President Obama seems intent on stretching the limits of our Orwellian disbelief. So here comes the $1 billion dollar question ($1 billion being the projected cost by September this year for whatever it is we’re doing in Libya): Are we at war in that country or not?
The official answer: Drones aren...
I’ve got my call into Ronald Madis Ebens. I’ve found him, heard his voice, and left my message on his answering machine. And when he calls me back, maybe he’ll say something to make us all feel better.
I’m not holding my breath.
It will be 29 years on June 19th. On that day in 1982, Ebens, a then ...
JOB ANNOUNCEMENT
COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is a 37-year old New York-based national civil rights organization. AALDEF does precedent-setting litigation, advocacy and policy work in the areas of economic justice for workers, immigrant rig...
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), with pro bono co-counsel Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, filed an amicus “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Gonzalez v. Arizona, challenging the legality of Proposition 200, Arizona’s re...
Scott Pelley begins his tenure this week as the anchor of the show that bears his name, “The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.” But I’m wondering, what if his name were Scott Pellicito or Scott Pelley Woo?
I do congratulate Scott on his new role and wish him well. In fact, he’s an old colleague f...
If only Shaquille O’Neal could have announced his retirement during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May. Then we could have really ended the month with a bang!
O’Neal is in all likelihood the biggest perpetrator of an Asian American slur in the history of American pop culture.
Find someon...
Today, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund testified before the New York City Council’s Finance Committee, opposing the proposed Chinatown Business Improvement District (BID) because of its potential negative impacts on small businesses and residents in Chinatown. A coalition of smal...
by Lisa Wong Macabasco
Bethany Li speaking at a rally in 2009, when the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (with co-counsel South Brooklyn Legal Services) sued New York City over its failure to reveal the devastating impact a rezoning would have on Brooklyn’s working-class Sunset P...
Whooping cranes are endangered, but there are still more of them than there are federal judges of Asian American descent, of which there are just fourteen.
Asian Americans, 17 million strong and five percent of the U.S. population, aren’t merely woefully under-represented in the federal judiciary, ...
By Sameer Ahmed and Amna Akbar
Imagine being thrown in jail in the United States for over four years, not because you had violated any laws, or even because the government thought you were about to commit a crime, but because government officials believed that you may engage in criminal acts at som...
The month of May is more than half over, and if you haven’t boisterously greeted the next available warm body (of whatever sex, race or ethnic origin) with a loud and celebratory “Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month,” what’s your problem?
This is our month. By law (Section 102, Title 36 of ...
As we pick up the pieces, here’s a sense of life inside Casa Osama.
If you’re a guy, you’d have been doing his dirty work—tending the goats.
If you’re a woman, you’d be lucky to be one of his four allotted wives giving him his oat extract aphrodisiac. Yum.
You’d also know that bin Laden was inter...
by Wajahat Ali
One of the global architects of terror responsible for inspiring the 9-11 tragedy was finally killed this week. Osama bin Laden, who violently hijacked the faith of 1.5 billion to rationalize his perverse criminal actions, is permanently seared into our collective consciousness as th...
AALDEF and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law Call for Immigration Reform, Transparency, Rights Protections
New York, NY…The U.S. government’s aggressive use of the immigration system in its counterterrorism efforts discriminates against Muslims and violates interna...
by Seth Freed Wessler
Ten years after Sept. 11, 2001, the animating target of the war on terror is dead, his body cast into the sea. A chapter is closed. Yet, in many communities here in the United States, it seemed the target was never just Osama bin Laden. For Arabs and Muslims in the U.S., and f...
When you’re told to stand by for breaking news from the White House on a Sunday night, you know you’re not about to get a standard garden-variety press release.
What could possibly interrupt a night reserved for watching America’s masterpiece theatre–that conniving Star Jones on Trump’s “Celebrity ...
by Susannah Griffee
A group seeking to build a mosque in Bridgewater, N.J. has sued the township for changing zoning laws to prevent the project.
The Al Falah Center says it worked with township officials for months to create a plan to renovate a former banquet center to be its new mosque and Isla...
by Lisa Fleisher
An Islamic group sued Bridgewater, N.J., for religious discrimination after the town changed zoning rules to block a mosque from opening in a residential neighborhood.
The Al Falah Center wanted to convert a former banquet hall located on a quiet side street into a mosque, day-car...
Alleges Township Broke Law, Stifled Religious Freedom
The Al Falah Center brought suit today against Bridgewater Township (NJ), seeking to compel the town to allow Al Falah to move forward with plans to renovate an existing building so it could be used as a mosque and community center. These plans ...
Without doubt, the Tyler Clementi story is a tragic one. The Rutgers University student committed suicide last year, plunging to his death from the George Washington Bridge. It was just days after his roommate allegedly displayed live video on the internet of Clementi romantically engaged with anoth...
