Dear friends and supporters,

The pace is always pretty fast here at the Asian Law Caucus, but it really picks up in April as our Anniversary Dinner draws near. Next week, on Friday, April 29^th we will be celebrating our 39^th Anniversary with key note speaker California Assemblymember Warren Furatani and honorees Reed Smith LLP, the Bring Steve Li Home Campaign and Nabila Mango.

This year, we are particularly excited and honored to be unveiling new names for our awards. Our Community Activist award will be named after the late Bill Sorro, who was a former ALC Board member and extraordinary labor and community activist. Our Lifetime Achievement Award, just launched this year, will be named after Yuri Kochiyama, a grassroots civil rights leader whose advocacy bridged so many communities of color and social justice struggles across several decades. Bill and Yuri have inspired each of us here at ALC as well as so many other activists and leaders.  They fully embody the spirit of what we come together to honor every year.

April was remarkable for another reason. We relaunched our employment law program and Winifred Kao, an experienced employment rights litigator, joined ALC as a staff attorney. Over the past three years, I have heard from many of you about the crucial role ALC has played defending the rights of low-wage immigrant workers and why it was important for us to continue our work in this area. Because of your feedback, we have made it one of the organization's top priorities to respond to those unmet needs in the community.

There is more information in the newsletter about the relaunch of the employment program.  As always, we welcome your feedback on how we can better serve and represent our community.

Warmest regards, 

Titi 

Going forward, each e-newsletter will highlight a key donor of the Asian Law Caucus. This season, in honor of our upcoming anniversary dinner, we are proud to highlight Minami Tamaki, a longstanding supporter of this annual event.

More than any other law firm, Minami Tamaki LLP has a shared history with the Asian Law Caucus, with the firm's lawyers having founded ALC and served in capacities ranging from staff attorney to executive director. The firm has partnered with ALC over the years to bring groundbreaking cases, including representing Fred Korematsu in his landmark quest for justice.

For almost four decades, Minami Tamaki continues to provide substantial support of ALC - through generous contributions of both time and dollars - made possible in part due to the law firm's growth into a full-service firm capable of servicing legal needs in the areas of corporate/business, immigration and nationality, personal injury, consumer, anti-trust and employment rights.

We see in the firm's consumer, anti-trust and employment rights practice the same spirit of championing the rights of others also seen in the Asian Law Caucus.

Partners Jack W. Lee and Brad Yamauchi and their team of attorneys have successfully litigated a variety of class actions, including representing African American steel workers, postal service employees, female federal forest service employees in California, purchasers of new cars who were charged more than the advertised sale price, and thousands of workers denied overtime pay.

Right now, Brad and the firm are working together with one of ALC's affiliates, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, to stop a major Fresno employer from discriminating against Hmong and older workers.

In addition, Jack and the firm have been appointed liaison counsel in one of the largest anti-trust class actions in history, representing countless victims of price-fixing by multi-national LCD manufacturers. 

Learn more by visiting Minami Tamaki's blog at http://mtdocket.com/cerg.

Since its founding, ALC has defended workers' rights through a myriad of programs, and with the hiring of Winnie Kao this month, the Caucus is excited to relaunch its Employment Program for the first time since 2007.  

Before coming to the Asian Law Caucus, Winnie worked at Davis, Cowell & Bowe, a union-side labor and employment law firm in San Francisco.  While there, she represented hotel, restaurant, and food and commercial workers and unions in a wide variety of labor, employment, constitutional, and class-action cases.  Winnie was previously a trial attorney for the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division litigating housing and public accommodation discrimination cases.  She served on detail as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Section of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C.   Winnie has also worked as a community organizer for various labor and civil rights organizations.

"I am extremely excited to rebuild the Caucus' workers' rights program.  I know that the program has been greatly missed -- particularly during these recent and difficult economic times, when workers are more vulnerable to workplace violations and abuses."   

While the Caucus is still assessing where it plans to focus the program's advocacy and impact-litigation work, Winnie has restarted the Caucus' workers' rights counseling clinic which is tentatively scheduled for the first and third Thursday afternoon of each month.  Workers seeking counseling about employment issues may call the Caucus' main number to schedule an appointment. 

Winnie also looks forward to meeting and collaborating with the Caucus' community partners and sister groups on future workers' rights campaigns and cases.      

Working with partners in California, Chicago, Texas, Michigan, Oregon and Georgia, the Asian American Justice Center is supporting local Asian American communities' participation in their local redistricting process. Affiliates of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice are leading redistricting efforts in their areas as well. 

Nationwide, Asian American demographics rose significantly from 2000 to 2010, reflecting the growing prominence of Asian American communities and underscoring the need to consider their interests in the planning phases of proposed districts during the  redistricting process. 

Asian American communities have a vested interest in participating in the redistricting process to ensure that they are not split by proposed school board, city council, state legislative and congressional district boundaries.  Considering the communities' growth during the past decade, it is important to advocate for new districts that reflect Asian American  interests and  are represented by elected officials. Equally important is that the communities work in coalition with other communities of color to protect minority voting rights in the redistricting process.   

• "Crossover districts" where the minority is potentially is large enough to elect the candidate of its choice with help from voters outside the minority
• "Coalition districts" where minorities could form a coalition to elect the candidate of their choice
• "Influence districts" where a minority can influence an election outcome even if its preferred candidate cannot be elected

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center filed two class action lawsuits April 12 on behalf of more than 20 current and former casino workers charging that Club One Casino in Fresno engaged in discrimination by segregating and reducing the hours of Hmong poker dealers, as well as firing its older employees.  APALC and the law firm of Minami Tamaki LLP represent the workers in both lawsuits. 

Chang et al. v. Club One Casino was filed on behalf of 16 Asian workers alleging race and national origin discrimination, and Caglia et al. v. Club One Casino was filed on behalf of six older workers alleging age discrimination.  The lawsuits allege that under the management of new owner Kyle Kirkland, Club One sought to create a new image, one that excluded its Hmong and older workers even though many had been working at Club One for more than 10 years. 

"Club One Casino's exclusion of Hmong poker dealers from working during high profile poker events bears ugly reminders of a time when minorities could only sit in the back of the bus," said APALC Attorney Justin Ma.  "Club One has no problem soliciting business from Asian customers, which makes its treatment of Asian workers particularly reprehensible."