Giash Ahmed has the distinction of being the first Asian Muslim and Bangladeshi immigrant to run for the New York State Senate. He is running for the State Senate from District 13 on a Republican Party ticket, the first ever to have been awarded to an Asian Muslim. His constituency,Read More

A Boston janitors’ strike has prompted a rare letter of support from the city’s Jewish welfare federation. The executive board of the federation, known as the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, voted Tuesday to send an open letter to Unicco, the company that cleans the federation’s headquarters and 27Read More

Just about everyone in New Jersey wants to fire state poet laureate Amiri Baraka, but nobody knows how. Call it poetic license. Last week Governor James McGreevey called for the resignation of Baraka, a 68-year-old poet, playwright and activist who gained fame in the 1960s as LeRoi Jones, after heRead More

On a Friday afternoon, 10 gay and transgendered teens laugh and talk on the steps of a well-kept Gramercy Park apartment building. A pretty transgendered girl sweeps her carefully coiffed hair from her face as she flirts and poses. Nearby, two boys with coffee-colored skin watch her and smile. ItRead More

. Pakistan Post. 2 October 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. Oman, Saudi Arabia, Muscat and United Arab Emirates deported 2000 Pakistanis. Upon their arrival in Pakistan, all were interviewed by FBI agents and released without further charges. Oman and Muscat deported 1,100 Pakistanis living there without legal status.Read More

Because their employers did not pay the health insurance fee to the union on time, about a thousand garment workers from a dozen Chinatown garment firms lost their guaranteed health insurance from the union yesterday. The garment workers union staged an “alternative strike,” by organizing frequent meetings during working hours,Read More

Sharonne Salaam, mother of Yusef Salaam, said she heard about Matias Reyes’ confession to the rape in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, when a friend called and said to turn on the TV. And she read more about it from a report in The New York Times. Ms. Salaam,Read More

Copycats, mainstream U.S. and Africans, African Abroad, 30 September 2002. English Language. Let us begin by admitting that many African immigrants in the United Sates are here to stay. Even though this is very difficult to say within our culture, yet it must be said that many will also dieRead More

The winds of renovation are in the air in East Harlem. They gust into our daily lives as a group of workers pours asphalt on Park Avenue while others put the finishing touches on the new, luxury laundromat on 116th Street; nearby buildings are being restored and new restaurants areRead More

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in Connecticut has withdrawn a recently introduced policy that required Sikhs to remove their turbans before being photographed for a driver’s license. The withdrawal came following complaints by members of the Sikh community. Initially, the department changed its policy to require a letter fromRead More

“How we Korean Americans Participate Appropriately in the Social Sphere in the U.S., the Immigrant’s Country” was the topic of a seminar called “Practicing Right Living” sponsored by the New Jersey Women’s Service Center. The participants in this seminar unanimously agreed that enhancing their understanding of other ethnic groups andRead More

On the eve of a much-anticipated national Jewish population survey, a leading demographer has found that there are 18 percent more Jews in America than earlier reports have stated. In a new national survey to be released this week, Gary Tobin, president of the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish CommunityRead More

Dressed as brides and widows, but wearing sneakers for the walk, hundreds of women marched yesterday in New York to protest the increase in domestic violence and to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Gladys Ricart. Known as the March of the Brides, the event was organized byRead More

The Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, the Pakistani High Commissioner, said that Musharraf met with Bush for half an hour, and one thing they talked about was student visas for Pakistani students. Student visas are not an issue for ordinary Pakistanis, they are an issue for the elite. Only the children ofRead More

In one of her poems, Sylvia Plath talks of a foot that was trapped in a black shoe for “thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or achoo.” That foot is Pakistan, which has suffered for thirty years in the black shoe of American-sponsored military dictatorships. Similar American-boughtRead More