Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund

Some early AALDEF advocacy efforts included: calling for the hiring of Chinese American construction workers at Confucius Plaza in Manhattan's Chinatown and mounting a campaign to stop the deportation of Filipino doctors, who had been recruited to fill the shortage of medical personnel in the United States.AALDEF also filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Fullilove v. Kreps, supporting the public works set-aside provision of minority businesses, including Asian American enterprises.AALDEF also filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the rights of undocumented immigrants to receive a public education (Plyler v. Doe) and to organize under the National Labor Relations Act (Sure-Tan v. NLRB).The first involved a demand for the federal civil rights prosecution of the murderers of Vincent Chin, the Chinese American engineer beaten to death by two unemployed auto workers in Detroit.Civil rights hero Fred Korematsu made his first public appearance in New York City for AALDEF's 10th anniversary celebration at Lincoln Center, featuring the East Coast premiere of Steven Okazaki's film, Unfinished Business, about the Japanese American redress movement.In Jin v. Board of Estimate, AALDEF filed an amicus brief in NY state court, arguing that English-language notices of zoning changes violated the due process rights of Chinese-speaking tenants.In 1993, when the Golden Venture freighter ran aground in Far Rockaway, Queens, AALDEF was among the first legal groups to gain access to the Varick Street detention center where hundreds of Chinese nationals were being held.[9] After September 11, 2001, AALDEF, located just eight blocks from the World Trade Center, convened a series of emergency meetings with Chinatown and Lower Manhattan advocates to begin the rebuilding process and address the environmental health, housing, and employment problems of displaced residents and workers.Through collaborative efforts with other civil rights groups, AALDEF developed a Unity Map that was adopted by the federal court to enable fair representation of the growing Asian American population in Queens.In 2012, AALDEF won a $1.2 million judgment in a human trafficking civil suit on behalf of a Filipina domestic worker subjected to involuntary servitude and forced labor in Rhode Island.[18][19] By working in multiracial coalitions, AALDEF has brought Asian American perspectives to policy debates and organized campaigns to stop hate violence, police misconduct and human trafficking.After the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, AALDEF defended the civil liberties of South Asians, Arabs, Jews, Iranians, and Muslims who were the targets of racial and ethnic profiling.
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