Showing posts with label Weekend reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weekend reading. Show all posts

Friday, January 10, 2020

WEEKEND READING: Historic Filipnotown, Tech opportunities for Filipinas, Hitler's 'bible' root of anti-immigration racism


How Historic Filipinotown became 'HiFi'

Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles has a cool new  nickname, reports Frank Shyong in the Los Angeles Times.

You've heard of SoHo in New York and SoMa in San Francisco. Now we have HiFi in Los Angeles.

Historic Filipinotown was named the fifth coolest neighborhood in the world by Time Out magazine. And lately the neighborhood has started to go by a new name: HiFi.

Place names often set our expectations about neighborhoods, especially ethnic neighborhoods. We hear Koreatown, Thai Town, and Little Armenia and we expect a neighborhood in which a majority of residents are people of that background, engaged daily in the cultural practices of their homelands, voluntarily clustering in that neighborhood because of the comforts of community.

Names, especially new ones like HiFi, can also signal change. And Historic Filipinotown is changing.


READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE
GINA ROSALES

How One Ex-Google Employee Is Creating More Opportunities For Filipino Women

If you are seeking a conference in your field or industry, there are a thousand and one to choose from. There are conferences for virtually every subject area you can imagine. 

Gina Rosales is a Filipino and Japanese American, and former Google employee who realized that as a budding female entrepreneur of color, there needed to be more conferences that made her feel supported and encouraged and that provided women of color the career guidance that is necessary to create a thriving business. 

With this idea in mind, Gina launched the Entrepinays Summit, which is “a weekend gathering of pinay entrepreneurs filled with panels, interactive workshops, mentoring, and meaningful connections.” Gina sat down with Forbes to discuss her career trajectory, why she started the Entrepinays Summit and how entrepreneurship can be fostered through sisterhood.



US CUSTOMS & BORDER PROTECTION
Immigrant children sit inside cages in the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, after being taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’

Britain, Poland, Italy, the United States. Around the world, countries once proud of welcoming immigrants seem determined to find ever more devious ways to keep them out. 

Are these signs of a newly ascendant nationalism? Or the last gasps of existential fear?The worldwide immigration crisis — and the racism apparently driving it — can trace its roots in part to a century-old book, Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race,” according to Clyde W. Ford's oped in the Los Angeles Times.

In publishing a centenary edition of the 1916 work, white nationalist Ostara Press praised the book as a “call to American whites to counter the dangers both from non-white and non-north Western European immigration.” Grant proposed a “Nordic race,” loosely centered in Scandinavia, as principally responsible for human social and cultural development. He feared immigration and intermarriage would dilute this race, dooming it to extinction.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Weekend Readings: Teaching Itliong, thumping Trump and time with Kamala



It's Indian Summer in my neck of the woods. Temps are in the low 80s but it feels cooler. The sun filters through the leafy branches of my mulberry tree. The sky glows with that special light that brightens the hills and makes the water sprinkler throw sparkling diamonds over thirsty patch of lawn.

In the days before the chill in the air makes it too cool to sit on the ol' deck, I try to ignore the depressing news of the day. But, I can't. This election is so damn important.

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ANDRE SIBAYAN
Larry Itliong is drawn by Andre Sibayan whose work is featured in 'Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong.'

The month of October is Filipino American History Month so its appropriate that Smithsonian.com features an article by Gayle Romasanta, "Why It Is Important to Know the Story of Filipino American Larry Itliong."

Romasanta co-authored the children’s book called Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong, written with the late historian Dawn Mabalon.

Why a children's book? Why Larry Itliong? 

Just a reminder, Itliong was the labor leader whose union of Filipino American farmworkers launched one of the great labor movements of the 20th Century, the Grape Strike and Boycott. The Filipinos were later joined by the union made up primarily of Mexican American farmworkers led by the late Cesar Chavez. Together, they formed the United Farmworkers. And the rest - as they say - is history.

Unfortunately, Itliong's critical role -- co-equal to Chavez -- is often overlooked and this is the marginalized history that needs to be told, especially to young Filipino American students who need to know that their people play important roles in this country's history.

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Scary stuff: Filipino American attorney George Conway writes a must-read and damning article for The Atlantic, about the deteriorating mental health of Donald Trump.

"You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental-health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump—particularly after nearly three years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. Questions about Trump’s psychological stability have mounted throughout his presidency. But those questions have been coming even more frequently amid a recent escalation in Trump’s bizarre behavior, as the pressures of his upcoming reelection campaign, a possibly deteriorating economy, and now a full-blown impeachment inquiry have mounted. And the questioners have included those who have worked most closely with him."



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Time Magazine's cover story of Kamala Harris is one of the best articles written about the Democrat seeking the presidency. It gives a better picture of who the Indian American politician is, a question most voters are still seeking an answer to.

It isn't a puff piece and includes some of her past actions as San Francisco's District Attorney and as California's Attorney General that has haunted her campaign.

Although her campaign has faltered over the summer after she scored major points in the first debate of the Democratic candidates, she is still in the hunt if any of the frontrunners falter. She remains an intriguing prospect to voters who are still undecided who to vote for.
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