Invitation to Hilarity

Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

26th Asian American International Film Fest

The 26th Asian American International Film Festival:

FRIDAY, JUNE 20 - SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 2003
Presented by Asian CineVision in association with Asia Society

Anyone going?

Happy Summer (or Lazy ronn)

My schedule is phucked for the summer. So here's a few items all bunched together till next week when I'll post a few medium to large items on Monday, Wednesday, and possibly Friday (fingers crossed).

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[ from George, via randomWalks ] :

ronn's SupaLink of the week | Asian Pride Porn from Director Greg Pak.

(while at randomWalks, check out this interesting link/post.)

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As a former volunteer for the inaugural event, I had tons of fun and made a few contacts. It has improved in subsequent years, althoug I probably won't attend this summer (long story).

The Harlem Book Fair Needs You

The Harlem Book Fair 2003 is looking for volunteers to help pull off a week of program events. The Fair is scheduled to run from July 13 through July 19 and includes an all-day street festival on the last day.

The Fair could use your help right away. They need help with pulling together a spoken word event, a spelling bee, an event for "men who write and cook," and the Phyllis Wheatley Awards ceremony.

Especially looking for people with the following skills: Public Relations, Event Planning, Media Relations, Interest in working with kids (Spelling Bee), Can-Do Attitude.

If interested, please e-mail Program Director Toby Thompkins for more information at harlembookfair@aol.com.

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the lomographic society international Presents

[ LOMOGRAPHY JAPAN ] & [ LOMOGRAPHY ASIA ].

The latter site is allegedly in both english and chinese, although I saw very little of my mother tongue on the site. I wish I could join, but the lomo I bought a few weeks ago is nothing more than an interesting paperweight. Give me a couple more weeks and a few eBay bids; I hope to have a working Lubitel 2 and some shots then.

Peepin' Panther

Cecily is sportin' summer colors and hipped me to pre-release screenshots of Apple's upcoming Panther (Mac OS 10.3). I like what I see so far. Still not convinced I'll be shelling out $100 for this OS upgrade.

I Got 5 On It (About Damn Time!)

Wired News: Apple Leaks Power Mac G5 Details

Apple Computer is expected to debut a new line of high-end G5 Power Macs on Monday that promises to put the company at the head of the performance race with Windows PCs.

[ ... ]

The machines probably will be unveiled during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech Monday morning at the company's weeklong Worldwide Developers Conference.

The new machines were widely rumored on the Internet, but it was Apple itself that let the cat out of the bag.

The specifications appeared briefly at Apple's online store late Thursday night and were pulled within an hour -- but not before screenshots of the page were taken. Within hours, the information spread to just about every Mac-curious website on the Net.

The World's Largest Retail Discriminator?

(This is a pretty long post)

Thompson Wigdor & Gilly LLP filed a nation-wide class action civil rights lawsuit against Federated Department Stores, Macy's and individual executives including Federated CEO Terry Lundgren, alleging a pattern and practice of racial profiling of people of color for shoplifting.

Earlier this year TWG filed a lawuit after its client, Manhattan legal secretary Sharon Simmons-Thomas, was detained and accused of shoplifting at the Herald Square Macy's. This despite the fact that she had receipts for all of her Christmas season purchases and there was absolutely no evidence to support their wild claims.

Some excerpts from the above press release announcing the refiling as a class action lawsuit:

[...N]ew evidence sohws that what happened to Ms. Thomas is not an isolate incident, but rather is part of a larger and very disturbing pattern that extends across the country. Not only does Macy's have a national policy of targeting people of color for shoplifting, it regularly pressures security guards to shakedown the wrongfully accused for money as part of a shameful profit-padding scheme," said Ken Thompson, lead attorney for the class and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney {for the Southern Brooklyn region} who prosecuted the police officers responsible for violating Abner Louima's civil rights.

* Targeting "Urban Wear" sections of Macy's stores.

That last claim was highlighted by Thompson this past Sunday morning and night on Kiss-FM's news programs with Bob Slade. Before the initial suit was filed, the NYPD had a uniformed police officer stationed in the urban wear section (FUBU, Sean Jean, etc.) which is adjacent to the above mentioned holding cells. How convenient. Immediately following the lawsuit announcement, the officer disappeared. Thompson is demanding answers from the police and I'm sure there'll be some bullshit about it being OK by Commissioner Ray Kelly who is increasingly becoming an ass in relation to People of Color.

"Macy's senior management has attempted to hide it's racially-discriminatory policies by hiring non-white security staff on sales floors, but this transparent attempt at window-dressing cannot disguise that Macy's targets people of color for shoplifting," said Mr. Thompson.

Years ago I worked as a security officer at a high-end retailer on 5th Avenue near the Plaza Hotel. Let's refer to the bastards as BG. BG opened a separate men's outlet across the street from the original store. I recently left the Guggenheim in advance of their closing for renovations and expansion. Almost from the start BG managers demanded that ALL African American shoppers be followed. This despite the fact that they made up an extremely low percentage of shoppers entering the store. It didn't matter if they were dressed in "urban wear" or three-piece suits. They were followed.

BG managers, and not just security management, would get upset if Black shoppers weren't basically harassed. A few months after opening, a new reporting system was implemented. Why, I don't know. It helped confirm my suspicions that the practice of "casing" was racially discriminatory. I reformatted the form used to record all security activity. I would say at least 95% of calls to follow/tail "suspicious" customers were made against People of Color -- the vast majority of them African American males. It got so bad that virtually no Black shopper would escape scrutiny. The only exceptions were long-time customers or those shopping with white customers. I kid you not. Interesting enough, most of the fraud committed in the store was by white males opening multiple instant BG accounts and never paying on the balances. Black customers would either never be offered the chance to open an instant account or have their credit checked although all they needed to start a BG account was a credit/charge card and an official piece of identify like a drivers license. And the vast majority of persons detained for shoplifting were also white males.

When I reported several confrontations this policy generated to the personnel manager, Al S., he took a stroll around the three floors for all of maybe 10-15 minutes and judged my complaint as "exaggerated." It didn't help that other Black employees that griped about the racism demanded by BG disappeared when I told them that I reported how we all felt. Soon after, I was permanently placed at the security desk away from the floor.

I guess they thought it would keep me quiet. Instead, I started making copies of the 10-39 (police lingo for “suspicious activity”) reports and created weekly, monthly and quarterly summaries for myself. Instead of my complaint bettering the situation in the store, it actually increased BG's discrimination. Al S. and Carmine (the Security manager) felt there could be no discrimination with a virtually all non-white security staff. I believe in the 6+ years I worked security there, BG maybe had 2 white security officers. The managers and supervisors were mostly white with a few long-time Black supervisors working night and/or weekend shifts. Many of the security officers did what was mandated, fearing for their jobs or being harassed themselves.

I admit I was a big mouth. Not only about my opposition to racist policies at BG, but also about what I was doing to document the results of said policies. So much so that others knew of my personal summaries. I naively thought other security officers would support efforts to stop the discrimination and improve relations with People of Color shopping in the store. Stupid me kept the reports in security office bins used to store paperwork. After a few days off one spring the old paperwork was gone and so was any chance of continuing personal summaries. Not that it would make a difference. I had become the enemy and facts would not get in the way of the racist bastards at BG.

At one point, we were ordered to call a 10-13 (officer needs assistance) and have ALL security officers follow any group of African American males larger than 2. Talk about stressful situations. I worked the extremely early shift, 5:30am to about 3pm (I was an undergrad at the time) and was already dressed in my street clothes when a 10-13 was called. Since I was already on the floor, I watched the entire incident unfold. About a half dozen young African American males in casual clothing were browsing the floors, enjoying a late, sunny afternoon. Once they were practically surrounded and made to look like thieves, they became angry and demanded to have the reason for such bad treatment. The security officers didn't respond as mandated by BG policy. They said they were messengers and had the right to shop like white customers. They were absolutely right.

Once they immediately left the store, I went outside and told the most vocal among them to follow-up with a letter of complaint to senior management. I gave them the addresses and telephone numbers of the CEO and President of the store and parent company. I'm not sure they followed my advice, but not too long after that incident the assistant security manager of the men's store -- a dark-skinned Latino Republican conservative -- made fun of a complaint sent in by a well-dressed, articulate and "highly-paid" African American male shopper. In fact, this assistant manager would ridicule Black shoppers to their faces when they complained to him or other management. BG didn't (doesn't?) care about complaining Black shoppers. I wished for years that a lawsuit would be filed against the store and managers. I would have testified against them.

For all my troubles, I was labeled a troublemaker and basically forced to leave BG and returned to the Guggenheim. Subsequent to my complaint to Al S., a fellow security officer filed a complaint against a new assistant Security Manager for referring to a younger African American officer as looking "like a monkey" with his Afro-style haircut. "John" was targeted by the assistant manager and fired outright for a violation of policy that never occurred. I testified on his behalf on two occasions in order for him to collect unemployment benefits denied by BG. The first (unknown by BG attorneys) was unopposed by the store. The second, the Security management team was shocked to see me sitting on John's side. During testimony, I passed notes to John's attorney, contradicting statements made by BG staff, including Al S. who outright lied about not receiving the notice to appear for the first hearing because the address was incorrect. Although the address was factually incorrect, any mail sent to the men's store would automatically be forwarded to the main store across the street.

There were other lies and almost immediately after the case, I was forced to work on a construction detail within the store. This meant different, ever-changing work times, late night work, sometimes after midnight and isolation from my fellow officers except the brother-in-law of the then men's store security manager.

Feeling extremely stressed and betrayed by my fellow officers, I left BG for lower pay at the Guggenheim. I essentially gave up. I’m convinced other officers reported my unionization to BG Security Management and they wouldn’t sign pledges to seek union representation after I (along with a couple other brave/naïve souls) set up everything to improve our lot.

If you targeted by Macy’s, please contact Thompson Wigdor and Gilly to see about joining the class-action. Don’t let anyone discriminate against you.

Jaguar to Die, Long Live Panther

Here are a few updates from the Web describing details from Apple's WWDC in San Fran:

Panther

Steve Jobs: Jaguar is over. Today we're going to preview Panther, Mac OS version 10.3. It's the fourth major release of OS X. Over 100 new features.

iDisk becomes a local folder that's synchronized automatically, and it's especially helpful with multiple computers which can be synchronized through ".Mac."

Expose is a new feature that helps manage windows when you're running many applications and opening many documents - it can shrink all the windows to thumbnail images. You can assign keyboard shortcuts, screen corners or a mouse button as a trigger.

The new finder is 'user-centric', no longer 'computer-centric.' Panther features brushed metal finder windows.

Safari 1.0 released

Fixes many bugs, faster, incorporates PDFs faster and better than other Mac-platform browsers.

A free download will be available later this afternoon.

Mail Updated

Faster, addresses become objects (whatever the hell that means), threading, and Safari enabled HTML integration.

iChat Updated

Now allows multiple formats (text, audio and video). Zero setup or configuration, everything is automated and shows you what your buddy is allowing (ie. text, audio, and/or video).

Nothing yet about the G5. I'm hoping by the time I get back to Brooklyn, rumors about hardware upgrades won't be just rumors.

Here Comes the Sun = There Goes ronn

You know, I should stop making promises. I doubt I'll be posting anything else this week. I'm excited by new Apple software and hardware. It's going to be in the 80s and 90s for the next few days. My niece is graduating from elementary school and I'm going to go out and will enjoy life for a change.

Back whenever.

A Gay "Brown v. Board of Education?"

Keith Boykin talks about the powerful victory against homophobia in Texas (and by extension, the entire United States):

Victory In Texas

Seventeen years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an antigay sodomy law in Georgia. Today, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court finally reversed itself and struck down an antigay sodomy law in Texas. If the infamous 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick case was the Plessy v. Ferguson for the gay community, then today's Lawrence v. Texas case may become the Brown v. Board of Education of the LGBT movement.

I'll simply post a few comments from a couple of email lists I belong to:

So, recapping the last week, Canada voted for gay marriage, the US Supreme Court just struck down Texas' sodomy laws, and today begins four days of Gay Pride in Mexico City.

Read the CNN take on the vote.

National HIV Testing Day

National HIV Testing Day June 27 -- that's tomorrow ya'll.

This Ain't No Joy-Luck Club

Los Angeles Times: That was 'Joy Luck,' this is now

When Julie Shigekuni, author of the upcoming "Invisible Gardens," was interviewing to teach a first-time course in Asian American literature at the University of New Mexico near her home, she says this is how she was asked about the insights she would bring to the class: "Amy Tan has already written the Asian American experience. Why should we hire you?"

Tan also haunts Mako Yoshikawa, author of the June release "Once Removed" (Bantam), an explosive novel about two estranged sisters, a Japanese American and her American stepsister, who find each other after 17 years. "I feel uncomfortable with the Amy Tan legacy," Yoshikawa says almost reluctantly, like countless young women who say, yeah, I'm grateful to Betty Friedan and all, but jeez, isn't it time to move on?

Tan's 1989 novel, "The Joy Luck Club," presented a heartwarming picture of Chinese American life that enjoyed wide mainstream acclaim, but that many younger Asians felt was overly romanticized, even "whitewashed." Before Tan, the 1976 Maxine Hong Kingston novel, "The Woman Warrior," faced similar criticism, although her works contained more anger than Tan's. There were other writers of the 1970s and '80s — Chang-rae Lee, Jessica Hagedorn, Ha Jin, Frank Chin and Garrett Hongo — who also brought fame and credibility to Asian American writing.

Now, whether a result of that legacy or the nuisance of persisting stereotypes that insist Asians are quiet, studious and obedient, the bulwark of "immigrant fiction" has burst. A flood of vital, angry, sometimes violent and even sardonic new fiction from young Asian American novelists is being released this year.

Why are South-East Asians always ignored? I better write something this summer about their fiction. First, I better read from my haphazard to-read pile.