Monday, August 30, 2010

CALL TO ACTION !

Call To Action -- sign a petition to President Obama
A. Background Info. - 2 Asian Am. judicial nominees, given the highest
rating - "unanimously well qualified"- by the Am. Bar Assoc. and approved
by the Senate Judiciary Comm., were "blocked" by Senate Republicans.
As you may know, 4 years ago, only 6 or 0.7% of the federal judges were
Asian Ams, all at the lowest rank of District Courts. 80-20 found it
outrageous. YOU and 80-20 made an effective issue of it getting Pres.
Obama's commitment to appoint more in writing.
By Aug. 1, we were well on our way to having 15 Asian Am. life-tenured
federal judges, two at the higher rank of Appeals Court Judges, one rank
below the Supreme Court Justices. However, the Senate Republicans
invoked a rarely used senate rule to "return to President" the nominations
of Goodwin Liu for Appeals Court and Edward Chen for the N. CA
District Court."
That means that these two nominations are DEAD, reducing the counted
from 15 to 13. 80-20 is puzzled. Do the senate Republicans want to
perpetuate the grossly unfair under-representation of AsAms on the
Federal bench?
B. The Petition to Pres. Obama -- please RE-NOMINATE them
Let's turn our anger into positive actions. Pls go sign a petition to
Pres. Obama
asking him to re-nominate those two Asian Ams. See below.
We need a fantastic response from you in order to achieve this goal.

"Dear Mr. President:

Please re-nominate Goodwin Liu and Edward Chen, when the
Senate comes back in session on Sept. 6. If you will kindly do so, I
(we) pledge to help find one Republican senator to give you the
60th vote for their senate confirmations.
You are the first president to publicly respond to expressed Asian
American concerns.
(1) You've increased the number of Asian Am. life-tenured federal
judges from 8, who were all at the lowest rank, when you took office,
to a potential 15, including 2 Appeals Court judges, and
(2) Your Labor Department has assured us, in writing, that Exec. Order
11246 will be enforced for Asian Ams. The Labor Dept. under Pres.
Bush had steadfastly refused to do so, resulting in Asian Ams having
not even half the national average odds to become managers/
administrators, i.e. glass ceiling.

We want to use this occasion to THANK YOU.
Sincerely,
The undersigned"

C. Seeking UNITY

Many other Asian Am. orgs, e.g. APAPA, AAJC, C-100, JACL, NAPABA,
OCA to name a few have also declared their support for the confirmation
of Goodwin Liu. 80-20 ha 269 s approached each to suggesting working
together as equals to secure the re-nominations. APAPA and JACL have
already responded positively. Being the smallest minority, UNITY is our
best salvation.

Go sign NOW !

Respectfully yours,

S. B. Woo
A volunteer Acting Exec. Director, 80-20 PAC, Inc.