked platform positions for delegateaction in Durban: (1)The Trans-Atlan-tic Slave Trade was a crime againsthumanity; (2) Economics is the basisof racism; and (3) Reparations are due.In Durban, thousands of NGOs withhundreds of variations on the confer-ences themes were present. Being inthe midst of so many diverse against-racism progressives was exhilaratingand affirming. Despite the languagehandicap of most members of theDurban 400, we exchanged messageswith the impressive Dalit and Romagroups and hundreds of old and newacquaintances. The resistance move-ment against racism and racial intol-erance is vividly active across theplanet. Activists from across the globe,nations and people of color who hadbeen colonized or enslaved, stated howthey saw racism as an active conceptand as an institutionalized system em-bedded within their societies. The com-mitment of the advocates, especiallythe NGOs, to erase the global plagueof racism was passionate, reasoned andrelentless. Rallies, participating in a10,000-person labor demonstrationmarch through the streets of downtownDurban, plus the oratory talents ofKofi Annan, Fidel Castro, BishopDesmond Tutu,WCAR PresidentNkosazana Dlamini Zuma, High Com-missioner for Human Rights MaryRobinson, and many state delegations,such as Barbados, fueled our determi-nation, even when we were physicallyexhausted.

The Durban 400 delegation was ex-tremely organized in our advocacy;

My ancestors are smiling.

major blow to racism as it is institu-tionalized within US society, as wellas to the enduring concept of “White(European) supremacy/Black (Afri-can) inferiority.” Those who profitfrom this racist concept and systemicwhite privilege still have a negativeimpact on Africans and other peopleof color worldwide. So I was off toDurban.

WCAR

The WCAR was an important his-torical event. Dozens of progressivegroups and Non-Governmental Orga-nizations (NGOs) were going to SouthAfrica. With deliberation and care, Ichose to work with the December 12thInternational Secretariat, a small butfocused group out of New York City.For over twelve years, to their credit,they had been participating in the an-nual meetings of the UN Commissionon Human Rights in Geneva, Switzer-land. They were following the man-date of Malcolm X — to bring the in-ternational issue of the mistreatmentof Black people to the UN: “It’s not acivil rights issue, it’s a human rightsissue.” They were going to Durbanin coalition with the national Black


ours was a group that worked 15-hourdays from the first day of the delegateconference (August 31) until its lastday (September 7). During this time,we conferred with the African Group,other NGOs and our allies in the Afri-can Descendants Group. In addition,scores of our delegation regularly but-ton-holed official state delegates andhammered home our positions. USopposition and its theatrical departuredid not deter this world of advocateswho came to work on eliminating rac-ism and related issues. Although theconference was scheduled to end onSeptember 7, when we departed forour remote lodgings a final documentwas still being negotiated between theAfrican Group and the EuropeanUnion Group. On the morning of Sep-tember 8, before the Durban 400 de-parted for the US, we returned to theconvention site in time to receive thefreshly minted final conference decla-ration. The fruit of our labor was vic-tory: our two main points had made itinto the world document!

Notwithstanding this major rhetori-cal victory, the significance of theDurban Conference will be measuredby its effects. As a proud participant,I see it as a watershed in a resistancemovement against racism that is cen-turies old. Our crowning achievement:In 2001, African people world-widegarnered enough political power tohave a world body declare our ances-tors to be humans, and, as well, todeclare that the incomparable suffer-ing committed by the hands of Euro-peans and US citizens for purpose ofprofit to be crimes against humanity –specifically, the slave trade industryand colonialism. Finally, memberstates were called upon to compensategroup victims and state victims of theseacts.

My ancestors are smiling.

Esmeralda Simmons ([email protected]), a former PRRAC Boardmember, is a civil rights and humanrights attorney. She serves as the Ex-ecutive Director of the Center for Lawand Social Justice at Medgar EversCollege, City University of New York.

❏

Durban, Globalization, and the WorldAfter 9/11: Toward a New Politics

by Howard Winant

The UN World ConferenceAgainst Racism was a very Americanevent. About 40% of the delegatesaccredited to the NGO forum wereNorth American; at Durban, one hadthe constant experience of running intoold movement comrades and friends,as well as seeing a new and youngergeneration of US activists coming to-gether.

The WCAR was American in an-other way, too: It was anti-American.Just as the first two WCARs (1978 and1983) were focused on anathematiz-ing and ending the South Africanapartheid regime, the 2001 Durbanconference sought to challenge the USempire, the hegemonic position the USoccupies in a post-colonial, post-ColdWar, post-apartheid and post-civilrights world.

Of course, the US government waswell aware of this situation. The os-tensibly pro-civil rights Clinton Ad-ministration coquetted with the con-ference throughout its planning stages,worrying about the oppositional andactivist orientation being developed inits various “Prepcoms” and NGO state-ments, but at the same time hoping tomoderate and coopt the conference, tosecure a role for the US as a reform-oriented official participant. Awareof the malign implications of turningtheir back on the conference, espe-cially among their already estrangeddomestic constituents on the Demo-cratic Party’s left, the Clintonites wereunwilling entirely to repudiate the con-ference. That task was left to the BushAdministration, whose domestic po-litical priorities were the converse ofClinton’s. Bush was a creature of theRepublican right, a Southern president(in the US sense of the word), ausurper who owed his office in largepart to anti-black voting rights fraud.He sought by attacking the conferenceto shore up his key lower-strata “so-cially conservative” constituencies —

for he had already assured the loyaltyof the corporate fat cats by enactingmassive regressive income and wealthredistribution. Disowning the confer-ence had an extra benefit for theBushies, too: it provided a “wedge is-sue” to divide two key DemocraticParty constituencies, blacks and Jews.

Then came September 11, andDurban was swept into the dustbin ofhistory. What had seemed to us — theNGO delegates — such a crucial eventwas now yesterday’s news, if peoplecould remember it at all. A massiveworld crisis will do that to you.

The 2001 Durban con-ference sought to chal-lenge the US empire.

And indeed, the 9/11 event was arupture in US politics and world poli-tics. The actual assaults — horrifyingand tragic as they were — were notthemselves the source of such dramaticpolitical shifts. Rather, the USgovernment’s response to the attacks,the reactionary counteroffensive thatBush and his minions have undertakenagainst civil society both within the USand against a range of perceived andreal enemies around the world, wasdecisive in kicking off the political cri-sis that democratic and egalitarian so-cial movements now face. The emer-gency conditions confronting ourmovements derive from severalsources:

• The widespread fear of “terrorism,”a panicky response that the Bushregime has effectively abetted andcultivated, much as its right-wingprogenitors fomented anti-commu-nist hysteria in the Cold War years(and before that in the 1920s aswell);



• A resurgent reactionary nationalismthat continues to garner widespreadpopular adherence by drawing onfamiliar old tropes: “fortressAmerica,” “the land of the free andthe home of the brave,” the emer-gency measures necessitated by“wartime,” etc.;

• A racially-based identification of“the enemy” as Arab or Arab-American, Muslims in general(even those, whether Muslim ornot, who resemble Arabs), and be-yond this, the incipientdemonization of the Islamic world,which hints at a series of very oldscores: the Crusades, the “clash ofcivilizations,” the Reconquista, etc.A thus far minor but interestingwrinkle in this ideological complexis the Bush Administration’s selec-tive cooptation of feminist criticismof the repression of women in some(but certainly not all) fundamentalistIslamic regimes.

As a result of these developments,we confront a very disturbing politi-cal situation: the near-paralysis of op-positional politics. The movementsthat seemed renascent before 9/11 —notably the anti-globalization, anti-WTO movement and the resurgentanti-racist movement represented byDurban, by reparations initiatives, byresistance to racial profiling, and bycritiques of the prison-industrial com-plex — have now been put on hold.Though not completely stymied, theyhave been set back considerably. De-nying this is whistling in the dark.

Current support for the Bush regimeis driven by two factors: the sense ofcrisis and the failure of any crediblepolitical alternative. Rather than sink-ing into the slough of despond, weshould be working on developing amovement-oriented explanation of thepresent situation. In the absence ofmass opposition, ideas really count. Infact, if there were available to us aradical democratic, anti-racist, anti-apocalyptic alternative account — al-ternative to the standard rhetoric of the“A Nation Challenged” sort, I mean

— the apparent “common-sense” ofmuch of the Bushies’ rhetoric wouldbe much easier to challenge.

So here are some contributions to-ward that alternative political stance.I hope that these ideas, in concert withthose of many other radical activistsand intellectuals, will help reinvigo-rate the movement we so desperatelyneed.

Radical Globalism: In the era ofthe internet, of diaspora, of AIDS andresurgent tuberculosis, of tidal wavesof migration, globalization is not thedomain only of corporations and capi-tal; it is also a popular domain.Exclusivist concepts of citizenship areover. “Fortress” America (or FortressEurope, or Fortress anywhere else) isan unworkable and repressive politi-

service in many Southern countriesamounts to more than 50% of state rev-enue per year. Assaults on the world’spoor via the global financial system –notably, the debt and its policing bythe IMF through “structural adjust-ment policies” — result in the deathsof tens of millions every year. Thiscan readily be understood in terms ofracism and terrorism: The world’s poorare largely peasants and super-ex-ploited workers, dark-skinned share-croppers and peons of a global corpo-rate plantation. Transnational SimonLegrees now seek to sell their South-ern darkies the water they drink, thecrops they have traditionally plantedand harvested, and the weapons theircorrupt governments will use to killthe peons of bordering countries.Health care or AIDS medicines forthese subhumans? Not unless they canpay our fees at the country club!

Colonialism is Not Over: The Eu-ropean colonial powers could not sus-tain their empires after WWII, a factthey sometimes had to be taught thehard way, through armed revolutions.But they learned by the 1960s that in-direct rule works better than explicitempire anyway. Setting up spheresof influence throughout the now- “in-dependent” global South allowed fora level of pillage and depredation un-imaginable during the bad old days ofovert colonialism. After WWII, theUS became the chief neocolonialistpower, carrying on its decades-longschizophrenia about whether it wasmore properly the “big stick” imperi-alist or the isolationist avoider of “for-eign entanglements.” Defeat in Viet-nam and the regime’s subsequent dif-ficulty in mounting interventions (theso-called “Vietnam syndrome”) showthat this conflict continues in our ownday, although after 9/11 and the Af-ghanistan triumphs, the “Vietnam syn-drome” may well be dead: furthercause for worry.

Proxy colonialism also should bementioned, notably in the Middle East,where Israel operates as the favoriteUS gendarme. Israel seems to havedecided that this is the proper momentfor an all-out war with the Palestin-

(WINANT: Continued from page 19)

We confront a verydisturbing politicalsituation: the near-pa-ralysis of oppositionalpolitics.

cal construct. Interdependence shouldbe recognized as a potential source ofstrength, not weakness. Ethnoglobalityhas replaced ethnonationality. Hugeexpatriate and post-colonial popula-tions in the world’s North represent atremendous resource for developmentand democratization, if they can beafforded full citizenship rights, notdemonized and super-exploited. Al-ready private remittances from “devel-oped” countries to poor ones consti-tute a major source of “foreign aid,”totalling about $75 billion/year.

Greed Kills: One message of bothDurban and 9/11 is that the world’sNorth, for its own security, needs toterminate its ceaseless exploitation ofthe global South. The consumerismof “McWorld” is built on a planetarysweatshop. The global “debt trap”now engulfs not only impoverished na-tions, but fairly developed ones likeArgentina, Mexico and South Korea.African debt/GNP ratios have reachedthe obscene level of 125%, and debt


ians, and Bush seems to have signedon. At Durban, I thought, laudablecondemnation of Israeli colonialismwas vitiated by real anti-semitism.That the Bushies used this as a poorexcuse for leaving the conferencedoesn’t mean that it wasn’t a realproblem.

Racism and Anti-Racism as Prac-tice: In a recent book (The World Is aGhetto: Race and Democracy SinceWorld War II), I have argued that rac-ism must be understood in terms of itsconsequences, not as a matter of in-tentions or beliefs. Today, racism hasbeen largely — though not entirely, tobe sure — detached from its perpetra-tors. In its most advanced forms, in-deed, it has no perpetrators; it is anearly invisible, taken-for-granted,“common-sense” feature of everydaylife and global social structure. Thisis the situation that allows US courtsand mainstream political discourse tooverturn affirmative action, to pro-claim the US a “color-blind” society,etc. But if we define racism as theroutinized outcome of practices thatcreate or reproduce hierarchical socialstructures based on essentialized racialcategories, then we can see better howit extends from the transnational to thenational to the experiential and per-sonal, from the global debt burden toracial profiling, from Negrophobia toIslamophobia. Racism is a deeply en-trenched social structure, largely con-gruent with the rise of capitalism, therise of democracy (for some), and thetriumph of Enlightenment concepts ofidentity and culture.

Since racism is so large, combat-ing it must also be a large-scale prac-tice. The reparations idea provides avaluable guidepost here. Reparationmeans repair, making whole, makinggood what was evil. As a sociopoliticalproject, reparations can be seen to ex-tend from the large to the small, fromthe institutional to the personal.Clearly, abolishing the debt (not “for-giving,” for who is to forgive and whois to be forgiven?) fits within the repa-rations logic, as does affirmative ac-tion.

Redistribution fits as well, but here

we must be careful: The politics of in-come and wealth distribution are“double-entry” bookkeeping items.Not only the allocation of resources isinvolved, but also the derivation ofrevenues. Thinking about the prob-lem on the US (national) level, forexample: If reparations were to be paidfor the crime against humanity (animportant point from Durban) that wasAfrican slavery, it would be impor-tant to look at both the inflow and theoutflow side of the process. On theoutflow side, reparations should takethe form of social investment (for ex-ample, a “Marshall Plan for the cit-ies” or something similar). Paymentsto individuals or families would be

called a counterrevolution) of 1877.Beyond reparations, anti-racist

practice can be understood macro-po-litically in terms of social citizenshipand micro-politically in terms of ac-culturation and socialization. Verybriefly, the concept of social citizen-ship was proposed by T.H. Marshallas the obligation of the post-WWIIwelfare state, the proximate stage inthe achievement of popular sover-eignty. Rights, Marshall argued, hadbeen acquired by the populace instages: first economic, then political.The time had now come for theachievement of social rights. Ofcourse, this formulation was offeredwhen the British flag still flew overLagos and Singapore and Jim Crowstill flourished in the US; it was pro-posed when postmodern criticism ofthe limits of “rights talk” (in criticalrace theory, for example) had not yetbeen made; and it certainly did not en-compass the diasporic and globalizedissues anti-racists face today. Yet wecan make use of it to think of politicalinclusion, social provision, even worldcitizenship.

By acculturation and socializationI mean the reawakening of the 1960sconcept that “the personal is political”as a key principle of anti-racist per-sonal practice. No one — no matterwhat their racial identity is — can befree of racism in their heads or hearts;as I have said, it is too deeply ingraineda social structure. Yet a great deal ofthought and action has been devotedto the problem of fostering anti-racistpractice at the individual and experi-ential level. Developing these skills,fostering the interruption and interro-gation of racism, and extending itsreach in family, school and culturalwork, is an important dimension of thepractice we want to foster.

Democracy is Inseparable fromPluralism: Both Durban and the cur-rent world crisis (of 9/11, globaliza-tion, and the Afghan war) teach us onceagain that hegemony is inherently un-stable and conflictual. But they alsodemonstrate that embattled hegemo-nies demonize their oppositions. The

We need a radical demo-cratic, anti-racist, anti-apocalyptic alternativeaccount of the presentsituation.

problematic: Slavery was far morecentrally a collective wrong than anindividual depredation. Its historicaloutcome in structural racism is themain evil we want to annul, and thenegative effects of past slavery forpresent-day individuals are hard to as-sess. On the inflow side, there is adanger that reparations would be paidout of general revenues, unduly assess-ing present-day working people for thecrimes of past colonialists and elites,perpetuating rather than attenuatingracial conflicts, and allowing new vari-ants of the “color-blind” argument toloom up in the future. An alternativerevenue-oriented strategy would raisethe money by means of a wealth tax,thus recognizing how many present-day capital hoards had their origins inslavery. Insurance companies indem-nified slaveowners if their slaves es-caped or shipbound Africans revolted,for example. British slaveowners werecompensated for their “losses” in 1833when Parliament abolished slavery,and North American slavocrats re-gained their autarchic local autonomyin the “Compromise” (which Du Bois (Please turn to page 22)


standard practice here is to rely uponracial and religious differences to unifysupporters and stigmatize critics:You’re either with us or against us, aloyal subject or a “terrorist.” Thesetactics remain effective, especially dur-ing “wartime,” but they are also newlyvulnerable to internal divisions. Thediasporic world, the many millions ofpost-colonial immigrants now in theNorthern countries, and the legacy ofanti-racist and civil rights movements,all potentially undermine such authori-tarian appeals. The dimension of reli-gious pluralism is especially importantnow. Why? Because racial and reli-gious profiling are converging. Be-cause Islamophobia is threatening topolarize the globe once again, this timein a nuclear age. And because reli-gious fundamentalism — North andSouth, East and West — is itself a di-rect threat to democracy.

The Body is the Person: The bodywas a key topic at Durban, becauseracial identity is always about the body.At Durban, there was discussion aboutenslavement (ownership of one’s body

by another) past and present, abouttrafficking in women’s and children’s(particularly girls’) bodies, AIDS andother diseases as racial phenomena, andabout the multiform linkages betweensex/gender and race. It is not newsthat racism derives much of its energyfrom sexism, from the efforts of mento possess and control women’s bod-ies. Nor is it surprising that authori-tarian and anti-democratic rule takes

(WINANT: Continued from page 21) of women. The right of all humanbeings to control over their own bod-ies is a fundamental democratic de-mand.

In Lieu of a Conclusion: These areonly tentative thoughts on the enormouschallenge we — our movement, ourradical democratic commitments —face in the post-Durban, and especiallypost-9/11, era. But this work will con-tinue; it is part of a larger project.Numerous activists and writers arestruggling with these issues. Notthrough any one set of ideas, butthrough the aggregation and synthesisof many efforts to make sense of thecurrent crisis, will we advance towarda new politics. Ultimately, while ideasmay be important, what we all relyupon most is the great unfulfilled de-sire for freedom that exists in humanbeings. Our task as a movement is tointerpret and help organize that desire.

Howard Winant ([email protected]) is Professor of Soci-ology at Temple University. His mostrecent book is The World is a Ghetto:Race and Democracy Since World WarII (Basic Books). ❏

Through the aggrega-tion and synthesis ofmany efforts to makesense of the currentcrisis, we will advancetoward a new politics.

women as its first hostages. Whethertraditional or modern, whether reli-gious or corporate, whether opposingthe burqua, demanding the right toabortion, or resisting the maquilas andsweatshops that dot the globe, a cen-tral thread of democratic movements— anti-racist, anti-globalization andanti-authoritarian — is the liberation

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye: Durban and Beyond

by Wade Henderson

It’s been only a few months sincethe tragedy of September 11, but it’salready cliché to suggest to those of uswho live in this country how deeplythe events of that day have affected ourlives and seared our psyches. We knowfirsthand that the magnitude of loss isa grievous blow, both in lost lives andlost political innocence. And as if thatweren’t disconcerting enough, we nowfind ourselves thrust into the global“war against terrorism,” a new kindof conflict with uncertain targets andeven more uncertain consequences be-yond the borders of Afghanistan. DidI forget to mention that we’re simulta-

neously fighting a bio-terrorist attackof anthrax, which may be related tothese events or may be from a domes-tic source?

America is at war; and Americansare on edge! Not surprisingly, publicattention is turned to the economic re-cession and important questions of na-tional security and the newly designatedhomeland defense. Unfortunately,questions regarding civil liberties, hu-man rights and policies affecting thebroader domestic agenda are beingforced into the back of the bus at theirtime of greatest need.

One of the most frequently asked

questions in the immediate aftermathof the September 11 attack was, “Whydo the terrorists hate us?” And notunexpectedly, the immediate reactionof many Americans seemed based onanger and patriotic pride, not analy-sis: “There can be no adequate expla-nation for such a heinous act!” “Westand for freedom, and they resent it.”There is truth in these statements, butbeing right is not always enough. Ifour nation is to overcome the chal-lenges of the moment and move to along-term solution to the problem ofglobal terrorism, we will need adeeper, more perceptive analysis to


help explain the hostility we encoun-ter in many parts of the developingworld.

Among the casualties of Septemberwas a serious examination of an issuethat may have helped to answer thedifficult question of “why they hateus,” and more importantly, to pointthe way to solutions to the problem.

The United Nations World Confer-ence Against Racism, Racial Discrimi-nation, Xenophobia, and Related In-tolerance (WCAR) ended in Durban,South Africa, just two days before thatfateful September morning. Contro-versial from its inception, marred bya walk-out of the United States andIsraeli delegations because of disagree-ments over the language in the pro-posed conference texts, the WCARnonetheless defied expectations by se-curing an agreement among the over160 nations present to tackle the glo-bal phenomenon of racial and ethnicdiscrimination and xenophobia.

Over a two-week period in lateAugust, thousands of civil and humanrights activists, together with govern-mental leaders from around the world,assembled in Durban with the expresspurpose of tackling one of the mostintractable global barriers to the ful-fillment of universal human rights.This was the third UN world confer-ence to examine problems of racial dis-crimination, but only the first one toexamine issues internal to each mem-ber nation. As might be imagined,there was great hypocrisy among manymember nations that were able see dis-crimination in the lands of their neigh-bors, but were blind to the problemsat home. Slavery in the Sudan, forexample, comes readily to mind.Nonetheless, the WCAR was a boonto previously marginalized groupsacross a broad spectrum. Groups likethe Dalits of India and South Asia, theRoma of Europe, the Afro-Braziliansand other African-descendent Latinos,and Indigenous peoples of North andSouth America all benefited from thisnew global exposure.

Durban was also a significant ad-vancement for African-descendentpeoples from around the globe. Aswe know from our own experience in

the United States, the issue of slaverycontinues to haunt any serious discus-sion about contemporary questions ofrace relations, both in the black/whitecontext, but also in the shifting racialparadigm brought about by immigra-tion and the emergence politically ofthe Latino and Asian communities.The WCAR was quite simply the firstUN-sponsored proceeding to formallyrecognize the Trans-Atlantic slave tradeand slavery itself as crimes against hu-manity. This extraordinary develop-ment sets the stage for internal chal-lenges by citizens against their owncountries for the continuing depriva-tions caused by slavery and race-baseddiscrimination. A nascent politicalmovement in support of reparations forslavery was already under way in theUnited States and elsewhere, but thanksto the WCAR, real fuel has now beenadded to the fire.

desire for bolder policy on eradicat-ing the continuing effects of racial dis-crimination; the publication of RandallRobinson’s The Debt, which is stimu-lating debate on college campuses; andlastly, a proposed lawsuit by HarvardLaw Professor Charles Ogletree andhis legal brain-trust on behalf of anas yet unspecified class of black plain-tiffs.

One might legitimately ask ifDurban was such a positive experi-ence, why has press coverage of theevent been so decidely negative? Andwhat about race relations in the UnitedStates? How have they been affectedby Durban?

Mary Robinson, United NationsHigh Commissioner for HumanRights, and the principal organizer ofthe WCAR, spoke to this issue at arecent UN Forum titled “News vs.Propaganda: The Gatekeeper’s Di-lemma.” Ms. Robinson responded tocriticism of the WCAR, which shesaid had been described as a well-in-tentioned, but ultimately flawed,event. She noted that the conferencehad been an empowering tool for manygroups, but that their stories had beenovershadowed by the media’s cover-age of the Middle East issue that domi-nated the conference. Karen Curry,Vice-President and New York BureauChief of CNN said CNN, made greatefforts to cover the conference in itsbreadth. That breadth, however, in-cluded coverage of a very legitimatenew story: the walk-out of the UnitedStates and Israeli delegations and theissue of Zionism. However, HafezAl Mirazi, Washington Bureau Chiefof Al Jazeera, said he felt some of theWestern media coverage was decid-edly biased, matching the attitudes oftheir governments that the situation inthe Middle East should not have beendiscussed specifically in Durban.

As a “non-governmental organiza-tion” (NGO) representative in Durbanon behalf of the Leadership Confer-ence on Civil Rights (LCRR), I be-lieve there is general agreement withMary Robinson’s observations. How-ever, the problems of the WCAR werenot merely inventions of the press. The

There was great hypoc-risy among many mem-ber nations that wereable see discriminationin the lands of theirneighbors, but wereblind to the problems athome.

While few in the United States ex-pect the reparations movement to bearfruit quickly (some skeptics say, if atall), its intensity is growing, driven bya convergence of events that have addedlegitimacy and urgency to the debate.These include the precedents set bygovernment reparations to JapaneseAmericans for their internment duringWorld War II and the over $7 billionin compensation paid to Jewish, Roma,gay and other victims of the Nazi geno-cide; the historic findings of state leg-islatures in Florida and Oklahoma forthe destruction of black communitiesby racist vigilantes in Rosewood, FLand Tulsa, OK in the early 1920’s; thegeneral frustration in the AfricanAmerican community over continuingattacks and erosion of race-based af-firmative action policies and the strong (Please turn to page 26)


Director’s Report

The National Low Income Housing Coalitionby Sheila Crowley

The National Low Income Hous-ing Coalition, founded in 1974 byCushing N. Dolbeare, is dedicatedsolely to ending the affordable hous-ing crisis in America. This is not justa lofty slogan, but a strong convictionthat the affordable housing crisis in theUnited States is a solvable problem.We do not lack the technology; weknow how to build housing. We donot lack capacity; we have a stronghousing industry and an ever-growingnon-profit housing sector. We do notlack resources; we are a wealthy na-tion with a healthy Federal Treasury.What we lack is the public will andpolitical courage to commit the levelof investment that is needed. Solvingthe affordable housing crisis is not cur-rently a public priority, despite com-mon agreement along the political spec-trum about the depth and extent of thehousing affordability problem. A sub-stantial increase in federal spending onlow-income housing assistance isNLIHC’s primary goal.

The Coalition is a membership or-ganization. Our members include non-profit housing providers, homelessservice providers, fair housing orga-nizations, state and local housing coa-litions, public housing agencies, pri-vate developers and property owners,housing researchers, local and stategovernment agencies, social justiceorganizations, faith-based organiza-tions, residents of public and assistedhousing and their organizations, andconcerned citizens.

NLIHC’s work is organized aroundfour discrete, but interactive functions:

• Public education includes confer-ences, meetings, publications andwebsite, media relations, and infor-mation and referral. NLIHC’sweekly newsletter (by email or

fax), Memo to Members, is widelyregarded as the primary source ofnational housing policy informationrelied on by housing advocatesacross the country. Our website(www.nlihc.org) offers extensiveinformation about all low-incomehousing issues, as well as links tovirtually all other sources of infor-mation on housing and poverty is-sues.

• Research and policy analysis sup-ports the public education programwith timely analyses of housing dataand preparation of reports that shedlight on current policy issues.NLIHC’s flagship research product,Out of Reach, is an annual analysisof the relationship between incomesand rents in every city, town andcounty in the nation. Out of Reachis used extensively by members ofCongress, the media and housingadvocates to document the extent ofthe affordable housing crisis.

• Field work and organizing focus onservices to NLIHC members, en-gagement of members in shapingfederal housing policy decisions,and coordination of joint activitiesof member state housing coalitions.NLIHC has affiliate housing coali-tions in some 30 states and is work-ing to establish similar efforts inseveral other states.

• Policy advocacy is the workNLIHC does in Washington to com-municate our members’ perspectiveto the Administration and membersof Congress. Policy positions ofNLIHC are developed by policycommittees formed around NLIHCpolicy priorities: housing produc-tion, vouchers, preservation of as-sisted housing, public housing andhousing plus services.

Solving the AffordableHousing Crisis

NLIHC promotes a three-prongedstrategy to solve the affordable hous-ing crisis. First, we support policiesthat directly improve incomes of low-income people, so that they can bettercompete in the private housing mar-ket. This means increasing the mini-mum wage, establishing living wagerequirements, supporting labor poli-cies that elevate wages, and strength-ening income assistance programs.

Low-income people’s access to ex-isting housing can also be improvedby directly subsidizing their housingcosts. Approximately 1.5 millionhouseholds receive housing vouchersthat pay the difference between the“fair market rent” and 30% of theirhousehold income. Increasing thenumber of new “incremental” vouch-ers each year in the federal housingbudget is generally understood thesedays as the primary indicator ofprogress, even though the number ofnew vouchers each year is dwarfed bythe need. In the face of millions ofneedy households, the FY2002 HUDbudget provides just 17,000 newvouchers.

There are some housing analystswho maintain that adding more hous-ing vouchers is the only viable hous-ing policy today. If only that weretrue, our task would be much simpler.But vouchers only work if there ishousing stock where they can be used.Increasing problems with voucher uti-lization in recent years indicate that a“voucher-only” low-income housingpolicy is inadequate. NLIHC supportsa range of strategies to improvevoucher utilization, including makingdiscrimination on the basis of sourceof income a fair housing violation.

is well-managed and is an invaluableresource to poor families. NLIHCworks on several fronts to promotepolicy solutions to preserve this hous-ing, including transfer of ownershipto non-profit housing organizationsthat are committed to maintainingaffordability over the long term.

One of the most effective strategiesfor preserving this housing stock isempowerment of residents to be ad-vocates on their own behalf. Recentchanges to public housing law devolve

However, in most communities, lackof stock remains the most serious im-pediment to voucher use.

The second prong of the solution isto prevent further loss of existing sub-sidized housing. Public housing andassisted housing (privately owned, butpublicly subsidized) together comprisenearly 3 million units of affordablehousing. Federal policy in recent yearshas accelerated the loss of this hous-ing. Some housing is in bad conditionand should not be preserved. But most

much of the decision-making about thefuture of public housing to local pub-lic housing authorities and the com-munities where they operate. As an an-tidote to more autonomy for publichousing agencies, significant rightsand responsibilities are now vested inthe residents to ensure that the best in-terests of residents are represented inthe decisions about the future of theirhomes. Together with the PublicHousing Residents National Organiz-ing Committee and HUD, NLIHC hasbeen engaged in an 18-month projectto train public housing resident lead-ers to take on this new role.

Finally and ultimately, solving theaffordable housing crisis requiresbuilding more housing. In particular,we need to construct new rental hous-ing that is affordable to the lowest-in-come households, those who have themost acute housing cost burdens. Tothat end, NLIHC is currently engagedin a multi-year campaign to establisha National Housing Trust Fund.

The National HousingTrust Fund Campaign

Together with several other nationalpartners, NLIHC launched the Na-tional Housing Trust Fund campaignin early 2001, with the goal of pass-ing federal legislation to provide re-sources to produce 1.5 million unitsof housing over a ten-year period. Thisis a level of low-income housing in-vestment unlike what we have seen formany years. The campaign includes astrong field component, a communi-cations and media strategy, and an ac-tive lobbying effort in Washington.

Bills introduced in 2001 in theHouse and Senate now have 124 and20 co-sponsors, respectively. Eachbill proposes to use profits earned bythe Federal Housing Administration’ssingle-family homeowner insuranceprogram, projected to be billions ofdollars for several years out, and redi-rects them primarily to support pro-duction of new rental housing afford-able for extremely low-income people.These profits now are counted as rev-

The Affordable Housing CrisisOf all basic human needs, hous-

ing may be the one that is most ad-versely affected by racial and eco-nomic inequality. It is also the ba-sic need, even more than food orhealth care, for which people mustcompete in the marketplace and forwhich government fails to assure asocial minimum. Today:

• More than 16 million very low-income American households(15% of all households) pay pre-cariously high percentages oftheir income for housing, live inpoor quality housing or arehomeless.

• While two-thirds of all Ameri-can households are homeowners,over half of racial minorityhouseholds are renters (53% ofblack households, 55% of Latinohouseholds and 50% of all otherracial minorities). Racial minori-ties are over-represented amongthe lowest-income renters, andunder-represented among thehighest-income homeowners.

• Access to safe, quality housingnot only is limited by the lack ofincome to pay for it, but by per-sistent and rampant racial dis-crimination in the housing mar-ket, even after 40 years of fed-eral fair housing laws.

• NIMBYism (Not In My BackYard) – discrimination in the sit-ing of housing against peoplewho are poor, disabled, and/or

not white – is widespread and,more often than not, sanctionedby local officials.

The federal investment inhousing is starkly inequitable andso bifurcated that the most richlysubsidized have little consciousnessthat they benefit from a federalentitlement – the mortgage inter-est and other federal income tax de-ductions that accrue tohomeowners. In 1976, the budgetauthority (BA) for assisted hous-ing (that is, approved direct expen-ditures for housing aid for low in-come people) was $77 billion (ad-justed for inflation). In the sameyear, the cost to the Federal Trea-sury for homeowner tax deductions(and other minor tax expenditures)was $29.4 billion. By 2001, thelow- income housing assistance BAhad declined to $24.6 billion, whilethe value of housing-related taxbreaks had skyrocketed to $121.1billion. Of course, the more expen-sive one’s mortgage is, the biggerone’s tax break. Had the level offederal investment in low-incomehousing of the mid-1970s just beenmaintained, the wave of home-lessness that swept over the coun-try in the 1980s and continues tothe present day could have beenprevented. Indeed, much of today’saffordable housing crisis could havebeen avoided.

(Please turn to page 26



enue to the Federal Treasury and usedfor other purposes.

The National Housing Trust FundCampaign has over 1,700 endorsingnational, state and local organizations,an unprecedented number of endors-ers for housing legislation. This listhas grown beyond housing and home-less advocates and includes a wide

range of religious, labor and social ser-vice organizations, and more endors-ers sign on every day. The NHTFCampaign is now focusing on gainingendorsements of mayors and other lo-cal elected officials, as well as news-paper editorial endorsements.

Complete information about theNational Housing Trust Fund Cam-paign can be found on the campaign’swebsite, www.nhtf.org.

Sheila Crowley([email protected]),a PRRAC Board member, is presidentof the National Low Income HousingCoalition. She previously served asexecutive director of The Daily Planet,a multipurpose homeless service/advo-cacy organization in Richmond, VA,and was a Social Work CongressionalFellow on the Democratic staff of theHousing Subcommittee of the SenateBanking Committee. ❏

rising tide of incivility at the WCARthat focused largely on the Middle Eastconflict between Israelis and Palestin-ians was destructive and contributedgreatly to the problems of the confer-ence. Moreover, anti-Semitic state-ments and activities, particularly in theNGO forum, were repugnant andshould have been broadly condemnedby the NGOs. The failure to do soonly served to legitimize the USgovernment’s decision to walk out ofthe WCAR. Secretary of State ColinL. Powell, for example, said he hadinstructed the US delegation to returnhome, citing “hateful language” pro-posed for the final conference state-ment. He said they had made the de-cision “with regret,” but had becomeconvinced that a successful conference“would [will] not be possible.”

The NGO coordinators of the con-ference failed to understand and toguarantee that while vigorous and opendebate on important civil and humanrights issues is vital, it must be con-ducted in a manner that is respectfulof the rights of others and of the un-derlying spirit of the WCAR. In thisregard, the NGO organizers failed mis-erably in their responsibility to pro-tect the integrity of the WCAR.

In the final analysis, however,some continue to believe that the USwithdrawal from the WCAR was pre-mature and unwarranted. In fact, theUS departure foreclosed our nation’sability to be a part of the ongoing pro-cess to improve conference languageat the time when our interventionmight have proven fruitful. And in

the end, the official governments’Statement of Principles and Plan ofAction contained none of the offend-ing language that had been the statedbasis of the US–Israeli withdrawal.This fact alone has caused some in theAfrican-descendent Diaspora to be-lieve that the real motivation for theUS action was its deeply held refusalto discuss reparations for slavery.

What does this entire debate meanfor race and ethnic relations amonggroups in the United States? After all,thousands of US NGOs came toDurban with measured expectations ofprogress. In fact, the LCCR’s multi-racial, multi-ethnic delegation re-

nizations, whose quest for progress onthe reparations issue caused them tofully embrace the WCAR, and repre-sentatives of Jewish organizations,whose concerns about anti-Semitismand the delegitimization of Israelcaused them to discredit it, continueto reverberate in post-Durban conver-sations about where we go from here.What is needed is an honest dialogueand rapprochement that recognizes thedifferences in perspectives on Durbanand seeks to repair the potential breach.After all, who should better understandthe important concept of reparationsthan the American Jewish community;and who should better understand thefear and anxiety of anti-Semitism thanAfrican Americans, who have experi-enced among the worst forms of rac-ism and discrimination?

And if, in the final analysis, whenlooking through the prism of Septem-ber 11, the United States can shift fromits position as a unilateralist super-power that rejected the value of theUnited Nations into becoming amultilateralist state that works in coa-lition with others, then surely anythingis possible, even a shared view of theWCAR between blacks and Jews.

Wade Henderson ([email protected]), a former PRRACBoard member, is the Executive Di-rector of the Leadership Conference onCivil Rights and Counsel to the Lead-ership Conference Education Fund.The LCCR is the nation’s premiere civiland human rights coalition. Hendersonwas instrumental in sending a delega-tion of leading civil rights experts tothe WCAR. ❏

(HOUSING: Continued from page 25)

(HENDERSON: Continued from page 23)

The rising tide of inci-vility that focused onthe conflict betweenIsraelis and Palestin-ians was destructive.

flected not only the diversity ofAmerica today, it was a bold effortbuilt on the coalition model to advancea global civil and human rights agenda.And, as previously noted, some issuesenjoyed a major breakthrough, not-withstanding the US walk-out. How-ever, the WCAR did leave the repre-sentatives of two allied groups with aneed to deconstruct what happened inDurban and with an eye toward futureaction.

Blacks and Jews remain close alliesin the social justice movement in theUnited States. However, the tensionsunleashed in Durban between repre-sentatives of African-descendent orga-

When ordering items fromthe Resources Section,please note that mostlistings direct you to contactan organization other thanPRRAC. Prices include theshipping/handling (s/h)charge when this informa-tion is provided to PRRAC.“No price listed” itemsoften are free.

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Please drop us a line letting us know how useful ourResources Section is to you, as both a lister andrequester of items. We hear good things, but onlysporadically. Having a more complete sense of theeffectiveness of this networking function will help usgreatly in foundation fundraising work (and is awfullygood for our morale). Drop us a short note, letting usknow if it has been/is useful to you (how manyrequests you get when you list an item, how manyitems you send away for, etc.) Thank you.

Resources

Race/Racism• Yellow: Race inAmerica Beyond Black &White, by Frank H. Wu,has just been publishedby Basic Books. $26(20% discount if youmention Code U921, 800/386-5656). Prof. Wu(Howard Law School) willbe on a book tour in Jan.& Feb. 2002: DC,Dayton, Seattle, SF, PaloAlto, Berkeley, Pasadena,Santa Monica, Boston,NYC (all definite), withColumbus, Phila.,Pittsburgh, Cleveland,Parkerburg, St. Louis,Chapel Hill & Chi.tentatively planned.Contact him at [email protected] fordetails. [4020]

• The Burning: Massa-cre, Destruction & TheTulsa Race Riot of 1921,by Tim Madigan (297pp., 2001), has beenpublished by St. Martin’sPress; $24.95. A noveltreating the same event isFire in Beulah, by RillaAskew (Viking, 2001,$25.95). [4103]

• Amerasia Journal,published by the UCLAAsian Amer. Studies Ctr.(headed by PRRAC Boardmember Don Nakanishi),has released its 30thanniversary issue (Fall2001). Articles coverdialogue on race & thecolor line; Asian-Amer.art & photography; aretrospective look atChina’s Great ProletarianCultural Revolution(1966-76); & new writ-ings by Asian-Amer.writers. $17 from theCenter, 3230 CampbellHall, UCLA, LA, CA90095-1546, 310/825-2968, [email protected];www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc.[4101]

• “Voices, Voices,Voices” is a 109-page,Dec. 2001 SpecialForum, from the UNWorld Conf. AgainstRacism, available (possi-bly free) from theInternatl. Human RightsLaw Gp., 1200 18th St.NW, #602, Wash., DC20036, 202/822-4600,[email protected]., ww.hrlawgroup.org.[3911]

• “In a Time ofBroken Bones: A Call toDialogue on HateViolence & the Limita-tions of Hate CrimesLegislation,” byKatherine Whitlock, is a45-page, 2001 JusticeVisions Working Paper,available (no price given)from the Amer. FriendsService Comm., 1501Cherry St., Phila., PA19102, 215/241-7126,[email protected]. [3914]

• “Improving RaceRelations & UndoingRacism: Roles & Strate-gies for CommunityFoundations,” by David

M. Sheie, ThadWilliamson & JohnFoster-Bey (86 pp.,2001), is available ($20)from Rainbow Research,621 W. Lake St., #300,Mpls., MN 55408, 612/824-0724, www.rainbowresearch.org.[3925]

• “The Assault onDiversity: Behind theChallenges to Racial &Gender Remedies,” byLee Cokorinos & ConnieMontoya (22 pp., 2001),profiles 5 orgs. that areusing affirmative actionas a wedge issue topromote a broader, anti-diversity agenda. $10from the Inst. for Demo-cratic Studies, 177 E. 87St., #501, NYC, NY10128, 212/423-9237,www.idsonline.org.[4080]

• “Changing of theGuard: GenerationalDifferences AmongBlack Elected Officials,”by David A. Bositis (34pp., 2001), is available(no price listed) from theJt. Ctr. for Political &Econ. Studies, 1090Vermont Ave. NW,#1100, Wash., DC20005-4928, 202/789-3500. Website: www.jointcenter.org [4141]

• The Natl. VotingRights Inst. website,www.nvri.org, is a good

source of information onthis important issue. Thefirst bulleted point ontheir announcementreads: “Find our howcampaign finance reformis linked to civil rights.”[4147]

Poverty/Welfare

• Representing thePoor & Homeless:Innovations in Advocacyis a compilation ofarticles written by lawprofessors & advocates ona range of issues, includ-ing the causes of home-lessness, affordablehousing, human rights,welfare & microenterprisedevelopment. $10 fromthe ABA Commn. onHomelessness & Poverty,202/662-1694, www.abanet.org/homeless.[4022]

• “New Opportunities?Public Opinion onPoverty, Income Inequal-ity & Public Policy:1996-2001” is a 26-page,Nov. 2001 BackgroundPaper, available, free,from Demos: A Networkfor Ideas & Action, 155Ave. of the Americas, 4thflr., NYC, NY 10013,212/633-1405, www.demos-usa.org. [3912]



• “What Cities Needsfrom Welfare ReformReauthoriztion,” by PaulLeonard & MaureenKennedy (45 pp., Nov.2001), is available (likelyfree) from The BrookingsInst. Ctr. on Urban &Met. Policy, 1775 Mass.Ave. NW, Wash., DC20036-2138, 202/797-6000, www.brookings.edu. [3913]

• “Policies AffectingNYC’s Low-IncomeFamilies,” by HughO’Neill, Kathryn Garcia,Virginie Amerlynck &Barbara Blum, is a 7-page, Oct. 2001 Exec.Summary, available(likely free) from theResearch Forum onChildren, Families & theNew Federalism, 154Haven Ave., NYC, NY10032-1180, 212/304-7150, [email protected]. Fullreport available on theirwebsite: www.researchforum.org. [3915]

• “Tracking theProgress of WelfareReform Quickly: AModel for MeasuringNeighborhood Health &Change” by Lois M.Quinn & John Pawasarat(25 pp., Oct. 2001),describes the Milwaukeeneighborhood indicatorsproject. Available, likelyfree, from the BrookingsInst. Ctr. on Urban &Met. Policy, 1775 Mass.Ave. NW, Wash., DC20036-2188, 202/797-6000, www.brookings.edu. [3927]

• “A Public BenefitsOutreach Kit,” designedfor agencies, orgs. &professionals who workwith low-income indi-viduals & families, isavailable (free) fromAARP Fulfillment, PublicBenefits Outreach Kit,D16851, 601 E St. NW,Wash., DC 20049, 202/434-2277, www.aarp.org.

[4090]

• “How Can WeEncourage Job Retention& Advancement forWelfare Recipients?,” byHarry Holzer & DouglasWissoker, is an Oct. 2001Policy Brief, available(free) from The UrbanInst., 2100 M St NW,Wash., DC 20037, 202/833-7200, [email protected] [4092]

• “The Poverty DespiteWork Handbook” (2001)has data showing theextent of work amongpoor families in eachstate, including factorscausing poverty amongworkers & policies statescan implement. $7 (+ taxfor DC, MA, MD resi-dents) from the Ctr. onBudget & Policy Priori-ties, 202/408-1080,[email protected]. [4095]

• “Recent Changes inColorado Welfare &Work, Child Care &Child Welfare Systems”by Jeffrey Capizzano,Robin Koralek, Christo-pher Botsko & RoseanaBess (Oct. 2001), isavailable (free) from TheUrban Inst., 2100 M St.NW, Wash., DC 20037,202/833-7200, [email protected] [4107]

• “Welfare Reform,the Next Phase: The needto apply the lessons ofhuman development,” bySusan Wagner & DariaZvetina, is the lead articlein the Summer 2001 issueof Applied Research inChild Development, thesemi-annual publicationof the Erikson Inst., 420N. Wabash Ave., 6th flr.,Chicago, IL 60611, 312/755-2250. Website:www.erikson.edu [4140]

• “A Local Ladder forthe Working Poor: TheImpact of the EarnedIncome Tax Credit in USMetropolitan Areas,” by

Alan Berube & BenjaminForman (15 pp., Sept.2001), is available(possibly free) from theBrookings Inst. Ctr. onUrban & Met. Policy,1775 Mass. Ave. NW,Wash., DC 20036-2128,202/797-6139. Website:www.brookings.edu[4142]

• “How Well HaveRural & Small Met.Labor Markets AbsorbedWelfare Recipients?,” aHHS study (2001), isavailable at aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/rural_1m01/index.htm, or by faxing yourmailing address to 202/690-6562. [4153]

• “Red Flags: ResearchRaises Concerns Aboutthe Impact of ‘WelfareReform’ on ChildMaltreatment,” byRutledge Hutson, a Ctr.for Law & Social Policyreport, is available atwww.clasp.org, [email protected], 202/328-5166.[4158]

• “Leaving Welfare,Left Behind: Employ-ment Status, Income &Well-being of FormerTANF Recipients” is anOct. 2001 report from theNatl. Campaign for Jobs& Income Supports(directed by PRRACBoard member DeepakBhargava), analyzing 18state “leaver” studiesfrom 2000-2001. Avail-able at www.nationalcampaign.org/Download/LEAVINGWELFARE.doc,or from Tyler Press, 202/518-8047, [email protected].[4160]

• “Welfare ReformAuthorization” is thetheme of the Nov./Dec.2001 issue of PovertyResearch News, publishedby the Jt. Ctr. for PovertyResearch of NorthwesternUniv. & Univ. of Chi. 6

articles, by Ron Haskins/Rebecca Blank, MarkGreenberg, Lawrence M.Mead, Eloise Anderson,Robert Moffitt, Bruce A.Weber. Likely free fromthe Jt. Ctr., 2046Sheridan Rd., Northwest-ern U., Evanston, IL60208-4108, 773/271-0611. Downloadable fromwww.jcpr.org. [4161]

• “Changes in Eco-nomic, Work, Welfare &Barrier Status 15 MonthsPost-Baseline,” by LisaK. Dasinger, Robin E.Miller, Jean Norris &Richard Speiglman (74pp., Nov. 2001), isReport #4 on theAlameda Cty. CalWORKSNeeds Assessment &Outcomes Study; avail-able (possibly free) fromthe Public Health Inst.,2168 Shattuck Ave., #300,Berkeley, CA 94704, 510/649-1987, [email protected]. [4209]

• “Microenterprise asa Welfare to WorkStrategy: Client Charac-teristics” is a 6-page,June 2001 research brief,available (likely free)from The Aspen Inst., 1Dupont Circ. NW, #700,Wash., DC 20036, 202/736-5800, [email protected],www.fieldus.org. The fullresearch report is avail-able as well. [4217]

• The Hard-to-Employ& Welfare Reform is aResearch Inst., sponsoredby the Jt. Ctr. for PovertyResearch (NorthwesternU. & Univ. Chi.), Feb.28-March 1, 2002 inNYC. Inf. from 847/491-4145, jcpr @uchicago.edu [4162]

CommunityOrganizing

• “Community ActionAgencies & Faith-Based

Organizations: A Legacyof Productive Partner-ships” (50 pp., 2001) isavailable (no price listed)from the Natl. Assn. ofComm. Action Agencies,1100 17th St. NW, #500,Wash., DC 20036, 202/265-7546, [email protected], www.nacaa.org.[3930]

• “Faith-Based Com-munity Organizing inAction: 5 Stories ofComm. Change [DARTin Fla.; LouisianaInterfaith Together;ISAIAH in Minn.;Project SAC-So. Calif.Af.-Am. Church-BasedOrg. Proj.; ValleyInterfaith in TX]” (26pp., Oct. 2001) available(free) from InterfaithFunders, 366 N. Broad-way, #410, Jericho, NY11753, 516/364-8922,[email protected].[3935]

• “Faith-Based Com-munity Organizing: TheState of the Field,” byMark R. Warren &Richard L. Wood (61 pp.+ Apps./Tables), isavailable (possibly free)from Interfaith Funders,366 N. Broadway, #410,Jericho, NY 11753,516/364-8922,[email protected]. [3936]

• Community Organiz-ing & Family Issues has abrochure describing theorganization’s work &programs. Contact themat 954 W. WashingtonBlvd., 4th flr., Box 42,Chicago, IL 60607, 312/226-5141, [email protected] [4230]

• The MovementActivist ApprenticeshipProgram, a project of theCtr. for Third WorldOrganizing, is holdingorganizer trainingprograms for people ofcolor, Spring and Sum-mer 2002. Stipends

available. Jan. 15 applic.deadline; [email protected], 510/594-4046.[4157]

• Standing OurGround: A StrongerVoice, A Better Boston:Urban Renewal &Community Control ofDevelopment in Boston,1948-74 is a 24-min. slideshow on video. $30indivs., $40 insts. [email protected], 310/392-2076. [4220]

CriminalJustice

• “Prisoner Reentry inPerspective,” by JamesLynch and William Sabol,is Crime Policy Report 3(2001), available on TheUrban Inst. website:www.urban.org, [email protected]. [4099]

Economic/CommunityDevelopment

• “Displacement: TheDismantling of a Com-munity” (49 pp., Sept.1999) is available (noprice listed) from theCoal. for a LivableFuture, 1220 SWMorrisson, #535, Port-land, OR 97205, 503/294-2889, [email protected], www.clfuture.org. [3939]

• The CommunityDevelopment VentureCapital Alliance annual(2002) conf. will be heldMarch 4 in Orlando. Inf.from CDVCA, 330 7thAve., 19th flr., NYC, NY10001, 212/594-6747,x10. Website: www.cdvca.org [4156]

• “A More PerfectUnion: Charting aStrategy for EconomicJustice” is the annual

(2002) conf. of theNeighborhood FundersGroup, March 14-16 inSF. Inf. from NFG, 1Dupont Circ., #700,Wash., DC 20036, 202/833-4690, x3. Website:www.nfg.org [4155]

Education• The ConnectedSchool: Technology &Learning in High School,by Barbara Means,William R. Penuel &Christine Padilla (244pp., Jossey Bass, 2001), isa Joyce Foundation-funded study. $27. [3916]

• Learning WhileBlack: Creating Educa-tional Excellence forAfrican AmericanChildren, by Janice E.Hale (2001?), has beenpublished by JohnsHopkins Univ. Press,800/537-5487. www.jhupbooks.com; $15.95[4097]

• “False Choices:Vouchers, Public Schools& Our Children’sFuture: Lessons fromMilwaukee” is a 4-page,Fall 2001 tabloid,available (no price listed)from Rethinking Schools,1001 E. Keefe Ave.,Milwaukee, WI 53212,414/964-9646,[email protected] available: “SellingOut Our Schools: Vouch-ers, Markets & the Futureof Public Education” (98pp., $7.50); 800/669-4192. [4015]• “Alignment ofStandards & Assessmentsas an AccountabilityCriterion,” by Paul M.La Marca, appeared inVol. 7, #21 (2001) ofPractical Assessment,Research & Evaluation.Available at ericae.net/pare. [4146]

• “Help Wanted...Credentials Required:

Community Colleges inthe KnowledgeEconomy,” by AnthonyP. Carnevale & Donna M.Desrochers (108 pp.,2001), is available, free,from Educ. TestingService, 1800 K St. NW,#900, Wash., DC 20006,202/659-8056.www.ets.org. [3917]

• “Closing the Achieve-ment Gap: Improving theEducational Outcomesfor African AmericanChildren” is a 33-page,Nov. 2001 report fromthe Natl. Black Caucus ofState Legislators. On theirwebsite: www.nbcsl.com,or from 444 N. CapitolSt., #622, Wash., DC20001, 202/624-5457;likely free. [3918]

• “Trying to StayAhead of the Game:Superintendents &Principals Talk aboutSchool Leadership” is a50-page, 2001 report,available (possibly free)from Public Agenda, 6 E.39 St., NYC, NY 10016-0112, 212/686-6610,[email protected],www.publicagenda.org.[3921]

• “Raising MinorityAcademic Achievement:A Compendium ofEducation Programs &Practices,” by DonnaWalker James, SoniaJurich & Steve Estes (190pp., n.d.), is available($10) from Amer. YouthPolicy Forum, 1836Jefferson Pl. NW, Wash.,DC 20036-2505, 202/775-9731, [email protected], www.aypf.org.[3928]

• “Education in Crisis:The State Budget Crunch& Our Nation’s Schools”is an 18-page, Nov.(?)2001 report from theHouse Comm. on Educ.& the Workforce; avail-able, free, from Rep.George Miller (D-CA),



202/225-3725. [3938]

• “Desegregation &Black Dropout Rates,”by Jonathan Guryan, is a61-page, June 2001Working Paper, availablefrom the Natl. Bureau ofEcon. Research, 1050Mass. Ave., Camb., MA02138, www.nber.org/papers/w8345. The papershows that deseg. plans ofthe 1970s reduced highschool dropout rates forblacks. [3941]

• “Overlooked &Underserved: ImmigrantStudents in US SecondarySchools,” by Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco, Michael Fix& Beatriz Chu Clewell(102 pp., Dec. 200), isavailable (no price listed)from The Urban, Inst,2100 M St. NW, Wash.,DC 20037, 202/833-7200[4013]

• “NAACP Call forAction in Education”(40 pp., Nov. 2001) isavailable from theNAACP: www.naacp.org.[4087]

• “Evaluating SchoolViolence Programs,” ed.Erwin Flaxman (2001), isavailable ($12) from theERIC Clearinghouse onUrban Educ., 525 W. 120St., Box 40, TeachersCollege, Columbia Univ.,NYC, NY 10027. A listof EIRC publications isavailable at eric-web.tc.columbia.edu.[4222]

• “Latinos in School:Some Facts & Findings”is a 2-page, Feb. 2001digest, available (possiblyfree) from the ERICClearinghouse on UrbanEduc., Box 40, 525 W.120 St., NYC, NY 10027,212/678-3436, wcs7.columbia.edu. [4223]

• “School Practices forEquitable Discipline ofAfrican American

Students” is a 2-page,Sept. 2001 digest,available (likely free)from the ERIC Clearing-house on Urban Educ.,Box 40, Teachers Col-lege, Columbia Univ.,NYC, NY 10027, 800/601-4868. Website: eric-web.tc.columbia.edu[4224]

• “School Choice asEducation Reform: WhatDo We Know?” is a 2-page, Aug. 2001 digest,available (possibly free)from ERIC Clearinghouseon Urban Educ., Box 40,Teachers College,Columbia Univ., NYC,NY 10027, 800/601-4868. Website: eric-web.tc.columbia.edu[4225]

• “Gender Differencesin Educational Achieve-ment within Racial &Ethnic Groups” is a 2-page digest, available(possibly free) from ERICClearinghouse on UrbanEduc., Box 40, TeachersCollege, Columbia Univ.,NYC, NY 10027, 800/601-4868. Website: eric-web.tc.columbia.edu[4226]

• “Are Latino StudentsBeing Prepared for theMCAS? Access toEducational Opportuni-ties for Latinos in FourMass. School Districts” isa 2001 report, available(no price given) from theGaston Inst. for LatinoComm. Dev. & PublicPolicy, Univ. Mass., 100Morrissey Blvd., Boston,MA 02125-3393, 617/287-5790, [email protected], www.gaston.umb.edu. [4228]

• The Tellin’ StoriesProject, a parent-schoolinitiative sponsored bythe Network of Educatorson the Americas, has wonan award at the Natl.Symposium on Partner-ships in Educ. Inf. from

NECA, 202/588-7219.Research on the roles/relationships for families& schools in children’seducation has beenpublished in “BetweenFamilies & Schools:Creating MeaningfulRelationships,” availablefrom NECA. [4059]

• The Campaign forAfrican AmericanAchievement is a 2001Natl. Urban Leagueproject. Inf. from LeslieDunbar, NUL, 120 WallSt., NYC, NY 10005,212/558-54538,[email protected]. [4221]

Employment/Jobs Policy

• Central LaborCouncils & the Revival ofAmerican Unionism:Organizing for SocialJustice in Our Communi-ties, eds. Immanuel Ness& Stuart Eimer (248 pp.,2001), has been publishedby ME Sharpe, 800/541-6563; classroom examina-tion copies available.[4102]

• “Roadblock on theWay to Work: Driver’sLicense Suspension inNJ,” by Ken Zimmerman& Nancy Fishman, is a21-page, Oct. 2001report, available (possiblyfree) from the NJ Inst. forSocial Justice, 973/624-9400, [email protected]. [3923]

• “Labor MarketConditions Among 16-24Year Old Adults in theUS, Illinois & theChicago Area at the Endof the 1990s: Progress,Problems & FuturePolicy Options,” byAndrew M. Sum, NealFogg, Robert Taggert &Sheila Palma, is a 28-page, June 2001 report,available (possibly free)from the Alternative

Schools Network, 1807W. Sunnyside, #1D,Chicago, IL 60640, 773/728-4030. [4010]

• “Promoting Employ-ment in Public HousingCommunities: Learningfrom the Jobs-PlusDemonstration” is a 6-page, Nov. 2001 PolicyBrief, available (likelyfree) from the ManpowerDemonstration ResearchCorp., 16 E. 34 St.,NYC, NY 10016, 212/532-3200, www.mdrc.org. [4018]

• “Coming Up Short:Current unemploymentinsurance benefits fail tomeet basic familyneeds,” by HeatherBoushey & JeffreyWenger, is a 6-page, Oct.2001 Issue Brief, avail-able (possibly free) fromthe Econ. Policy Inst.,1660 L St. NW, #1200,Wash., DC 20036, 202/775-8810, www.epinet.org. [4078]

• “Who Will Care forUs? Addressing theLong-Term CareWorkforce Crisis,” byRebecca Stone & JoshuaWiener (2001), is avail-able on The Urban Inst.website: www.urban.org,[email protected].[4100]

• “Workforce Invest-ment Act: Better Guid-ance Needed to AddressConcerns Over NewRequirements” is an Oct.2001 GAO report,available at www.gao.gov, click on “GAOReports,” then “Today’sReports,” then “Oct. 4,2001” — it’s 2nd reportlisted. [4159]

• “Labor MarketDropouts & the RacialWage Gap, 1940-90”recently won the W.E.Upjohn Inst. DissertationAward competition.Author is Amitabh

Chandra (Univ. of KY,now at Dartmouth).According to the Oct. 21issue of Upjohn’s Employ-ment Research, Chandra“demonstrates thatliterture on the racialwage gap has systemati-cally overstated theeconomic gains ofAfrican-American men byignoring their withdrawalfrom the labor market.”[4144]

Environment• Approaches toSustainable Development:The Public University inthe Regional Economy,by Robert Forrant, JeanL. Pyle, WilliamLazonick & CharlesLevenstein (434 pp.,2001), has been publishedby Univ. of Mass. Press(Box 429, Amherst, MA01004); $24.95. www.umass.edu/umpress.[4011]

Families/Women/Children

• Where Are All theYoung Men & Women ofColor?, by MelvinDelgado (292 pp., 2001?,$22.50), has beenpublished by ColumbiaUniv. Press, 61 W. 62St., NYC, NY 10023,212/459-0600, www.columbia.edu/cu/cup.[4093]

• “The IncarcerationGeneration: WhenParents Go to Prison,What Happens to TheirChildren?” by Vesla M.Weaver, is a 2-pagearticle in the Sept. 2001issue of Focus, themonthly magazine of theJt. Ctr. for Political &Econ. Studies, 1090Vermont Ave. NW,#1100, Wash., DC

20005-4928, 202/789-3500. [4148]

• “Early Care &Education: WorkSupport for Families &Developmental Opportu-nity for Young Chil-dren,” by Kathryn Tout,Angela Romano Papillo,Martha Zaslow & SharonVandivere (27 pp., Sept.2001), is available (likelyfree) from The UrbanInst., 2100 M St. NW,Wash., DC 20037, 202/833-7200, [email protected], www.urban.org. [3934]

• “Running to Keep inPlace: The ContinuingEvolution of OurNation’s Child WelfareSystem,” by Karin Malm,Roseana Bess, JacobLeos-Urbel, Robert Geen& Teresa Markowitz (26pp., Oct. 2001), isavailable (likely free)from The Urban Inst.,2100 M St. NW, Wash.,DC 20037, 202/833-7200, [email protected], www.urban.org. [3937]

• “Downtown Women’sNeeds Assessment:Findings & Recommen-dations” is an Oct. 2001report from the Down-town Women’s ActionCoal., identifying theneeds & characteristics ofwomen living in the SkidRow/Central City Eastarea of downtown LA.Available at www.shelterpartnership.org.[4150]

• “Imagine a NationWithout Child Abuse:Combining OurStrengths for Preven-tion,” a natl. conf.sponsored by PreventChild Abuse America,will be held March 2-5,2002 in Dallas. Inf. fromthe org., 200 S. MichiganAve., 17th flr., Chicago,IL 60604, 312/663-3520,x221. [4216]

Health• “Health as a Na-tional Asset: Can ThisPerspective from FinlandHelp Us Reform ourHealth Sector?,” byPhyllis Freeman &Anthony Robbins, is a39-page, Oct. 2001report, available (likelyfree) from the McCormickInst. of Public Affairs,Univ. Mass., Boston, MA02125-3393, [email protected].[3922]

• “Mobilizing to FightHIV/AIDS in the African-American Community,”eds. Jennifer C. Friday,Marsha Lillie-Blanton &Jennifer Kates, is a 48-page, April 2001 Supple-ment to Minority HealthToday. Available, likelyfree, with a Survey ofBlack Elected OfficialsChartpack, from theKaiser Family Fdn., 800/656-4533. [3926]

• “Getting Health CareWhen You Are Unin-sured: A Survey ofUninsured Patients atInova AlexandriaHospital in Alexandria,VA,” by Dennis Andrulis,Christina An & CarolPryor (32 pp. + Apps.,Dec. 2000), is available(no price listed) from TheAccess Proj., 30 WinterSt., #930, Boston, MA02108, 617/654-9911,www.accessproject.org.[3931]

• “Urban IndianHealth,” by RalphForquera (19 pp., Nov.2001), is available (free)from the Henry J. KaiserFamily Fdn., 800/656-4533, www.kff.org.[4019]

• “Patterns of Child-Parent Insurance Cover-age: Implications forCoverage Expansions,”by Amy J. Davidoff,Genevieve M. Kenney,

Lisa Dubay & AlshadyeYemane, is a Nov. 2001Policy Brief from TheUrban Inst., 2100 M St.NW, Wash., DC 20037,202/833-7200,newfederalism.urban.org/html/series_b/b39/b39/html. [4023]

• “Medicaid-EligibleAdults Who Are NotEnrolled: Who Are They& Do They Get the CareThey Need?,” by Amy J.Davidoff, Bowen Garrett& Alshadye Yemane, isan Oct. 2001 Urban Inst.Policy Brief, available(likely free) from theInst., 2100 M St. NW,Wash., DC 20037, 202/833-7200, [email protected];newfederalism.urban.org/html.anf_a48.html. [4024]

• “Minorities inMinnesota More Likelyto Lack Health Insur-ance” was the headline ofan item in a recent issueof the Amer. PublicHealth Assn. newsletter.The report it refers to is“Final Report to theSecretary, Health Re-sources & ServicesAdministraton, State ofMinn. Dept. of Health”(65 pp., Oct. 2001).Available from the HealthEconomics Prog. at theDept., 121 E. 7th Place,#400, St. Paul, MN55101, 651/282-6367.Website: www.health.state.mn.us [4210]

Homelessness• Advancing theResearch Agenda onHomelessness: Politics &Realities, ed. Paula W.Dail, is the special Sept.2001 (Vol. 45, No. 1)issue of AmericanBehavioral Scientist (8articles). Subs. to themonthly are $130 indivs.,$865 insts; unclearwhether you can purchasea single issue. Contact



Rememberto send us

itemsfor our

ResourcesSection

Sage Pubs., 800/818-7243, [email protected], www.sagepub.com.[4143]

• “Homeless in Cali-fornia,” by John M.Quigley, Steven Raphael& Eugene Smolensky, isan Oct. 2001 PublicPolicy Inst. of Calif.report, available atwww.ppic.org/#ppic151.[4017]

Housing• “Increasing Afford-able Housing & RegionalHousing Opportunity in3 New England States[CA, CT, RI] and NJ,” isthe title of the 2001Symposium of theWestern New EnglandLaw Review. Among the 7articles (+ Biblio) are:“Opening the Suburbs toRacial Integration:Lessons for the 21stCentury” (49 pp.), byPRRAC Board memberFlorence Roisman;“Fairly Sharing Afford-able Housing Obligations:The Mt. Laurel Matrix”(15 pp.), by John M.Payne. The 307-pagevolume is available ($10)from the W. New Eng.College School of Law,1215 Wilbraham Rd.,Springfield, MA 01119,413/782-1406. [3920]

• The Housing LawBulletin is publishedmonthly by the Natl.Housing Law Project.$100 first-year sub. pricefor new subscribers.Contact the Project at 614

Grand Ave., #306,Oakland, CA 94610, 510/251-9400, [email protected]. [4110]

• “Meeting the HousingNeeds of People inPoverty: Findings from aNatl. Survey of Comm.Action Agencies” (82 pp.,Oct. 2001) is available(no price listed) from theNatl. Assn. of Comm.Action Agencies, 110017th St. NW, #500,Wash., DC 20036, 202/265-7546, [email protected], wwww.sacaa.org.[3929]

• “Expanding Afford-able Housing ThroughInclusionary Zoning:Lessons from the Wash-ington Met. Area,” byKaren Brown (35 pp.,Oct. 2001), is available(likely free) from theBrookings Inst. Ctr. onUrban & Met. Policy,1775 Mass. Ave. NW,Wash., DC 20036-2188,202/797-6139;downloadable fromwww.brookings.edu/urban. [3933]

• “Can Money Solvethe Problem?” is a 15-page, Nov. 2001 Section8 Report #7 on accep-tance of vouchers in 3MN counties. Available(likely free) from HomeLine, 3455 BloomingtonAve., Mpls., MN 55407,612/728-5770, [email protected]. [3943]

• “Separate & Un-equal: Predatory Lend-ing in America” (232 pp.+ Tables, Nov. 2001) isavailable (no price listed)from ACORN, 739 8th St.SE, Wash., DC 20003,202/547-2500, www.acorn.org. [4014]

• “Sources of Data onState & Local HousingNeeds” is a Nov. 2001memorandum from theCtr. on Budget & PolicyPriorities, www.cbpp.org/

11-30-01hous.htm. [4021]

• “The State ofMinority Access to HomeMortgage Lending: AProfile of the NY Met.Area” (2001) is availablefrom the Brookings Ctr.on Urban & Met. Policy,1775 Mass. Ave. NW,Wash., DC 20036, 202/797-6139, www.brookings.edu/urban.[4066]

• “Quantifying theEconomic Cost ofPredatory Lending,” byEric Stein (July 2001), isavailable (no price given)from the Self-Help CreditUnion, PO Box 3619,Durham, NC 27702-3619, 800/476-7428.Website: www.self-help.org [4215]

Immigration• Caught in theMiddle: Border Commu-nities in an Era ofGlobalization, byDemetrios Papademetriou& Daniel Meyer (340 pp.,Oct. 2001), has beenpublished by theCarnegie Endowment forInternatl. Peace; $24.95+s/h; 800/275-1447,www.ceip.org/files/Publications/CaughtinMiddle.asp.[4068]

• “From the Border-line to the Colorline: AReport on Anti-Immi-grant Racism in the US”is a 81-page, 2001 reportfrom the Natl. Networkfor Immigrant & RefugeeRights (headed byPRRAC Board memberCathi Tactaquin), pre-pared for the UN WorldConf. Against Racism.Available ($18 indivs.,$38 libraries, insts.) fromNNIRR, 310 8th St.,#303, Oakland, CA94607, [email protected],www.nnirr.org. [3924]

Miscellaneous• Defying Corpora-tions, Defining Democ-racy: A Book of History& Strategy, by Dean Ritz(336 pp., 2001), fromPOCLAD (the Program onCorporations, Law &Democracy), is available($17.95) from Apex Press,777 UN Plaza, #3C,NYC, NY 10017, 800/316-2739. POCLAD hasother publications aswell, and is reachable atPO Box 246, S.Yarmouth, MA 02664-0246, 508/398-1145.[4012]

• “Bridging theOrganizational Divide:Toward a Comprehen-sive Approach to theDigital Divide” (31 pp.,2001) is available (likelyfree) from PolicyLink,101 Broadway, Oakland,CA 94607, 510/663-2333; downloadable fromwww.policylink.org.[3932]

• “A Seat at the Table:Keeping the Public inPublic Policy” is a 2001report available (no pricegiven) from The Neigh-borhood Funders Gp., 1Dupont Circle, #700,Wash., DC 20036, 202/833-4690; online atwww.nfg.org. [4096]

• “Bringing HumanRights Home: LinkingIndividual Dignity withMutual Destiny” is the1996-2000 programactivities report of theNatl. Ctr. for HumanRights Education, PO Box311020, Atlanta, GA31131, 404/344-9629,[email protected],www.chre.org. [4145]

• “Building Capacityin Nonprofit Organiza-tions,” eds. Carol J. DeVita & Cory Fleming(2001), is available (noprice listed) from The

Urban Inst, 877/UIPRESS, [email protected]; also on theirwebsite: www.urban.org.[4218]

• Design for SocialImpact is a graphicdesigner/activist firmworking for publicinterest gps. Clientsinclude ACLU-Penn.,Educ. Law Ctr., Natl.Voting Rights Inst.,Public Educ. Network.524 S. 4th St., #589,Phila., PA 19147, 215/922-7303, www.designforsocialimpact.org.[4072]

JobOpportunities/Fellowships/Grants

• The Univ. Mass.Public Policy PhDProgram is seeking to filla faculty position at theadvanced asst., assoc. orfull prof. level. Review ofapplics. will begin Jan.15, 2002. C.v., samplepubs., teaching evals. & 3ltrs. of ref. to Dept.Human Resources, Search#640, Univ. Mass.-Boston, 100 MorrisseyBlvd., Boston, MA02125. Inf. from RandyAlbelda, 617/287-6963,[email protected].[4094]

• Union Jobs: DC-areaunion job listings areposted regularly by ChrisGarlock: [email protected]. [4154]

• American CivilLiberties Union Founda-tion is hiring a Guardianof Liberty Coordinatorto work in the Member-ship Dept. (min. salary$25,537). Resume/ltr. toACLU, 125 Broad St.18th flr., NYC, NY10004. [4190]

• The NationalWomen’s Law Center hasthe following positions:Advocate for its Women’sHealth & ReproductiveRights Prog.; SeniorCounsel for its EducationProg.; Counsel for itsEmployment & FamilyEconomic Security Prog.Resume to NWLC, 11Dupont Cir. NW, # 800,Wash., DC 20036,[email protected].[4192]

• The AmericanLegacy Foundationmakes grants for anti-tobacco work (research,demonstration projects,marketing & education,technical asst. & train-ing). Contact them at1001 G St. NW, #800,Wash., DC 20001, 202/454-5555, [email protected].[4149]

• The Southern Pov-erty Law Center isseeking a Staff Attorney.Resume/ltr. to PO Box2087, Montgomery, AL36102-2087, Fax 334/956-8481,[email protected].[4203]

• Association ofMaternal & Child HealthPrograms needs anExecutive Director.Resume/ltr. to AMCHP,1220 19th St. NW,Wash., DC 20036,[email protected],www.amchp.org. [4204]

• EnvironmentalHealth Coalition seeks aNeighborhood Revitaliza-tion Project Director.Resume/ltr. to EHC Attn:Stephanie Kaupp, 1717Kettner Blvd., #100, SanDiego, CA 92101,[email protected],Fax: 619/232-3670,www.environmentalhealth.org. [4205]

• ACLU of IllinoisFellowships: RacialJustice Project & CivilLiberties: Resume, ltr.,list of refs, legal writingsample by Jan. 15 toACLU of Illinois, 180 N.Michigan Ave., #2300,Chicago, IL 60601, 312/201-9740. Website:www.aclu-il.org [4061]

• EnvironmentalJustice: Partnerships toAddress Ethical Chal-lenges in EnvironmentalHealth is a grant programof the Natl. Inst. of Env.Health Sciences. Letter ofintent deadline Feb. 25,2002. Inf. at grants.nih.

gov/grants/guide/rfa-files-RFA-ES-02-005.htm1.[4083]

• Natl. Network ofGrantmakers Directoryis available at a 50%discount: $25. NNG isthe organization ofprogressive, socialchange-orientedgrantmakers. 1717Kettner Blvd., #110, SanDiego, CA 92101, 619/231-1348, [email protected], www.nng.org. [4085]• Sydney S. SpivackComm. Action ResearchInitiative enables sociolo-gists to undertake comm.action projects that bring


PRRAC'S SOCIAL SCIENCEADVISORY BOARD

Richard BerkUCLA Department of Sociology

Frank BonillaCUNY Department of Sociology

Heidi HartmannInst. for Women’s Policy Research (Wash., DC)

William KornblumCUNY Center for Social Research

Harriette McAdooMichigan State School of Human Ecology

Fernando MendozaStanford Univ. Department of Pediatrics

Paul OngUCLA Grad. School Architecture

& Urban Planning

Gary OrfieldHarvard Univ. Grad. School of Education

Gary SandefurUniv. Wisconsin Inst. for Poverty Research

Margaret WeirDept. of Political Science,

Univ. of California, Berkeley


social science knowl-edge, methods & exper-tise to bear in addressingcommunity-identifiedissues & concerns.Applics. accepted untilFeb. 1, 2002. ContactAmer. Sociol. Assn.,1307 NY Ave. NW,#700, Wash., DC 20005,www.asanet.org/student/commact.html. [4089]

• EnvironmentalJustice Grants areavailable from EPA tocommunity nonprofits &tribes. Feb. 21, 2002deadline. Contact SheilaLewis, 202/564-0152,es.epa.gov/oeca/oej/grlink1.html. [4091]

• The Cultural Heri-tage & Educ. Inst., asmall Native-led non-profit, has available anAlaska internship.Applic. deadline March15, 2002; [email protected]. [4152]

• The State StrategiesFund supports state-basedstrategies to increase civicparticipation in politicallife, empower disadvan-taged constituencies &promote political reform.Inf. from them at 264 N.Pleasant St., 2nd flr.,Amherst, MA 01002, 413/256-0349. [4219]

• Amerasia Journal isseeking an AssociateEditor. $33,240. (Pub-

lished by the UCLAAsian-Amer. Studies Ctr.,headed by PRRAC Boardmember Don Nakanishi.)Resume/writing sample/ltr. by Jan. 20 to RussellLeong at the Ctr., 3230Campbell Hall, UCLA,LA, CA 90095-1546,310/206-9844,[email protected] (but emailapplics. not accepted).

• The Assn. of Mater-nal & Child HealthProgs. is hiring a PolicyAnalyst. Mid-$40s.Resume/ltr. to AMCHP,1220 19th St. NW, #801,Wash., DC 20036.

• The ACLU Founda-tion is hiring a Director

of Communications & aMembership AcquisitionCoordinator. For former,ltr./resume to S. Ashton,ACLU, 125 Broad St. -18th fl., NYC, NY10004, 212/549-2585; forlatter, ltr./2 cc of resumeto HRJOBS/ACLU.ORGor to address above.

• William J. BrennanFirst AmendmentFellowship is offered bythe ACLU to 3rd year lawstudents & recent grads.$35-37,000. Ltr./resume/2 ltrs. of recc./at least 1writing sample, post-marked by Jan. 18, 2002,to ACLU, 125 Broad St.,18th flr., NYC, NY10004-2400.

NonprofitU.S. Postage

PAIDJefferson City, MO

Permit No. 210

POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCILBoard of Directors

CHAIRJohn Charles Boger

University of North Carolina School of LawChapel Hill, NC

VICE-CHAIRSKati Haycock

The Education TrustWashington, DC

José PadillaCalifornia Rural Legal AssistanceSan Francisco, CA

SECRETARYjohn powell

Univ. of MinnesotaInstitute on Race & Poverty

Minneapolis, MN

Deepak BhargavaCenter for Community ChangeWashington, DC

Sheila CrowleyNational Low IncomeHousing Coalition

Washington, DCThomas Henderson

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under LawWashington, DC

Judith JohnsonPeekskill City School DistrictPeekskill, NY

Elizabeth JulianDallas, TX

S.M. MillerThe Commonwealth InstituteCambridge, MA

Don NakanishiUniversity of CaliforniaLos Angeles, CA

Florence Wagman RoismanIndiana UniversitySchool of Law

Indianapolis, INAnthony Sarmiento

AFL-CIOWashington, DC

Theodore M. Shaw NAACP Legal Defense

& Educational Fund New York, NYCathi Tactaquin National Network for

Immigrant & Refugee Rights Oakland, CAWilliam L. Taylor Washington, DC

[Organizations listed foridentification purposes only]

Chester W. HartmanPresident/Executive Director

Denise Rivera Portis Office Manager/Latino Outreach Coordinator

Tracy Jackson Administrative Assistant

Poverty & Race Research Action Council3000 Connecticut Ave. NW • Suite 200

Washington, DC 20008202/387-9887 FAX: 202/387-0764

E-mail: [email protected]: www.prrac.org

Address Service Requested1-2/02

poverty & race - prrac — connecting research to advocacy

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