New York police officers killed two unarmed black people in May and there has yet to be rioting in the streets or even mass demonstrations as the black and civil rights communities wait and see whether police and governmental authorities will either produce credible investigations or turn the matters over to special prosecutors.

Alberta Spruill, 57 and African American, died of a heart attack May 16th after Special Operations police, acting on a bad tip that the apartment contained munitions, tossed a stun grenade into her Harlem apartment as she dressed for work, handcuffing her even after finding no guns in the place. The medical examiner's office has ruled the death a homicide, but blame has yet to be assigned. Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly have apologized for the incident and acknowledged the obvious, that something was terribly wrong with this raid. Bloomberg's response has been noted to be in stark contrast to that of his predecessor in police misconduct cases. Rudy Giuliani almost always sided with the police, exacerbating racial tensions.

The head of the unit that conducts no-knock searches, Deputy Chief Thomas Purtell, has been transferred to the Housing Bureau, but he has not been charged with any malfeasance. Capt. David Driscoll, the Harlem precinct's commander, was transferred to Brooklyn in the wake of the botched raid.

Peter Vallone, Jr., chair of the City Council Public Safety Committee plans hearings on these police procedures on June 12. He told the Daily News, "We want to look into what went wrong. And we really want to make sure that this never happens again." Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, the story said, is asking those who have been subjected to mistaken raids on their homes to call (800) 728-1550 and to appear at a hearing on June 5 at 10:30 AM at her Municipal Building office at 1 Centre Street on the 19th floor South.

There are many unanswered questions in this case, where the police seem to have acted legally in that they obtained a warrant. Why was such an unreliable source used? Shouldn't there be a better system in place to screen sources? Why wasn't the apartment put under surveillance to verify the tip that it was being used for illegal purposes? Why wasn't the most rudimentary investigation done into who actually occupied the apartment, a trustworthy city worker and grandmother?

But the elephant in the room of this case is race. Is it conceivable that police would have conducted the raid in this way in a white neighborhood?

Similar issues surround the case of Ousmane Zongo, 38, the black immigrant from Burkima Faso who was killed by a police officer, Bryan Conroy, at a West Chelsea storage facility where he worked. The officer alleged to a supervisor that Zongo, who repaired African art in one of the storage spaces, lunged for his gun. Conroy shot him four times. He has yet to speak to either the District Attorney's office or police investigators. The Rev. Al Sharpton says that he has spoken to a witness to the incident who only wants to speak with an independent investigator. The witness, according to Newsday, is an "undocumented immigrant fearful of being deported."

Several hundred demonstrators, mostly West African immigrants, demonstrated on May 28th outside the W. 27th Street storage facility where Zongo was killed. Their rallying cry was for Governor George Pataki to appoint a special prosecutor in the case. Michael Hardy, a lawyer for the Zongo family who is associated with Sharpton's National Action Network, said, "There needs to be no question of impartiality in this investigation. The police department and the district attorney may need to be prosecuted."

Sidique Abou-Bakarr Wai, president of the United African Congress addressed the crowd, insisting, "It is not about black rights, it is about human rights." When he said, "Zongo did not fight with a police officer," the West

African demonstrators chanted, "Never! Never!" "Africans don't fight," Wai said. "We are a law abiding people. We don't have a quarrel with the police, but with vigilante officers."

Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel was also on hand at the rally. "We have been here before," he said, recalling Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo, "another unarmed New Yorker shot dead because of police force. The names change, but the issues are the same: 1) Whether the shooting was justified, 2) Will the truth be discovered and disclosed? and 3) Will there be systemic change in regard to police procedures. The civil rights community wants the truth and the truth is difficult to obtain in these cases. We learned years ago that police cannot investigate police. And the District Attorney's office, because they rely on the testimony of police, has a built-in conflict of interest." He, too, said that a special prosecutor was critical in this case. And he feels that Mayor Bloomberg needs to be educated about the history of these kinds of cases if he is willing to trust the police to investigate themselves.

Zongo, who had intended to return to his native land to be reunited with his wife and children, "was a peaceable man," said Mohammed Dibassy, president of the African Arts Center where Zongo worked and a leader of the Malian Association USA. "We are a peaceful people, but we want solutions. We want justice to be done."

After seeing the cops who killed Diallo acquitted of all wrongdoing in an Albany court, these West Africans are not willing to see this case handled by the same people. Masses of New York civic leaders were arrested outside police headquarters to push for the arrests of the officers who killed Diallo, only to see the case moved upstate. This time, they want a special prosecutor.

Council Resolution to Protect Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

More than 100 civil liberties advocates gathered on the steps of City Hall on May 28 to herald the introduction of a resolution in the New York City Council to call upon the United States to repeal provisions of the USA Patriot Act that "pose a direct threat to the constitutional protections afforded individual freedoms." If passed, New York would join 115 other American cities in petitioning the Congress and the President to restore civil liberties trimmed by the post-9/11 act.

"September 11th shook the city and country to its core," said Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, part of the New York Bill of Rights Defense Committee, "but we must be free as well as safe." She cited such infringements as "relentless snooping on our private lives, diminished right of courts to protect us, undermining the right to due process and counsel," and assaults on freedom of speech. If New York adopts the resolution, it will double the population covered by jurisdictions who have passed similar petitions.

Councilmember Bill Perkins is the chief sponsor of the resolution. Councilmember Charles Barron, another sponsor, said that this resolution joins one in the Council calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act. Councilmember Margarita Lopez said that Congressman Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) had urged the New York City Council delegation that went to Washington last month to help in pushing the Congress to reform the Patriot Act. She said that immigrant people are "disappearing" in this country under the Act the way dissenters disappeared in Latin America in the 1970s.

Councilmember David Yassky said, "I honor the men and women in our armed forces, but over history, what makes us strong is not military might, but our commitment to freedom and individual liberty."

Pat Perry, who lost her son, John, a police officer, on September 11, 2001, said that John "strongly supported the Bill of Rights and would be here today" if he were alive. Playwright Tony Kushner said, "It is not surprising that an administration that believes they can create democracy unilaterally through military action believes it can secure democracy here at home by decimating the Bill of Rights."

Bishop Paul Moore, Religious and Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 83

The Rt. Reverend Paul Moore, Jr., Episcopal Bishop of New York from 1972-89, died on May 1st after a long bout with cancer. He was 83. I paid tribute to Moore in the pages of the Gay City News for his leadership in the city on the rights of women and gay people. In a town where many religious leaders come down on the more conservative side of issues, Moore was an outspoken champion of the poor, downtrodden, and disenfranchised. When his time as head of the Diocese of New York was up, he worked on more international causes rather than upstage his successor at St. John the Divine Cathedral, including a leading role in securing justice for the people of East Timor. But his home base was Greenwich Village and he continued to be a force for human rights in his beloved city. Despite fourteen years out of office, his funeral was packed in the largest cathedral in the world on 112th St. and Amsterdam Av.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

Nobody likes a schoolyard bully, but nobody tried to pass a law against them, until now. There are such bills being considered by both the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature.

Last month, the New York State Assembly voted 144 to 2 to pass the Dignity for All Students Act, an anti-bullying bill that would require schools to take systemic action to address bias-related harassment of students on the basis of "actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnic group, religion, religious practice, disability, sexual orientation, gender (including gender identity and expression), or sex." It also would require training of staff on how to deal with these issues and mandates documentation of and data collection on incidents of harassment. There is a Dignity for All Students Coalition of more than 100 groups statewide supporting it, including religious, civil rights, gay/lesbian, and education organizations.

As usual, the members of the Republican-dominated New York State Senate do not see the issue in the same way as the Democratic-led New York State Assembly. The senate has its own bill, the Schools as Safe Harbors Act, which also addresses bias harassment, though not as comprehensively. "The good news is that the Senate and Assembly are actively discussing a compromise measure," said Ross Levi, legislative counsel for the Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay and lesbian lobby group. "That's very encouraging. The timeline is quicker than I would have guessed when the session started."

In the city, an anti-bullying bill will soon be introduced into the City Council with a similar name, the Dignity in All Schools Act, which would prohibit harassment for any reason in public and private (but not parochial) schools, mandate that the chancellor create guidelines for enforcement, require training for employees and students on how to discourage harassment, require that the schools develop a method of reporting bullying cases.

The bill already has 37 co-sponsors. Since only 34 votes are needed for a veto-proof majority, chief sponsor Alan Gerson, who represents Lower Manhattan in the council, expects the bill to be enacted before the start of the new school year in September.

Gerson said the city anti-bullying act is designed to "call attention to an endemic problem and get something done about an awful part of youth subculture. For too many kids, the lessons learned are not about math and science, but how to endure taunts and harassment." He said that one of out society's "dirty secrets" is that "nothing seriously has been done about this. There is so much good and wonderful about youth. They're fresh, open, vibrant, and open-minded. But there is this subculture that affects too many of our young people -- the pecking order. Too many kids feel that there needs to be someone to pick on. Both the pickers and those picked on are victims. I want to give the school the tools and resources to deal with the problem effectively.

"I'm not naĂŻve," Gerson said. "This is not a panacea, but it could be a step in helping it to go away."

Posting The Human Rights Law

Intro 353 would require that the city's human rights law be posted in all places of employment and public accommodation.

Tom Smith, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club, developed the bill with former Council Member Kathryn Freed, and now sees real hope for passage. "The original human rights law didn't contain an education section," he said. "It is just as important for people to be able to understand and access the law as it is having the law in the first place."

The recently revitalized City Commission on Human Rights has been engaged in more education and outreach under Commissioner Patricia Gatling. Last month they launched a campaign to educate the public about the meaning of the latest addition to the human rights law, the category of "gender identity and _expression" protecting people of transgender experience. And on April 25, the commission and the New York Immigration Coalition offered a program on Immigrant Employment Rights, part of a new effort to educate immigrants on the "federal and city protections afforded under the Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986 and the New York City Human Rights Law."

Same-Sex Partner in Civil Union Recognized as Spouse by New York Judge

Nassau County Supreme Court Judge John P. Dunne granted John Langan, a gay man who had obtained a civil union with his male partner Conrad Spicehandler in Vermont, the right to sue St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan for the wrongful death of his partner. This is the first time anywhere in the country that a jurisdiction outside Vermont has recognized a person in a civil union as a "spouse" under the law. Professor Arthur Leonard of New York Law School covered the legal issues for the Gay City News and I interviewed advocates for same-sex marriage about the impact of this decision on their movement.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

Even though his coffin was draped with the American flag, U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Riayan Tejeda, 26, was not a U.S.citizen. Tejeda, who was killed in combat in Iraq, was a native of the Dominican Republic.

Eight years ago he joined the Marines after graduating from George Washington High School.

“I hope the United States will remember that my son died for this country,” his father Julio Tejada told Newsday.

Tejeda’s death has brought attention to stories of immigrants who fought for the U.S. military throughout history and the current controversy over their immigration status.

For immigrants, joining the military could lead to a faster track to citizenship, which allows them and their immediate family to reap the same benefits as native-born U.S. citizens.

In early 1990s, immigrant soldiers became eligible for citizenship after three years of legal residency, two years less than civilians. More than 3,600 immigrant soldiers became U.S. citizens from 1994 to 1999.

Last July, President Bush signed an executive order that temporarily allows immigrant soldiers to apply for citizenship immediately. Nearly 5,500 military personnel applied and some already got their citizenships.

There is no law prohibiting illegal immigrants from joining in the army but the armed forces representative says anyone without proper documents is rejected, according to a report in the New York Times.

Tejeda and at least six other U.S. servicemen killed in the war in Iraq had not yet become citizens. Six of these immigrants were granted citizenship posthumously but their relatives did not receive the benefits that would normally go to the families of the citizens.

“It is an honorary status in commemoration of the valor and the sacrifices of the deceased,” the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services explained in the memo.

More than 36,000 service members are non-citizens, making up about 5 percent of active duty service members. About a third come from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries and the rest are from China, Vietnam, Canada, Korea, India and other countries.

In New York City alone, 40 percent of Navy recruits were immigrants, 36 percent in the Marines and 27 percent in the Army.

Many are surprised by the number of non-citizens serving in the U.S. military but others say immigrants have always been a part of the military.

“Basically, both immigrants or non-citizens have served in the military since at least the Revolutionary war,” said University of Michigan Professor Cara Wong, who has been studying immigrants and war.

There were over 500,000 immigrants who fought in the Civil War. They were allowed to form their own units, elect their officers and speak their native tongues. “The Germans are true and patriotic,” said President Abraham Lincoln about the German immigrants volunteering to fight for the union army.

Some immigrant soldiers were even honored by the army for their bravery. During WWII Mexican born soldier Marcario Garcia, whose company was pinned down by the Nazis, fought his way out and, though wounded, was able to return with captured prisoners. Garcia was promoted to staff sergeant and awarded the Medal of Honor.

“The distinction between legal and illegal immigrants was non-existent until well after the Civil War,” said professor Wong.

The situation of non-citizen soldiers has caught the eyes of lawmakers in Washington D.C. Some are introducing bills that would shorten the waiting period to two years for foreign-born soldiers and others even argue for immediate citizenship for all immigrants on active duty in the armed forces.

But that did not happen soon enough for Tejeda. At his funeral, hundreds of people gathered to honor him at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Washington.

“He may never have been made officially a citizen of our nation,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “But we are proud he was a citizen of New York.”

Spokesmen for Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Charles Rangel said that they are seeking citizenship posthumously for Tejada if his family desires.

An immigrant from Bangkok, Thailand, Chaleampon Ritthichai is the editor of The Citizen.

Frieda Zames, who uses a motorized scooter because of a bout with polio, was fed up with trying to ride city buses.

Most city buses did not have wheelchair lifts - and the ones that did were routinely broken - and so Zames and other activists sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Zames and a friend also organized a protest, parking themselves in front of an M14 bus on the corner of Third Street and Avenue A, refusing to let it move.

At the time, public officials scoffed at such protests as little more than a nuisance. The mayor said it would be cheaper to buy every disabled person a limousine than to make city buses handicap accessible. One transportation official called federal legislation on the issue "a cruel hoax."

That was 20 years ago. Today, all 4,457 of the MTA-operated buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts that are used 800,000 times a year by most of the 51,000 New Yorkers who are in wheelchairs.

"The bus system, at least in Manhattan, works quite well," said Zames, who is now 70 years old.

The buses are the one success story in what advocates for the disabled see as a major local civil rights issue – the right to get around.

"What we're talking about here is giving people with disabilities the same kind of options that everybody else has," said Terence Moakley of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association.

Appropriate transportation for the hundreds of thousands of mobility-impaired New Yorkers is not just a right, it is the law. (See Gotham Gazette article from 2000, "A Decade of Disability Rights"). But 13 years after the passage of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, advocates see one failure after another:

• Fewer than eight percent of the subway stations in the city are fully handicap-accessible
• The "Access-A-Ride" van service — which offers 24 hour, door-to-door service to those who cannot ride subways and buses — is plagued by poor service, mismanagement, and safety violations
• The city has no yellow taxicabs for passengers in wheelchairs
• There are 61,000 sidewalk curbs that people in wheelchairs cannot cross that were supposed to be fixed by 1994.
• Some ramps to water ferries are not handicap accessible.

The city says it is complying with federal requirements as quickly as it can, given the size of New York and the age of the transportation system — the last subway line was built over 60 years ago.

And if no public officials make comments as snide as Mayor Ed Koch did about the cost of accessible buses, it is just a fact that costs are very high to provide adequate transportation for the disabled. It costs $260 million to operate Access-A-Ride vans, an increase of 650 percent from eight years ago. And each new MTA bus with a low floor and a wheelchair ramp costs $331,000.The middle of a budget crisis is not the time, the cost-conscious say, to start focusing on an issue already long ignored.

But, the disabled ask, when is a good time?

TRANSPORTATION LAWS AND LAWSUITS

New York City lags behind other large cities like Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington D.C. when it comes to making public transportation fully accessible to its 1.8 million people with disabilities, 220,000 of whom use wheelchairs, crutches, braces, or some other mobility device to get around.

"In order to compare New York City to other cities, you first must recognize the scale," said Frank Bowe, a professor at Hofstra University and former director of the American Council of Citizens with Disabilities. "New York City is by orders of magnitude larger and more complex in its transportation systems than others."

The first major law requiring the city to modify its public transportation came in 1973, with the enactment of the federal Rehabilitation Act which prohibited unfair treatment of disabled individuals in programs or activities that receive government funds, including public transportation.

It was not until 1990, with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that the law explicitly prohibited all discrimination against people with disabilities and required all forms of public transportation to be accessible or that a comparable option be offered.

However, the city complies, said Bowe, only when pushed to by formal complaints.

SUBWAYS: NOT FOR EVERYONE

In the last two decades, the MTA has made improvements to subway stations to accommodate more passengers.

The agency has added elevators and ramps to some subway stations, posted large print or Braille signs for the blind, installed platform-edge warning strips, and provided text-messaging pay phones for the hearing impaired. All Metrocard machines can give both text and audible instructions. And the MTA even offers training courses for riders who are blind or visually impaired so they can learn to better navigate the subway system.

However, for many New Yorkers the subway is still not an option.

Of the city's 468 subway stations, only 36 are wheelchair accessible and many of those have problems.

Alexander Wood, who uses a wheelchair, recently got off at the 125th Street station to find that the elevator was broken. Wood, who was on his way to a business appointment, was stranded. He couldn't get to the street or even to another subway platform. He had no other choice but to call for help.

"The police sent down four lady cops, and they see this man who's 6 foot tall, 200 pounds, with 50 pounds of gear in a wheelchair, and they're like, 'What are we going to do now?'" said Wood, who heads up Disabilities Network of New York City. "Finally some of their colleagues came along and it worked out fine."

At other stations, passengers can only use one side of the platform. For example, at the Cortlandt Street station in lower Manhattan, there are elevators on the downtown side, but not the uptown tracks. And many subway stations also have wide gaps between the platform and the train, making it difficult for less mobile people to board.

"I am so afraid of those gaps between the platform and the train - being dragged or something - that I just don't use the subway," said Frieda Zames.

The MTA has plans to modify another 64 stations by the year 2020, which would create a total of 100 accessible stations. The renovations will cost an estimated $530 million.

ACCESS-A-RIDE OR "A STRESS-A-RIDE"

One night last fall, Alice Crespo, who is blind, was trying to get from a friend's house in Brooklyn to her home in Queens. Like many New Yorkers with a disability, Kreslow's primary form of transportation is Access-A-Ride, the city's 24-a-day van service for those unable to use buses and subways.

Crespo called and the van came to pick her up. However, when she went to get in the van, the driver told her that he would not take her where she wanted to go because it would make him late for his next scheduled pickup. He suggested he drop her off at a subway station and so could take a train home. Crespo refused; the driver told her to hail a cab.

"It's not like I can just see one on the street and get it, " said Crespo. "I'm totally blind."

After 20 minutes, the van driver relented and took her home.

According to testimony at a recent City Council hearing, such experiences are common for passengers who use Access-A-Ride services.

Customers complain of late pick-ups or vans that never show up, and of drivers unfamiliar with New York City streets who have been known to take passengers on grueling, roundabout trips. Some even refer to it as "A Stress-A-Ride."

A series of recent articles in the Daily News have tracked the Access-A-Ride problems, including 619 accidents involving injuries and major damage in the last year. The problem, critics say, is a decentralized system that uses ten private companies that do not have adequate oversight and have little incentive to improve service. Only two of the companies passed their most recent safety inspection.

"Right now the Access-A-Ride program is so inefficient that it is committing a violation of human rights against the same people it is supposed to be serving," said City Councilmember Margarita Lopez, who joined in a lawsuit against the van providers.

At a recent hearing, Howard Ende of MTA New York City Transit spoke in defense of the service, stating that the organization's complaint rate was only 8 per 1,000 riders. He added that Access-A-Ride is scheduled to receive 500 new buses by 2003.

New York City's paratransit service, which receives requests for 200,000 rides a month, is also the most expensive service of its kind in the country, averaging $56 per trip.

In 1998, the total cost of Access-A-Ride was $41 million; in 2002, it cost $260 million, an increase of 600 percent in eight years.

Passengers pay $1.50, which only covers about three percent of the total cost. Since there are no state or federal funding for the program, the city pays for a about a quarter of the cost and the rest comes from the general operating funds of New York City Transit – which means fares and general subsides.

NO YELLOW CABS

Last year, Stacy LaRoche was trying to hail a cab with "Lucky," a guide dog who helps LaRoche walk. Three separate taxis refused to pick her up. After an investigation by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the drivers admitted they did not stop for LaRoche because she had a dog; each was fined $200.

But for many people with disabilities in New York City, the issue is not whether a cab will pick them up, but whether they can get in at all.

Unlike 40 U.S. cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, New York does not have any wheelchair accessible taxis in its fleet of 12,287 yellow cabs. And there are only four wheelchair accessible, for-hire cars in the city.

Two years ago, it looked as if wheelchair accessible yellow cabs might become a reality when the Taxi and Limousine Commission proposed that all new yellow taxis purchased after July 2001 be accessible. The commission later rescinded the proposal, arguing that the poor economy, the financial fallout of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the cost of providing insurance for accessible vehicles were too high for the commission to overcome.

Whereas a standard yellow cab costs between $23,000 and $24,000, a new wheel-chair accessible yellow cab can cost as much as $40,000, not including vehicle insurance that runs up to $15,000 a year. Converting an existing livery van with a wheelchair lift costs about $7,000.

"It's a false hope to say that 50, 100, or 200 yellow cabs would really help the disabled community," said Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus at a City Council hearing last month. The commission now supports a plan to make more livery cabs handicap accessible, in part because their insurance is less costly than yellow cabs.

CUTTING CURB CORNERS

In many areas of the city simply crossing the street is impossible because sidewalk curbs are too high for many wheelchairs.

"It's very simple," said Robert Stulberg of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. "If you're in a wheelchair and you pull up to a corner that's not ramped, you literally cannot get to the other side of the street."

The Americans with Disabilities Act set a deadline of 1994 for all cities to comply with regulations that would cut curbs and replace them with sloped inclines at street corners. However, by that time, the city did not have a plan to fix the city's 12,750 miles of sidewalks.

The organization Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association sued and the Giuliani administration fought the case in court for eight years.

In September 2002, the case was settled by the Bloomberg administration, which agreed to spend $218 million with the aim of installing ramps on the remaining 61,000 curbed street corners by the year 2010.

The city's transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, said that the agreement reflects the city's commitment to making street corners accessible "expeditiously" in a "fiscally prudent and sound manner."

However, the city is already behind schedule in meeting its goal of fixing all city sidewalks by 2010, completing just half of what should have been accomplished so far.

FERRIES AND THE FUTURE

Although improving existing forms of transportation can be an expensive and slow process, advocates have hope for the future, in particular for water ferries.

The majority of New York Waterways ferries are wheelchair accessible, however, 13 ferries that were added after September 11, 2001 to provide increased boat service to lower Manhattan are not. All of the New York City Water Taxis, the newest ferry service in the city, comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

However, many of the city-owned docks do not have wheel-chair accessible ramps.

Recently a bill was introduced into the New York City Council, that would require all water transportation and ramps to ferries to be wheel chair accessible. Advocates are encouraged by the support the legislation has in the City Council, where 47 of the 51 members have signed on as sponsors and hearings on the legislation are underway.

Activists are also looking ahead ensure that future development projects like the 2nd Avenue subway, plans to make transportation an essential aspect of the plan to host the 2012 Olympics, and a new transportation hub in lower Manhattan are open to all New Yorkers.

Many remember the former World Trade Center station as being dependably accessible, part of the Manhattan subway route riders with disabilities could count on and are already lobbying planners and elected officials.

"It's a hub, there's going to connections to lots of trains, and we want to be able to get on all of them," said Jean Ryan of Disabled in Action.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

ADVOCATES
• Disabled in Action
• Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association
• Access-a-Ride Demands from Disabled in Action
• Disabilities Network of New York City

GOVERNMENT
• New York State Office of Advocate for Persons with Disabilities
• Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities
• Accessible Subway Stations in New York City
• The MTA's Guide to Access-a-Ride
• City Council Committee on Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, and Disability Services
• New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission
• New York City Commission on Human Rights

LAWS
• The Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• The Americans with Disabilities Act

It has always been the mission of the New York Civil Liberties Union to preserve the Bill of Rights, which were the first amendments to the United States Constitution. But those rights have come under such unprecedented attack since the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, they say, that a new group has been formed to augment their efforts.

The New York City Bill of Rights Defense Campaign brings together the Civil Liberties Union with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the NAACP, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund , and other groups in a campaign to protect civil liberties at the local and state level, while focusing New York efforts against federal encroachments. An organizing conference was held in Brooklyn on March 23rd at Long Island University.

"The attack on civil liberties -- the war on them, really -- has filtered down from the top and is manifested in state legislation and is also relevant on the city level," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She cites in particular the New York Police Department's efforts to dismantle the 1985 Handshu decision (based on a lawsuit that went back to 1971) that limits police surveillance of lawful political activity such as demonstrations.

In February, Federal District Court Charles S. Haight, The New York Times reported, modified the Handshu order citing "fundamental changes in the threats to public security." Newsday reported that "Haight's ruling expands the department's investigatory powers, allowing all branches to investigate suspected political activity. Under the Handshu guidelines, such investigations were limited to one unit, the Public Security Section." It also "modifies departmental constraints that there must be a 'criminal predicate' - the suspicion of unlawful activity - to justify political surveillance or infiltration. The department will now be bound by FBI guidelines, Haight ruled, which are less restrictive."

As Lieberman puts it: "Without more than just saying there is a threat of terrorist attacks, there was not an adequate basis to eliminate or modify Handshu. It didn't prohibit police from spying, it simply set up a mechanism where the police centralized the operations in one unit and had to get prior or after-the-fact approval for surveillance or infiltration of organizations predicated on an internal showing of some criminal suspicion. And if it were just a matter of lawful protest, they wouldn't be able to get the approval." Lieberman said that the Handshu procedure "required a paper trail, which served as a significant deterrent."

At recent anti-war demonstrations, "police were out taking pictures from rooftops and on the streets," Lieberman noted. "They wouldn't have been doing that before." The Civil Liberties Union will soon publish a report on city and police tactics at the massive February 15 rally; demonstrators were not allowed to march past the United Nations.

But Lieberman said that "the major concern is that we'll see a return to undercover surveillance and infiltration and collecting dossiers on the loyal opposition. There is a history of dirty tricks and saboteurs that is too pervasive to ignore, particularly at a time when people are in motion out on the streets. We should not be intimidated or chilled by police disruption and becoming fact files at One Police Plaza."

The goals of the new coalition, Lieberman said, are to fight "the end of open government, pervasive government eavesdropping and surveillance, discriminatory and repressive immigration policies, preventive distention, military tribunals, and the profiling of immigrants."

City Councilmember Bill Perkins is developing a bill with Council members Hiram Monserrate of Queens and Charles Barron of Brooklyn that calls upon the city to monitor abuses in these areas. Lieberman noted that the fear of government repression by Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants is so pervasive that many "are afraid to access government services that they desperately need, including health care, calling the police, and even reporting fires."

In sum, Lieberman said, "the notion that the New York Civil Liberties Union should be launching a campaign to defend the bill of rights is in and of itself a commentary on our times. After all, it is our mission in life. But the attacks by Bush/Ashcroft in response to September 11th have created an enormous crisis that none of us could have predicted that we would see in our lifetimes. They are putting an infrastructure in place to return to secret government, dirty tricks, spying on lawful political activity, and amassing of data on private activity that sets up the kind of Big Brother society that goes well beyond anything we ever contemplated."

New York City Kept Enforcing Anti-Sodomy Laws for More than 20 Years After They Were Declared Unconstitutional

All sodomy laws in this country may be dead by June if the United States Supreme Court rules as expected in a Texas case just argued, but while New York's law has been unconstitutional under the state's constitution for 23 years, hundreds of New Yorkers have been prosecuted in that time in a scandal uncovered by Duncan Osborne of the Gay City News .

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments March 26 on the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law, banning people of the same sex from having sex. Depending on what grounds the court uses, it could get rid of this and three other gay-only sodomy laws as well as laws in nine other states that penalize non-vaginal intercourse for both same-sex and male-female couples. I covered the hearing for the Gay City News in "Reckoning for Sodomy."

Most of these states that still have these laws are in the South. New York's law was overturned by the Court of Appeals, the state's highest, in 1980. Osborne found that there were 39 arrests for consensual sodomy in Brooklyn alone from 1981 to 2001 and some in every borough. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes would not comment on the matter.

The invalidated law was not actually removed from the books by the state legislature until 2000. Richard Haymes, director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, told the paper, "That there is discretion to make arrests under a law that has been found unconstitutional seems even more surreal because what it is saying is that there are certain boroughs where it is safer to have certain types of sex than other boroughs."

Osborne wrote that "prosecutors may have been using the prospect of dismissing the sodomy charge in order to get a plea to a lesser charge."

Human Rights Commission Testifies at City Council

City Human Rights Commission Chair Patricia Gatling testified before the committees on general welfare and finance on March 13 that the goal of eliminating the 5,000 case backlog at the commission has "been achieved" and that the agency secured "close to a million dollars for complainants"-three times the amounts won in 2000 and 2001.

Despite an initial increase in funding for the agency under Mayor Bloomberg after steady starvation by the Giuliani administration, Gatling reported that their fiscal year 2003 budget was cut by $350,000 and 2004 has already been cut another $200,000. She noted that "the possibility of a larger reduction and personnel losses looms," and that they have tried to supplement the budget with "grants, academic partnerships, intern programs, volunteer staff, and a federal contract."

Gatling also testified, "The mayor intends to submit legislation that would amend the city's Human Rights Law to make it substantially equivalent to the federal Fair Housing Act" so that the commission can be paid to investigate and prosecute housing complaints for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

Demonstrations against the impending pre-emptive war by the United States of America against Iraq marched past the Coliseum in Rome, the Houses of Parliament in London, the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia on February 15. But when they tried to march past the United Nations in New York, they were stopped by the city with the backing of the federal government.

The New York Police Department said that they could not handle a march for security reasons and the federal courts and the editorial boards of the daily newspapers in the city accepted this. With the country on an "orange alert" from the United States Department of Homeland Security, the demonstrators were restricted to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on a side street north of the United Nations and some surrounding streets and this was accepted as a necessary concession to security by many opinion makers in New York, while bitterly contested by the demonstration organizers from United for Peace and Justice and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Some City Council members were concerned enough about the denial of a march permit to call public hearings on February 25 before the Government Operations and Public Safety Committees.

The organizers of the demonstration have been criticized for not laying out their plans for a march well in advance. Beyond the fact that this was a response to recent developments in the United States campaign to attack Iraq, many demonstration organizers in New York no longer go to the Police Department for permits for large demonstrations because they end up in negotiations leading to a late selection of a route or site that, they feel, defeat the purpose of their action.

While much public attention has been focused on the restrictions on this anti-war demonstration, protests in New York City were steadily hemmed in during the Giuliani years. Mayor Giuliani did everything he could to close City Hall Plaza not just to protest demonstrations, but also to press conferences. Only after repeated lawsuits by Housing Works, an AIDS housing advocacy and service group, did groups win the right to press conferences and demonstrations, albeit severely limited.

In the not too distant past, the steps of City Hall were once as democratic a place as Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park in London, with two or three ad hoc press conferences or actions competing at the same time. Now behind iron gates and a metal detector just to get into the plaza, it is a much less dynamic area and infinitely more restrictive of free speech.

The argument of the police, often hailed as the finest in the world, that they cannot handle certain marches and demonstrations is also nothing new. When members of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization wanted to march up Fifth Avenue in 1993 to protest their exclusion from the St. Patrick's Day parade prior to the big event, the police made the same argument -- that they couldn't handle more than one parade that day, even at different times. (The police can and do handle more than one parade when they are led by different ethnic groups at the same time.) The gay group sued the police and Mayor Dinkins in federal court and lost. Their protest march on the morning of March 17, 1993 was stopped by the police who then proceeded to arrest more than 250 demonstrators, a procedure that arguably took a lot more time and trouble than letting them proceed up the avenue before any of the other St. Patrick's parade participants were scheduled to take it.

When a gay Wyoming college student, Matthew Shepherd, was brutally murder in 1998, there were marches in sympathy and outrage across the land. The New York demonstrators, however, were not permitted to march down Fifth Avenue from outside the Plaza Hotel on W. 59th Street. Police arrested most of the organizers at the outset and the demonstration, filled with anger at Shepherd's death and police tactics, turned into a chaotic mess leading to many arrests and injuries, not to mention many more traffic tie-ups all over the West Side than would have occurred had the march been allowed to proceed.

If the cause is more politically sensitive, marchers have been able to go forward.  When Amadou Diallo was killed by police with 41 bullets in 1999, a huge protest march against the police was allowed to proceed across the Brooklyn Bridge into a demonstration area near City Hall. It all depends whose ox is gored.

Ann Northrop, an AIDS activist who is a veteran of many of these marches, said of the February 15th anti-war demonstration, "It's the most shameful thing that Bloomberg has ever done. It could have been a peaceful huge march with no problems." Instead, people were herded onto side streets and made to walk blocks and blocks away from the rally. A police source said that orders came down from the top of the Bloomberg administration that New York was not to be seen as a center of protest and the police should therefore interfere with the ability of protesters to get to the rally by telling them that there were terrorist threats. People were being turned away as they arrived at Grand Central Station in some cases.

The New York Civil Liberties Union is determined to reverse the trend on restrictions on demonstrations in New York, just as the police are determined to continue using this method of penning demonstrators in (as they pen in revelers on New Year's Eve in Times Square). "As long as the judiciary goes along with this," Northrop said, "we're stymied. But as long as we turn out in huge numbers, no matter what they do to us, we'll be successful. We have to keep the pressure on. That's what stopped the Vietnam War."

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

Monica Terazzi admits that, a year after the terrorist attacks, Arab Americans in New York are no longer subjected to the threats and harassment that many of them underwent in the immediate aftermath. "We have experienced a lot fewer incidents of violent crimes," said Terazzi, the New York director of the American Arab Discrimination Committee. Indeed, the City Commission on Human Rights has not seen many complaints by Arab Americans of their civil liberties being violated.

But 9/11 still holds a special threat to the civil liberties of Arab-Americans in New York -- as well as to that of the rest of New Yorkers.

"We are still seeing a lot of workplace discrimination and incidents of police harassment. " Terazzi said. She is especially concerned that the government is detaining Arab immigrants and holding them for months on end for such infractions as overstaying their visas. "A Palestinian man with Jordanian citizenship was recently deported for not reporting an address change," she said. "This had never previously been a deportable offense... Everyone knows someone who has been harassed or detained. It is pretty scary, the notion that police can swoop down on your house and disappear with your husband."

Air travel poses special problems for those of Middle Eastern descent. "Many Arab Americans have been pulled out of line at airports," she said, despite assurances from United States Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta that there would be no such racial profiling. "Arab American passengers have been ejected from flights after going through security. I have spoken to lots of people who have faced so much harassment that they say, 'I'm not traveling again.'"

It is true that most of the incidents that Terazzi talks about are "anecdotal" -- they are not listed in official statistics, such as complaints registered with the City Commission on Human Rights. "People don't want to draw attention to themselves," Terazzi explained. "There is a fear of anything associated with the government." Her group held a town meeting in Bay Ridge with local and federal government agencies represented and the reaction from the crowd was "we don't want to go there; it's the government."

Staff members of the human rights commission are conscious of this reluctance, and have been speaking to small groups of Arab Americans, encouraging them to make reports and reminding them that they do not have to be citizens to do so. But few have come forward, despite an assurance from Commissioner Patricia L. Gatling that "discrimination has no place in this city -- not today, not tomorrow, and not on the anniversary of the attack on our nation at the hands of terrorists." She said that the city human rights law "is one of the most comprehensive in the nation" and that she and Mayor Michael Bloomberg are committed to "the vigorous enforcement of the law that protect these rights. And that protection extends to all New Yorkers, not just some of them."

Indeed, all New Yorkers should be concerned about the threats to their civil rights, says Donna Lieberman, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "In September and October of last year," she said, "I didn't dare contemplate how bad things would get. Some of the measures that the government has adopted have seriously eroded our fundamental civil rights and cry out for reversal." One example is the TIPS program, the Bush plan to recruit millions of volunteers to do domestic surveillance. Another is the "facial recognition technology" which is being employed at the Statue of Liberty, which is "about as accurate as heads or tails" in identifying evil-doers, while creating "a Big Brother-type of encroachment."

"What's heartening," Lieberman said, "is that...the American people have resisted to a certain extent. That's why we have not seen a proliferation of military trials. That's why TIPS has been met with resistance."

In New York, Lieberman said, the state legislators "enacted tough anti-terrorism legislation without debate or thoughtful consideration in an effort that was designed more to attain political capital than protect security. It increased death penalty application and defined terrorism in a vague and chilling way." Despite the rush to pass the law last year, "we haven't seen any prosecutions." She believes the law would not hold up in court.

The New York City Department of Education has a whole page of resources for administrators and teachers on how to help students cope with the traumatic effects of September 11, but there is scant acknowledgement in the school system's special materials on the stigmatization to which many students of Middle East origin or descent have been subjected. The resource page does, however, promote a special post 9/11 series on PBS-TV's "In the Mix" called "The New Normal" that focuses on dealing with ethnic, racial, and other human differences. And the "9/11 as History" program cited from the Families and Work Institute does include a lesson plan that deals with "compassion and diversity."

New Yorkers concerned about human rights should know about two events timed to the one-year anniversary. Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization of family members of those who perished on 9/11, is sponsoring a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on September 10. And on September 11 at 6 PM, a candlelight vigil will begin at Atlantic and Court Streets in Brooklyn, the heart of the Arab American community in New York, to gather for "remembrance, prayer, reflection, and unity," according to Terazzi.

New Human Rights Commissioners to be Named This Month

Mayor Bloomberg is finally getting around to filling twelve vacancies on what is supposed to be the 15-member City Commission on Human Rights. An announcement is expected in mid-September.

The beleaguered agency, which lost 75 percent of its funding under Mayor Giuliani while ironically gaining Charter status, got a new chairperson, Patricia L. Gatling, back in February. She is the only paid member of the Commission and directs the staff. But only two of the non-salaried commissioners are left-Marta Varela, who chaired the agency under Giuliani, and Derek Bryson Park. This minimum of three commissioners is required to make final determinations on cases. When all fifteen commissioners are on board, rotating panels of three review decisions and make recommendations to the full commission.

Gay Rights Continue to Advance in Wake of 9/11

In June, I wrote an Issue of the Week on "The Rights of Same-Sex Partners" and how they had advanced after the public saw how domestic partner survivors of the victims of 9/11 received second class treatment. While most of these are state and federal issues, the City Council is doing what it can to bring about spousal equivalency for domestic partners, gay and straight. In August, it passed Intro 114 by a vote of 34 to 7, with four abstentions. In it, New York City recognizes domestic partnerships or same-sex marriages contracted in other jurisdictions under our domestic partners law. In other words, the couples will not have to register again in the city just as married couples don't have to get married here to have their union acknowledged. Mayor Bloomberg signed the bill on August 27 and it went into effect immediately.

Mayor Bloomberg's 12 new human rights commissioners (plus one holdover held their first meeting on January 29. The session started with controversy and went on to focus on "doing more with less," as Commission Chair Patricia Gatling put it.

The agency, cut 80 percent in the Giuliani years, received a slight increase in the budget passed in June. But since then it, along with all other agencies, has been asked to cut its budget for this year as well as for the coming fiscal year. That has spurred the commission to try to get grants from the federal government and others to expand its work.

When I expressed interest in covering the meeting, Betsy Herzog, the director of public information, told me not to expect any fireworks. But just as the meeting began, Rabbi Avi Weiss and others from the Coalition for Jewish Concerns stood up to vociferously protest the appointment of Commissioner Omar T. Mohammedi, an attorney in private practice who is the general counsel for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The protesters said the American-Islamic group "condones terrorism" and have called for a City Council investigation into Mohammedi´s appointment. Mohammedi refused to comment for Gotham Gazette, but his biography on the commission's web site does not mention his work for the Council for American-Islamic Relations.

Commissioner Haskell Lookstein, a rabbi, had previously expressed concern about Mohammedi's involvement with the, but seemed to have reconciled himself to serving with him by the time of the meeting. George Spitz, a community activist and Orthodox Jew who attended the meeting, presented a letter to Gatling hailing the Mohammedi´s appointment, writing that he "will provide much needed representation" for the Muslim community. Spitz said that he checked out the group's web site "and found nothing of a bigoted nature."

Police led the demonstrators out, and the meeting resumed. But the controversy continued. Ed Skyler, Mayor Michael Bloomberg´s press secretary, called Weiss and the other protestors "extremists". This prompted an editorial in the conservative New York Sun criticizing Sklyer and commenting, "Mr. Mohammedi has so far refused to answer questions from the press about CAIR or about what he thinks of Hamas, Hezbollah, the American Jewish Committee or the World Trade Center bombing."

The meeting, though, proceeded to other matters. Gatling and her staff of deputy commissioners told the unpaid commissioners what the agency was doing. The commissioners serve as advisors and also make determinations on civil rights rulings made by an administrative law judge.

Deputy Commissioner for Law Enforcement Avery Mehlman chronicled the commission´s efforts in 2002 to resolve the huge backlog of complaints and to deal with "systemic discrimination" in the city. This included sending out newly hired testers (former police officers) to see whether landlords were violating the city's human rights law. Combating discrimination against women and people with prior criminal records was also cited as a priority. For example, the agency is working with Princeton University on testing the extent to which people coming out of prison face employment discrimination.

"This agency hasn't been a litigation agency," Gatling said, but she is working to change that. For example, the human rights commission is seeking a change in the city´s human rights law that would allow the agency to go to state court to pursue discrimination cases.

Given the agency´s limited resources, Deputy Commissioner for Investigations Cliff Mulqueen said that the agency "is trying to contract with [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] to pay us" to handle housing discrimination cases.

Deputy Commissioner for Public Affairs Lee Hudson reviewed a broad range of programs at the agency, including a current survey of discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians that is available on the agency's revamped web site. It is available in six languages (in two, English and Arabic, on the web site) and so far more than 500 surveys have been returned.

The seven neighborhood human rights offices are being consolidated into one in each borough. And a new computerized system to track case is being developed. All the satellite offices will be able to use it.

For the first time, the agency is developing compliance guidelines for the newest category covered in the human rights law, "gender identity and expression." People of transgender experience have been protected from since early last year.

General Counsel Randy Wills proposed a new set of by-laws for the commission, including moving from meeting once a month to once every four. While that prospect and Gatling's commitment to one-hour meetings was welcomed by some, it was not adopted as the New York Times reported. Privately, some commissioners expressed the desire to meet more frequently to fulfill their obligations "to foster mutual understanding and respect among all persons in the City of New York and to encourage equality of treatment for, and prevent discrimination against, any group or its members."

Defending Affirmative Action

On April 1, high school and college students from around the nation will stage a Civil Rights March to the Supreme Court to "defend affirmative action and save Brown v. Board of Education." It is being organized by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN).

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

When Mohammad Ferdous Bin Zaman turned on the TV to find out about the weather, he could not believe what he heard.

Bangladesh became the latest nation, along with Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait, to join the list of 25 countries whose male citizens must register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they intend to stay in the United States

"Why Bangladesh?" asked Bin Zaman, 24-year-old Bengladeshi student who now lives in Astoria, Queens. "We don't have a past record of terrorist activities."

The special registration applies to all U.S. visa holders including international students, immigrants whose permanent resident status are pending and undocumented immigrants. Women, green card holders, naturalized U.S. citizens and those who have political asylum are exempt.

The first registration deadline ended up with a massive arrest of immigrants in Los Angeles last December. Although no similar arrest was reported in New York City, immigrant communities here are nervous.

"All of a sudden we got a lot of work to do because we have clients who are petrified," said Jo Anne C. Adlerstein, head of the immigration law practice at Proskauer, Rose.

In some cases, Adlerstein encouraged her clients to leave the country before the registration date because they might be detained for over-staying their visas or other criminal records if they register.

"We had one client from Tunisia who went back last week before the [second] deadline and a number of Pakistani clients are evaluating their options," she said.

Some Pakistani immigrants decided to move out of the country altogether before the third registration deadline on February 21.

"This definitely bred fear, intimidation and confusion on the part of many affected," said Donna Lieberman, Executive Director at New York Civil Liberty Union. "There are so many who just don't understand: why them?"

By next month's deadline more than 24,200 men through out the country are expected to be registered, fingerprinted and photographed, according to an Associated Press report. One Lebanese citizen who has already registered said that he felt "humiliated having to go through the interrogation and the whole process."

Jorge Martinez , a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson, has said that the registration system is meant to protect the United States and the countries on the list are places that harbor terrorist organizations. "It's all based on national security," he said. "It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity."

"[Bagladeshis] are very peaceful people," Bin Zaman said. In fact President George Bush had once cited Bangladesh as a tolerant, moderate and practicing democracy with Muslim majority.

North Korea aside, most countries on the list are ones with a large Muslim population. "It's an extreme example of racial, religious and ethnic profiling," said Lieberman.

Critics also doubt that the registration would prevent future terrorist attacks and point out that some of the 19 hijackers were registered with the INS as students. "How do you know if somebody is a terrorist who has been here in a sleeper cell for 10 years? How do you know that they're not already a citizen?" Alderstein said.

Some immigrants are concerned about what will come after registration. "I don't know what they will do next, " said Kabir, a 26 years old Bangladeshi who lives in Jamaica, Queens. " I fear maybe two months after registration, they will send us all letters saying that there are no jobs available, the economy is going down, and that there is no need for us to be here and we should leave."

Immigrant groups such as the New York Immigration Coalition, the Coney Island Project and the Asian American Legal Defense Fund have arranged protests against the registration program. But at the same time they conduct workshops on how to deal with it because there is no alternative for immigrants who want to remain in the country.

"I would not recommend that you would stay in the country past the registration date without registering," Alderstein said.

'I'm going to register," said Kabir. " Whatever they ask me to do, I'll do it."

First Group

• Registration deadline: December 16, 2002
• Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria

Second Group

• Registration deadline: January 10, 2003
• Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen

Third Group

• Registration deadline: February 21, 2003 (extended to March 21)
• Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

Fourth Group

• Registration deadline: March 28, 2003 (extended to April 25)
• Bangladesh, Indonesia, Egypt Jordan and Kuwait

Learn more at http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/lawenfor/specialreg/index.htm

In response to the Special Registration, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund has produced informational alerts in Korean, Urdu and English and provided free legal advice by telephone.

If you believe that this new registration rule applies to you, You can get free, confidential advice from Sin Yen Ling, a lawyer at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 212-966-5932 extension 213.

Learn more at http://www.aaldef.org/news.html

An immigrant from Bangkok, Thailand, Chaleampon Ritthichai.

It took him more than ten months to do it, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has filled eleven vacancies on the New York City Commission on Human Rights with some of the leading civil rights leaders in the city. Among those named were two college presidents, five attorneys, and eight people with doctorates. They are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, religion, and sexual orientation. But it is their depth of experience working for civil rights that makes this perhaps the most high profile panel in the commission's history.

In alphabetical order, they are:

Rev. Calvin O. Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and President of the State University of New York at Old Westbury, has been one of the leading voices against racism in the city for decades. While he has taken his fight to the boardrooms of New York, he has also engaged in such street actions as whitewashing billboards promoting malt liquor to people of color in his community.

Matt Foreman, director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the state's leading gay and lesbian lobby group, also once led the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. He just negotiated with Governor George Pataki and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno to get a commitment that they would finally vote on a state lesbian and gay rights bill next month. He said that he wants to focus on "policy and systemic issues around discrimination" through the commission.

Edison O. Jackson is the President of Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York and serves on the board of the Catholic Interracial Council of New York. He has "written extensively on issues of concern to educators with particular concentration on minority students and the community, academic preparation and student performance," according to his biography from the Brooklyn-based college.

Rabbi Haskell Lookstein is considered a leading centrist in Orthodox Judaism. Since 1959, he has been the rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jesurun and since 1966 the principal of the Ramaz School. He is the author of "Were We Our Brothers' Keepers?" about the horrors of the Holocaust. He is not afraid of controversy. Earlier this year, he was in the news for calling for a boycott of the New York Times over their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Grace Lyu-Volckhausen, an adviser to Council Member John Liu (D-Queens), is active in several Korean-American groups including Koreans for Civic Action, the Coalition of Korean American Voters, and the Black-Korean American Mediation Project. With Vicki Alexander, she wrote in Ms. Magazine about "Black/Asian Conflict: Where do We Begin?" back in 1991 about two feminists, one Asian American and one African American, who "sit down as strangers to discuss the conflicts between their communities." She is president of the Tiger Baron Foundation and a board member of the Asian Pacific American Women's Leadership Institute.

William Malpica, an attorney in private practice, does pro bono legal work for the NAACP. He is also on the Junior Advisory Board to the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, the group dedicated "to improving the quality of life of Latino children and families."

Omar T. Mohammedi is also an attorney, among whose specialties is discrimination law. He is the president of the 9/11 Coalition for Constitutional and Human Rights and of the New York Area Muslim Bar Association. His work as general counsel for the Council on Islamic Relations has drawn some fire and that group has sent out an action alert saying that "representatives of the pro-Israel lobby are pressuring officials to withdraw the appointment of Omar T. Mohammedi." The alert does not specify which groups are doing the pressuring. It should be noted that while the chair of the commission serves at the pleasure of the mayor and is compensated, these other commissioners get three-year unpaid terms and may not be removed except for failure to perform their duties.

Bryan Pu-Folkes, who describes himself as Jamaican-Burmese American, is the president of New Immigrant Community Empowerment in Queens, working on helping new immigrants as well as building bridges between longtime residents and new arrivals. He wrote about his mission in an article for Gotham Gazette called "Nice But Not Easy" this past February. And last October, he was presented with the 2001 Brooke Russell Astor Award from the New York Public Library recognizing "unsung heroes who have contributed substantially to improving the quality of life in New York City."

Lisa Quiroz is the publisher of "People en Español" and is a member of the board of both the Hispanic Federation and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Institute, dedicated to engaging "the public sector in support of Latino higher education achievement." Quiroz told Gotham Gazette, "The reason I took this appointment is that as a lifelong New Yorker, I saw this as an opportunity to make a difference for the communities I care about. I got the sense that there will be renewed focus at the commission. The new chair is terrific and she is intent on getting things done, especially around housing and education rights. Don't see it as a ceremonial post, but as a chance to get things done."

Jenny Rivera was once an Administrative Law Judge for the New York State Division on Human Rights and associate counsel for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. She is now associate professor of law at the City University of New York School of Law. She concentrated on constitutional and feminist law at Columbia Law School. She has testified on legislation concerning discrimination and domestic violence against Latinas and was an observer at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

And Susan R. Scheer is a longtime disability activist. She is now the director of Disability Services for Columbia University. She has been executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York Independent Living Services and was once the deputy director of the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. Bloomberg announced that Matthew P. Sapolin is the new executive director of his Office of Disabilities. He had been the co-executive director of the Queens Independent Living Center.

All in all, just putting this diverse group of people into the same room has the potential of building some bridges in New York that were not there before. When conflicts between communities arise as they inevitably do in New York, they can be eased through the kinds of relationships among commissioners that are fostered at meetings.

Commissioner Patricia Gatling said that she and her staff have reduced the backlog of complaints from 5,000 to 2,000. She also said that despite the new round of budget cuts anticipated at most city agencies, since most of the commission's money comes from federal "community block funding," the Human Rights Commission is not being asked for more cuts. Gatling said that the agency took an 83 percent cut under the previous administration.

Gatling ticked off several cases that were as much as 12 years old that had recently been settled. These eleven new commissioners' only official duty is to be the final arbiter of cases, which are first decided by an administrative law judge. When busy people like these give up their time for such work, without compensation, the odds are they are not doing it just to get called "commissioner" and put "Honorable" in front of their names. They now have a position from which to seriously enhance intergroup relations in this most diverse of cities. How far they go with that mission is entirely up to them.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.