The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, advocacy, and community education. Spring internships are available for college, graduate, and law students in AALDEF’s Voting Rights Program.

In prior elections, Asian Americans faced a series of barriers in exercising their right to vote; for example, ballots have been mistranslated listing Democratic candidates as Republicans and vice versa, lack of interpreters, denial of language assistance, rude and hostile poll workers. AALDEF’s Voting Rights Program aims to enhance the political participation of Asian Americans and guard against anti-Asian voter discrimination.

Voting Rights Interns work on the following:

• Advocate for full compliance with the Voting Rights Act and federal Constitution, by analyzing election monitoring reports. The Voting Rights Act mandates Chinese and Korean language voting assistance and forbids anti-Asian voter discrimination. This includes legal research and writing, fact pattern development, and working with clients and witnesses for possible litigation.

• Monitoring the Presidential Primary Elections in NY, NJ, MA, PA, MD and VA to document the use of bilingual ballots.

• Assess local elections compliance with settlements reached in voting rights lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and other states.

• Registering new voters after citizenship swearing-in ceremonies.

• Conduct research and advocacy on local, state and federal election reform proposals.

Description of Spring Internships:

Supervision: Interns are supervised by attorneys through regular meetings and trainings.

Compensation: These internships are not paid positions, but academic credit can be arranged.

Hours: Interns work anywhere between 12 to 25 hours per week in the office.

Duration: Spring internships usually follows the spring semester, commencing with the start of classes (end of January) to the first or second week of May.

To Apply: Bilingual ability is helpful but not required. Students with language ability in Korean, Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, or Chinese are especially welcome to apply and languages (if any) should be stated in the resume.

Applicants should also state the number of hours they can work per week and a possible schedule.

Send a resume and cover letter to:

Voting Rights Spring Intern Search
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
99 Hudson Street, 12th floor
New York, New York 10013-2815
Fax: 212-966-4303 Email: info@aaldef.org

For more information, contact Glenn D. Magpantay at 212-966-5932, ext. 206 or gmagpantay@aaldef.org.

Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra.

More of my random movie updates. I watched Milk today and it had a totally Blaaag-worthy character: Michael Wong, the only Asian American gay activist that was on the campaign team for Harvey Milk. My favorite part of it was when a distressed Milk jokingly said to Wong, "Don't you have some laundry to do?" and Wong dryly replied, "Don't you have a hairdresser to visit?"

Sadly, I couldn't find any pictures of Kelvin Yu, the actor who played Wong, on IMDB or Google Images (big surprise). But seriously, if you want to see him, just go watch the movie. It would do Dennis Chin or any of our gay Asian American activist friends proud.

Here's a happy, drunken well wish from us to you. We're all finally done and have no qualms with having our brains melt over the break. Hopefully you will be like us and not go watch the "Chinese Meets West Extravaganza".

Last night I finally went to see the super hyped movie Slumdog Millionaire. If you know me, then you know that I'm part blogger, part half-assed academic, and part film/concert geek. Be warned, I wrote this with little intention of bringing up any Asian American connections, but make of it what you will.

The first thing that turned me onto this movie was the heaps of praise that Videogum editor Lindsay Robertson showered onto it:

gabe: let your guard down
gabe: for once
lindsay: I did, when I saw Slumdog Millionaire!
lindsay: my guard was down for like, an hour

I couldn't believe it when I read this. Who, in their mid twenties to thirties, in the 21st Century, lets their guard down when watching any movie, especially one done by the guy who made the crazy zombie flick 28 Days Later? New Yorkers are dry and caustic, and like it or not, the qualities are contagious.

But then again, there is definitely something about Danny Boyle knowing how to tap into people's feelings through a number of magical things, including kids. There is this amazing scene, for example, and I won't tell you too much, but it involves a child, an outhouse, and the pile of shit that he has to crawl through in order to meet the most famous celebrity in India. I kid you not, this scene (the outrageousness of which was to be topped in later scenes) made me completely not care that the plotline was outrageous, and that nobody really believes in everlasting love underscoring this movie.

Which in some ways is the strength of its setting in Mumbai, a place that has become all too familiar in the tabloids as of late and doubly unimaginable. Boyle has somehow made us forget the horrors of what's happened there overseas, exposed its underbelly of people who suffer but are in love, and why not? A tragedy doesn't rob a city of its magic or its sentimentality, and neither should the recent headlines for this movie. In truth, a part of me didn't even realize or care that Slumdog took place in Mumbai. When I walked out of it with my boyfriend, one of the first things that he said about it was, "It felt like a completely fantastical sort of film." Indeed. Yours truly, the self-identified Daria Morgendorffer of the Blaaaging team, has been sold.

...so, I admit, I started this off as a "Holiday Gift Guide"-themed post of sorts but scrapped the idea when, suddenly, it dawned to me: why would anyone out there in our readership of tens, when looking for a gift to give, think about listening to the advice of a man and his mostly useless interest in politically progressive hip-hop? Why would you even continue to write this post? Could it have to do with the fact that, after finishing your last final paper, you rejected the most obvious next step (sleep) and instead weighed the idea of writing a blog post?

Behold! A distraction:



This looks like the sucks. Hollywood, why are you doing this?

Interesting article on the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress. Take a closer look at the reporting in the following exerpts.

"NEW ORLEANS — Soft-spoken, retiring and diminutive, Anh Cao does not appear to fit the role of dragon-slayer."

"Mr. Cao was a refugee from Vietnam at age 8, a former Jesuit seminarian, a philosophy student with a penchant for Camus and Dostoyevsky, an unknown activist lawyer for one of the least visible immigrant communities here and a Republican in a heavily Democratic district."

"Mr. Cao is not large, standing only 5 feet 2 inches by his own sheepishly given reckoning. But he is persistent and has the sort of difficult life story that would have made taking on Mr. Jefferson seem like a lesser hurdle."

"He is only a recent convert to the Republican Party, having been a registered independent for most of his adult life, and has no position — at least not one he cares to share yet — on President-elect Barack Obama's agenda. His politics seem less a matter of ideology than of low-key temperament and a Jesuit-inspired desire to “help and serve people,” as he put it. His mother bundled him onto a military transport plane with some siblings as Saigon fell in 1975 — “She shoved me along with a bunch of relatives,” he said — and he was separated from his father, a South Vietnamese army officer sent to a prison camp, for 16 years. He recalls a letter he received from his father at age 9, sent from the prison: Study hard, and give back to the community."

"Mr. Cao left the Jesuits, set up as a lawyer and began advocating for the small Vietnamese community clustered in the eastern section of New Orleans. Like others in the community, his life was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded his house with eight feet of water. And like others, he quickly bounced back, part of a resilience in the community that was chronicled here in the first months after the hurricane hit. "

"The odds did not look good for Mr. Cao, but he was helped by two circumstances. Whites, fed up with the scandals around Mr. Jefferson, who is black, turned out in force, and blacks stayed home. In largely white precincts, turnout was around 26 percent, while in the blackest precincts, it was only around 12 percent, said Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans demographer and analyst."

"Full article: "History and Amazement in House Race Outcome"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/us/politics/08cao.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

By Adam Nossiter