Candidate for
Board of Education; County of San Francisco

SHORT BIO for ERIC MAR # 11/00

Eric Mar has been active in the Asian American community and social justice movements for over 16 years. Mar is the past director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights (NCCIR).

He has taught Asian American and Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University since 1992. He is currently on the board of directors of the Chinese Progressive Association and the Media Alliance.

He is a past executive board member of the Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. In 1999, he received the community service award from the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA).

In 1994 Mar co-founded APIFORCE (Asians and Pacific Islanders for Community Empowerment), a collective of progressive activists which formed out of the organizing against the anti-immigrant Prop 187 initiative.

He is an elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee in SF and was one of the community activists that built the campaign that re-established a District Elections system in SF in 1996.

As an attorney, Mar has served on the Human Rights Committee for the State Bar of California and the Civil Rights Committee of the National APA Bar Association.

From 1993-97 he was the Assistant Dean for New College Law School in San Francisco, the oldest public interest law school in the country, where he taught a course on critical race theory.

Mar is married to Sandra Chin Mar, a San Francisco teacher active in UESF, the teacher's union. They have a 7 month old daughter Jade Justicia! Mar.