Stand Up (for Justice!)

Dear Friends of NCRR,

Join us in celebrating NCRR’s 25 exciting years of redress and social justice advocacy at a luau dinner on Saturday, September 24, 2005 at Centenary Church, 300 S. Central Ave in Little Tokyo from 4 to 8 PM.

Recapping our history:

* NCRR worked tirelessly to build a grassroots movement in the Japanese American community to seek reparations for the incarceration during World War II, and then to work with other groups to insure that Congress passed legislation to make individual reparations from the U. S. government a reality. After President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, NCRR and the community urged Congress to quickly appropriate funds to carry out the provisions of the Act.

* In the early 1990’s, NCRR received hundreds of phone calls and letters from Japanese Americans denied redress. They needed help. NCRR organized community meetings and lobbying trips to Washington DC so that those denied could appeal their cases to the Office of Redress Administration (ORA) in the Department of Justice. Among those subsequently found eligible were minors deported to Japan, fired railroad and mine workers, and detained Hawaiians.

* NCRR worked with volunteer attorneys from the Japanese American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union to file lawsuits for many of these Japanese Americans denied redress and for Japanese Latin Americans.

* During the post-9/11 era, NCRR actively supported the Muslim and Arab American communities with candlelight vigils, Breaking the Fasts, and community forums. Educational talks on Black and Mexican reparations and on the plight of former labor and sex slaves of World War II Japan were held.

* NCRR and Visual Communications produced Stand Up For Justice, about Ralph Lazo who went to Manzanar with his young Nisei friends during World War II. In addition to the yearly Day of Remembrance which NCRR has sponsored since 1981, our new website www.ncrr-la.org has been used as a resource by students here and abroad and we are in the process of publishing an NCRR Reader.

Lots to celebrate and much yet to be done! Party with us on September 24 and help us raise funds to continue our educational and civil rights work!

Sincerely,

Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress