APAforProgress.com News Release
from Curtis Chin, APA for Progress Board President
On Saturday June 23, 2012 Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, a national network of progressive Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and allies (www.apaforprogress.org) is organizing a live online one hour nationwide townhall to discuss hate crimes and bullying.
Leading APIA civil rights leaders will be participating in the national online Townhall including Congressmember Judy Chu, OCA Executive Director Tom Hayashi and more.
Asian Pacific Americans for Progress is looking for cities to help host viewing parties to be a springboard for groups to also talk about local issues after the one-hour presentation is done.
Vincent Chin 30: Standing Up Then and Now
A nationwide Google Hangout* townhall with leading civil rights leaders from around the country
Saturday, June 23, 2012
2 pm EST/11 am PST/8 am HST
In 1982, Vincent Chin was the victim of a hate crime murder in Detroit. Thirty years later, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continue to face discrimination and bullying. In fact, more than half of Asian Americans report being bullied in the high school class room, the highest of any racial group. In light of recent tragedies like the suicide of Pvt. Danny Chen and the continuing effects of 9/11, what can Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders do to stand up against racism and discrimination?
Please join APAforProgress.org for a one-hour panel discussion...
Update May 28, 2012
May 24, 2012 would have been Private Danny Chen's 20th birthday.
After weeks of hazing, physical and mental abuse and racial taunting as documented in his personal diary, U.S. Army Private Danny Chen was found dead of an apparent suicide on October 3, 2011 in Afghanistan.
More than 9,000 cards honoring bullying victim Danny Chen have been collected and are on their way to Washington D.C. by supporters of anti-bullying legislation of H.R. 5638, the "Service Member Anti-Hazing Act." The bill has passed the House on Friday, May 25, and now waits for Senate approval.
Update April 11, 2012
Army Courts-Martial in Connection with U.S. Private Danny Chen Moved to US
The U.S. military announced today that the trials of the eight U.S. soldiers implicated in the death of 19 year old U.S. Army Private Danny Chen have been moved to U.S. soil. The trials will be held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, if senior military officials decide courts-martial are warranted. Fort Bragg's commanders have accepted jurisdiction in the case.
A miliary investigator has recommended courts-martial for all of the soldiers.
"We are relieved and pleased," said Elizabeth R. OuYang, president of the New York chapter of civil rights group Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), which has been lobbying the military for a change in jurisdiction to the United States, rather than in Afghanistan.
Chen's relatives say he was subjugated to brutal hazing...
A David Ono - ABC7 Eyewitness News Special
KABC-TV Los Angeles
Travel with ABC7 Eyewitness News Anchor, David Ono to Vietnam on the 40th Anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize winning photo “Napalm Girl” which shows an innocent 9-year-old whose clothes were burned off her body by napalm during the Vietnam War.
Airing Saturday, June 2, at 6:30 p.m. PST
Highlights of David Ono's powerful documentary are online at KABC-TV's website. The documentary initially aired on KABC-TV June 2, at 630 p.m. PST.
A photograph allows us to deeply examine a split second in time. It’s an opportunity to freeze the world and absorb all the emotions, actions, consequences that are attached to that moment. Photographer Nick Ut’s “Napalm Girl” did exactly that. We saw an innocent child whose clothes were burned off her body, running naked, in seething pain. Children, caught in the cross fire, would forever have an indelible face - Kim Phuc.Are You Truly Free?
By Marilyn Tam
“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
We are fortunate that we in the USA can enjoy basic freedom as a given. The things that bind us are more internal – the mental restrictions and “shoulds” that shape our thinking and our decisions subconsciously.
These subconscious constraints confine us to a fixed set of expectations and view of the world.
It locks us from truly being able to soar to our highest potential, inner peace and happiness. How can we break free? This is a three-step process. First by recognizing that we are prisoners of our beliefs.
Whatever we believe about ourselves and the world is what we are going to experience. If you are holding negative thoughts like, “I’m not good enough” or “Bad things happen to me”, then that is what you are going to create in at least some aspects of your life.
No one consciously choose to hold limiting beliefs, and yet we all do to some extent. Our childhood conditioning, whether from family, school, other influential figures in our lives, or the mass media, often contain some negative programming. People’s intentions may have been good, but fear and limitation are commonly used to keep young, rambunctious and questioning children, and indeed all people, in...
The Olympics, Ryan Seacrest and Me
As the old song goes, “it’s been a long, long time.”
I apologize for not writing sooner. It’s not that I haven’t been writing. Just not for this space. For example, I just had a short piece published in The Hollywood Reporter, about the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, with a focus on music. It’s in the August 10 edition of “THR,” which is an interesting blend of trade magazine (for showbiz industry folks) and consumer mag (for people who like backstage peeps at the business known as show).
My piece—about the 60’s music that producer Danny Boyle featured during that wild, wacky event—was nothing special. But one thing about it really amused me. Just below my story was a Q&A with Ryan Seacrest, who was among the talent NBC shipped to London to work the Olympics.
A few months ago, when Dick Clark died, I wrote my first article for The Hollywood Reporter, recalling a sometimes contentious interview with him from ‘way back, for Rolling Stone. The editors chose a quote of Clark, something he said to me, for the headline: “YOU’RE A LIBERAL, AND I’M A F---ING WHORE’. This, right after a glowing tribute, “What I Learned from the Master,” by…Ryan Seacrest.
We are fated to be together!
This is to say that stuff happens.
Just the other day, I was on Castro Street here in San Francisco, and a guy asks, “Aren’t you Ben Fong-Torres?” I admit that I am.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” he says.
I didn’t...