Hillary Pushes Hard for Latino Vote

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton has her eyes set on the Latino vote. Her campaign is bracing for a possible swing of black voters toward her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, by focusing more of her attention on Latino voters. Representative Edolphus Towns, a black Democrat from New York who has endorsed Clinton, says Obama is likely to draw about 60 percent of the black vote despite months of the "black-enough debate." Towns believes that in order for Clinton to win, she will need to made inroads with the Latino community.Read more.

Read more of DiversityInc's coverage of Election '08.

Corporations Welcome New Moms

New moms can breathe a sigh of relief knowing there is hope left for their budding careers. A growing number of companies are offering ways for new and returning mothers to balance family and work in hopes of preventing an exodus of talent. PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 12 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^® list) is launching a new program called Full Circle that will allow women to take up to five years' unpaid leave while staying connected to the company through mentoring, free training classes and invitations to networking events. Other corporations offer programs providing personal time far beyond the 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave guaranteed to most women under federal law. The Personal Pursuits program at Deloitte & Touche (No. 19 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list) lets former employees stay connected through freelance assignments and career coaching. However, these programs are typically reserved for a smaller subset of women in managerial or executive positions. Women who take advantage of these programs should not expect to get their job back upon return, but the idea is that participants will return at a comparable level. Read more.

For more on work/life, read the March 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine.

LGBTs Seek to Oust Anti-Gay Mayor

The LGBT community is outraged by openly anti-gay Mayor Jim Naugle of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. LGBT advocates are calling on Naugle to resign immediately for making insidious comments. Members have even started a campaign called Flush Naugle, drawing on Naugle's fixation on gays engaging in "homosexual activity" in public restrooms. In the past, Naugle has said that installing a single-occupancy restroom on a local beach could deter "homosexual activity." During his six-year term, he also told a local newspaper that he preferred the word "homosexual" to "gay" because he believed most gay people were probably "unhappy." Soon after, he criticized a plan to house a private gay-book collection in a local public library because it supposedly contained pornography. Read more.

Muslim Americans Oppose 'Co-Conspirators' List

Two prominent Muslim American organizations took measures yesterday to undo what they described as the government's effort to smear the entire Muslim community by naming some of its largest organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and an unnamed national association of Muslim lawyers, as un-indicted "co-conspirators" in a Texas terrorism trial. The group of lawyers delivered a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales objecting to the co-conspirators list, which said breached the department's own guidelines against the releasing of names of co-conspirators. CAIR announced it also would file a brief today asking Judge A. Joe Fish of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas to remove its name and all others from the list. CAIR's board chairman added to the brief, stating that the list will likely prompt death threats and hate mail against the council and lead to the "demonization of all things Muslim." Read more.

New Orleans DA Loses Appeal Over Racial Firings

The case against New Orleans district attorney Eddie Jordan, accused of firing dozens of white employees after taking office in 2003 and replacing them with black workers, has come to a close. Jordan, who is black, claimed he filled key positions with political supporters and did not violate civil rights or discriminate against the former employees based on race when he took over. In total, Jordan fired 53 of 77 employees. All of the fired employees were white, with the exception of one Latino. The jury found that 43 employees had been the victims of racial discrimination. In his appeal, Jordan argued that jurors did not have enough evidence to reach that conclusion in 2005. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict that, with interest, Jordan's office owes the ex-workers and their attorneys about $3.5 million, states The Houston Chronicle.

Native American Leader Sues Over Construction Site

Mike Jackson, president of the Quechans tribe, is leading a new kind of Native American war. Upon hearing about the new construction of a $4-billion oil-refinery project located outside of Yuma, Ariz., a small piece of land once inhabited by his ancestors, he filed a lawsuit against the developers at Arizona Clean Fuels for trespassing on sacred land. What makes this case different from more traditional fights between Native Americans and developers? The refinery isn't on the Quechan reservation or even next to it--it's planned for a parcel of land some 40 miles to the east of the reservation in Yuma, but Jackson and the tribe's lawyers argue that before the land can be transferred to the company building the refinery, an exhaustive archaeological and cultural inventory must take place. Read more.

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