After more than four years of refusing to deal comprehensively with bullying in schools, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced a major new initiative to combat the problem that they have minimized in the past, but now acknowledge impedes “our students’ ability to learn.”

The two officials were surrounded at a hastily called press conference on Wed., Sept. 3, by advocates of the Dignity in All Schools Act (DASA), a 2004 City Council bill that mandated most of what Bloomberg is implementing only now. He vetoed that earlier bill, dismissing it then as “silly” and “illegal,” and the Council did not take him to court after it overrode the veto, but the mayor still refused to implement the law....

[P]ressure from the Sikh Coalition may have been the key to turning it into the chancellor’s regulations announced last week. Amardeep Singh, executive director of the coalition, said a survey of 400 Sikh students in New York City Schools found 65 percent had faced bias-based harassment, such as being called “terrorist or Osama,” and that 20 percent had been “touched or hit.” The coalition demanded the regulations in a June 30 march through Richmond Hill, Queens, compelling Klein finally to promise them action.

“We made substantial progress,” Singh said. “For the necessary sea change to take place, we still have work to do.” The group wants to see public reporting by category of harassment victims, something the mayor said would be done but which Singh said is not explicit in the regulations.

Singh also said he and his group had absolutely no problem with Sikh children being taught to respect gays and lesbians.

“We believe in equality for all,” he said, decrying the idea that “anybody’s dignity would be denigrated.” He noted that two Sikh members of the Canadian Parliament voted for same-sex marriage to the consternation of Sikh leaders in India but not in their home districts. [Link]

When vandals attacked Montreal's École Les

Jeunes Musulmans Canadiens last year, it took thousands of dollars to replace the school's shattered windows and months of counselling to help its traumatized students.

But no amount of money and no amount of counselling could completely erase the nagging worry that it could happen again or the knowledge that under Canada's Criminal Code, the hate-based attack on their Muslim school carries no more penalty than spray painting initials on a wall.

That's why Nabiha El-Wafai is among those who supports legislation tabled by Bloc Québécois MP Carole Freeman that would amend the code to prohibit hate-based vandalism against all buildings used by religious, ethnic and sexual minority groups,

"I think a bill like that could be perfect," El-Wafai, head of the school's primary sector, said in a telephone interview. "If there is a law that would protect places like schools, it could make people who think of committing such acts back up before doing it."

El-Wafai said adopting the bill would send an important message to communities like hers that the Canadian government cares about their welfare.

She's not alone.

Yesterday, members of all three opposition parties teamed up with representatives of a variety of religious and ethnic groups to show support for Freeman's bill, which is scheduled to begin debate tomorrow.

Bloc officials said yesterday that if all goes well, the bill should make it through committee and a final vote by the House of Commons by May or June. [Link]

SALDEF Expresses Disappointment with Congressional Defeat of Landmark Hate Crimes Legislation

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) . . . today expressed its extreme disappointed with the recent defeat of vital hate crime legislation in Congress.

"Every year, Sikh Americans across the nation find themselves the victims of hate crimes without any support from their local police departments," remarked SALDEF National Director Rajbir Singh Datta. "The United States Congress must exemplify the courage necessary to ensure that we are welcoming of our nation's diversity rather than in strict opposition to it."

The bill would have strengthened the ability of federal, state, and local governments to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. The bill helps state and local anti-bias efforts by enabling the Justice Department to assist them in the investigation and prosecution of all hate crimes. This bill is vital in areas of the United States where the local officials choose not, or do not, have the resources to investigate and prosecute assailants of hate crimes. [Link]

The mother of a 14-year-old Sikh girl is planning a legal challenge after her daughter was excluded from her school for wearing a religious wrist bangle.
Sarika Singh was sent home by the school after she refused to remove her silver Kara bangle as she felt it was “a constant reminder to do good.” Aberdare Girls School in south Wales said it had a clear code of conduct and it had temporarily excluded a pupil for refusing to accept a ruling from the governors.Jane Rosser, the head teacher, said that wearing the Kara was against regulations because it was a piece of jewellery.
The only two forms of jewellery that girls were allowed to wear in school were a wrist watch and one pair of plain metal stud earrings.
However the Sikh girl's supporters claimed the school's decision infringed her human rights.
The girl's mother Sanita Singh, 38, said she was taking legal advice and was considering seeking a judicial review.
She had the support of several local politicians and the Sikh Federation UK, she added.
She said the teenager would remove the bangle for gym classes, or wood and metalwork, for safety reasons.
She added: “It is not jewellery. It is part of our faith and symbol of our belief.”
She added: “We feel very strongly that Sarika has a right to manifest her religion. She is not asking for anything big and flashy, she is not making a big fuss, she just wants a reminder of her religion.”
Her daughter's interest in the Sikh faith intensified after the family visited India, including the Golden Temple in Amritsar, two years ago.
"I don't believe in putting pressure on children to follow a certain religion, but Sarika decided for herself that she wanted to be a practising Sikh,” Mrs Singh, a mother-of-two, added.
Sarika, of Cwmbach, near Aberdare, said: “I am a Sikh and it is very important for me to wear the Kara because it is a symbol of my faith and a constant reminder that I should only do good work, and never do anything bad, with my hands.
“It is a comfort to me and a confidence booster when I am doing my exams. The reason I am fighting for my right to wear the Kara is because I want to stand up for the right of all the other Sikh pupils across the country to wear their Karas in school.The governors rejected the girl's request to wear the bangle after examining the uniform policy and human rights legislation in detail.
The family has been backed by the Valleys Race Equality Council, whose director is the former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies.
He said: “We have arranged for her to see a solicitor and an application will be made to the High Court for a judicial review of the school's decision.
“We believe the school is acting in contravention both of the 1976 Race Relations Act and of human rights legislation.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/07/nbangle107.xml

full article also on http://ethnicconfusionbritain.blogware.com/blog

Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made one of his first priorities in the fall sitting of Parliament a bill to force voters to show their faces at the polls.

But there is not one shred of evidence that such a problem existed in the first place. Even Harper's Conservative government has admited "there was no apparent case of fraud" in three federal by-elections that were held in September in Quebec, when unjustified hysteria over veiled Muslim women first boiled over.

Yet that has not stopped Harper from trying to fix this imaginary problem by proposing changes to the country's election law that would require voters to show their faces before they cast their ballots. The opposition parties are just as guilty of stirring up this issue, even though the Liberals and NDP now appear less enthusiastic about the measure than they did only a month ago.

Harper has tried to dress up the bill as a means to "enhance public confidence in the democratic process." But it has nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with pandering to narrow-minded fears about minorities, particularly in Quebec where a troubling debate over "reasonable accommodation" is now raging.

Glaring inconsistencies in the proposed legislation only highlight that Harper and other federal politicians are shamefully playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims.

For one thing, the bill does little to achieve Harper's stated goal of improving the visual identification of voters. Voters are still not required to show photo identification in order to vote. They can present two pieces of non-photo ID approved by Elections Canada instead.

One acceptable combination is a debit card and a bank statement, neither of which contains a photo, age or physical description. In that case, showing your face might prevent you from voting twice, but does nothing to establish who you are in the first place.

Nor does it prove anything to show your face while being vouched for by another voter, another method of getting a ballot.

At the same time, Canadians temporarily living overseas who vote by mail do not have to show their faces to election officials. Approximately 80,000 people mailed in their ballots in the 2006 election. Why isn't Harper worried about them?

By singling out veiled Muslim women, Harper and others have seized on one of the most visible signs of difference in our multicultural society in order to make a point: If minorities want to exercise all their rights as Canadians citizens, they need to act more like "us."

Absent real security concerns, Harper is sacrificing the openness and inclusiveness on which this country was built in order to appeal to the ethnic prejudices of a few. That is not the Canadian way.

When it comes up for debate in the House of Commons, opposition parties should take a stand against fearmongering and intolerance by voting against this odious bill. [Link]

Senate Bill will help protect victims of hate crimes

This morning the Senate passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (LLEHCPA). The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), the nation’s oldest and largest Sikh American civil rights and advocacy organization, worked with a national coalition of over 200 civil rights, faith-based, law enforcement, and women’s groups working to ensure passage of this bill.

“Today the Senate sends a clear message that crimes motivated by hate will not be tolerated in America, and that such offenses will be prosecuted with vigor. As a nation dedicated to the ideals of equality and mutual understanding, we have a special responsibility to combat bigotry that takes the form of violence,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the bill which passed with bipartisan support.

LLEHCPA will allow the federal government to assist states and local law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Doing so will make communities safer for people of different backgrounds. The law extends hate crime legislation to those states where current laws are inadequate. [SALDEF Press Release]

As Democratic leaders crowed Wednesday about nearing completion of a bill to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, some civil liberty advocates and lawmakers were furious that conferees slipped in language that they said could substantially increase racial profiling across the country.

The measure would grant liability protection for people who divulge information to authorities about possible terrorist actions. It was included in the conference report at the insistence of Republicans, with support from a key independent and some Democrats.

The final provision is not as far-reaching as previous versions. It would only apply to people giving information in good faith and would not protect those making false statements with “reckless disregard” for the truth, aides said. [Link]

Protection from lawsuits for wrongly reporting suspicious behavior has failed to pass the U.S. Congress.

The legislation was inspired by a suit brought by a group of Muslim imams who were removed from a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix before it left Minneapolis last November, The Washington Times reported. Some passengers on the plane said they had seen the imams, behaving suspiciously by praying together before boarding.

The imams, who were allowed to leave after several hours of FBI questioning, sued the airline, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission and unnamed passengers.

Democratic leaders said that the lawsuit protection could lead to racial profiling. The provision was kept out of a homeland security bill during a House-Senate conference.

"This is a slap in the face of good citizens who do their patriotic duty and come forward, and it caves in to radical Islamists," said Rep. Peter King, R-NY, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee. [Link]

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) strongly urges all Sikh Religious Leaders to sign on to an interfaith letter in support of The Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) (Senate bill number S. 1105). In the previous Congress, this bill enjoyed broad bi-partisan and law enforcement support from across the nation.

The interfaith letter, available online at www.ClergyAgainstHate.org, urges United States Senators to co-sponsor and pass ground breaking hate crimes legislation which will provide local governments with necessary resources to serve their communities.

Bias crimes are increasingly a cause for concern within the Sikh American community in a pre- and post-9/11 context. The FBI Hate Crime Report, although voluntary, has documented over 115,000 hate crimes since 1991. In 2005, 7,183 hate crimes were reported, of which, 17.1 percent were perpetrated against individuals of faith and 14.2 percent against ethnic minorities.

Current law authorizes federal involvement only in those cases in which the victim was targeted because of race, color, religion, or national origin. Unfortunately, some local jurisdictions neither have the resources nor will to investigate and prosecute assailants alleged to have committed a hate crime. Additionally, current law does not protect victims on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.

LLEHCPA will allow the federal government to assist states and local law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes when the local agencies request such support. Doing so will make our nation safer for all Americans and allow smaller municipalities to procure additional resources to effectively investigate and prosecute bias crimes. The law also extends serious hate crime legislation to those states where current laws are inadequate. [SALDEF Press Release]

Last night, the U.S. Senate passed legislation authored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) to examine the treatment of German Americans, Italian Americans and other European Americans during World War II as well as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The legislation passed as an amendment to the Immigration Reform Bill. Senator Feingold made the following statement on the legislation’s passage today:

“I am pleased that the Senate overwhelmingly voted for an official government study of how German Americans, Italian Americans, and Jewish refugees were treated by our government during World War II. I first introduced this legislation in 2001 after hearing from a group of German Americans in Wisconsin who were concerned that this sad chapter in our nation’s history had gone unnoticed for too long. It was only decades after World War II that they felt comfortable coming forward to ask for this acknowledgement. I thought it was only appropriate for a country that prides itself on equality and justice to acknowledge and learn from its mistakes.

“Americans are rightly proud of our victory in World War II, but while there has been study of the internment and relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, few people know about our government’s failure to protect the basic rights of German and Italian Americans. We also must understand why, as the United States heroically battled fascism, our government turned away thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, delivering many of them to their deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime. By passing my legislation, we can learn from these tragedies while some of the people who survived these injustices are still with us.” [Link]

Is immunity for those who report information the way to deal with aircraft safety?

Identical bills introduced in mid-May in the U.S. House and Senate would purport to grant immunity from civil suit anyone who reports suspicious activity that poses a threat to an aircraft.

The bills are a response to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Minneapolis from an incident last November in which US Airways removed several Islamic clerics (imams) from a flight just prior to takeoff, after receiving reports from passengers that they behaved in a way that suggested they might be planning an attack.

The bills would protect passengers who "in good faith" report suspicious activity. The bills would be effective retroactive to last November, hence would preclude suit by the clerics against the passengers. To date, the clerics do not have the names of the passengers but are suing them as "John Does," hoping to get their names from US Airways.

The scenario here -- hence the supposed need for legislation -- is more than a little strange. People who board an aircraft planning to hijack it or commit some other terrorist-type act are not likely to draw attention to themselves by engaging in suspicious conduct as the flight is preparing for departure. The Sept. 11 hijackers, from what is known, remained quiet until they were in the air.

The need to provide immunity for passengers is also not clear. There is little chance that a suit against a passenger who in good faith reports suspicious activity would pass the pre-trial stage. It was not the passengers in the November incident who removed the clerics. It was US Airways.

Backers of the legislation say that it is too easy to sue, even with no legal basis. However, great risk is taken by a plaintiff, and by a plaintiff's lawyer, in filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure calls for sanctions, including money sanctions, against a lawyer who files a frivolous lawsuit. The defendant may be able to collect the defendant's costs, including attorney fees, from the plaintiff.

Whatever one thinks of the aim behind the bills, they may not achieve their purpose. That is so because the bills immunize only a person who reports suspicious activity "in good faith."

The bills deny immunity to anyone who knows that the information they report is false. Thus, a plaintiff could argue that the person could not have made the report in good faith, and therefore that no immunity applies. [Link]

An ordinance that bans profiling was approved Wednesday by the Detroit City Council. It prohibits police and city employees from asking about the immigration status of residents.

The council voted unanimously for the law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, dress, physical appearance and immigration status. Under the new law, police cannot ask people for their immigration papers unless it was related to a crime.

In Detroit, some immigrants complain that, after being pulled over by police, they have been asked for residency papers. Others say they are afraid to apply for city help or programs such as home-repair assistance because of their immigration status.

"It's not something a city employee should be asking," said City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr., who introduced the bill. "It's not within their purview."

Cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles have passed similar ordinances in recent years, making them what are sometimes referred to as sanctuary cities.

The ordinance was introduced after talks with Latino, Arab and Muslim groups. [Link]

Three years ago, the Ismail family stared in disbelief as an inferno rose from their convenience store in Northeast San Antonio.
The Conoco food mart at 14330 Nacogdoches Road had been torched by a man Kabiruddin and Mumtaz Ismail didn't know, but whom police said acted out of bias toward them. Their store was one of five targeted by arson or vandalism between 2003 and 2004 whose operators were of foreign descent, according to San Antonio police and arson investigators.

Kabiruddin and his wife, Mumtaz, have lived in San Antonio for more than 25 years and are now U.S. citizens. But to the arsonist, what mattered was that the two are Muslim and originally from Pakistan. That's why the fire — set at about 3 a.m. April 9, 2004 — was classified as a hate crime and the man who pleaded guilty to setting it, 35-year-old Thomas C. Carroll, was sent to prison for 30 years.

That outcome was unusual, however.

Fourteen years after Texas passed its own hate crimes law, prosecutions remain few — eight in the past six years. The state did not keep track of hate crime prosecutions before 2001, but a report issued in 2000 by the Human Rights Commission, a national civil-rights group, said the Texas hate crime law had only been used "a couple of times" since it was first enacted in 1993.

Prosecutors here complain that the law poses the difficult hurdle of proving that suspects are motivated by hatred, and similar concerns have also been heard regarding federal hate crime law, with prosecutors and civil rights groups complaining that the bar is set too high.

Mumtaz Ismail and her son, Shehzad, talk about the family's struggles in rebuilding their convenience store after it was burned down.

In those cases, the government must prove that a defendant committed an offense not only because of a victim's race, color, religion or national origin, but also because of their participation in one of six narrowly defined "federally protected activities" — interfering with someone's voting rights, for example.

As a measure of the current confusion over the effectiveness of hate crime laws, Democrats in Congress and in Austin, including state Sen. Rodney Ellis, the Houston Democrat who pushed for the Texas law, are seeking both to toughen existing measures and study why they aren't being more widely used.

In Austin, a bill being sponsored by state Sens. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, and Royce West, D-Dallas, would amend the Texas hate crime law to add the homeless as a protected class. Van de Putte said attacks on the homeless in San Antonio spurred her to support the measure.

A bill introduced by Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, calls for the state attorney general to study how effective the law has been.

It's unclear how these measures will fare as the session's May 28 end date nears.

Ellis pushed for expansion of the state hate crime law in 2001 in the wake of the highly publicized murder of James Byrd Jr., an African American man dragged to his death by three white men. That year, the law was also renamed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act.

"We are trying to get more information on why those numbers are where they are," said Jeremy Warren, a spokesman for Ellis. "As much as we'd like to believe that hate crimes aren't occurring, we know that isn't the case."

Speaking out

The FBI defines hate crimes as those motivated by prejudice, hatred or advocacy of violence against victims because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability.

A 1968 federal law protects people against violence and intimidation because of their race, color, religion or national origin. It was followed by a patchwork of legislation meant to close loopholes and enhance sentences.

A series of failed attempts to include other groups of people as protected classes under the law also followed. Forty-five states, including Texas, have passed their own hate crime laws.

On May 3, the House passed a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, that would add sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability as protected classes and increase penalties to up to life in prison if the offenses involved kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to kill a person protected by the bill.

The so-called "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act" proposal would presumably remove hurdles so it can be used more. The bill would also authorize $5 million for fiscal 2008 and 2009 for grants to law enforcement agencies — no more than $100,000 per agency per year — to help cover expenses associated with the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes.

"The point (Conyers) is trying to make is A) these crimes are greatly under-reported, and B) there is a lack of prosecution because locals lack the resources," said Melanie Roussell, a press secretary for Conyers.

In Bexar County, no one has been prosecuted federally for a hate crime in the past eight years, but officials say there likely were prosecutions under the larger civil rights section of federal law.

The arson at the Ismails' store is counted among hundreds of incidents labeled "hate crimes" in Texas since 2000. It was one of 30 such incidents reported in Bexar County and 309 in the state in 2004.

One reason for few prosecutions, say community leaders and advocates, is that victims can be reluctant to report incidents that might well be defined as hate crimes.

"A lot of them, they don't speak out," said Pamela Lim-Jensen, a state licensed Korean-language interpreter in San Antonio. "They have a language barrier, they don't know the law or their rights or they're afraid it might backfire on them."

Sarwat Husain, president of the San Antonio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said others won't come forward because they are afraid of a backlash.

"The fear factor is high in the community," Husain said. Hate crime "is under-reported."

Until now, the Ismails have opted not to speak publicly for fear of retaliation.

Today, they proudly talk about the Conoco they struggled two years to rebuild. Shehzad Ismail, their only son, said it was best to speak up in order to educate the community about what took place, and to heal.

Using the law

The Texas hate crime law allows prosecutors to seek stiffer penalties, called enhancements, for lower-level crimes like arson if district attorneys can show the victims were selected "because of a defendant's bias or prejudice" against them.
After complaints from prosecutors that the law was too vague, it was amended in 2001 to list specific categories of people who are protected. It now protects race, religion, color, sex, disability, sexual preference, age and national origin.

But amending the law has yielded little in the way of prosecutions, according to the state judiciary's statistics, which show that districts attorney have pursued hate-crimes enhancements eight times since 2001 — despite more than 1,600 incidents in Texas reported to the FBI during that period.

No one keeps track of state-by-state hate-crime prosecutions, so it is unclear what kind of job Texas is doing. Federal law requires the FBI to collect statistics on hate crime incidents from state and local jurisdictions that voluntarily report them, but not to keep track of prosecutions. In Texas, counties must report to the state's judiciary any time prosecutors file enhancements under the state law, and the outcome.

Prosecutors may choose not to seek an enhancement because there is insufficient evidence that the crime was motivated by hate. Instead, they may opt to prosecute an offender for a more serious crime, like attempted murder, which already carries high penalties, said Rob Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

"Texas law is already so broad," he said. "It's a good system that accommodates all kinds of motives. In cases where you already have facts that justify the death penalty or a first-degree felony charge, there's very little utility to a hate-crime enhancement."

Beverly McPhail, an adjunct social work professor who runs the Women's Resource Center at the University of Houston, examined the issue as part of her dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. She interviewed 19 prosecutors and a summary of her findings was published in October in the Prosecutor, a magazine of the National Association of District Attorneys.

She said prosecutors prefer not to include the enhancements because doing so creates an extra evidentiary burden and may lead to acquittal.

"One of the biggest things prosecutors don't like is having to prove bias," McPhail said. "They want to win the case. They don't care how they win the case."

Fighting hate

Carroll, of San Antonio, was suspected of setting fire to at least five businesses operated by Muslims or Hindus, and had been investigated for several weeks. However, the federal government did not prosecute him because it could not show he violated federal hate crime law and the state already was prosecuting him, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Baumann and FBI spokesman Erik Vasys said.

The Bexar County district attorney's office — which accounted for half of the state's eight hate crime prosecutions — charged Carroll with arson, a second-degree felony but later re-indicted him under the state's hate crime law. The upgrade raised the potential penalty to a maximum of 99 years in prison.

Carroll was sentenced to 30 years as part of a plea deal in which he admitted setting three of fires because of bias.

"We think (the sentence) sends a strong message," First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said. "This stuff is not going to be tolerated here."

That message has been clear to the Ismails.

After the fire, a steady flow of customers came with condolences, hugs and hundreds of dollars in donations.

"We're a nation made up of everybody is what people don't realize," said Mark Brownlowe, a repeat customer. "It wouldn't be America otherwise." [Link]

[S]ix years after 9-11, Muslims in America continue to be the targets of violence and abuse.

We especially need it now, with President Bush threatening a veto of legislation that would expand the national hate crime law. Currently, the federal government is only allowed to get involved if a hate crime specifically targets a federally protected activity. Voting, for example.

The president believes the new law isn't needed. There are already state and local laws addressing the issue of hate crimes, he says....

Official state data shows that, in 2005, 260 hate crimes were reported in Florida. Of those, 36 percent were attacks based on religion and ethnicity.

But that's misleading. Because Muslims -- particularly in these post-9-11 days when they feel so isolated from the rest of American society -- tend not to report such crimes....

And things seem to be worsening rather than improving....

The reality is that a lot of people are scared of Muslims. They think anyone who prays facing Mecca is a possible suicide bomber.

Which is precisely why expanding the federal government's power to deal with hate crimes is a good idea.

You would think signing off on the new hate crime law would be a no-brainer, particularly given the president's horrendous reputation among Muslims. [Link]

As a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Brad Sherman called for a Federal Hate Crimes statute to become the law of the land during the annual Baisakhi celebrations held April 8 at the Los Angeles Convention Center here.

With the Democratic Party having captured Congress in the recent elections, "I'm convinced that we will be able to pass such a bill and add it to California's law," he told the gathering of Sikh men and women from throughout Southern California.

Since France has prohibited the wearing of religious attire in public, Sherman also told the gathering that he has sponsored a resolution with 41 co-sponsors "to put the United States on record, saying that religious garb is a human right that ought to be respected by all governments that are concerned with human rights regardless of which religion, regardless of which country." [Link]

Sikh American Community Encouraged to Contact Local Legislators to Support Important Bill

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), the nation’s oldest Sikh American civil rights advocacy organization, today applauds Congress for taking the first step in passing a new piece of legislation aimed at protecting the nation’s communities from hate violence.

Late yesterday, U.S. House of Representative Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), introduced H.R. 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime’s Prevention Act of 2007. The legislation, which has enjoyed bipartisan support from this Congress, and has 137 co-sponsors already, will provide assistance to state and local law enforcement agencies and amend federal law to facilitate with the investigation and prosecution of violent, bias-motivated crimes. [SALDEF Press Release]