Posted: 20 May 2013
We have 24 hours left until GAP’s Annual Shareholders Meeting begins — it’s our best chance to shame CEO Glenn Murphy into signing the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Agreement. Let’s bombard GAP HQ with calls , flood Glenn Murphy with messages that shame him to personally feel public pressure to sign, and create a ‘social media storm’ on GAP’s facebook and twitter pages!
Here’s a few points you could make:
- Glenn Murphy, it is up to you to sign the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement and make sure GAP clothes are made in safe conditions now.
- More than 35 companies — including H&M, Zara, and Abercrombie & Fitch — have already agreed to sign the Agreement.
- Your reputation is on the line and your decision will determine whether I buy from your company or not.
Call GAP HQ Now
- Eva Sage-Gavin, Executive VP of Global Human Resources and Corporate Affairs (+1 (415) 427-6480)
- Dan Briskin, VP of Global Employee Relations (+1 (415) 427-5218)
- Kindley Walsh-Lawlor, VP of Social and Environmental Responsibility (+1 (415) 427-2640)
Please, please, please, please help share this. We could make a great difference.
Signal boost! Please help spead the word.
Click here to share Avaaz’s GAP Ad
Send GAP a tweet!(via anirresistiblysexyperson)
18mr:
May is Mental Health Month and the statistics from the Office of Minority Health should be a concern for the AAPI community. For example: the percent of Asian American students grades 9-12 who attempted suicide is almost 2x that of non-Hispanic whites (CDC: 2009).
Including myself, four members* of APIDC (Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California), a non-profit advocacy group, conducted an online survey earlier this year of AAPIs with mental illness for a presentation at a national health disparities conference looking at the intersections of race, ethnicity and disability.
We knew there are a lot of mental health issues among AAPI communities, and wanted to get a firmer grasp of what’s going on with actual people living with mental illness; and their own sense of what’s missing and needed. The survey included a number of topics such as: usage of mental healthcare services, barriers to care based on mental illness or disability, attitudes toward mental illness from one’s AAPI community and recommendations for the mental health field on how to serve AAPIs better.
My training is in qualitative methods, which basically means I love to talk to people and learn first-hand what they experience. In my opinion, talking to people is the first step in any process — whether it’s in a new relationship, to design a program, or create a new policy. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was hopeful for some recommendations that would be useful for healthcare providers and AAPI community advocates.
Key Findings: Even with only twenty participants, I was struck by how often cultural attitudes were cited as major barriers to respondents’ ability and desire to seek help (over 50%). Many participants also said negative cultural attitudes within their AAPI community toward mental illness had an impact on their sense of self and social relationships. Those attitudes also contributed to delayed care.
Quotes from Survey Participants: While we can’t say our findings are true for all AAPIs with mental illness, I believe the following quotes from our participants illustrate some common challenges and struggles many AAPIs can relate to, for example cultural attitudes held by family and their community:
…for me it has been negative. My family would say that I do not love them or is being a good daughter…They turn it around on my internal worth and how I’m affecting them. I am isolated from the rest of my community because I do not feel as though I fit in. It’s a vicious cycle.
My parents don’t really have vocabulary in Vietnamese to apply to mental illness. Either you’re crazy or you’re not. If you’re ‘depressed’ in English, the closest equivalent my parents have is ‘not being grown-up and dealing with life’ in Vietnamese.
In turn, these attitudes impact many participants’ ability and desire to seek help:
I kept it hidden for so long that finally I had reached my ultimate bottom by trying to commit suicide. I had struggled with my depression and suicidal ideation for so long by myself that I didn’t know what else to do to manage it…
I kept it a secret for years. When I told them, I was already getting help and doing much better, yet still my mom treated me like I was making it up or exaggerating the difficulties…Years later, she…still treats me like I am weak and more fragile. It hurts that she doesn’t see my strength or courage in seeking help.
All the comments weren’t so bleak. In fact, some participants talked about how culturally competent mental health providers with an understanding of AAPI cultures helped them with their treatment:
My counselor is also Asian American and she focuses on the cultural nuances of Asian American identity on mental health in our community. I feel like she’s been invaluably helpful and helps me understand how much of our history ties into personal relationships with our family members.
My therapist is sensitive to cultural issues. She understands that I cannot just ignore and let go of my family as my culture focus on family cohesion and cultural dynamics. She helps me find the balance on how to deal with family.
Looking Forward: From this small survey, we learned that AAPIs with mental illness face unique issues that need to be understood and better served by mental health providers, the mental health system, AAPI advocacy groups, community-based mental health organizations, plus all AAPI communities and families.
While there are barriers and challenges facing AAPIs with mental illness, several participants had positive experiences with providers who are trained to understand AAPI cultures or who are also AAPIs. My colleagues and I proposed the following recommendations based on our findings:
- Recruit and retain a diverse, bilingual mental health workforce
- Invest in mental health infrastructure for community outreach to AAPI communities
- Increase spending on educational and accommodation materials in AAPI languages
- Increase research on the needs of AAPIs with mental illness
What else do you think AAPIs can and should do to raise awareness about mental illness in our communities and beyond?
18MR Guest Blogger ALICE WONG, disabled /Asian-American/news junkie/ night owl/advocate/researcher, can be found on Twitter @SFdirewolf
Interested in writing a guest blog? Get in touch!
(via gaobibaituo)
Jamel Mims on facing two years in prison for protesting Stop & Frisk
October 23, 2012New York City teacher Jamel Mims faces up to two years in prison for nonviolently protesting the most controversial racial profiling policy in America today. Last year, he was one of the key members of a civil disobedience campaign to stop Stop-and-Frisk that boasted the iconic academic Cornel West as one of its leading advocates. Today, he stands on trial along with 12 other campaigners.
As discussed in last week’s State of the Left, the NYPD policy involves 1,800 instances of stopping and frisking citizens every day; in the last decade, 87% of people who are stopped are black or Latino; and about 9 of 10 are innocent of any wrongdoing. There is not even a hint of exaggeration in saying that certain sections of New York City are turned into police states for minority youth.
Enter Jamel Mims:
On Tuesday October 23, I will be on trial along with Carl Dix, who, with Cornel West, initiated the 2011 campaign of nonviolent protest to stop Stop-and-Frisk. We are facing up to two years in jail for non-violent protest at the NYPD 103rd precinct in Jamaica, Queens last year.
The stakes are undoubtedly high: this is the second stop-and-frisk protest mass trial resulting from the culminating action of the civil disobedience campaign that sparked citywide resistance to the policy. The Queens District Attorney added a serious misdemeanor charge on us last month, and re-wrote our charges last week so that we’re charged with ‘acting in concert’ rather than as individuals.
The action last November was the third such protest at New York City precincts with the most stop-and-frisks, this one taking place in the borough of Queens. We held a community rally and march through Jamaica, Queens, which ended at the 103rd Precinct. As our march arrived at the precinct, it was completely barricaded on all sides – on lock-down in anticipation of the protest. An officer slides open one of the metal grates and motions us inward so that we may protest at the precinct doors. After minutes of chanting and singing outside of the precinct steps, 20 of us were arrested, quite quickly, but held for hours late into the next day. For less than ten minutes of protesting stop-and-frisk outside of the doors 103rd precinct, which houses the NYPD officers who put fifty shots into Sean Bell, 12 co-defendants and I now find ourselves facing two years of jail time.
If anyone think this is just an empty threat, and they won’t convict or send us to jail, let me reiterate—the DA has twice bumped up the charges in the last month, and has made it very clear that the prosecutorial apparatus intends to place us behind bars. A year ago, those who had no first-hand experience of the humiliation of being illegally searched barely knew the practice occurred. Those who got stopped and frisked thought there was nothing one could do about it. Now, the stop-and-frisk policy and the horrors it inflicts are going viral in mainstream society. Copwatch and videos of NYPD stops garner thousands of views, and nearly every day there are articles or opinion pieces about stop-and-frisk. Potential mayoral candidates have even had to confront this, as politicians line up to claim their opposition to the policy, or express their desire to reform or modify it in the ongoing pursuit of public opinion.
In this watershed moment, when stop-and-frisk is opening a window into the daily plight of thousands, the very people who put their bodies on the line to put this issue into the spotlight and openly call out for its abolition are vigorously prosecuted and threatened with incarceration. I refuse to accept this. It’s unthinkable that the Queens District Attorney, who couldn’t make a case against the cops who murdered Sean Bell, is now throwing the book at nonviolent civil disobedience protesters. In this light, the intended effect of this prosecution is insidiously transparent: to send a chilling effect through the movement against mass incarceration, and dampen the spirit of resistance it has ignited. To put it quite simply: don’t speak up, and certainly don’t fight back.
Well, I’m speaking up. And not just as someone who is passionate about the issue. I speak as a target of police abuse, as a Fulbright Scholar whose scholarship was almost denied after being assaulted by Boston police while trying to leave a party. I speak to you as an artist and teacher whose work in New York City public schools has me witness the humiliation and degradation of the youth by the NYPD on a daily basis. I speak to you as a committed opponent of the New Jim Crow, a system of mass incarceration that has 2.4 million mostly black and Latino men warehoused in prisons across the nation, with stop-and-frisk as a major pipeline into that system.
Most of all, I speak to you as someone who has cast their lot with those at the bottom of society: with those thousands of youth who are brutalized, targeted, harassed, and shuffled off behind bars — and is now facing years in prison for standing with them.
We fully intend to stop this railroading by bringing the political battle into the courtroom and putting Stop and Frisk on trial. If we are allowed to be convicted and jailed without a massive fight, then the battle against stop-and-frisk and the spirit of resistance it has engendered will be seriously dampened. On the other hand, if people stand with us in this legal battle–if we meet and defeat their attempts to silence and punish us–then the movement will gain further initiative and pull many more people into the struggle against mass incarceration.
The United States police state imprisons all dissidents, from police brutality activists to government whistleblowers.
(via hiphopfightsplaque)
The classic doll color test performed with a white child, complete with the parent’s
excusesreactionsThe little girl even says she picked the white figures as the good child because it “looks like me” and the dark girl as bad because “she’s dark”. When Soledad O’Brien asks the girl’s mother about it, we’re met with quite a few colorblind based excuses and “well, we just don’t talk about race”.
“We don’t talk about race!!”
And your kid is saying racist shit regardless.
That should fucking tell you something, lady.
But of course, it won’t. I bet you cash money she won’t change a thing, continuing to use that color blind bullshit.
(via hiphopfightsplaque)
Greenwich Village Hate Crime Murder Victim Was “Proud Gay Man” From Brooklyn
On Friday evening, a 32-year-old man was fatally shot in the middle of Greenwich Village in what police believe was “clearly a hate crime.” Brooklyn resident Mark Carson was walking with friend on Sixth Avenue near West 8th Street around midnight Friday when they were confronted by 33-year-old Elliot Morales and two others. “Do you want to die here?” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Morales asked Carson. Morales then allegedly pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot him once in the cheek.
Carson and his 31-year-old friend were dressed in tank tops and cut-off shorts with boots. Police say when they first were approached by the suspects, Morales and pals started hurling gay epithets at them, including “Look at these faggots” and “What are you, gay wrestlers?” Even when Carson and friend started walking away, the suspects chased after them shouting “faggot” and “queer.”
Carson, who managed a yogurt store, had moved from Harlem to Brooklyn recently. “He was a courageous person,” Carson’s brother, Michael Bumpars, told the Daily News. “My brother was a beautiful person…He was our foundation.” Kay Allen, a friend for more than a decade, told the Times: “He was a proud gay man. A fabulous gay man” She added that he loved going to the Village: “His spirit was too big for this city. He didn’t have a negative bone in his body.”
And y’all wonder why I don’t like straight men and why I dont like being in any space with them…
(via hiphopfightsplaque)
(via aslantedview)
one type of people that I truly despise in this world are people who fail to see the long term damages from racist movie casting practices that range from colorface to whitewashing. How the real life treatment towards people of color influence the decisions to cast certain people of certain races in movies, which further influences the real life treatment of people of color. And they dare tell us to “chill out” when the cries of pain can no longer be suppressed.
No matter how blatant or just “a little bit racist” the choice made, a powerful industry is still trodding on the very beings of pocs, and that’s fucked up.
(via stopwhitewashing)
cultural genocide in North America
This, this right here, this is why “white people” cannot wear our things, cannot appropriate our customs or languages. Because y’all did this. y’all continue to do this too.
well then you motherfuckers need to stop wearing jeans, watching tv, eating our food and wearing clothes of ours, stop using cell phones, and pretty much anything your “culture” hasnt contributed to.
the shit can go both ways, and i can wear what ever the fuck i want, just like you can.
although, i wouldnt wanna wear that shit because WHY would i need to.
people on here are fucking idiotic.
-_-
Yes because y’all forcing assimilation on us is totes the same thing. The original post flew right over your entitled little head, didn’t it? sit down Zhaaganaashii
white people won’t quit
(via hiphopfightsplaque)
When Does Plastic Surgery Become Racial Transformation?
This extensive Buzzfeed article investigates the troubling story of Leo Jiang, a man who has spent years and tens of thousands of…
Alabama city destroying ancient Indian mound for Sam’s Club
This is complete bullshit on SO many levels.
1) It belongs to someone else
2) It’s sacred to that someone
3) It’s against the fucking LAW
4) Wrong, just fucking wrong…I have no more words
Please boost
(via hiphopfightsplaque)
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