Recently in Professional Organizations Category

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/us/23scotus.html

Two cases of racial discrimination were brought to the table of the Supreme Court.

   Firefighters filed that there has been issues with the Chicago fire department, claiming that they has been issues were applicants who took the exams passed, and because of there ethnicity (White's & Hispanic's) there test were throw out based on racial bias. 
  
   According to new york times"The Chicago firefighters sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment and required them to file a claim within 300 days of the contested practice. the Argument on Monday concerned whether each of 11 rounds of hiring based on the 1995 test reset the clock on the statute of limitations."
   Based on the statute of limitations, I don't believe that the Supreme Court should not throw the case out, if there is a problem the Chief Justices should take it into consideration that there is a problem that has not only affected someone because the color of their skin, but it effected their families as well. Because of someone using bigotry, and a bias to select applicants.    

From This American Life on NPR. The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declared that homosexuality was not a disease simply by changing the 81-word definition of sexual deviance in its own reference manual. It was a change that attracted a lot of attention at the time, but the story of what led up to that change is one that we hear today, from reporter Alix Spiegel. Part one of Alix's story details the activities of a closeted group of gay psychiatrists within the APA who met in secret and called themselves the GAYPA...and another, even more secret group of gay psychiatrists among the political echelons of the APA. Alix's own grandfather was among these psychiatrists, and the president-elect of the APA at the time of the change. (24 minutes)

It's about an hour long, but if you get the chance, everyone should listen to this program!

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=204

Alex found this cool website for an organization called Annunciation House. They're an organization comprised of volunteers who aid thousands of people who immigrant to this country from all over Mexico and Latin America. Check out the video to get a better understanding of the hardships that people go through when immigrating to this country:

http://annunciationhouse.org/about/video/

This video really hit close to home because my parents went through enormous amounts of hardship when they brought my sister and I to the U.S. They left their families, their language, their culture, and everything else behind in order to provide a better life for all of us. My mom went 5 years without seeing her mom and 10 years without seeing some of her siblings because she couldn't cross back into Mexico while her paperwork was being processed. My father went from being a Mining Engineer to a farm hand and later a garbage collector for the city of El Paso. They've faced a lot of racism and discrimination not just because of what they look like or where they come from, but also because they speak with an accent. I too remeber being 5 years old and being made fun of for not knowing how to speak English very well. Also, my great grandfather used to tell me horror stories of when he worked on fields in McAllen, Texas and California during the 1950's and 1960's. He said he and his friends would do back breaking labor, in very harsh conditions, and at the end of the day they would see multiple truckes filled with limes leaving the place where they worked, and thinking, "Look at all those limes, the owners are making a lot of money, and here they are paying us 12 cents a day." One of the things that stood out the most however was that he paid into Social Security and never saw a dime out of that money. A lot of people don't realize that there have been millions of workers who are exploited and pay into things like Social Security and taxes, and never see any of that money. Instead, others reap the benefits of their hard work. Anyhow, that's my two cents for the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8npzELNmQ&feature=related

The G-20 was established in 1999, in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, to bring together major advanced and emerging economies to stabilize the global financial market. Since its inception, the G-20 has held annual Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meetings and discussed measures to promote the financial stability of the world and to achieve a sustainable economic growth and development.

To tackle the financial and economic crisis that spread across the globe in 2008, the G-20 members were called upon to further strengthen international cooperation. Accordingly, the G-20 Summits have been held in Washington in 2008, and in London and Pittsburgh in 2009.

http://www.aclu.org/

"The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country."

This site has great information and also includes a Key Issues page, where you can find information about specific areas that the ACLU is involved with.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

I know this is delving into my psych and law roots a little bit, but this is the link to the Innocence Project's website. The Innocence Project is an organization devoted to exonerating the wrongly convicted through the use of DNA evidence or identifying flaws in the judicial system. Many of those who have been exonerated were put in prison in the first place because of faulty eyewitness testimony. This is relevant to us because a lot of these eyewitness ids were made by a person of a different race than the wrongly accused. We will inevitably be discussing the cross-race effect in this class, so I thought this website would help provide some evidence of how much of an issue the CRE is. There are a lot of interesting stories on here, and they have also recently updated the site with some of their greatest accomplishments of the decade.  

I came across this video of a social experiment in a retail store: 

http://www.splcenter.org/

"The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, SPLC is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups."

An amicus brief is a document which is filed in a court by someone who is not directly related to the case under consideration. The American Psychological Association has submitted many briefs to courts when they believe education on psychological issues is important for the case at hand. The APA has submitted briefs on sexual harrassment, sexual orientation, disabilities rights and many other topics. Check out a list of the briefs by topic with links to the briefs themselves.

http://www.apa.org/about/offices/ogc/amicus/index-issues.aspx

 

http://www.pay-equity.org/index.html

The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE), founded in 1979, is a coalition of women's and civil rights organizations; labor unions; religious, professional, legal, and educational associations, commissions on women, state and local pay equity coalitions and individuals working to eliminate sex- and race-based wage discrimination and to achieve pay equity.