Lambda Legal is the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization committed to achieving full civil rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people, and people with HIV or AIDS. Founded in 1973 and headquartered in New York City, Lambda Legal has regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas. Lambda Legal achieves its mission through litigation, education, and public policy work.

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New! Post-Katrina: Companies Are Responsible For Workers They Recruit To Perform Clean-Up And Rebuilding. States have an interest in ensuring that unscrupulous corporations that have received FEMA funding are not able to lure vulnerable workers from other states and then leave them without money or a place to live. Some contractors are not withholding taxes from workers’ pay, depriving the workers of benefits and the states of payroll tax revenues. Not only is this exploitation and abuse of the workers, it leaves the destination states and towns with the additional burden of assisting the workers who have no money and no home and dealing with local tensions that arise from their presence. This fact sheet identifies some strategies for holding companies responsible. (Oct. 2005)

The Washington Post
November 4, 2005
By Darryl Fears

Two months after the government began allotting billions of dollars for disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, subcontractors in the Mississippi Gulf Coast say they are not being paid. As a result, they say, they cannot pay their workers, who are mostly immigrant laborers and who have painted homes, removed debris and completed other salvage chores.

Over the past two days, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, or MIRA, has prepared complaints on behalf of more than 150 immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, and submitted them to the Labor Department. The complaints are asking the department to compel at least five subcontractors in Gulfport, Biloxi and other gulf areas to compensate the workers for as much as $100,000 in unpaid work.

The allegations came to light during a forum on Katrina-related immigrant abuse, held by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Washington last week. Activists said immigrants were living in tents and crowding bus stations to leave the Gulf Coast because they had not been paid. Others are staying on, hoping that pay will come.

Elias Ascencio turned up his collar against the first blast of winter as he stood with other day laborers in the parking lot of The Home Depot in Passaic, hoping to get picked up for a job. The approaching cold had him considering a pitch he'd heard that morning: to head for the Gulf Coast.

"If the right opportunity comes up, I think I'll go," Ascencio, 35, who is Mexican born, said in Spanish. "To flee this cold, any offer will do."

In the months since Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the southern coast of Mississippi and Louisiana, immigrant laborers from North Jersey and across the United States have been heading to the South in droves, drawn by the promise of cleanup and reconstruction jobs.

Featuring keynote speaker Derrick Bell and many other outstanding voices.

The National Black Law Journal cordially invites you to our 35th Anniversary Symposium. The symposium will feature three panels that seek to interrogate the factors related to African American access to legal education, the impact of the institutional environment on student oucomes and progress in the profession. More broadly, the program will reflect upon where African Americans stand in legal education and in the field, particularly in light of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and the ongoing debate regarding affirmative action. This is an opportunity to hear from leaders in the areas of social justice and Critical Race Theory as well as contribute to a progressive discourse with students and practitioners.

UCLA School of Law – Room 1357
November 18, 2005
8:30am-5:00pm

Its bittersweet being back in New Orleans. Although the architecture is the same, and its a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a very different city from the one I love. Its a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are being left far behind. A city where people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred different ways.

White New Orleans is steadily coming back, and Black New Orleans is moving out. A grassroots organizer with New Orleans Network tells me she has been speaking to people in every moving truck she sees. She reports that in every case, “they’re Black, they are renters, they’re moving out of New Orleans, and they say they would stay, if they had a choice.�

Inequality continues through the cleanup of New Orleans. Some areas have electricity, gas, and clean streets, and some areas are untouched. Medical volunteer Catherine Jones reports that driving the streets of New Orleans at night, “ I felt like I was in the middle of a checkerboard. The Quarter lit up like Disneyworld; poor black neighborhoods a few blocks over so dark I couldn't even see the street in front of me.�

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
12:00 PM
Law Room 1314

To learn more about Prof. Kang's work in this area, please see:
Audio link to interview Prof. Jerry Kang
Transcript link of interview with Prof. Jerry Kang

UCLA School of Law's Critical Race Studies Program

presents

Hurricane Katrina: Bringing the People and the Issues Home
A Public Educational Forum on Natural Disaster,
Social Justice, and the Law

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
12:00 PM
Law Room 1314

To access Prof. Kang's archived presentation on exam writing, please see:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/kang/Talks/talks.html

To access Prof. Kang's web page, please see:
http://jerrykang.net

Noon
Room 1314.

Please RSVP Robin Lee at leer@law.ucla.edu

Download file

GOOD HOPE, La. - Near this speck on the map southwest of New Orleans, where an oil refinery spouts flames into the sky and alligators are said to lurk in the green canals, sits something that is causing consternation across Louisiana: a camp for out-of-state workers cleaning up after the flood.

The camp, operated by a New York company called LVI Services, is not much to look at: a row of tractor-trailers crammed with bunks, a long line of portable toilets, a couple of R.V.'s and three tents with striped roofs. Gun-packing guards wear black T-shirts reading, "Police."

It is a temporary home for hundreds of LVI's workers, some of whom said they were in the United States illegally. They are commuting into New Orleans, swabbing the mold off walls, ripping the guts out of buildings, removing mountains of soggy debris.

Like many in New Orleans, NO/AIDS Task Force, one of the oldest and largest
AIDS service organizations in the Gulf South, was greatly affected by
Hurricane Katrina. Some of our facilities were badly damaged, our staff,
clients and volunteers were displaced all around the country and our largest
yearly fundraiser, our annual NO/AIDS Walk was cancelled. The cancellation
of the 16th annual NO/AIDS Walk means a loss of hundreds of thousands of
dollars at a time when the agency needs it the most.

NO/AIDS needs your help more than ever. The Task Force is asking for help in
replacing their lost Walk with a Virtual Walk, which runs from Oct 12 to Dec
16. Instead of walking with your feet, you're asked to walk with your
keyboard. It's easy for you - and vital for NO/AIDS! The Task Force is
asking anyone concerned about the fight against AIDS, to join them by
registering at www.noaidstaskforce.org as an individual, starting a team or
joining a team. Once you're registered, you will be able to turn your email
into a powerful fundraising tool. NO/AIDS is also accepting general
donations through the virtual walk site.

NO/AIDS Task Force is struggling to get its doors open to services for their
clients and anyone infected or affected by HIV/AIDS as they return to the
New Orleans area. They have already reopened their medication disbursement
program and are also offering client services, food distribution and mental
health services on a limited basis, and intend to continue adding services
in the coming weeks. These efforts depend greatly on the success of the
Virtual Walk. Please join in the efforts to help NO/AIDS and the clients
they serve by registering at www.noaidstaskforce.org. Please help us spread
the word, by passing this email along to anyone who may be interested.

More information and registration at http://www.noaidstaskforce.org

We recently spent a week in New Orleans and southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration.

Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect--the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city.

In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with. Until a grand jury or Congressional committee begins to uncover the answers, the moral (as opposed to simply physical) reconstruction of the New Orleans region will remain impossible.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the surrounding areas, critics charged that a lack of concern for poor and black people who lived in the devastated areas was behind the slow response to the disaster, the assumption being that low-income people and black people were disproportionately likely to be victims. Even among victims, blacks and poor people were seen as more likely to suffer hardships than whites and high-income people.

Results from a CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey* allow a comparison of racial and income effects among actual hurricane victims. The poll was conducted six weeks after the storm hit the Gulf Coast. Interviews were conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 9 among people who had applied for Red Cross assistance because of damage they had suffered from Katrina. The Red Cross database included more than 463,000 names, and the poll interviewed a random sample of 1,510 by telephone, some by landline and others by cell phone.

A comparison of the experiences reported by these people shows that blacks and poor people were indeed more likely than whites and high-income people, respectively, to suffer from the hurricane. It also shows that there were larger racial differences than income differences.