The New York Times has an interesting article that describes how many Wal-Mart employees have taken the initiative, after repeated failed attempts to form a union, to form their own voluntary worker associations to fight back against Wal-Mart’s exploitative practices of reducing employee hours so that they lower their labor costs and so that their employees no longer qualify for health insurance:

The group is urging the State of Florida to grant unemployment benefits to workers whose hours have been cut back by Wal-Mart. It is arguing that workers who quit Wal-Mart because the reduced hours meant they were not earning enough to live on deserve jobless benefits. It also wants supplemental jobless benefits for workers with reduced hours who remain at Wal-Mart. . . .

The association is the latest attempt by labor and community groups to squeeze at Wal-Mart’s pressure points. In the past month, the food and commercial workers have led an effort, joined by the nation’s two big teachers unions, urging consumers not to purchase school supplies at Wal-Mart. . . .

Mr. McDonough said his union hoped that Wal-Mart workers would grow so emboldened and that community support would grow so strong that unions could succeed at organizing some Wal-Marts in a few years. The new association is not urging shoppers to boycott Wal-Mart.

It’s an encouraging development, I guess. Wal-Mart has been ruthless in preventing unionization in their stores up to this point, so we’ll have to wait and see how successful these new but different attempts are. But it’s good to see that Wal-Mart employees are taking the initiative to organize themselves this time, rather than rely on external organizations trying to do it for them.

Despite the college admissions scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, statistics these days show that Asian Americans are disproportionately overrepresented as students in many of the country’s top universities, especially in California, the state with the largest Asian American population. An article at Inside Higher Education highlights how Asian Americans are approaching 50% of the student population at U.C. Berkeley and how this has led to changes in the racial politics on campus:

When Fred Chang, a senior and president of Pi Alpha Phi, came to the University of California at Berkeley five years ago, he saw not one, but two Asian American fraternities -- Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon -- representing the only two nationally recognized Asian American fraternities in the nation. Only a handful of colleges in the nation outside of California have both. . . .

[Chang] said membership [at Pi Alpha Phi] has been cut in half in his time at Berkeley, and now there are only 16 brothers, all Asian American. He said he doesn’t “really see the point” of having clubs that are exclusively Asian, and does not think Pi Alpha Phi can survive unless non-Asian students are recruited.

Chang thinks that the increasing number of Asians will actually doom some exclusively Asian groups because students don’t feel the need to join a club to fit in. “Everyone tries to assimilate,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a future here in trying to hold on to [exclusively Asian] tradition.” . . .

Chang said there’s even some backlash over Asian organizations. Lambda Phi Epsilon, the other Asian fraternity, no longer attends Interfraternity Council meetings because members didn’t feel welcome. “A lot of the mainstream fraternities throw events together,” he said, but “we’re not as welcome.

In other words, in an environment where being Asian meant that you were in the minority, it would be natural for Asian American students to want to unite around their similar status and situations. However, in this case, as Asian Americans are increasingly becoming the norm -- or at least make up a numerical majority -- on many campuses around the country, the pressure now is to assimilate and disperse so that other racial groups are not threatened.

Interesting, isn’t it? It seems that the tables have been turned -- Whites who used to be the majority and the norm and increasingly feeling resentful of no longer being the majority and the norm around campus these days. It’s actually quite similar to what happened when many suburbs in CA shifted from predominantly White to predominantly Asian -- many longtime White residents resented the “takeover” of “their” neighborhood.

The reality is that this demographic shift toward larger numbers of Asians on campuses and in American society in general is not going to stop any time soon. But change always brings resistance and conflict. This article illustrates one example of what that conflict might look like. Needless to say, there are sure to be more to come . . .

I suppose it was inevitable -- as the Associated Press reports, parts of legislation proposed by the Bush administration to help individuals and businesses recover from the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina are likely to help those who are already affluent, rather than the neediest:

The Congressional Research Service report said some elements of the tax assistance would do more for wealthier taxpayers because many lower income individuals and families pay little tax. Lower income survivors are also less likely to have retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs.

However, the same tax measure includes assistance specifically for lower-income families that would help the working poor hang onto their income tax credits, which can be disrupted by unemployment or family separation. . . .

To be fair, there are several parts of the legislation that would specifically target low-income victims of the disaster, and that this proposed legislation apparently has bilateral support. However, I still find it rather dubious to hear that affluent individuals and businesses may still get a disproportionate share of the relief provisions.

This follows on top of reports from CNN and others that contractors with close ties to the Bush administration are getting plum federal contracts to clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

And of course, we can’t forget how the Michael Brown, former Director of FEMA who was forced to resign in disgrace for his completely inept mishandling of the disaster, was a political appointee of the Bush administration who had very little prior experience handling emergency relief operations.

Sadly, it’s like Haliburton all over again and another example of just how thoroughly corrupt this administration is.

Reuters has an article that describes that two young ethnic Chinese men in Singapore were recently charged with with violating the country’s strict rules about disseminating Internet postings that are intolerant of racial, ethnic, or religious groups:

The two ethnic Chinese men, aged 25 and 27, face charges for promoting ill-will and hostility between ethnic communities on their personal websites, or “blogs,” in June. The police said both men were accused of posting racist remarks aimed at Singapore’s mostly-Muslim ethnic Malay community. If convicted, they may be jailed for up to three years or fined up to S$5,000, or both.

Singapore has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, but also some of the toughest media laws. Singapore police have wide powers to intercept online messages, and Internet service providers are required to block websites containing material that may be a threat to public security, national defense, racial and religious harmony and public morality.

I’m not sure how I feel about this particular practice. On the one hand, I believe in freedom of expression, even when it’s speech that I strongly disagree with. I’ve said before and I still believe that freedom of expression belongs to everyone, not just for those with whom you agree. Based on that, punishing people for their thoughts is not right.

On the other hand, as a sociologist and a person of color, I am also aware that certain kinds of speech are more dangerous than others. That is, when speech promotes violence or virulent intolerance of minority groups, that is where I draw the line. This is also consistent with hate crimes statutes that prohibit such speech, even if it does not eventually lead to violence. On those grounds, if the postings of these citizens in Singapore promoted this sort of blatant intolerance, that might be a reasonable justification to punish them.

However, as news organizations such as CNN report, a new publication by the organization Reporters Without Borders seeks to help dissidents disseminate and promote their views by giving them tips on bypassing repressive censors in their countries:

In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the 87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to replace easily traceable home computer addresses. . . . The advice varies depending on the user’s level of paranoia -- from changing cyber cafes to sending cryptographically signed messages via specially formatted e-mail.

The guide explains circumvention technologies that can break through government filters but warns bloggers to check how severe the penalty will be if they are caught using them. The freely available handbook advises bloggers to be ethical and warns that the tips are not intended for terrorists, racketeers or pedophiles who use the Internet to commit crimes.

Although the line that separates freedom of expression from criminal activity may be a little blurry at times, I think this kind of publication can be a useful method to ensure freedom of speech and political dissension in an otherwise oppressive country, while at the same time, maintaining a set of ethics and responsibility so that minority groups are not threatened with hate and violence.

There are certain stereotypes applied to young college-aged White men -- that they can be loud, obnoxious, frequently drunk, and at times, racist. Here’s an instance in which all of the above seem to be true: as reported by the Michigan Daily, two college students are suspected of committing a hate crime against young Asian students by, among other things, shouting racial epitaphs at them and urinating on them:

The incident began when one of the suspects, a 21-year-old, allegedly urinated from a second-floor balcony on two Asian students walking [by]. . . . After the couple asked why they were being urinated on, the suspect and another student reportedly began to use racial slurs disparaging the couple’s Asian heritage.

The situation escalated, according to a police report, when at least one student began throwing items, which the couple suspected were eggs, at the couple. One of the students was immediately taken into custody. The other student who urinated on the couple, barricaded himself in the apartment, which the police could not enter without a warrant.

However, the AAPD knows the identity of the student, who could face jail time if prosecuted. AAPD Lt. Michael Logghe classified the crime as ethnic intimidation, or verbal or physical attack against a person of another race or gender. Logghe said ethnic intimidation is a felony and carries a maximum penalty of four years in jail.

The suspects could also be charged with assault, and one of the suspects could face a charge of indecent exposure, which would require him to register as a sex offender.

Not surprisingly, the suspects have a different version of what occurred.

Forgive me if I’m a little biased, but at this point, I believe the Asian American students more than the accused suspects. Even if the suspects did not actually urinate on the students, I can almost guarantee that some sort of racially-motivated provocation happened, with racial slurs being used profusely.

Isn’t it nice to see these young White male college students doing everything they can to dispel and contradict these stereotypes about them? I can also already see their parents trying to make excuses for them: “Oh, they were just trying to have fun” or “It was just a small incident that got blown out of proportion.”

If their parents say something like that, will it be any wonder where they learned that such behavior was acceptable?

I consider myself a “car enthusiast” and I was browsing through one of my regular reads earlier today, AutoBlog, and came across a link that has pictures of sports cars that have been “Photoshopped” (an image that’s been digitally modified) to produce cute little minicars such as this one on the right. Pretty cool!

The Boston Herald has a story about how Boston police and working together with several small businesses, many of them owned by Asian Americans -- particularly Vietnamese Americans, on preventing unruly teenagers from shoplifting, vandalizing, and even assaulting store owners, as was the case last year:

Vietnamese merchants in Fields Corner who were terrorized by unruly middle school students last school year are back on edge with the start of classes even as police crack down on the young punks. The after-school rush turned violent for many shop owners along Dorchester Avenue during the past year as crowds of students harassed store clerks, shoplifted and even assaulted merchants. . . .

Boston police Capt. Frank Armstrong assigned two beat cops to cover Fields Corner full time in response to the after-school violence. During the day, three patrol cars roam the neighborhood, and two extra uniformed police officers work from 12 to 4 p.m. Armstrong said helping the store owners has become a priority.

It is nice to see examples of local police working with Asian Americans, rather than ignoring them or even working against them. Many times, police and other government agencies are too quick to buy into the image of Asian Americans as the “model minority” who don’t experience any discrimination. Hopefully this cooperation ends up being an example of cultural understanding and community unity.

As many news organizations such as CNN are reporting, North Korea has just announced that it has agreed to give up its entire nuclear program, after initially demanding that it retain the right to develop its civilian sector use of nuclear energy:

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and to IAEA safeguards,” the statement said. . . .

The joint statement also includes a pledge that Pyongyang and Washington will “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations” -- a considerable change in the tone in relations between the nations. . . . In exchange, the United States, China, Japan, Russian and South Korea have “stated their willingness” to provide energy assistance to North Korea, as well as promote economic cooperation. . . .

A Bush administration official told CNN that Pyongyang’s promise is significant, but noted the North Koreans must show they will allow for verification, including rejoining the international nuclear inspections regime which would allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to re-enter the country.

As with most observers, I think this is a very promising development, perhaps even a breakthrough. But I happen to agree with the administration in this case, that promises are one thing, but actual follow-through and implementation will be something else. However, it does seem as though North Korea’s leaders are sincere this time, as they have been easing their approach towards the west and the U.S. in recent months. We’ll have to hope that this will work out to everyone’s benefit.