At 8 A.M. on September 11, 40-year-old Fekkak Mamdouh was asleep, having worked the previous night's late shift from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. His wife, Fatima, lay beside him; she had dropped off their daughter at kindergarten four blocks away and then climbed back into bed. For six years, Mamdouh, whom everyone knew by his surname, had been a waiter at Windows on the World, the luxury restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower. He had started working there in 1996 when Windows reopened after the 1993 terrorist bombing in the World Trade Center basement. Mamdouh's wide brown eyes and the round apples of his cheeks gave him a disarming look of innocence. These mellow features hid the scrappiness that had made him a beloved, though sometimes controversial, union leader.

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"The positive fact is that I have noticed, confirmed… the fact that the U.S. society is confronting racism."

It's a statement that raised my brow. But that is what Doudou Diene, the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia told NPR’s Weekend Edition host, Scott Simon on Sunday.

Diene, charged with preparing a report on the state of racism in the US, Brazil, Japan, Russia, Canada and twenty other countries, cited the Democratic nomination of Senator Barak Obama, a black man, as sign that people in the US are finally doing the "internal work" needed to fight racism. He called it "a deep process of transformation." And so it finally begins, I thought. Here is more fodder for pundits who consistently sweep racism under the rug.

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(January 29, 2008—Minneapolis, MN) The Organizing Apprenticeship Project (OAP) has released the 2nd Minnesota Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity. The report grades the Minnesota Governor and the Legislature on their leadership to address the growing racial disparities facing Minnesota’s communities of color, and finds that both share a "D".

(February 20, 2008—Chicago, IL) With the state legislature beginning its session this week, a new report by ARC, Facing Race: Illinois Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity 2007-2008, finds that dire racial inequities demand more attention in Springfield, Illinois.

(February 21, 2008—Chicago, IL) The Applied Research Center (ARC) released the findings of its second annual report, Facing Race: Illinois Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity 2007-2008, at a daylong series of events in Chicago and Springfield.  While the State Senate held steady with a grade of 'B', the House received a grade of 'C', a decline from last year's showing.

(15 de Enero, 2008—California) Un nuevo informe de investigación llevado a cabo por el Applied Research Center (ARC) documenta el fracaso por parte de los legisladores de California en no invertir en políticas que beneficien a todos los californianos.