Cyril Pahinui, Crown Prince of Hawaiian slack-key guitar, dies at 68

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CYRIL PAHINUI, 1950-2018

THERE'S NOTHING MORE SOOTHING than Hawaiian slack-key guitar and songs. Like gentle waves lapping on an island beach, the music washes over you softly, massaging away your tensions and worries.

Last week (Nov. 19), Hawaiian guitarist and singer Cyril Pahinui died at the age of 68.
Pahinui, a Grammy-nominated master of slack-key, succumbed to respiratory and kidney failure in Honolulu. Pahinui had been hospitalized since Feb., 2016, over complications related to exposure to Agent Orange during his time serving in Vietnam, his widow, Chelle Pahinui, tells NPR.

Cyril Pahinui, who the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation identifies as Native Hawaiian, was born and raised in Waimanalo, Oahu, far from the glitter and lights of the tourist strip of Waikiki.

It was there where he learned his artform from his father, renowned slack key guitarist Gabby Pahinui. The younger Pahinui turned his gift into a prolific half-century career that included two Grammy nominations, the Gabby Pahinui Waimānalo Kanikapila festival and an enduring influence on later generations of Hawaiian musicians.

Pahinui received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Ki Ho‘alu Award in 1997 and again for a second time in 2017. He was given the Hawai’i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

He was also honored as a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in September 2017, and was the 2018 recipient of the Rotary Club of West Honolulu’s David Malo Award in October of this year.

Survivors include his wife, Chelle Pahinui, daughters Amber, Andrea, Anne, Carrie, and Elizabeth, 19 grandchildren, his brothers James (“Bla”) and Philip Pahinui, and sisters Margaret Pahinui Puuohau and Madelyn Pahinui Coleman.

Pahinui's final album, made up of recordings from the '90s and titled Marketplace, was recently released. Celebrate the late musician through these songs and performances:

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TGIF FEATURE: Moana to be redubbed in Hawaiian

Disney introduced its first Pacific Islander 'preincess' in Moana.

ASAM NEWS

A HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE version of the Disney hit Moana will be given to every accredited school across Hawaii this Christmas, reports Hawaii News Now.

The University of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media worked on the project.

“This was an educational endeavor to encourage students to learn Olelo Hawaii and we are so grateful to our partners at Disney Animation and Disney Character Voices International for making this possible,” Academy for Creative Media Director and Founder, Chris Lee, said.

Auli'i Cfravalho will voice her role as Moana in the Hawaiian version of the animated Moana.

Actress and Native Hawaiian Auliʻi Cravalho reprised her starring role in the Hawaiian remake.

“I am so deeply proud of my Hawaiian roots,” Cravalho said to University of Hawaii News last year.. “To perform the role of Moana, acting and singing in the Hawaiian language, is so deeply humbling and exciting. I can’t wait to work with the talented language experts who will help bring this version to life.”
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TJ Cox likely heading to Congress

SCREEN CAPTURE / ABC

Democrat TJ Cox believes he will win his congressional contest.

VIRGINIA'S REP. BOBBY SCOTT will have a fellow Filipino American serving with him in the 116th Congress of the United States.

On the other side of the country, Filipino American TJ Cox has declared victory with the narrowest of margins, 529 votes, over incumbent Republican David Valadao.

"I am elated to announce that we have won," Cox said in a statement. "Voters across the district resonated with our message of expanding health care, creating good jobs and fighting for our families' futures. I am truly humbled to have received so much support.

As the latest batch of votes from a part of Congressional District 21 that favored Valadao were counted Wednesday, Cox actually gained votes. By mid-afternoon lead, Cox was confident enough to declare victory.

The votes left still uncounted are in Fresno and Kern counties, which have consistently trended in favor of  Cox since  Nov. 6, which is why Cox declared victory before all the ballots were counted.

In his statement, Cox thanks Valadao and his family for their service for the past three terms. At press time, Valadao hasn't officially conceded with several thousand ballots still to be tallied. 

Mainstream media outlets sported headlines Wednesday afternoon declaring local businessman Cox the winner.

On election day, national media declared Valadao the winner since he had a 4,400 vote lead. As election officials began counting provisional and mail-in ballots, that lead was whittled away day by day. 

The Central Valley district, which is largely a rural district stretches from Bakersfield to Fresno, is the last contested Congressional race in the country. If the lead for Cox holds as now expected, it means Democrats will have gained 40 seats in the mid-term election.

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50th anniversary: Founding of Asian American Political Alliance

Some of the original members of Asian American Political Association and friends recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Asian American Political Alliance in Berkeley, Calif.

By Sara Hossaini
Reprinted by Permission of KQED
IN 1968, six young Americans of Asian heritage gathered at a house on Berkeley's Hearst Avenue to discuss how to create a place for themselves in the activism of the day.
It was one of the most politically tumultuous years the United States had seen. The Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese was eroding public support for the Vietnam War; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated; and San Jose athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest on an Olympic podium.

Vicci Wong of Salinas was a 17-year-old first-year student at UC Berkeley in 1968, and she was searching for a place to contribute to what she saw as "the struggle."

"The peace movement was led by whites," Wong said, "and then I tried to join the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and they told me you can't because you're not black. So they said you should form your own group, and I thought, 'Well, what is my group?' "

Wong found the answer at the meeting held at the home of two PhD students, Emma Gee and Japanese internment survivor, Yuji Ichioka. They'd found her and the others by searching for Asian last names in the rosters of other political groups.

"When I came to the steps here and knocked on that door, my life, and like everyone here else said, their lives all changed," said Wong on Saturday at 2005 Hearst Avenue, celebrating the 50th anniversary of that momentous meeting.

RELATED: 1968 - The Year of Asian America

During that first session, the group coined the concept and the term, Asian-American, and officially founded the Asian American Political Alliance. Wong says they immediately looked around at each other and knew they had created something special and that they were representing more than just themselves.

"I went in Oriental and left Asian-American," Wong said.

AAPA established main chapters at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, and the group helped lead unprecedented long student strikes at both schools, which resulted in the first Ethnic Studies departments in history.

"We wanted to save not only our communities, but establish control over our communities," Wong said.

That meant pushing back against the notion that they were perpetual foreigners and fighting things like the gentrification of San Francisco's Manilatown.

The plaque marking the birthplace of the Asian American Political Association.

AAPA co-founders in attendance said that their successors in AAPA and the people influenced by its activism have continued to fight for justice for their communities and others.

"We're seeing it circle back against Muslims now," said former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who helped found the Asian American studies program at UC Berkeley along with her husband and AAPA co-founder Floyd Huen. "(Asian-Americans) are still not seen as full Americans."

For all of its influence, AAPA has ebbed and flowed at Berkeley, going inactive twice, including up until this year. But a new group of Berkeley students is coordinating the third incarnation of AAPA at Berkeley, calling it "AAPA 3.0."

"I think what AAPA means to me is learning from leaders who were really persistent and courageous to fight against injustice and to establish our roles as Asians in American history," said Johnny Nguyen, a first-year UC Berkeley student who's helping lead the current effort. "Having taken my first ever Asian-American studies class this semester, it's surreal to hear about my place in history in the textbooks. I'd like to see Asian-American studies expanded and enhance it. That's exactly what we want to do with AAPA 3.0."

Photos by Sara Hossaini/KQED

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Chinese American family detained in China

Victor and Cynthia Liu travelled to China with their mother and have not been allowed to return home.

ASAM NEWS

CHINA IS HOLDING HOSTAGE two Chinese American children and their mother in a bid to get their father to turn himself in, reports the New York Times

Liu Changming is accused in a $1.4 billion fraud case. The family believes authorities in China are trying to force the former executive of a state owned bank, to return to China to face criminal charges.

Victor and Cynthia Liu landed in China in June to visit their sick grandfather. He is a sophomore at Georgetown University and she works at a consulting firm. When they tried to return to the U.S., they were prevented at the airport from leaving. Police also detained their mother, Sandra Han, who had accompanied her children to China. She is being held in a secret site known as the black jail. All three are American citizens.

The family claims Changming severed ties with the family in 2012.

“The investigative officers have made abundantly clear that neither my brother nor I am under any form of investigation,” Ms. Liu, 27, wrote to John Bolton, National Security Adviser, in August. “We are being held here as a crude form of human collateral to induce someone with whom I have no contact to return to China for reasons with which I am entirely unfamiliar.”

The family claims Changming severed ties with the family in 2012.

“The investigative officers have made abundantly clear that neither my brother nor I am under any form of investigation,” Ms. Liu, 27, wrote to John Bolton, National Security Adviser, in August. “We are being held here as a crude form of human collateral to induce someone with whom I have no contact to return to China for reasons with which I am entirely unfamiliar.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has a different take.

“The people you mentioned all own legal and valid identity documents as Chinese citizens. Because they are suspected of economic crimes, they are restricted from exiting the country by the Chinese police in accordance with the law,” it said to the Times.

According to the Insider, Changming fled China in 2007 and his whereabouts are unknown. China listed him on its 100 most wanted fugitive list in 2015.

China has held foreigners in the past to force cooperation from family members.

The Insider reports it placed the wife of Liu Xiabao, a human rights activist, under house arrest for eight years.

It also prevented the family of outspoken Chinese Canadian actress, Anastasia Lin, from leaving the country in 2016.
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Fe del Mundo: Google's Doodle and Harvard's quandry

TUESDAY (Nov. 27) Google showed a Doodle for Fe del Mundo on the occasion of what would have been the Filipino pediatrician’s 107th birthday. Google is showing the doodle  in a few countries -- but not in the United States. 

Dr. del Mundo was born on Nov. 27th, 1911 and died on August 6th, 2011. To just call her a Filipino pediatrician would be accurate but it wouldn't do justice to her contributions and accomplishments. 

Her pioneering work in pediatrics in the Philippines in an active medical practice that spanned 8 decades won her international recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1977. 

“I’m glad that I have been very much involved in the care of children, and that I have been relevant to them,” said del Mundo. “They are the most outstanding feature in my life.”

Google's accompanying blog about del Mundo:

DR. FE DEL MUNDO

A gifted student who became the first woman admitted to Harvard Medical School, del Mundo returned home after completing her studies in the U.S. During World War II, she set up a hospice where she treated more than 400 children and later became director of a government hospital. Frustrated with the bureaucracy, she eventually sold her house and belongings to finance the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines. Del Mundo lived on the second floor of the Children's Medical Center in Quezon City, making early morning rounds until she was 99 years old, even in a wheelchair.

When she wasn’t treating patients she was teaching students, publishing important research in medical journals, and authoring a definitive ‘Textbook of Pediatrics.’ She established the Institute of Maternal and Child Health to train doctors and nurses, and became the first woman to be conferred the title National Scientist of the Philippines and received many awards for her outstanding service to humankind.

Before WWII, she returned to the Philippines to provide her services. She later opened her own hospital and research facility.

n 1980, she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines while in 2010, she was conferred the Order of Lakandula. Del Mundo was still active in her practice of pediatrics into her 90s. She died on August 6, 2011 after suffering cardiac arrest. 

In a tribute to the late doctors, Philip S. Chua, a Filipino American physician who was former student of de Mundo’s, said: “She was the first Filipino Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics, the first lady president of the Philippine Pediatric Society, the founder and first president of the Philippine Woman’s Medical Association, the first woman to be elected president of the Philippine Medical Association in it’s 65-year history, and the first Asian to be voted president of the Medical Woman’s International Association.”

Her Doodle pushed Harvard in a quandry. While her bio states that she was the first woman to enroll in Harvard's medial school, Harvard's historians couldn't find any records confirming that part of her story.

After graduating from medical school at the University of the Philippines in 1933, Philippine President Ramon Quezon offered her a full scholarship to further her medical studies at  any institution in the world. She chose Harvard.

Her biography, as stated when she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award (Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize) in 1977 for her work in pediatrics, includes the anecdote of del Mundo’s surprise upon arriving in Cambridge and being sent to a men’s dormitory. There was no other option, the bio read, since there were no lodgings designated for women at the time. Upon discovering the mix-up — it appears that the admissions board had assumed she was a man — Harvard officials looked into her application. Finding an impressively strong record, the pediatrics department head accepted her anyway.

Except ... Harvard couldn't find any documentation that del Mundo had ever enrolled as an undergrad. Most likely, explained Harvard officials, she was accepted into Harvard Medical School as a graduate student.

The fragmented record of del Mundo’s years at Harvard offers clues about the school’s attitudes towards women and minorities at the time. HMS, tweets Joan Ilacqua, archivist for diversity and inclusion at Harvard’s Center for the History of Medicine, did not “celebrate or acknowledge the academic work of women prior to officially accepting women students in 1945.” Being a woman from a far-off nation — perhaps admitted accidentally for graduate studies — it’s unlikely that del Mundo’s achievements were recorded in a way that they deserved.

Harvard's history of its first female graduates, for example, didn’t include del Mundo before Tuesday, but at around 4:25 p.m. Eastern, an entry was added: “1936: Dr. Fe del Mundo comes to Boston to further her studies in Pediatrics, likely at Boston Children’s Hospital.”

“I think Dr. Fe del Mundo is an incredibly inspirational person,” Harvard's Ilacqua told Inverse, “and I think that her story is so important and certainly worthy of being seen by so [many] people.”

“Dr. Fe Del Mundo was a pioneer for Filipino Americans, women of color, and everyone in general. She teaches us to recognize that despite the systems that try to push us down, we can dream big and accomplish our goals,” Kevin Nadal, a psychology professor at the City University of New York and trustee of the Filipino American National History Society, told NBC News.

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50 years ago: First skirmish of the International Hotel saga

Photo by National Register of HIstorical Places

The International Hotel was home for Filipino and Chinese elderly.

ON THIS DATE, 50 years ago, Nov. 27, 1968 - 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants from the Manilatown neighborhood of San Francisco began a nine-year-long, anti-eviction campaign against Financial District encroachment after receiving an eviction notice.

Widespread student and community grass-roots support imprinted this event as a milestone in Asian American and housing advocacy history. 

The campaign culminated in the deployment of over 400 riot police, mounted patrols, anti-sniper units and fire ladder trucks in a 3 a.m. eviction raid on August 4, 1977. A 3,000-person human barricade was brutally cleared away by authorities before tenants were physically removed from the premises. 

The three-storey brick structure was demolished in 1077 leaving an empty hole in what was Manilatown and a gaping wound in the heart and soul of the Asian American community.

RELATED: 

• The day the International Hotel fell
• 1968 -- the year the Asian American community mobilized

The developers eventually sold the empty lot on Kearney Street to the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese. With the input of housing activists, former tenants and city planners, over 104 affordable senior housing units and community space were built on that site and opened up in 2005. 

I covered this story as a fledgling reporter for the Philippine News. It was my first taste of journalism and ever since then it awakened an awareness in me that impacted my life in so many ways.

The battle for the International Hotel will go down in the annals of Asian American history as a watershed event. It galvanized the fledgling Asian American student movement on the college campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, united generations of the elderly and the youth seeking a cause and gave birth to a consciousness that Asian Americans matter, that their history matters, and sparked a legacy of activism that was launched with the 1965 Grape Strike that continues to this day. Asian Americans would no longer be the quiet subservient people living forever on the margins of society. 

i made it to manilatown.
the people here can name every fish back home.
they sang songs at night.
waiting so long for the International Hotel.
i dreamt of a place to gather with them. 

Al Robles 

Excerpt from Wandering Manong

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Padma Lakshmi condemns using tear gas against asylum seekers

SCREEN CAPTURE / GUARDIAN

U.S. border guards fired tear gas into Mexico to dissuade refugees from illegally entering the U.S.

PADMA LAKSHMI spoke out against the Trump administration’s attacks on refugees at the United States-Mexico border in a Monday morning (Nov. 26) appearance on NBC’s Today.
As an immigration advocate for the ACLU, the Top Chef host, model and activist has been outspoken against the policies of Donald Trump.

Lakshmi was being interviewed about her decision to publicly share her experience as a survivor of rape, and why the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh moved her to come forward in a September New York Times op-ed. During the course of the interview, she brought up her work as an advocate for the ACLU. She condemned U.S. officials’ tear gas attacks on migrants, including children, at the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday.

"The migrants at our southern border include mothers and small children exercising their legal, human right to seek asylum," declared the ACLU in a tweet on Monday morning, and told the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, "Tear gassing children is outrageous and inhumane."

"Obviously even this morning, coming here, I was reading about all the tear-gassing of children on the border and it’s devastating,” Lakshmi told Today hosts Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie. 

“I am an immigrant, and I really identify with those people. My mother literally came to this country with $100 in her pocket. That is it. And she made a life for me and her and she left a very bad situation for both of us in India. That takes courage.”

Migrants fleeing violence and unrest in Honduras and Guatemala have traveled thousands of miles through Mexico to ask for asylum at border entries, but the number of people and the long process has frustrated some of the refugees.

On Sunday afternoon, Central American refugees, including families with children and infants in strollers, attempted to cross the border into the U.S., from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency responded by closing down the border crossing and firing tear gas at the migrants, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The port of entry near San Diego is the most common place for Central Americans to seek asylum in the US. What those in the latest caravan didn't realize is that Tijuana is already full of asylum seekers from previous caravans.

Under a policy of “metering” asylum seekers, in which US officials limit the number of people who are allowed to enter the port and ask for asylum each day, migrants currently wait two months or longer in Tijuana before being allowed to enter the US to be processed, according to Vox.

U.S. border officials allow only 60 to 100 asylum seekers — or fewer — to be precessed  each day. An unofficial wait list of hundreds of people over the summer ballooned to thousands this fall. Before the caravan arrived, wait times stretched to two months, and the temporary migrant shelters in Tijuana were already near capacity.

“When someone leaves their home and everything they know and belong to, to go to another country, it’s because they have little other choice, and we forget that,” Lakshmi said during her NBC interview.

“We have plenty in this country. Plenty to share, plenty for everybody. And I think we need to remember that the reason we’re great is because of this melting pot of immigrants, and this great cornucopia of influences and cultures and traits and expertise that we cull from all over the world. That’s really, to me, what makes America great.”
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FilAm businessman TJ Cox pulls ahead in his Congressional contest

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Updated, Nov. 27, 1 p.m.)

THREE WEEKS after the midterm elections and there are still two House races undecided and one of them involves a Filipino American first-time candidate.

On election night, Nov. 6, national media announced incumbent Rep. David Valadao as he built a 4,400 lead. over Democrat challenger TJ Cox in California's District 21. As the mail-in and provisional ballots were counted Cox slowly whittled away at that lead.

Monday night (Nov. 26) Cox pulled ahead with a mere 438 votes with several thousand votes to go. Shortly after taking the lead, Cox told reporters,  "Here in the Central Valley, we are often underestimated and counted out."

"But while the national spotlight focused elsewhere, our hard-working communities came together to fight for better health care, good jobs, and more opportunities."  

The reason it takes so long for California officials to count the ballots is because the state encourages voters to cast their ballots by mail. The majority of the state's voters prefer to mail in their vote, which is counted by hand. Counties have until Dec. 7 to certify the results of the electinos.

“Every update has kept us on track to win,” Phillip Vander Klay, a Cox spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times. “We're still on that track.”

Valdadao's campaign hasn't issued a sttement yet on this turn of events.

The Fresno Bee says that if current trends continue with the remaining uncounted votes, Cox should maintain his lead.

If Cox, an engineer and owner of two nut-processing companies, wins, he would become the second Filipino American elected to Congress. Rep. Bobby Scott, the other FilAm congressmember, was unopposed to retain his Virginia seat.

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California governor saves Asian refugees from deportation

KQED / HOPE McKENNEDY

Assemblyman Rob Bonta  announces the drive by the API Legislative Caucus and Advancing Justice Asian Law Caucus to ask for pardons by Gov. Jerry Brown

ASAM NEWS

THE ASIAN PACIFIC Islander Legislative Caucus in California is lauding Governor Jerry Brown’s decision to pardon three Southeast Asian Americans.
They are three of about 20 Southeast Asian immigrants who are seeking pardons from Brown in his last weeks in office, according to The Marshall Project.

All are facing deportation for crimes they committed in their youth.

“As families come together for the holiday season, we have another reason to be thankful. Governor Brown has helped prevent the separation of families by pardoning deserving Southeast Asian Americans,” the API Legislative Caucus said in a statement to AsAmNews.

The three men who received pardons are Truong (Jay) Quang Ly, Tung Thanh Nguyen and Hai Trong Nguyen.

Hai Trong Nguyen came to the United States as a refugee at the age of two from Vietnam.

He served nearly 16 years and two years of probation for robbery and attempted robbery and use of a firearm-crimes he committed at the age of 16.

“He has shown since his release from custody (in 2017), he has lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character, and conducted himself as a law abiding citizen,” Brown wrote in his pardon. “Mr. Nguyen helped found Asian and Pacific Islanders Re-entry of Orange County and has volunteered with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.”

In 1994, Tung Thanh Nguyen was sentence for murder and robbery. He acted as a lookout while his crime partners stabbed the victim.

“Mr Nguyen has become a tireless advocate for juvenile justice reform, and was actively involved in efforts to pass Senate Bill 260 (2013), which established a separate parole hearing process for individuals who committed crimes as juveniles,” wrote Brown. He has received numerous awards for founding the Asian and Pacific Islanders Re-entry of Orange County.

Truong Jay Quang Ly served more than nine years for voluntary manslaughter. A passenger of a car Ly was driving shot and killed the driver of another car. he has been out of prison since 2009 and now owns seven restaurants. He is a current board member of API-RISE which is devoted to criminal justice reform and helps current and former Asian Pacific Islander Inmates.

“One supporter wrote that Mr Ly is the exact type of person who merits protection from deportation and should be allowed to remain in the country that he now gives back to in such a meaningful way,” said Brown.

Brown issued some 30 pardons on last week and commuted the sentences of 70 more, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Many Southeast Asian Americans are survivors of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge Genocide. They were part of the largest refugee resettlement in our country’s history and were placed in poverty-ridden neighborhoods with significant crime rates. Some of these refugees were infants and children when they arrived throughout the 1980s and made mistakes in their youth resulting in prison sentences for their transgressions. Today, they have fulfilled their sentences and are now working to make positive contributions to their communities,” the API Legislative Caucus said.

"California immigrants are under full frontal assault from the federal administration. Period," said Assembly member Rob Bonta, chair of the API Legislative Caucus at an earlier San Francisco press conference. "We believe — the API Caucus and our California Legislature — that we should do, and must do, everything in our power to stand up for, defend and protect our immigrants."

A new law, Assembly Bill 2845, authored by the Filipino American lawmaker, will make the pardon and commutation process more transparent and allows the process to be expedited when an urgent issue, such as a pending deportation, requires immediate action. It is due to go into effect in January 1, 2019.

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

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Sikhs finding the American dream as truck drivers

SCREEN CAPTURE / CBS NEWS

Mintu Pandher owns . nine big-rig trucks and a truck stop in Laramie, Wyoming.

THESE DAYS, instead of a baseball cap, the drivers of those big-rig trucks on America's highways, could just as well be wearing a turban.

More than 30,000 Sikhs have become truckers in the last two years. The Economist reports that the political group Sikhs PAC estimates there are 150,000 Sikhs in the trucking industry and that nearly 90 percent of those people work as drivers,

Sikh Americans, most of them immigrants from India, are filling in a huge gap in the trucking industry. Even with unemployment at a nearly 49-year low, there is a record-high shortage of truck drivers.  

"For Sikhs, they want to keep their articles of faith, turban, unshaven hair, beard, moustache -- it's a safety hazard for a lot of jobs that require it. So in trucking they can keep everything, and still make a decent living," said truck driver Mintu Pandher told CBS News.

This year, the turnover rate for truck drivers is 96 percent. More than 50,000 drivers are needed to meet the demand, and the shortage is forcing companies like Amazon, General Mills, Tyson Foods and others to hike up their prices to consumers, according to the CBS report.

Pandher bought a used tractor-trailer 13 years ago. Now he owns nine rigs, plus a truck stop in Laramie, Wyoming. At his ruck stop, he's added a Sikh temple and his restaurant serves South Asian dishes.

The industry, eager to find enough drivers, have created recruiting videos that look like something straight from Bollywood production promising high pay, a glamorous future: fancy truck, nice car and a modern split-level suburban home.

What they're selling is the American dream.

The commercials may be a little catchy with the singing and dancing but the promises the videos offer are reality for many Sikhs, says Pandher.

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RIP: Meena Alexander, poet, essayist, professor of life

SCREEN CAPTURE / YOUTUBE

MEENA ALEXANDER, 1952-2018

ASAM NEWS

FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FANS are mourning the passing of a distinguished award-winning Indian American poet and essayist.
The Wire reports Meena Alexander died Tuesday in New York at the age of 67.

Her work included Atmospheric Embroidery, Birthplace with Buried Stones, Quickly Changing River, Raw Silk, and Illiterate Heart, which won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award.

She was born in India, later raised in Sudan and has lived in New York since 1979.

“Lacking just one single place to call home and shorn of the hold of one language I could take to be mine and mine alone, I felt stranded in the multiplicity that marked my life, its rich coruscating depths only forcing me—or so I felt—into grave danger,” she wrote in her essay Poetry: The Question of Home.

Scroll reports she also won the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award in Literature from the South Asian Literary Association.

The Asian American Writers Workshop paid tribute to Alexander after hearing of her death.

According to Onmanorama, Alexander worked as a Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies at New York City University and also an English teacher at Hunter College in New York City.

She spoke multiple languages-French, English, Sudanese Arabic and Hindi.

“It took me quite a while to realize that I did not have to feel strung out and lost in the swarm of multilingual syllables – rather, that the hive of language could allow me to make a strange and sweet honey, the pickings of dislocation,” she once told Wire.

She is survived by her husband, David Lelyveld and two children, Adam Kuruvilla and Svati Mariam.

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'Top Chef' Dale Talde muses on an 'authentic' Filipino American Thanksgiving

SO YOU'VE survived Thanksgiving, the launching of the holiday season; the first of those family get-togethers.

For all the holidays -- but especially Thanksgiving -- the celebration centers around food and that all-American bird -- the turkey. 

If you are descended from immigrants (and aren't we all?) then the fusion of cultures and food traditions make Thanksgiving a perfect time to celebrate all our heritages -- traditional American fare spiced up with a dish or two from the country your family came from.

If we serve lumpia and pancit with that turkey, does that make our Thanksgiving less "American?" or less "authentic?"

Popular Top Chef Dale Talde, Food & Wine's Best New Chef in 2013, bristles at the word "authentic." Who's to say what's "authentic?" he asks.

“For my parents, it’s a learned holiday. For years the turkey was horrible in our house. Now we do it right, but everything else is Filipino food,” Talde told People.

It wasn't always this way. Growing up in Chicago where he was born, as he went to school, he resented the cuisine of his parents. He just wanted to eat McDonalds and fries, chicken nuggets and Hot Pockets like his classmates.

As he got older, he formed an alliance of commiserators, friends of a variety of ethnicities united by their second-generation Asian immigrant experience. Their homes all smelled different for different reasons—Dale's from shrimp paste, Robert's from kimchi, and Raj's from asafoetida. With their families, they were foreigners. 

Talde and his friends were all-American. Like their peers they listened to American music (hip-hop, mostly), wore the latest Jordans and sported jerseys of their favorite sports heroes, played basketball, and ate American food, which for Dale meant burgers and tacos, kielbasa and hot dogs, egg rolls and deep-dish pizza—anything that wasn't Filipino.

As an adult, he's learned to appreciate his roots and the Filipino dishes his mom made in her Chicago kitchen. He parlayed his training and his heritage into two appearances on the Food Network's Top Chef, including the series featuring Top Chef all-stars, and a string of restaurants reflecting his own vision of America.

Today, his dual identity is etched on the menu at his restaurants in New York and New Jersey. There he reimagines iconic Asian dishes, imbuing them with Americana while doubling down on the culinary fireworks that made them so popular in the first place. 

In his restaurants you're likely to see menu items like pretzel dumplings, breakfast ramen, and his insanely delicious (if unholy) take on pad thai, made with fatty bacon and deep-fried oysters. A few blocks up the road at his after-work bar Pork Slope, he’s serving tater tots, cheeseburgers, and a pork chop banh mi. 

Some chefs cook food meant to transport you to some foreign land. Talde's food is meant to remind you that you're home.

Talde's various restaurants offers up dishes that is a mishmash of cuisines from around the world: Korean, Japanese, Singaporean, Filipino, German, French, Italian, even Jewish.

That's about as authentically American as you can get, right? 
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Rule change sought for Congress' first hijab-wearing members

MPR

Ilhan Omar is breaking new ground in Congress.

ASAM NEWS

ILHAN OMAR of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are the first two Muslim women to ever be elected to Congress. When congresswoman-elect Ilhan Omar, who wears a hijab — a traditional headwear worn by some Muslim women — is sworn in, she will be the first federal legislator who wears a religious headscarf reports Roll Call.
Due to a 181-year-old ruling that bans hats of any kind from Congress, Democrats are working to accommodate Omar and propose a rule change that will allow religious headwear on the House floor.

The Washington Post reports that the proposal, by Omar, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Incoming Rules Chairman Jim McGovern, is part of the House Democrats rules package entitled “New Congress, New Rules” to emphasize diversity and inclusion. In a summary draft list published by The Post, the document says: 

“Public servants working for the People’s House should reflect the faces of America. The Democratic rules package will provide an opportunity for all Americans to be included in this great institution”.

The Democrats working to alter this headwear ban serves as an explicit announcement that Muslim Americans, and other individuals who may wear a yarmulk, a dastaar, or other religious garbs, will always be allowed in Congress. Omar, tweeted last weekend, “No one puts a scarf on my head but me. It’s my choice—one protected by the first amendment.” She adds, “And this is not the last ban I’m going to work to lift,” reports CBS News.

Journal reveals Asian American Christian missionary killed by stone-age tribe had premonition of death

INSTAGRAM

JOHN ALLEN CHAU

AN AMERICAN MISSIONARY wanted to spread the word of God to inhabitants of a remote island in India, but instead he was killed by a hail of arrows.

John Allen Chau, 26, was killed over a week ago and reportedly buried in the sand shortly after setting foot on India’s North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. The island is inhabited by stone-age tribes and in order to protect their way of life the Indian government forbids outsiders from visiting them.


Chau apparently knew that his visits to the Sentinelese was illegal and dangerous, according to his entries in his journal. He also hinted that he might not return alive. 

On Nov. 16,, the night before his fatal visit to the Sentinelese, Chau penned a letter to his parents, asking them not to be angry at the Sentinelese or God if he were to die. He advised them to live their life in “obedience” and that he would see them again when they “passed through the veil.”

The Sentinelese who he wished to convert to Christianity, are the most reclusive of the  tribes and in the past have driven away uninvited guests with spears and bow and arrows and thrown spears at helicopters flying overhead.

According to journal entries made public by his family, Chau made multiple unsolicited trips to the community over the past three years as he made plans to “establish the kingdom of Jesus” on the island.

In his journal, Chau described himself as “an American citizen, part Irish, part Native American and part African and part Chinese and South East Asian'; groups that have painful histories of invasion, colonisation and forced ‘civilisation.’" 

"God, I thank you for choosing me before I was even yet formed in my mother’s womb to be your messenger, of your good news to the people North Sentinel Island," he wrote. He then expressed hope that the Sentinelese tribe will accept Jesus and Christianity with an open heart.

Chau made arrangements with local fishermen to bring him to the island. They brought him as close as they dared, knowing the ihabitants' hostility to outsiders. He made the final leg of the journey by himself in a canoe. 

As he approached, one of the tribesmen shot an arrow at him hitting him in the chest. By a miracle, he survived because the arrow hit a bible he was carrying.

He returned to the fishermen's boat where he wrote the notes in his journal describing his attempts to evangelize the natives. He left instructions with the fishermen that if anything happened to him, to give his journal to a local friend.

The next day, as he again made an attempt to meet with the natives, he was again met with arrows. That is when he met his death. Witnesses said he was buried in the sand.

Authorities have not yet recovered his body.

Chau’s family in Alabama released a statement saying he “loved God, life, helping those in need, and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people,” according to the BBC.

“We also ask for the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Islands. He ventured out of his own free will and his local contacts need not be persecuted for his own actions,” the statement said.

“He loved God, life, helping those in need and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people,” the family said. “We forgive those reportedly responsible for his death. We also ask for the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Islands.”

“This is not a pointless thing – the eternal lives of this tribe are at hand and I can't wait to see them around the throne of god worshiping in their own language as Revelations 7:9-10 states,” he wrote in one of the last journal entries. “I love you all and I pray none of you love anything in this world more than Jesus Christ,” he said, before signing off ‘Soli Deo Gloria’, followed by his name.
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