March 14, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) – Malaysia and the European Union said Monday they hope to wrap up free trade talks by June 2012, an ambitious target amid sensitivities over Kuala Lumpur’s government procurement policy favoring ethnic Malays.

Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said the EU hopes to find a “win-win situation” to the Malaysian policy of awarding most state contracts to companies owned by the ethnic Malay majority under an affirmative action program. The policy has largely kept foreign companies from bidding for state contracts.

He said the trade pact will let Malaysian companies access a market of 500 million people and bid for more than 300 billion euros ($418 billion) worth of contracts in EU nations.

“Compromises will have to be made but … there are obvious advantages to Malaysia. The EU has a very open public procurement market. Over 300 billion euros are open for bidding. I think we can create a win-win situation,” Gucht told reporters.

Two rounds of talks have been held since December, with the third session slated in May in Brussels.

Malaysian Trade Minister Mustapa Mohamed said government procurement is a delicate subject as it involves billions of dollars. The two sides have different levels of development, which could put Malaysian firms at a disadvantage, he said.

Government procurement has so far been excluded from Malaysia’s free trade pacts with other countries including Japan, New Zealand and India. The thorny issue thwarted its talks with Washington, prompting Malaysia to instead join negotiations for an Asia-Pacific trade agreement last year that also included the U.S.

Gucht said studies showed that free trade with the EU could bolster Malaysia’s economy by up to 7.5 percent of its gross domestic product once fully implemented.

The EU is Malaysia’s fourth largest trading partner, with two-way trade rising 11 percent in 2009 to nearly 123 billion ringgit ($40.5 billion). Malaysia is the EU’s second largest trading partner in Southeast Asia.

Some activists staged a protest during the second round of talks in Malaysia last month, citing fears that strict intellectual property provisions under the agreement could block the sale of low-cost generic drugs in the country or make them more expensive.

Posted on www.canadianbusiness.com

Susan Burton and Kimberle Crenshaw talk about the issues around reentry for women of color on GRITtv. Vote for Susan as a CNN Hero at http://heroes.cnn.com/vote.aspx

Hope is in short supply these days, particularly for those in America’s packed prison system. California incarcerates more women than any other state, and when those women get out of jail they often have nothing more than $200 in their pockets and hope to go on. Susan Burton was one of those women once, and now she’s founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a nonprofit organization that helps formerly incarcerated women get their lives back together.

Susan has been named one of CNN’s ten Heroes this year, and is in the running for the top spot, and she joins us via Skype, along with Kimberle Crenshaw, who explains just why Susan’s nomination gives her hope in a bleak time.

AAPF Criminal Justice Series

February 1998
• Salon Workshops examine the growth of Prison Industrial Complex
• Dynamics of poor Black women, economy & domestic violence in limelight

November 1999
• Public discussions on Kemba Smith case in the crossfire of Domestic Violence & U.S. Drug Policy
• Drug policies for women of Color & consequences for their families initiatives

Spring & Late 2000
• Downward Push on Upward Mobility – Salon Themes on Welfare Reform, Post-Industrial society, Rights to Education
• Race & The Criminal (In)justice System – Conference on Proactive Resistance
• Kemba Smith Retreat– Public Education on Contemporary Drug Policy
• Kemba Smith Youth Foundation receives grant from Soros Foundation

1997
• Kimberle W. Crenshaw guest co-hosts on “Equal Time” on CNBC

1998
• Americans For A Fair Chance (AFC) commissions FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) study detailing huge discrepancies in media representation of Affirmative Action issues
• Policy Forum Affirmative Action Discussion & Book Party celebrates launching of We Won’t Go Back by Matsuda & Lawrence

1999
• Policy Forum Cosponsored Affirmative Action Symposium discussing right-wing misrepresentations & way to move forward
• Claude Steele & Susan Sturm on the Myths of Standardized Testing & effects on higher education

2000 & 2001
• UN World Conference Against Racism
• May 2000 – National Conference on Black Women & the Law serves as a precursor to UNWCAR
• May 2000 – Geneva UN PrepCom takes intersectional work to the international arena with participants from Brazil, India, Portugal, UK, Israel, Guatemala, Philippines, Mali & Uganda
• December 2000 – Citizen’s Conference Against Racism & Preparatory Intergovernmental Meeting of the Americas in Santiago, Chile – Introduces intersectional framework into activist works & UN Human Rights agenda
• May 2001 – Second Geneva UN PrepCom
• August – September 2001 – Durban, South Africa – AAPF urges intersectional analysis to be incorporated into UN Declaration & Platform of Action

2003 – 2010
• Expansion of:
• Affirmative Action
• Structural Racism
• Intersectionality
• International Collaboration
• Strategic Interventions
• Applied Reframing

March 2003
• Affirmative Action Teach-In/Workshop Conference
• Grutter vs. Bollinger (2003)
• Affirmative Action Strategic Intervention Media Workshop addresses counter-strategies to existing media bias
• Prominent scholars, activists, lawyers, psychologist, journalists convene to generate ideas & actions for honest Affirmative Action discourse & outreach

July 2003

Partnership with Aspen Institute Begins
• Structured around Social Justice issues and assault on Affirmative Action, the partnership with AAPF provides long term knowledge building process within Structural Racism lasting until 2008

October 2003
• Freedom Sunday – Crenshaw & Harris conducts church speaking tour to raise awareness & connect vital information about Affirmative Action; messages connecting churches & The Civil Rights Movement.

2004 – 2006
• AAPF carries out major initiatives during the heat of MCRI (Michigan Civil Rights Initiative) with Media Intervention Project, Conferences & Workshops
• Defending Affirmative Action: Confronting Distortions in the Public Debate
• The Affirmative Action Strategy Summit (April 2004)
• Promoting Equal Opportunity Post-Grutter (October 2004)
• Research Consortium & Policy Initiative (October 2004)
• Affirmative Action Leadership Training & Community Mobilization (2006)
• Negril Social Justice Writers Retreat, Jamaica (2006)

2006

Battle over Affirmative Action
• March 2006 – AAPF & ACLU Michigan convenes at Detroit for “Affirmative Action Leadership Training” for “grass tops” activist leaders & community
• June 2006 – AAPF & ACLU Michigan’s “Mobilizing Our Base” with NAACP, LaSed, ACCESS & ADC – Michigan.
• “10 Myths” are presented to enthusiastic audiences
• 13 Myths about Affirmative Action comes into being
• AAPF with ACLU Michigan creates coordinated response to Ward Connerly’s campaign

2007
• In lieu with AAPF’s global outreach to form consent for racial justice and inclusion policies, AAPF expands on Globalizing Affirmative Action with summits in Niteroi, Brazil and Bellagio, Italy strategizing first steps for GAAPP or Global Affirmative Action Praxis Project
• AAPF in collaboration with UCLA School of Law takes law school and graduate students every Spring to Brazil or India to conduct extensive field research pertinent to Affirmative Action and report their findings for comparative outlooks. In addition, scholars from Brazil and India come to the US for multilateral discussions on affirmative action, race and justice

2008
• January – AAPF collaborates with National ACLU to host Affirmative Action Summit convening writers, community members, activists and scholars to promote strategies for Affirmative Action outreach
• March – Work for JAPER (Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Promote Equality), a joint initiative between US and Brazilian government begins. Kimberle W. Crenshaw serves as a co-chair for the Civil Society Committee.
• August – Kimberle W. Crenshaw makes major appearance on PBS’ NOW on sideline of Democratic National Convention to defend Affirmative Action and analyzes the false debate over Obama’s nomination, Post-Racial America and struggle for racial justice
• AAPF begins working on Section 8 Housing Discrimination, documenting and investigating incoming residents of Antioch, California.

2009
• June – AAPF organizes cross-disciplinary study and seminar on Colorblindness at the Stanford Center for the Study of the Behavioral Sciences with more than twenty five scholars representing ten academic disciplines. Kimberle W. Crenshaw also receives prestigious Fletcher fellowship and at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
• June – GAAPP program brings students from Brazil and India to UCLA School of Law for the first time after two consecutive years of UCLA and Columbia Law School conducts fieldwork in both countries
• June – Social Justice Writer’s retreat brings together academics, scholars, journalists, human rights activists in Negril Jamaica for another year of intensive seminar work, writing projects on social justice issues. AAPF’s regular collaborators provides valuable feedbacks and counsel for AAPF’s oncoming projects
• September – Eve Ensler guest lectures for Kimberle W. Crenshaw’s class on Intersectionality and AAPF collaborates with distinguished guests on V-Day. Kimberle W. Crenshaw presents her poem Respect to full house at the Apollo.
• October – First phase of engagement with national educational organization Communities in Schools begins on Structural Racism that plans to bring together CIS participants from all over the country for intensive workshop in August.
• October – AAPF prepares to launch to major projects for 2010 on Intersectionality Learning Circle and Brother to Brother Initiative. These ambitious projects plans to center and bring home the role of intersectional analysis for gender, cultural and structural discrepancies, especially as Kimberle W. Crenshaw’s major theoretical gesture has traveled widely around in academic, activist and policy making circles around the world.

2010
• March – In a major event at the UCLA School of Law, 4th Annual Critical Race Studies Symposium unfolds with around two hundred and fifty panelists and over four hundred participants including distinguished scholars, activists, writers from all around the world to commemorate twentieth anniversary of Intersectional theory and practices. Kimberle W. Crenshaw presents the keynote speech delineating her hopes, inspirations and ambitions for future of Intersectionality to a full house.
• May – August – AAPF continues its intensive engagement with Communities in Schools preparing participants with discussions, webinars and assistance for August workshop integrating Structural Racism in CIS outlooks.
• August – AAPF conducts two back to back workshop in one week for over 100 participants including CIS board members, supervisors and coordinators to apply and reframe Structural Racism in CIS outlooks and practices

While at Barnard, Leda excelled academically, earning the distinction of magna cum laude. Her senior thesis, entitled “Youth Voices on Lockdown: Identity Shaping in Service Learning Programs” focused on the intersectionality of race, gender and class identities and how they shape volunteers’ perceptions of the inmates they taught in their service-learning class. Leda continues to be interested in the criminal justice movement and its far reaching implications for low-income communities of color.

Since graduating, Leda had worked in the corporate law sector before coming to the Policy Forum. She remains passionate about social justice issues and plans to pursue a career in law…Welcome Leda!

In this respect, the Social Justice Writer’s Retreat affords us the opportunity to bring together a community of writers from disparate fields: a) to provide critical feedback to one another on their current “writings in progress” on social justice issues; and b) to offer constructive critiques of Policy Forum projects designed to advance social justice goals. Participants not only receive valuable input from peers on the articles and books that they are developing, but they also provide us with wise counsel with respect to our ongoing projects – vetting our materials, research initiatives, organizational strategies and programmatic endeavors.

While the seminars are work-intensive, the seclusion of the retreat setting provides an environment that is wonderfully conducive to a heightened focus on the issues at hand. Everyone benefits, which is why we have such a rich variety of colleagues who embrace the experience. Retreat participants have included, among others, journalists, academics, literary agents, foundation program officers, and human rights advocates – all of whom share a commitment to social justice work.

The annual Social Justice Writer’s Retreat convenes in Negril, Jamaica.

“Intersectionality” is a term that may have been new to many of the people who attended the 10th Annual Women and the Law Conference at Thomas Jefferson School of Law on Friday, April 30, but now they have a much better grasp of this significant legal concept. Indeed, the conference was titled “Women of Color and Intersectionality: Understanding and Addressing Challenges” with the specific goal of creating more awareness about this dilemma that impacts untold numbers of women in this country who seek relief from race and sex-based discrimination.

Who better to define intersectionality than Professor Kimberle Crenshaw of UCLA and Columbia law schools? She was this year’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecturer at the conference, which was presented jointly by TJSL’s Women and The Law Project and UCLA Law School’s Critical Race Studies program.

Click to read more >

ASU, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Danielle Legler

Excerpt:

Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder of the African American Policy Forum and a leading authority in the areas of civil rights and the politics of race, brings her perspective to Arizona State University April 8 for the 15th anniversary A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations. “Educating All Our Children: A Constitutional Perspective” is the topic of her talk, to begin at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ventana Ballroom on ASU’s Tempe campus…

 Read full ASU article here.

Excerpt:

Decades after the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr.’s sense of the “fierce urgency of now” when combatting racial inequality remains necessary and prevalent, according to Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. A University of California at Los Angeles law professor and leading authority on civil rights, Crenshaw spoke at the College’s annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.

During her keynote address to a packed crowd in Spaulding Auditorium, Crenshaw stressed that by ignoring the topic of racism, today’s society remains post-racial rather than non-racial.

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