This month, NCRCR spoke with Jenny Yang, Partner at Cohen Milstein and counsel for plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the largest civil rights class action lawsuit in U.S. history. Listen in as they discuss the potential impact of this much-anticipated Supreme Court ruling on gender and employment discrimination.
Listen to the full interview series here.
Sandra Park of the ACLU Women's Rights Project spoke with Tricia Perry about the Flores-Villar v. United States case regarding differences in the ability of men and women to confer U.S. citizenship on their children born abroad. Listen in as they discuss the potential impact of the case on gender and citizenship rights.
Listen to the full interview series here.
The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR) has announced the winners of its 2010 Written Essay and Visual Image Contest. The contest entitled “What Does Equality Mean to You?” asked youth ages 14-18 across the United States to define equality from their unique perspectives by submitting either a written entry or a visual image such as a drawing, cartoon or photograph. Winners were selected by a panel of high-profile judges, including singer and songwriter Alicia Keys, comedian Margaret Cho, Congressman Keith Ellison (MN), Congressman Gregory Meeks (NY) and NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.
Naomi Lattanzi, 16, of Los Altos, California won for her courageous personal essay entitled “Are You?” in which she discusses how she feels when a schoolmate asks whether she is a lesbian. As the nation continues to struggle with issues affecting the rights and everyday lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (“LGBTQQ”) communities such as marriage equality, bias attacks and bullying, Naomi’s answer seems fitting: “I don’t know, but you can’t take away what sense of self I have. As long as I have people who accept me you can’t make me feel inferior. You’ll eventually have to accept the truth: We are equals.”
18-year-old Misra Walker from the Bronx, New York is the winner in the visual image category. Misra’s powerful image of a Latino man standing in front of an American flag with his arms crossed over his chest and eyes downcast evokes the conflicting feelings of frustration and hope experienced by many immigrants across this country as they seek to realize the “American Dream.” This image seems particularly appropriate given the debates about immigration and citizenship happening across the country.
Finally, 18-year-old Abisola Barbara Williams from Brooklyn, New York was the first runner-up in the visual entry category. Abisola’s piece, a collage of three images featuring a young woman wearing a Muslim headscarf, another without head covering, and someone wearing a bracelet with the word “peace,” spoke to her sense of how the various aspects of race, gender and religion interact to form a complex pattern of discrimination that has resulted in her Muslim peers experiencing violence and harassment on the streets of New York. Again, this image addressed a timely and important topic given the recent rise in anti-Islamic sentiment across the country.
The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights invited winners and finalists to New York City this week in order to recognize their leadership efforts. Naomi and Abisola participated in a training session on how to speak about civil rights issues and met with a variety of civil rights advocates.
Young people have always played an important role in the struggle for civil rights and social justice. Despite the accusations of laziness and indifference leveled at them, youth political involvement over the past few years has broken every stereotype about the apathy of young people in America. During the 2008 presidential campaign we saw first-hand that this ‘Millennial Generation’ is thinking about and playing an active role in civil rights, politics and social issues. Naomi, Misra and Abisola represent a new generation of leaders whose activism and innovation will continue to shape the landscape of civil rights and social justice in the 21st century.
If you’ll permit us a brief detour from pop culture into a more scholarly, Supreme Court-loving culture (although the Supreme Court probably does constitute pop culture for many people) we thought it worth highlighting the biography of former Justice William J. Brennan published late last year. While NCRCR Director Juanne Renee Harris has acknowledged that Brennan was ‘no Jimmy Smits,’ there was still a good deal of intrigue to be found in this book...mixed in with a few hundred pages of dense but interesting case history. For those not yet born during the early days of the civil rights movement, the book provides a lot of context for what was going on in the judiciary and around the country during one of the most profound eras of social change in our country and in the decades that followed. So, if you are a Supreme Court watcher, find case law interesting, think Supreme Court justices are pop culture icons, or would just like to try something that looks at the civil rights movement from a different perspective, this book may be for you.
For a more detailed review of the book, see Dahlia Lithwick's piece in the New York Times.
The Culture Corner is a series of blog posts intended to be a forum for discussion of how pop culture treats issues of civil rights, social justice and the courts. Television, movie, theater and musical portrayals inform our understanding of these issues on a daily basis. Are these depictions accurate? Fair? Misleading? We welcome your thoughts. Please join in the discussion.
(Photo by Chattanooga Endeavors Inc.)
A decision to slash funding for Medicaid has real and tangible effects on people’s lives, such as those of Lillie Brantley, Allie Jo Woodward and Gilda Garcia. Lillie Brantley is 84 years old and severely impaired by Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Allie Jo Woodward, 79 years old, has bipolar affective disorder, depression and a host of physical ailments including diabetes, glaucoma and hypertension. Gilda Garcia is 77 years old and has had unstable diabetes since 1995. Ms. Brantley, Ms. Woodward and Ms. Garcia all receive services benefits from Medi-Cal Adult Day Health Care (ADHC), a community-based program for low-income seniors and younger adults with disabilities in the state of California. ADHC provides an organized day care program that includes therapeutic, social and skilled nursing health activities enabling participants to restore or maintain their capacity for self care. These crucial services, including daily professional nursing services to monitor their health; daily personal care services to assist with day-to-day living tasks; social services to improve their mental and emotional well-being; and physical and occupational therapy to increase their physical strength and functionality, have enabled Ms. Brantley, Ms. Woodward and Ms. Garcia to live independently with the assistance of family members, who provide part-time care when not working. Ms. Brantley, Ms. Woodward and Ms. Garcia cannot afford private care and their family members cannot afford to quit their jobs to provide full-time care (nor are they qualified to provide all of the care needed). As a result, cuts to the ADHC program will deprive these women (and many others) of the care and company they depend on, and most certainly place them at risk of hospitalization and/or institutionalization.
Despite the fact that programs like ADHC and other Medicaid services are notoriously underfunded, the California state legislature passed a law cutting ‘Medi-Cal’ payments (Medicaid reimbursements) to medical providers by ten percent in 2008. The state legislature voted for an additional five percent payment reduction in early 2009. In making these cuts the state failed to take into account the effect that they would have on the already scarce services to low-income people living in medically underserved areas and for people with disabilities. The state also disregarded federal law requiring them to consider, among other things, whether payment rates are consistent with the ability of health care providers to offer quality care and sufficient to recruit enough providers to ensure that care and services are available. As a result of these cuts, low-income enrollees across the state have suddenly found themselves unable to fill and pay for their prescriptions, and hospitals and other care facilities have been unable to provide adequate treatment to their Medicaid patients as required by law.
Recently the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on a trio of lawsuits regarding California’s cuts. The three cases, known collectively as Maxwell-Jolly v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, California Pharmacists Assn, and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, were filed on behalf of Brantley, Woodward and Garcia (and others like them) and yet again raise the issue of access to the courts for individuals and groups to enforce laws meant to protect their rights. In all three ‘Maxwell-Jolly’ cases, the federal district and appeals courts ruled that, despite the budget climate, California could not cut Medicaid spending so drastically without taking into account federal requirements that the program ensure affordable, quality health care for low-income individuals and families, and for people with disabilities. At the Supreme Court level, the issue up for consideration is whether or not the federal Medicaid law meant to safeguard access to healthcare for those in need can take priority over the California state law cutting the Medicaid budget. The Court will also decide whether Brantley, Woodward, Garcia and others who are affected by the cuts have the right to go to court to enforce federal Medicaid rules. This case is yet another example of a court case involving below-the-radar-screen procedural issues that have real-life, serious and potentially life-threatening ramifications for thousands of people across the country. We can only hope that, when making its decision, the Court chooses to keep Ms. Brantley, Ms. Woodward and Ms. Garcia in mind.
(Photo by LOLren.)
