Amazon, based in Seattle, operates this corporate office building in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Lisa Werner/Moment Editorial/Getty Images

A former Amazon engineer faced a spate of sexist comments from a manager at the logistics giant when she applied for another job there, according to a lawsuit she filed in San Francisco on July 5. The complaint accuses Amazon of gender discrimination, marital status discrimination and retaliation and seeks general and compensatory damages.

The engineer, Rajakumari Chouta, lives in Fremont and had begun working at Amazon in San Francisco in April 2022. According to the civil complaint, she regularly received strong performance reviews until November. Then, she was told her rating had plummeted, and two days later, she learned she’d be laid off if she couldn’t find a different job within Amazon in the next two months, the document says. Chouta’s ensuing internal job search exposed her to “shockingly sexist comments,” the complaint alleges. She began looking for new roles and reached out to a hiring manager named Nagendra Rudravarjhula about an open position, per the lawsuit, which also noted that Chouta and Rudravarjhula were from the same geographic and linguistic background in India.

The suit alleges that when Chouta met with Rudravarjhula to talk about the engineering job, he told her it wasn’t for “people who need to ‘take care of the kids, a husband, and have household chores.’” He also allegedly “presumed that women might not be able to perform well in the position as the job involved frequent on-call status,” the complaint says, and told Chouta the job was only for people who could work 12 hours a day.

Chouta didn’t get the job, and her two months were ticking by. When she learned that two more roles were open on Rudravarjhula’s team, she set up another interview, per the suit. He called her the day after, with positive feedback, the complaint says.But again, the conversation was allegedly tinged with blatant sexism. Rudravarjhula told Chouta the engineering work would be “tedious and might not be suitable for the female candidates,” the suit says, and allegedly made the “remarkable request” that Chouta get “permission” from her family and husband to take on the job. He also asked her to let him know if she’d be “willing to contribute like male candidates and transfer to Seattle using her own expenses,” the complaint says. She told him she’d take the position, but once again, she missed out on the job, the complaint says: On Dec. 21, she was told the position was subject to a hiring freeze, and then, on Jan. 3, she learned it had been filled by a man. On Jan. 5, Chouta complained to Amazon about Rudravarjhula’s comments, per the suit, and she officially lost her job on Jan. 8, with the two-month period lapsing. She learned that she had been put on a “no re-hire” list, which her old manager said was due to her performance, but Chouta believes this was made up to justify her not getting a transfer, the complaint says.

“The hiring manager was looking for excuses to hire a male candidate, and not a married woman, all along,” the suit alleges.

Neither Rudravarjhula nor Chouta’s lawyers responded to SFGATE’s questions in time for publication. Amazon spokesperson Zoë Hoffmann told SFGATE, “We don’t tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind in our workplace. Anytime an incident is reported, we investigate it thoroughly and take appropriate action against anyone who is found to have violated our policies.”

Sutter County

Rouble Claire Case

1. Sikh American Faces Racist Threats Sacramento Bee This article details the legal struggles of Rouble Claire, a Sikh American who faced racist threats in Sutter County. It explores the impact of these threats on Claire and the ongoing fight for justice.

2. Sutter County Racial Threats Case Sacramento Bee An in-depth look at the racial threats faced by Rouble Claire in Sutter County, focusing on the legal challenges and community response.

3. Sikh American’s Experience of Racism ABC 10 This piece covers the personal account of Rouble Claire and the broader implications of racial discrimination faced by Sikh Americans in Sutter County.

4. Further Details on Racial Threats ABC 10 Additional information on the racial threats against Rouble Claire, including interviews and community reactions.

5. Man Wins Judgment Against County Appeal-Democrat A report on a recent court ruling where a man won a judgment against the county over alleged hate crimes and inadequate response.

6. Sikh Coalition Blog Update Sikh Coalition An update on the ongoing legal fight for justice by Rouble Claire, highlighting the support from the Sikh Coalition and the progress of the case.

7. California Sikh Wins Hate Crimes Case American Bazaar Online Coverage of the federal court decision in favor of Rouble Claire, focusing on the legal arguments and the significance of the ruling.

Rouble Claire Case Summary Sikh Coalition An overview of Rouble Claire’s case, summarizing the assault and harassment he faced, and his ongoing efforts for justice.

Doctor Sues PAMF Alleging Racial Bias and Over-radiation of Patients.

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT 
Daily Post Staff Writer

A doctor has sued the Palo Alto Medical Foundation for allegedly ignoring him when he raised concerns about patients being over-exposed to radiation, and for expecting him to be docile and compliant to conform to Asian male stereotypes.

“Dr. (Harrison) Wang was so affected by this expectation that he remained painfully quiet when a male doctor made inappropriate sexual remarks during a mock breast examination in the presence of female technicians and physicians,” the lawsuit says. “The doctor stated something to the effect of being good at ‘sticking the meat.’”

Palo Alto Medical Foundation and its parent company, Sutter Health, are investigating Wang’s allegations and taking them seriously, spokeswoman Callie Lutz said yesterday.

“Until our investigation is complete, we are not able to comment on this specific issue,” she said. “As a health care system serving diverse people and communities, we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.” However, Wang is the second doctor to sue PAMF and Sutter alleging racial bias.

  Dr. Omondi Nyong’o claimed in June 2021 that he was told by other black doctors to keep his head down because it would attract trouble with the largely white management.

  His supervisors cast him as “an angry black man,” and he was told to take the stairs rather than the elevators because “the white doctors would be ‘uncomfortable’ seeing him there,” Nyong’o’s lawsuit said. Nyong’o and PAMF privately settled the lawsuit in September, and Nyong’o left to start a private practice. Wang still works as a radiologist at PAMF’s clinic in Santa Cruz. He also was discriminated against at the medical center at 325 Distel Circle in Los Altos, his lawyer Gina Szeto-Wong said.

Wang said he complained about a lack of masks and Covid testing during the pandemic. PAMF ignored him, and one patient coughed on Wang’s head during an exam, he said.

Patients continue to be over-radiated in radiology procedures, “thus greatly increasing their risk of getting cancer,” Wang said.

Wang is asking for the court to order financial damages “in an amount sufficient to punish or make an example of defendants.”

Wang’s attorney, Szeto-Wong, said he declined to be interviewed.

Domestic abuse survivors — including the mothers of slain children — are pushing for reform of the California family court system when it comes to custody and visitation proceedings.

SACRAMENTO —  In late February, a Sacramento man shot and killed his three young daughters during a court-ordered supervised visit at a church that their mother had asked a judge not to approve.

A Los Angeles man is serving 25 years to life in prison for suffocating his 5-year-old son to death in his car seat in 2017, a move he admitted was to punish his estranged wife, the boy’s mother, who was fighting for full custody.

Earlier this month, a 6-year-old boy and his mother were killed at their Baldwin Park home in a shooting that police say was connected to a domestic dispute with her boyfriend.

In the aftermath of these and other tragedies, domestic abuse survivors — including the mothers of slain children — are pushing for reform of the California family court system when it comes to custody and visitation proceedings. In numerous cases, they say, judges and mediators dismissed their requests and ignored warning signs about violent spouses and guardians.

Earlier this week, survivors of violent crimes stood alongside state Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) outside the Sacramento Capitol to call for the courts to better recognize signs of abuse and to err on the side of the child’s safety when it comes to custody deals.

Currently, the court system is too focused on an even balance of custody with both parents, regardless of a history of one parent’s — usually the father’s — domestic abuse and violence, Rubio said.

“The fact is victims and their children may be at greater danger during separation and when they have restraining orders,” Rubio said at a press conference Monday. “Their abusers are angry and will do anything to harm them, ruin them, assault them, kill them and go as far as killing their own children in retaliation. The system failed them.”

California to receive up to $25 million in new federal funding to “prioritize child safety” in divorce and custody cases.

SB 616 is known as “Piqui’s Law,” in honor of Aramazd Andressian Jr., the 5-year-old affectionately known as Piqui who was killed by his father in 2017.

His mother, Ana Estevez, spoke through tears alongside Rubio in Sacramento, and said the court denied her request for sole custody of her son because of “the belief that custody should be shared equally,” and therefore she was unable to protect him.

“During his confession, he admitted he hated me and wanted to hurt me. And he did. He hurt me in the deepest and most inhumane way possible. He took the one thing that mattered the most to me in this world — my only child,” Estevez said of her ex-husband. “Being a survivor of a violent crime also comes with a life sentence. For me, that sentence is having to live my life without my son.”

Since 2008, there have been 851 known cases in the U.S. of children killed by a parent or guardian during a divorce or separation, according to the Center for Judicial Excellence, a nonprofit organization in San Rafael, Calif., that advocates for children involved in the family court system.

Kathleen Russell, executive director of the Center for Judicial Excellence, said many cases of parents killing their children during divorce or custody hearings can be prevented. She is advocating for a focus on reform and accountability of judges, as has been pushed in recent years for police.

She pointed to a report in 2019 by the California state auditor that showed various failures of the Commission on Judicial Performance, the only oversight agency in charge of investigating complaints about judges and courtroom handlings.

Accountability is especially important, Russell said, as women in domestic violence situations are often financially abused — meaning they are less likely to be able to obtain a lawyer during custody hearings.

“The courts are simply not recognizing the dangers of domestic violence and child abuse that are so common, and they have this immunity where they can pretty much do whatever they want and not be held accountable,” Russell said. “Children in family court are essentially treated like marital property, not as human beings. Kids have a right to be safe in their home and to grow up into adulthood.”

Rubio has also called for better enforcement of restraining orders and tighter rules for child visitation, saying the system has failed people like Ileana Gutierrez, whose daughters, ages 9, 10 and 13, were gunned down by their father in Sacramento, along with the court-appointed supervisor assigned to oversee their visits.

The case shed a light on the gaps in enforcement, as David Mora — who killed himself after the attack — was able to maintain visits with his children despite a history of documented violence and mental health problems. He was also able to acquire an AR-15-style rifle, which he used to kill his daughters, despite gun restrictions for those with restraining orders.

Gutierrez had filed a restraining order against Mora, which was granted, but the court denied her request for the same for her children.

She stood alongside Rubio outside the Capitol on Monday, crying and wringing her hands, wearing a T-shirt depicting a picture of her smiling daughters, Samia, Samantha and Samarah.

“This mother will never see her children graduate from high school, go off to college, fall in love and walk down the aisle. She was robbed,” Rubio said of Gutierrez. “I’m not just sad, I am angry. I am really angry that our children continue to die at the hands of their abusers.”

Son of Atlanta spa shooting victim says his Asian mother was targeted

Robert Peterson struggled for months to stop thinking about the day his mother and seven other people, mostly Asian women, were shot and killed last year at Atlanta-area spas. He’s found some comfort living at the Norcross, Georgia, home his mother Yong Ae Yue worked hard to own and in the memories of the many nights they played poker together, but Peterson says he can’t let others forget that his family and the Asian American community see the March 16, 2021 killings as hate crimes. The gunman may have not said any racial slurs out loud during the shooting spree, but his actions “are the proxy of his misogyny, of his racism,” Peterson, 39, said. Since the mass shooting, the gunman has pleaded guilty to four of the killings in Cherokee County and was sentenced to life in prison. But he still faces an additional 19 charges in nearby Fulton County, where prosecutors have said they will be pursuing the death penalty for hate crimes targeting the sex and race of the victims. Ignoring this racial aspect and the longstanding objectification of Asian women has only intensified the trauma of losing his mother and fuels his fight for justice, Peterson told CNN. The spa killings forced a debate about racism toward the Asian community in the United States, but reports of Asian people being assaulted and harassed had already been increasing since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A year later, not much has changed in America, according to advocates, survivors of the violence and their family members. The alleged gunman in the Atlanta attacks has not been tried in a state or federal court for a hate crime, anti-Asian racism is still continuously being reported, and challenges of proving bias against the Asian American community persist. “We see swastikas or Nazi symbols and salutes. In the Asian American community there’s not something that unifying that everybody understands as something that’s geared towards, intimidating or trying to hurt the AAPI community,” said Byung “BJay” Pak, a former US attorney in Atlanta who represents Peterson. First test of the hate crimes law in Georgia Yue, 63, and the other seven victims, Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Michels, 54; Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Delaina Yaun, 33; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; and Hyun Jung Grant, 51, were killed at three spas across the Atlanta area. Yong Ae Yue, center, was one of the eight people killed in the Atlanta spa shootings and is remembered by her sons Elliott Peterson, left, and Robert Peterson, right. Robert Aaron Long, the then-21-year-old suspect in the shootings, told authorities he was distraught due to what he described as an addiction to sex. His claim sparked a debate over the motive behind the attack as well as numerous calls in support of a hate crime designation — a trend that continues today. “We have to tell and reckon with the whole truth of why they’re not here with us today: systemic racism, White supremacy, gender-based violence, the enduring impact of war, both here and in Asia,” Phi Nguyen, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta, said about the victims during a Saturday memorial event in Brookhaven, an Atlanta suburb. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment but a pretrial hearing is set for April 19 in Long’s case. The case is expected to be the first test of the hate crimes law passed by the Georgia Legislature after the deadly shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. The law allows prosecutors to classify existing charges as a hate crime before trial. A jury would first have to determine guilt, and then consider whether it’s a hate crime. Pak, who also represents the family of Suncha Kim, said Long’s case won’t change Long’s potential life in prison or death penalty sentence but it would be symbolically important. “My wish for our clients is that they have their day in court and they get an answer for a situation that’s just incomprehensible to try to bring some logic to it and to see justice done,” Pak said. So far, federal authorities have not filed hate crimes against Long. A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN the federal investigation of the Atlanta spa shootings remains open as officials continue monitoring the state cases. Rep. Judy Chu, a California Democrat and chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus who previously was concerned that Long would not be charged with a hate crime, told CNN she was encouraged by the response of state and federal officials. Fulton County prosecutors are treating the case as a hate crime and the Justice Department “committed to examining the evidence to see if it meets the criteria for a federal hate crime,” Chu said. “There is no question to me that these murders were deliberate acts of hate,” Chu said in a statement. ‘I miss the small things’ As Peterson and his family await a trial, he tries not to feel the loss of his mother at every corner of their home, especially in the kitchen, where he proudly keeps the ceramic bowls and pots that his mother used to teach him how to cook his favorite dish, Kimchi-jigae, a type of traditional stew. “I miss the small things. I miss her needing me to change the light bulb, update her computer, go to the store to pick up cat litter, or carry a 24-case of water,” Peterson said. “You know, those are the things that I wish she could ask me today.” Yue was a traditional Korean woman, a mother who taught her biracial sons to fully embrace their Asian heritage and do good work, he says. She understood the outrage and pain after the killings of Black men and women by police, Peterson says, just as she was frightened by the rise in anti-Asian attacks at the beginning of the pandemic. “She loved America, she loves Georgia but it was not lost on her, as most (Asian) women in America feel today, the threat of violence. It’s a constant thing that is a hovering over their lives in their daily activities,” he said. If he could talk to her today, Peterson said his mother would be proud that he’s willing to speak up for her and the other victims. More Asian Americans are under attack In the year since the Atlanta spa shootings, violent assaults and harassment have left Asian Americans across the country afraid and physically hurt. One of them is Hoa Nguyen, a 68-year-old grandmother in Brooklyn who was punched in the face by a stranger on January 19 while she was on her way to the market. “I turned my head to the right and he punched me two more time behind my ear on the left side. Then he went back to walk the way he had come,” Nguyen said. While Nguyen, who is Vietnamese, did not suffer major injuries, she no longer feels safe walking on the streets as much as she did before, or even taking the bus or the train to visit her daughter in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. “We’ve never had to look over my shoulders walking around the city and now, every time I walk outside, I’m looking over my shoulder,” said Nguyen’s son, 42-year-old Khanh Nguyen. The suspect, Mercel Jackson, 51, was arrested and has been charged with assault, harassment and hate crime charges, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. He told police he “doesn’t like how Chinese people look,” he thinks “Chinese people look like measles,” and “doesn’t like Chinese people looking at him,” according to court documents. The attack led neighbors and several nonprofit organizations around New York to offer the Nguyen family their emotional and legal support, Khanh Nguyen said. Unfortunately, it sparked another type of anti-Asian hate toward the family. “No one goes up to the streets and yells things at us but despite the sadness of these stories, you still have people going online and spewing hate towards us,” he said. Just in New York, there were 131 incidents confirmed to have an anti-Asian bias motivation last year, according to data from the NYPD. That’s a significant increase from 27 incidents reported in 2020 and one in 2019. The full scope of the violence across the nation is unclear. Statistics from advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate collected after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic suggest there have been more than 10,000 anti-Asian hate incidents in the US but the organization’s data is crowdsourced, self-reported and not independently verified. But even when those incidents are reported, reaching a hate crime conviction is challenging, said Jennifer Wu, an attorney representing the Nguyens and the family of GuiYing Ma, a 61-year-old woman who was attacked in Queens by a man with a rock and who died last month. In New York, which has a hate crime penalty-enhancement law like in Georgia, the statute requires the bias to be the “whole or substantial factor” motivating an attack. That’s a high standard, Wu says, because it “requires you to get into the mind of the perpetrator” and there could be more than one contributing factor, Wu says. “The way the law has treated hate crimes is to force people to choose one reason why the hate crime is committed,” Wu said. The law is not structured in a way that acknowledges the reality that the reason we love and hate people is for a multitude of reasons and not a single exclusive reason.” For Peterson, who lost his mother in the Atlanta spa shootings, there was not just one reason why the victims were targeted. His mother was not just at the wrong place, at the wrong time, he said. Peterson believes the suspect had in mind their racial identity, their gender, their workplace, and what that represented to him. “She wasn’t just Asian, and she wasn’t just a woman. These two are inextricably linked. She is both of these things simultaneously, and you can’t separate one from the other,” Peterson said.

The suit comes months after a jury awarded a former Black employee at the electric carmaker’s San Francisco-area factory $137 million. A California state agency is suing Tesla, accusing it of allowing racial discrimination and harassment to flourish at its San Francisco Bay Area factory in a lawsuit that was made public on Thursday. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing said hundreds of Tesla workers had reported being subjected to racist graffiti and widespread use of racial slurs, including from supervisors. They also accused the company of discriminatory practices. The agency said Black employees were assigned more physically arduous work and denied transfers and promotions more often than other workers. “After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, D.F.E.H. found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” Kevin Kish, the department’s director, said in a statement. “The facts of this case speak for themselves.” In a statement posted online on Wednesday, before the lawsuit was filed, Tesla said it “strongly opposes” all forms of discrimination and harassment. The company denounced the lawsuit, arguing that the state agency had investigated dozens of previous claims in recent years and found no misconduct. “It therefore strains credibility for the agency to now allege, after a three-year investigation, that systematic racial discrimination and harassment somehow existed at Tesla,” the company said. “A narrative spun by the D.F.E.H. and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof.” Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Tesla said its Fremont factory had a “majority-minority work force” and described the lawsuit as counterproductive “at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California.” The company moved its headquarters to Texas last year and opened a new factory in the Austin area. Tesla also said the California agency had declined its requests for information on the accusations. The company plans to ask the court to “pause the case and take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard,” it added. In October, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $137 million to a Black former Tesla employee who said he had faced racial harassment from a supervisor and other colleagues while working at the Fremont factory in 2015 and 2016. Employees had drawn swastikas and scratched a racial epithet in a bathroom stall and left drawings of derogatory caricatures of Black children around the factory, he said. The next month, Jessica Barraza, another Tesla employee, sued the company, accusing it of allowing pervasive sexual harassment, both verbal and physical. Six more women sued the company in December, citing similar treatment. Last month, one of Tesla’s top Black executives, Valerie Capers Workman, left the company. As head of human resources at Tesla, Ms. Workman was often the face of its response to such suits. Read More: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/cars/tesla-california-racism-lawsuit/index.html

Chinedu Okobi was a Black man walking in a city where people of his race make up less than 1 percent of the population. And when he began acting oddly on an October afternoon in 2018, wandering into traffic on El Camino Real in Millbrae, sheriff’s deputies quickly arrived. Okobi, who wasn’t armed, tried to walk away when an officer questioned him. Minutes later, the father and Morehouse College graduate who had battled with mental illness was dead, stunned seven times with a Taser by a San Mateo County deputy until his heart gave out. At one point, he is heard screaming on a video, “somebody help me,” before deputies pile on top of him. “If officers had done that to a dog, people would be up in arms,” said Ebele Okobi, who has pushed in vain for someone to be held accountable for her brother’s death. “He kept saying, ‘What did I do? Help me.’ But there was no one.” Many in the ultra-liberal Bay Area imagine the region lies a world away from Minneapolis or Atlanta or Louisville, where the killings of unarmed Black people have ignited a national reckoning over police violence and race. But a Bay Area News Group review of 110 law enforcement killings in the five-county Bay Area since 2015 tells a different story. While Black residents make up only 7% of the combined population of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, they accounted for a staggering 27% of those killed by police in the region since 2015, the news organization’s analysis found. Toxic mix, lethal consequences About one out of five people killed by police — like Okobi — were not armed, the analysis found. And 40% of those who were unarmed were Black. Overall, a majority of those killed were experiencing some kind of mental-health crisis. Before the deadly encounters, there was no evidence that nearly 45% of those killed — including Okobi — were committing any kind of violent crime. And those findings don’t even include the Solano County city of Vallejo, which has been plagued by questionable police shootings of Black residents and is now being investigated by the state attorney general. What they do clearly show is how the combination of race, mental illness and aggressive policing often fuel a toxic mix of misunderstandings with lethal consequences. To be sure, a number of those killed by police were stone-cold “bad guys” who were threatening lives after killing others, including a San Jose police officer. Reviews of many of those cases show officers clearly under attack, risking their lives when a fatal outcome would have been difficult if not impossible to avoid. But there were many examples that raised significant questions about officers’ decisions — and district attorneys’ overwhelming propensity to justify the fatal results. An ex-police officer-turned-sociology professor who reviewed a video last week of Okobi’s death at this news organization’s request called it “cops gone wild” and a travesty that the officers were neither disciplined nor criminally charged. Like Okobi, Roy Nelson Jr. was an unarmed Black man with a history of schizophrenia, suffering a mental-health episode and committing no crime when his ex-wife called 911 to report he was hallucinating and needed psychiatric help. He was later found to have methamphetamine in his system. “I can’t breathe,” Nelson insists on a video recorded by Hayward police after a group of officers pulled him from a patrol car because he wouldn’t stop kicking the door. The officers handcuff the 300-pound man, face down on the ground, then try to wrap him in a restraint similar to a straitjacket. “I can’t breathe,” he says again, in a plea that feels even more harrowing five years later, after George Floyd repeatedly uttered that same phrase and died under a police officer’s knee in Minneapolis. Roy Nelson died too. So did Rakeem Rucks, who also yelled, “I can’t breathe,” while face down in the dirt as Antioch cops piled on top of him in 2015 after finding him in an altered state, high on methamphetamine. According to a lawsuit filed by Rucks’ family, officers put their knees on his neck as he struggled until his death. None of the officers in any of those deadly encounters were ever disciplined. In fact, there is one constant in each of the 110 cases examined: Not a single officer who killed someone in the Bay Area in the past 5 1/2 years has been prosecuted. Only once has a police chief fired an officer. Equating race with danger? Over the last month, the streets of the Bay Area have come alive with protests over Floyd’s death. But the stark facts about who dies at the hands of police in the Bay Area suggest there is plenty right here to fuel the debate over policing and racial justice. Perhaps no one knows that better than Oakland civil rights lawyer John Burris. “Historically police officers in this area are much quicker to shoot against African-Americans than they are others,” said Burris, who has sued police departments in California hundreds of times and has represented the families of Okobi, Nelson and Rucks in excessive-force lawsuits. “The part that’s most troubling to me,” Burris said, is “the lack of respect for Black lives and consideration for the collateral damage it causes.” Lawyer John Burris, right, speaks to media about Chinedu Okobi’s deadly encounter with San Mateo County deputies. Burris filed an excessive force lawsuit against the Sheriff’s department on behalf of Okobi’s mother, Amaka Okobi, left, and her daughter, Ebele Okobi, center. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) The research is clear — race matters. Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University law professor, recently co-wrote a paper based on thousands of cases that found police in the U.S. are more than twice as likely to shoot Black people than people of other races. “It doesn’t matter if they are armed or unarmed, or if they are in a mental health crisis or not. Or if they are neither armed nor mentally ill. Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of whether they are standing still, whether they are attacking, or withdrawing, Black people are always going to be more likely to be shot,” Fagan said in an interview. “We don’t know if (the reason) is implicit bias,” he said. What is clear, he said, is that “police equate race with danger.” Alice Huffman, president of the California and Hawaii NAACP, said Black people know why. “We can’t pin it on racism, but we know it is,” she said. Law enforcement investigations of police killings are often “half-assed and not on point,” and when racist tactics or cops are exposed, “it’s because someone is already dead.” Nikki Romans sees it differently. Her late husband, Sgt. Ervin Romans, was one of four Oakland police officers killed in March 2009 by an ex-convict on the deadliest day for law enforcement in the city’s history. “I hate that they are putting the stigma on all these officers. There’s Black officers who have been in shootings,” said Romans, whose father was Black and mother is white. She makes a point of never mentioning the race of Lovelle Mixon, her husband’s killer, who was Black. “Any time I’ve spoken about the guy who killed my husband, anytime I would bring it up, I always said it was a bad person,” she said. “A bad person killed my husband that day.” The funeral for Nikki Roman’s husband, Ervin Romans, and the three other slain officers was held at the Oracle Arena on March 27, 2009. The other officers killed by Lovelle Mixon were Mark Dunakin, Dan Sakai and John Hege. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group file photo)) Read More: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/28/110-deaths-police-killings-in-the-bay-area-since-2015-result-in-no-prosecutions-of-cops-and-little-discipline/

“Pervasive ‘Old Boys’ Club’ culture” drove one cop to sue San Francisco

A $225,000 settlement with gay SFPD officer Brendan Mannix was approved by the Board of Supervisors today, more than three years after he filed a lawsuit alleging that he was harassed and discriminated against because of his sexual orientation. Further, Mannix’s lawsuit said he was retaliated against, and he accused the city of failing to prevent such harassment against members of the LGBT community. City Attorney spokeswoman Jen Kwart said Tuesday that, “given the inherent costs of continued litigation, we believe the proposed settlement is an appropriate resolution. There is no admission of liability on the part of SFPD or the city.” Mannix, who is still employed with the department, said in his 2018 civil lawsuit against the city that Sergeants Patrick Tobin and Lawrence McDevitt “frequently made comments about Mr. Mannix’s sexual orientation and what they perceived to be his failure to conform to what a man should look and act like.” Attorneys representing Mannix did not provide a comment on the outcome of the lawsuit before press time. This story will be updated if they do. Mannix joined the police force in 2015 and spent a successful year at Richmond Station. He alleges in his lawsuit that the harassment began when he was transferred to Central Station, where his appearance was often mocked and he was told he was too “dramatic” or being a “queen.” When he tried to make the behavior stop, Mannix said he was laughed at by Tobin and McDevitt. Mannix also said he heard derogatory comments made about transgender people, and learned of a Muslim officer also facing Islamophobia within the department, but claimed he was disregarded when he tried to come forward about it. Tobin left the SFPD in 2017 and joined the Broadmoor Police Department, which has been under recent scrutiny for various instances of corruption. Tobin and McDevitt both also have histories of misconduct during their long careers with the SFPD. Eventually, Mannix said his calls for backup started going unheeded, including in one case where he pursued and apprehended a robbery suspect alone. Backup from his station never arrived to assist. At one point, court documents say, Mannix took a leave of absence during the summer of 2017, during which time Sgt. Tobin retired from the SFPD. When he returned from his leave, the discrimination continued. Mannix decided to file a formal complaint in late 2017 with the city’s Department of Human Resources, Equal Employment Opportunity Division. But Mannix said the sergeant in charge of the complaint omitted most details of the allegations, and the EEO Division made no findings in his favor. Mannix ultimately filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which gave him the green light to sue the city in 2018. The city, in response, denied all of Mannix’s allegations and any claims of injury he made in his lawsuit. The SFPD did not respond to a request for comment on whether Tobin, McDevitt, or any other officers named in the lawsuit ever faced any discipline in response to Mannix’s accusations. This story will be updated if we receive a response. Mannix’s settlement was reached in November, 2021. After today’s vote, it now awaits final approval by the Board of Supervisors.

Gender Pay Gap Widens as Women Age

Women are over-represented in lower paying jobs and, as they age, the pay gap widens even more. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) shows the pay and age dynamic of women and men. Here, we looked at workers ages 35-44. According to the QWI data based on unemployment insurance wage records for the third quarter of 2020 (the most recent national data), women in the United States earned 30% less than men and that pay gap increased with age. Although the gender pay gap has narrowed since the signing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women earned 82 cents for every dollar a man earns according to 2020 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The gender gap has narrowed for younger women as they increase their education level and break into occupations traditionally dominated by men. While women have a growing presence in higher paying industries like Information or Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, they are still over-represented in lower paying industries. QWI Explorer provides easy access to national data on earnings of women and men. Figure 1 shows a gap in monthly wages of almost $4,000 for women compared to men with a bachelor’s or advanced degree. Women are more likely than men to be employed in professional and related occupations, according to a 2019 BLS report. Within the professional category, however, the proportion of women in higher paying jobs is much smaller than that of men. There are nearly 15 million women in Health Care and Social Services, over 7 million in Retail and Trade and 5.5 million in Accommodations and Food Services. QWI Explorer The QWI Explorer allows users to examine different aspects of the labor market through interactive tables that compare and rank labor force statistics on:

• Employment.
• Job creation and destruction.
• Wages.
• Hires and separations.

Through interactive visualizations and detailed reports, users can analyze earnings by worker sex, race, education, industry, and age across national, state, metro/micropolitan, and workforce investment areas. An infographic published last year using 2019 data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) Explorer illustrates the trend. Earlene K.P. Dowell is a program analyst in the Census Bureau’s Economic Management Division/Data User and Trade Outreach Branch. Read More

When John Wang worked at Z & Y Restaurant, one of the most famous dining destinations in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he says he didn’t get overtime pay, the restaurant routinely took his tips and breaks weren’t possible. “I can’t even use my fingers to count the number of times I used the bathroom at Z & Y,” Wang said. “It was nonstop work.” In 2018, he and a group of fellow workers decided to file a claim with the state for lost wages and to pursue a better work environment. Now, that fight is over: Z & Y has agreed to pay 22 workers $1.61 million in a hefty wage theft settlement, including nearly $600,000 in tips that the workers say the restaurant withheld from them. The original complaint also alleged failure to pay minimum wage, overtime, sick leave and split-shift premiums from 2016 to 2019. Z & Y denied any wrongdoing in the settlement. Faced with multiple citations from the Labor Commissioner’s Office and a separate lawsuit regarding tips, Z & Y owners Jun Yuan Zhang and Li Jun Han decided it would have been too expensive to defend themselves, according to their attorney Seth Weisburst. “The restaurant and its owners had to make the difficult business decision to settle these claims instead of spending significant resources on attorneys’ fees and several years in court,” Weisburst wrote in a statement. Five workers are also getting $70,000 from Z & Y in a separate settlement over retaliation, which alleges Zhang and Han reduced hours, disciplined, fired or declined to rehire the employees after raising concerns about wage theft. Z & Y also denied any wrongdoing in the retaliation settlement. The dollar amounts are not why Chinese Progressive Association executive director Shaw San Liu calls this “a historic settlement.” The workers also earned new policies at the Sichuan restaurant, such as paid workers’ rights trainings, fair scheduling practices, transparent tip distribution and bilingual employee manuals. “They were able to actually change the workplace for the better for future workers at this restaurant and hopefully other restaurants that look at this case,” Liu said. The Chinese Progressive Association and fellow nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice — Asian Law Caucus supported the workers through the case. The 22 Z & Y workers — servers, bussers and cooks who are all Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants — were inspired by the 2018 wage theft case at Kome Japanese Seafood Buffet in Daly City, which ended in a $2.6 million settlement covering 133 workers. In the past few years, local nonprofits also helped workers in wage theft cases against Mission Beach Cafe, Burma Superstar, Gordo Taqueria and more. Ex-staffers at Z & Y described an exhausting environment where they were regularly underpaid. On a typical Saturday at Z & Y, former server Wang said he’d arrive at 10:30 a.m. and leave at 11:30 p.m., after the last customer finally walked out the door. But he said he’d only get paid for the hours Z & Y was actually open, from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. He said he also wasn’t allowed to take his legally required 10-minute breaks. “We don’t have enough employees working in the front, so we don’t have time to take breaks,” he said. In addition to Z & Y taking a chunk of employees’ gratuities, the restaurant also deducted credit card fees from the tips, according to Palyn Hung, an Asian Law Caucus attorney who represented the workers. Z & Y’s attorney denied Wang’s and Hung’s accounts, saying that they aren’t accurate. “The restaurant and its owners never ‘stole’ any wages or tips from employees, nor did they retaliate against any employees. That simply did not happen,” said Weisburst. But Hung said the new scheduling practices are a critical change for workers because they sometimes wouldn’t know their work schedules until two days in advance, making it difficult to plan for child care and medical appointments. While San Francisco has a predictive scheduling law, it applies only to restaurants with more than 20 employees. The settlement requires Z & Y to post schedules two weeks in advance and allow for flexibility, such as workers trading shifts. In the process of organizing, former Z & Y cook Li Liu said he and other workers were scared of losing their jobs because of their limited English skills and lack of knowledge about the country’s labor laws. “We are immigrants. We are a group of disadvantaged workers,” he said through an interpreter. “Asking the employer to pay back what they owe us, it was something we dreamed of, but it wasn’t something we felt like we had the power to win.” Now, Li Liu is cooking at another restaurant and feels more confident in protecting his rights as a worker. He hopes the Z & Y settlement encourages other low-wage employees to speak up about poor conditions at other restaurants. Shaw San Liu points to dim sum destination Yank Sing’s $4 million wage theft settlement in 2014 as the landmark case that laid the groundwork for immigrant workers at Z & Y and elsewhere. Nearly 300 staffers not only got back pay but also raises, health care benefits and a committee established so employees could regularly meet with management. As the Bay Area recovers from the pandemic, Hung said the restaurant industry has an opportunity to improve working conditions — and workers should be involved in creating solutions. “We classified restaurant workers as essential workers and we saw how important their work is, and if they’re not safe and protected, then neither are we,” she said. “We can do better.” Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Read More

In the United States, issues of race can often be cast along the lines of Black and white — and, especially at a moment when the world is being forced to confront the ways systemic racism is built into the nation’s history, the reasons for that focus are clear. At the same time, the land has never been inhabited by only those two groups, and the ways in which other minorities interact with both Black America and white America offer key insight into that past. Case in point: The complex histories of both anti-Blackness and anti-racist solidarity within the Asian American community. In this week’s issue of TIME, Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen explored the ways in which the “trap” of being a “model minority” creates inequality not just for Asian Americans, but for everyone. That dynamic has come to the forefront especially in light of the presence of Tou Thao, an Asian American officer, at the death of George Floyd. One viral tweet compared Thao to the sole Asian man amid the white bidders in the movie Get Out, while Hasan Minhaj tackled anti-Blackness in the Asian American community in a new Patriot Act clip, noting: “We think we’re not a part of the story, but we’re at the scene of the crime! That’s why the full picture matters. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum — it happens in a system.” That system is one that has been evolving for centuries, and still influences the work of many Asian American activists today. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Asian Americans working as immigrant laborers in the U.S. were villainized (and often subjected to horrendous racial violence) as the sinister “Yellow Peril.” That experience of discrimination created solidarity with the Black community, which, says Renee Tajima-Peña, the producer of Who Killed Vincent Chin? and PBS’ documentary series Asian American, was expressed in a wide range of outlets. Frederick Douglass denounced the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and an Indian immigrant served as the editor of Negro World in the early 20th century. That connection endured into the decades that followed. But, as with many facets of life in the U.S., things got more complicated around the 1960s. On one hand, as the civil rights movement introduced new ways of thinking about justice and equality in the United States, Asian American leaders drew inspiration from—and provided support for—Black freedom fighters. For example, after Japanese Americans were seen as threats and sent to detention camps during WWII, that community offered support to Civil Rights leaders trying to repeal the Emergency Detention Act over concerns that Black activists could be subject to the same kind of treatment. The term “Asian American” was coined in 1968 by UC Berkeley students who were inspired by the Black Power Movement; likewise, Asian American students rallied alongside Black student organizers and other ethnic student groups as part of the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley in the late ’60s, which culminated in student strikes that led to equal education opportunities and the creation of ethnic studies programs. Activists like Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs not only pulled insights from Black radical frameworks for Asian American liberation, but were also strong and active advocates for Black social justice movements. At the same time, however, the model minority myth was spreading. This idea posited that Asian Americans were more successful than other ethnic minorities because of hard work, education and inherently law-abiding natures. But many of the advances of Asian Americans around the time of the 1960s were not the result of hard work alone, but also of the same systemic forces that held others down—such as immigration policies (like the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which abolished former anti-Asian immigration laws and prioritized skilled workers) and political spin constructed to counter the civil rights movement. “Before the model minority myth, Asians and Asian Americans were exploited for their labor, othered, seen as ‘Yellow Peril,’” says Bianca Mabute-Louie, an ethnic studies adjunct at Laney College. “[The myth] came about when Black power movements were starting to gain momentum, so [politicians] were trying to undercut those movements and say, ‘Asians have experienced racism in this country, but because of hard work, they’ve been able to pull themselves up out of racism by their bootstraps and have the American Dream, so why can’t you?’ In those ways, the model minority myth has really been a tool of white supremacy to squash Black power movements and racial justice movements.” As Mabute-Louie notes, not only does such a myth create a monolithic identity for Asian Americans and render their struggles invisible, but it also drives a wedge between them and other communities of color, primarily Black Americans, because it uses perceived Asian American “success” to invalidate claims of inequality toward non-white Americans. It also reinforces a structure in which assimilation into white society is the primary goal for other ethnic groups. “To say that this minority is the ‘good minority’ means you’re essentially saying there’s a bad minority, which keeps people divided,” says writer and activist Helen Zia. “The problem is, when you hold a carrot out, some people start believing that we can shed this previous portrayal and stereotype of being the enemy and we can be accepted, we can move up, we can reap the privileges of the white masters, we can maybe even become honorary whites.” Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter This dynamic did not mean the end of solidarity between the two communities: when Vincent Chin was beaten to death as a result of racism in Detroit in 1982, for example, Black activists like Jesse Jackson were a part of the movement to call for justice for his murder. But it did drive a wedge between them, and that tension has loomed large in the mainstream narrative in recent history, thanks in large part to events that took place in Los Angeles in 1992. That year, L.A. erupted in protests and riots after four police officers who were caught on camera brutally beating Rodney King, a Black motorist, were acquitted. During the riots, Korean-American businesses appeared to be targets for looting and destruction—which many connected to the 1991 killing of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old Black girl, by a Korean immigrant store owner, Soon Ja Du, who shot Harlins after assuming that she was stealing a bottle of orange juice. Although Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter later that year, the perceived lightness of her sentence helped stoke the flames for the civil unrest ignited for Rodney King. In the years since, interracial conflict has often served as the primary framework for looking at interactions between Black and Asian American communities. From a 2017 viral video that documented a Korean beauty store owner physically attacking a Black customer he suspected of shoplifting; to some Asian Americans’ advocacy for eliminating race-conscious school admissions; to the division of the Asian American community in New York over NYPD police office Peter Liang, after he was convicted for manslaughter after fatally shooting an unarmed Black man, Akai Gurley, conversations about race between these two communities often center on anti-Black actions and beliefs. But, experts say, that tension is still far from the whole picture. “Conflict has always been a central part of the story, but it’s because it’s much more sensational to talk about Asians and African Americans fighting than it is to talk about the day-to-day work of finding solutions to problems and working together,” says producer Tajima-Peña. “Toni Morrison talks about a master narrative, not written by us, and that narrative [of these two communities] has always been conflict and tension.” Now, as the U.S. sees mass uprisings against racial injustice and police brutality, some see a chance to continue the history of solidarity, and put the history of division to the side. While Asian Americans still experience racism—one only need look as far as the spike in violent anti-Asian attacks in recent months, due to the coronavirus pandemic, for proof—in the United States they don’t experience the same level of structural racism that those who are Black do, and the recognition of that fact has driven many into activism. “Asian Americans owe so much of their presence in this country to the Black struggle for freedom — from birthright citizenship to the ability to tell our stories in education and the culture to the civil rights we enjoy,” says Jeff Chang, the author of We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation. “We want to be on the right side of history, and that side is squarely in fighting against anti-Black racism.” Some Asian Americans have focused on calling out racism in a way that speaks specifically to their own communities and families. For example, Letters for Black Lives, an organization that provides multi-lingual resources to help people talk about Black Lives Matter with their families, was started by young Asian Americans in 2016; the group has now updated their templates to reflect more recent news. And Dr. Anthony C. Ocampo, an associate professor of sociology at Cal Poly Pomona, created a slide deck presentation with his cousins to talk to their family about what’s going on in the news and how it relates to structural racism. Others are creating resources designed to educate and inform Asian Americans about how their history has intersected with Black history. Mabute-Louie has been making shareable Instagram ‘zines that not only address how to fight anti-Blackness, but also provide context about the history of Asian American and Black solidarity. “There are a lot of resources out there on how to be anti-racist and a lot of books about white fragility,” she says. “But a lot of the things I’m seeing is catered and made for white people to engage and we as Asian Americans have a very different journey.” Ultimately, however, no matter what the method, these activists share a core belief that how Asian Americans respond in this moment will not only reflect this shared history but also help shape the futures of both these communities. “The power of Asian Americans standing up for Black Lives Matters is that it sends a clear message: the same racist logic schemes that are keeping our communities down might look different in Black communities than they look in Asian American communities, but it’s still the same system. [It’s] meant to relegate us to the margins, to keep us in subordinate positions, to keep us out of leadership positions, to basically be in a position where we can’t write our own stories in this country,” Ocampo says. “We need to be the authors of our story.” Read More: https://time.com/5851792/asian-americans-black-solidarity-history/

“For months after immediately reporting these hateful acts, I sat in silence waiting for action that never came,” said Rouble Claire, a Sikh man who lives in Sutter.

SUTTER, Calif. — Rouble Claire is a 66-year-old man of South Asian descent who’s been living in Sutter since 1973. He’s also a first-generation Sikh American.

According to the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group that defends Sikh civil rights, Claire experienced racism, hate and threats. It happened at the South Butte Market in Sutter on May 11, 2021.

“That morning, Mr. Claire was accosted at a local grocery store,” said Amrith Kaur Aakre, legal director for the Sikh Coalition. “While he was there, a woman he did not recognize started shouting profanities at him and racist slurs. She called him the ‘F-word and then Hindu.’ She threatened to ‘ram’ him with her car, and then got in her car and sped towards him in a parking lot, only swerving away at the last moment.”

According to the Coalition, Claire immediately went inside the store and asked an employee to call 911. But, the Coalition says the police did not respond to the scene. After that, Claire went home.

“Later that same day, Mr. Claire observed another woman who was scrawling the words ‘Sand and then the N-word,’ in chalk in front of his house and in his driveway,” Aakre said. “He called the police, again, to report the second incident. One deputy who responded to the chalking incident used his own water bottle in an attempt to wash away the evidence before taking photos for the office and another advised him not to drive on his own street to avoid any confrontation.”

The Coalition is urging the Sutter County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the case and file criminal charges. That includes charges of criminal threats, assault, assault with a deadly weapon and all applicable charges, including those involving hate and bias.

On Monday, attorneys representing Claire filed a 41-page civil lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento. The civil lawsuit is against deputies of the Sutter County Sheriff’s Office, Sutter County, and the women accused of racist threats. 

“I have been subject to threats, harassment, and racial slurs–yet almost a full year later, no one has been held accountable,” Claire said in a statement released by the Sikh Coalition.

“For months, after immediately reporting these hateful acts, I sat in silence waiting for action that never came. I did not want to have to take legal action against anyone, but I believe that this failure of justice is unacceptable: No one in our community should have to face this kind of hate and bigotry.”

Attorneys Gina Szeto-Wong, principal attorney of Szeto-Wong Law, and Sean Tamura-Sato, managing partner of Minami Tamaki LLP, are representing Claire in the civil case. The first hearing is set for August. Claire’s attorneys plan on seeking more information through the legal process about the two women accused in the case, along with the role of the SCSO.

“This civil suit is a first step to remedying that failure, as well as taking legal action against the women who threatened and harassed him, who have faced no consequences whatsoever due to Sutter County’s practice of inadequately investigating and prosecuting hate crimes against racial and ethnic minorities,” said Szeto-Wong.

ABC10’s Race and Culture team reached out to the SCSO regarding the case. Law enforcement did not respond to our emails, phone calls or voice message. 

Sutter County District Attorney Amanda Hopper sent ABC10 a statement, in full, reading: 

“The Sheriff’s Office did not refer this case to my office for hate crimes against Mr. Claire. The referred charge was for violating Penal Code Section 245(a)(1), assault with a deadly weapon. The probable cause statement from the Sheriff’s Office did not contain sufficient evidence to prove this crime beyond a reasonable doubt, specifically as the eye witness stated that it did not appear that the suspect attempted to hit Mr. Claire but was merely trying to block him in. If the alleged information contained in the civil documents are accurate, then my office has not received all of the reports and evidence referenced. Should all evidence be submitted to the District Attorney’s Office, we will conduct a new review and legal analysis of the facts and make a filing decision. The statute of limitations for the requested charge is three years so the case can be filed anytime prior to May 11, 2024.”