Andrew Yang campaign launches write-in vote in Ohio

ASAM NEWS

Andrew Yang announced he will launch a write-in campaign in Ohio after a technicality forced him off the ballot in the Ohio primary, reports Newsweek.
Yang’s supporters accused the state of denying voters their first amendment rights and say they submitted three times the required signatures to get on the ballot.

Cleveland.com, however, reported his campaigned submitted those signatures without including the paperwork indicating what those voters were signing.

“The law is clear — when Ohioans sign a petition, they deserve to know what they’re signing,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in a statement. “This is why petition forms must be submitted, complete with a statement from the candidate stating their intention to run. By their own admission, the Yang campaign failed to do that.”

Yang’s campaign called it a “bureaucratic paperwork issue caused by an awkwardly-worded law.”

The campaign, which has not yet qualified for the January Democratic presidential debate, did get some good news.

The New York Times reports the Democratic National Committee has requested that polling organizations conduct more polling ahead of the next debate on January 14.

No polls have been conducted since the last debate, yet one of the requirements is for candidate’s to have 5% support in four debates or 7% support in two early primary states. Yang had submitted a formal request for more polling, which the DNC last week denied.

Weekend Reading:: When Asian Americans identify themselves; Romance novel industry down and dirty; 74 years after he died, Manzanar internee's body found

KEN GAETIEN

Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada, Shawn Wong, and Chan’s daughter Jennifer, photographed near San Quentin State Prison, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When Asian Americans separated from immigrants from Asia

Hua Hsu has an really interesting piece in The New Yorker about the "The Asian-American Canon Breakers" Proudly embracing their role as outsiders, a group of writer-activists set out to create a cultural identity—and a literature—of their own.

Identity politics offers a voluntary response to an involuntary situation. Power structures beyond our grasp sort us according to categories not of our own choosing, predestining us to be seen in a certain way by (as Ching might put it) “the average person.” Choosing to call oneself an Asian-American, rather than answering to “Oriental,” makes the most of an imposition. It offers some people a ready-made sense of purpose, short-circuiting the power of an epithet imposed from without. 

Students and activists in California invented this term in the late sixties, inspired by Black Power and similar movements among Native Americans and Chicanos, and those involved in Third World Liberation. They ultimately emphasized what connected different Asian-immigrant communities and their struggles: efforts to resist gentrification and alleviate poverty, the antiwar movement, stereotypes about Asians as passive or perpetually foreign. The term implied a set of shared historical conditions. Where to go next was an open question.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

WASHINGTON POST

Racism has romance novel industry questioning itself

Everyone is getting hot and bothered over in the aisle where the romance novels are shelved. and its not because of the book jackets' of shirtless men locked in passionate embraces with lingerie-clad, swooning women.

Mikki Kendall takes a deeper look into the growing controversy in Think.

Romance as a literary genre represents a quarter of all fiction sales and more than half of all paperback sales, and it brings in over a billion dollars in sales annually.

The impact of romance books on the culture is outsize because everyone is interested in romance, whether they admit it publicly or not.

When Asian American romance novelist Courtney Milan wrote about the industry's institutional racism in publishing and depiction of people of color, particularly Asian American women, it exposed the dirty laundry no one wanted to admit to ... until now. Mikkie Kendal writes about the growing controversy for NBC.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

GILCHI MATSUMURAWAS

Skeletal remains of Manzanar internee found

The Los Angeles Times tells the touching story how a long-lost grave of an internee at Manzanar Incarceration Camp was found.

Giichi Matsumurawas was separated from his group of fishermen who escaped the camp at night to go fishing at a nearby lake. A blizzard came upon the group, which found shelter in a cave.

Matsumurawas' body was found a month later.He was buried nearby under a pile of stones.

For 74 years, the grave lost to time and elevation. Like so much from the closing days of the war, it became a fading memory held by aging survivors of the camp who rarely spoke of the tragedies they endured.

Last week, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office and the National Park Service announced that they had used DNA to positively identify Matsumura’s body, which was found by hikers in October.

Seventy-four years after he died, Matsumurawas' family has closure.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

Sunday Read: MacArthur Genius Fellow opens up about childhood sexual abuse

MacArthur Foundation

sujatha baliga was named a MacArthur Genius Fellow for 2019.

By Irene Chang
ASAM NEWS
sujatha baliga may be a 2019 MacArthur Genius Fellow, but she remains so humble she prefers to spell her name in lowercase.

baliga works with Impact Justice in Oakland, California as the director of the Restorative Justice Project, an initiative that centers around providing alternatives for youth in the criminal justice system.

baliga’s work revolves around restorative justice, which encourages “constructive, rather than punitive or retributive, responses to wrongdoing.” Restorative justice heals everyone involved — including the crime survivor, the surrounding community, and those who have caused harm — and brings them together to discuss a plan to make amends.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded her a $625,000 five year Genius Grant which she plans to use to spread her message of restorative justice.

“The role of a restorative justice facilitator is to create spaces in which people can have necessary conversations for the well-being of their relationship, including to address conflict and harm,” baliga told AsAmNews. “The most important thing is to hold with equal partiality everyone impacted by what’s happening.”

Prior to moving to California, baliga had been a former victim advocate and public defender in New York and New Mexico. baliga’s inspiration for restorative justice came from the Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), an organization that she said factors the Oakland community into its justice practices.

“They think about doing things Oakland style,” baliga said. “And I think that’s a really important thing to do, to center the community in which you’re working, in thinking about how restorative justice should flourish.”

Just before earning her J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, baliga lived in India and spent time with a community of Tibetan refugees. She learned about the Tibetan system of justice prior to Chinese occupation, a system that focused on healing for all involved, rather than forming sides and pitting people against each other.

“I really started to see that there could be justice systems that didn’t rely on the binary thinking of putting people in different camps and having them duel it out,” she said.

baliga had gone into law school thinking she would primarily be a victim advocate and prosecutor. But after observing how the current justice system works in “a notion of sides, of ‘us versus them,'” she found that the Tibetan justice system especially appealed to her.

baliga also attributes her dedication to alternative justice methods to her own background. Restorative justice is the perfect intersection between her cultural identity as an Indian American and a Buddhist, and her professional practices of being an attorney.

“I’ve literally broken every ‘Asian girl rule,'” she laughed, referring to how she didn’t stick to the expectation of working in a law firm, or being silent about her sexual abuse to make herself “marriageable on the Indian marriage market.”

“I didn’t follow any of those rules that were externally imposed,” she added. “It’s the ‘good Asian girl’ rules that I broke, but not what it means to be deeply connected to the things that are most important about Asian culture.”

If anything, baliga’s Asian identity drove her into this direction. Her Buddhist practice allowed her to think of justice in alternate ways, and her focus on healing entire families and communities rather than single individuals hails from the idea of a collectivist culture within Asian countries.

She is also outspoken about growing up in an abusive home and being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse from her father, and speaks publicly about her experiences on forgiveness.

“It is really, really important to me that my story becomes more publicly accessible to so many survivors who live with secrecy and shame and silence,” she said.

Part of her quest in spreading restorative justice practices is to allow everyone affected in a crime, including the perpetrator, to participate in a rehabilitating process. baliga needed a deeper level of healing for the entire family, one that current justice systems couldn’t provide.

“I didn’t ever see my father as the enemy,” said the US-born daughter of immigrants from India. “I wanted us all to heal, and the systems that were in theory designed to protect me — like the criminal legal system and child protective services — weren’t designed in any way to attend to all of us simultaneously.”

baliga and her team have helped jurisdictions across the nation create youth diversion programs across the nation, which allow juveniles to actively work with their victims and communities and remain accountable for the harm they’ve caused. These programs provide alternatives to the punishment of youth detention centers and zero-tolerance school discipline policies.

“That’s essentially what the restorative justice process looks like,” baliga said. “It’s people who are being supported to be directly accountable to their crime survivors and self-identify needs — and we do that through dialogue.”

Currently, baliga said that she’s focusing on restorative justice methods for partner and sexual violence, and how to apply these practices in a safe and effective way to heal affected families.

Winning the MacArthur Genius award and title has not only freed baliga financially to pursue her research in furthering restorative justice, but has also lifted her up as a public Asian American survivor of child sexual abuse.

“If my receiving this award helps people know that not only can you transcend unthinkable harms, like child sexual abuse, but that you can go on to flourish and to turn what’s happened to you into something that can be a benefit to others and to live a rewarding life; like that is just such a blessing,” she said.

Student's mother hits sour notes with 'ethnic' cello teacher

A cello teacher's lessons went beyond playing an instrument when she called out a student's mother's racism.

The teacher, Ms. Asif, took a screenshot of a note from one of her student's mothers and posted it on social media. It has since gone viral.

"White people are so subtly racist, this is an email I just received from a student’s mother,” she wrote to introduce the mother's note.

Asif blotted out the name of the mother, but in later exchanges, called her "Mrs. D." Asif also posted her response, that speaks for itself:

Asif also wrote:

"also for those people wondering why his clothes have an ‘ethnic stench’ it’s because this kid is always mfing hungry, his parents once told me they skip on his meals so he could lose weight, the kid is 9!!!!!! so I always feed him whatever’s cooked at home bcos I feel for the kid"

Asif later clarified later that she is an Uyghur Muslim – a minority of the Turkic ethnic group originating from the general region of Central and East Asia – not an “Indian,” as the mother repeatedly called her.

The Uyghurs are cultural minorities centered in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

When the mother came to Asif's house to clear up the "misunderstanding," Asif fed her some "ethnic" snacks. The meeting didn't go so well.

In her Dec. 30 posting, Asif says the mother, Mrs. D, tried to explain how strong the "Indian smells" are and didn't see anything wrong in her note.

"She went on saying how she has Indian friends and loves Bollywood and Indian food, again she knows I’m not Indian so she is quite obviously deliberately humiliating me. I asked her to apologise because I was obv offended, she said ‘I’d apologise if I had said something wrong’" wrote Asif. 

"She started fully sobbing and the whole time I was just there like ...? I’m not about to let you be the victim here, if anyone’s the victim it’s your son m8. She goes ‘I’m sensing a lot of hostility here which I do not appreciate at all’ I was like yo??? "

Mrs. D called her husband who came to Asif's house and berated the cello teacher. Asif threatened to call child protective services for allegedly starving their child.

The ugly confrontation ended with Mrs. D. apologizing "for being a racist."

Asif's final posting ended by saying:

"Anyway, please stand firmly for what you believe in, demand respect and accept nothing less of it, and if something doesn’t look right please let someone know, someone may be suffering silently."

2019 Review: Hollywood 'discovers' Asians

Left to right: Always be My Maybe, The Farewell and The Terror: Infamy.

This is the fourth and last installment of a four-part series: 2019 Review

The ripples of the big splash caused by 2018's Asian August is still being felt in Hollywood. It’s hard to tell if this is a temporary phase or a permanent direction but AAPI actors, directors and other creatives are making the most of Hollywood’s discovery of Asian talent sitting right under its nose.

(Editor's Note: Read headline with more than a hint of sarcasm.)

The crazy success of Asian led movies Crazy Rich Asians, To All the Boys I Ever Loved and Searching made Hollywood sit up and take notice of the diverse audience and Asian talent sitting right under tis nose.

An argument could be made that if not for the success of Asian August paved the way for the 2019 movies such as Ali Wong's and Randall Park's Always Be My Maybe, Mindy Kaling's Late Night, Stuber with Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista, The Sun is Also A Star with Charles Melton as the romantic lead, and the Lulu Wang-directed and critically acclaimed The Farewell, which featured an all-Asian cast including CRA star Awkwafina.

Other cast members cashed in the hit status of Crazy Rich Asian with new roles: Henry Golding starred in thriller A Simple Favor and the romcom Last Christmas, Michelle Yeoh got a recurring role in Star Trek spinoff Star Trek: Discovery and joined Golding in Last Christmas, Gemma Chan got a small role in Captain Marvel and Bess of Harwick. 

They were supported by movies by established stars: Aquaman starring Jason Momoa,  Keanu Reeves starred in John Wick 3 and Dwayne Johnson was busy in 2019 with three flicks, Hobbs & Shaw, Fighting With My Family, Jumanji: The Next Level.

From Great Britain came the sleeper hits, Yesterday, starring Himesh Patel and Blinded by the Light with Viveik Kalra.

Filipino American actor Darren Criss at the SAG awards.

Television breakthroughs

On the small screen there were more Asian American faces on traditional and streaming networks  in what feels to be a Golden Age in Hollywood (and Canada) for AAPI actors.

Filipino American actor Darren Criss followed up his 2018 Emmy for acting with 2019's Golden Globe, SAG award and a Critics Choice award for his amazing portrayal of mass killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. 

Asian Canadian Sandra Oh won Best Actress for a Golden Globe and Critic's Choice for her role in the BBC's Killing Eve, becoming the first actor of Asian heritage to win in that category.

Kim's Convenience and Fresh Off the Boat are centered around Asian American families and the issues they face adjusting to North American culture.

AMC's The Terror: Infamy brought the horror of the Japanese Americans internment camps during WWII into American living rooms while at the same time, scaring the bejeebers out of viewers.

A new television series, Warrior, was introduced last year which mostly takes place in mid-1800s San Francisco's Chinatown starring a largely Asian cast. Historical racial attitudes meet Chinese martial arts made for entertaining fare.

Lilly Singh debuted as the first Asian American host of A Little Late with Lilly, a late night talk show on NBC.

Hasan Minhaj in 'Patriot Act.'

Hasan Minhaj launched his hour-long weekly comedy show, Patriot Act, on Netflix. The streaming network also featured comedy specials from several other comedians, including  Jo Koy, Ali Wong and Ronny Chieng.

Other AAPI actors were included in shows with ensemble casts such as Grey's Anatomy, The Good Doctor, Legends of Tomorrow, 9-1-1, Silicon Valley and Hawaii Five-O and a dozen other shows. Despite the increased presence of AAPI actors in television and movies, their numbers are still lagging considering the hundreds of projects being produced and under development, according to annual diversity reports from USC and UCLA.

The presence of AAPI actors in entertainment is a form of "soft power" in helping form a picture of what an "American" looks like by giving US viewers and audiences -- in a nonthreatening way -- a different perspective as they become familiar with AAPI issues and accustomed to Asian and Pacific Islander images. 

To make sure this "Golden Age" is more than a passing trend, some artists have taking to producing products themselves rather than waiting for roles to audition for. CRA stars Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan and Awkwafina have all started their own production companies.

“I know what I want, and that’s to tell stories that make (an) impact on people, to tell good stories,” Awkwafina tells Variety. “That’s what I have control over.”

2019 REVIEW 
Part 1: AAPI political visibility explodes on nat'l scene
Part 2: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community
Part 3: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up AAPI communities

UPDATED Jan. 4 11 a.m for clarity, fix typos & to include additional art. Oh hell! Post was rewritten to make it better.

Buzzfeed: 'Andrew Yang could win this thing'

SCREEN CAPTURE /CNN

Andrew Yang during the CNN-moderated debate last summer.

For the first time in this long primary season, a national media outlet has admitted that Andrew Yang has a fighting chance to win the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump.

Buzzfeed's headline, "Andrew Yang Could Win This Thing" comes after fundraising figures were released Thursday that showed the candidate's campaign raised $16.5 million in the last three months of 2019, which should be enough to allow him to stay in the race all the way to the Democratic Convention this July in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I tweeted a while ago that this is the simulation where we win — and that’s what it feels like now,” Andrew Yang told Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith between campaign stops in New Hampshire Thursday night.

“I get asked all the time whether I expected to be here,” Yang said. “And the truth is that I did.”

Yang's surprising showing -- most pundits didn't expect him to be around at this stage of the game -- might be an indication that donors, and perhaps voters, are not satisfied with the top tier candidates, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.

For those still undecided, Yang, who regularly polls better than seasoned politicians Cory Booker, Amy Klobucher  and Tulsi Gabbard and billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, may be an option. He is definitely not a conventional politician and hasn't fully embraced the far-left policies to which the GOP has attached the socialist label.

Realistically, Yang still has big hurdles in front of him. He needs to expand his base, mostly made up of young males and Asian Americans, according to AAPI Data. Besides the undecided voters, his campaign is hoping to attract those Trump voters who regret their 2016 choice and moderate Democrats who don't want their ultimate choice to go too far to the left. 

“It’s a completely new universe that we are speaking to,” said his campaign chief Nick Ryan, who pointed to some 400,000 individual donors. “No matter how passionate a small base of support is — they’re not going to get you $16 million. These are folks who aren’t all on blue-hat twitter.”

One of Yang's senior aides summed up to Buzzfeed that Biden, Warren, and Sanders “are running like it’s 1996.” Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, the aide said, “are running like it’s 2008. We’re running like it’s 2030.”

Buzzfeed concludes: "He's got a shot." A long shot to be sure, but if the stars align and he finishes strong in Iowa in New Hampshire, Yang may still surprise those pundits and media who have not taken him seriously thus far.

Man killed trying to retrieve his stolen laptop

ASAM NEWS

Shuo Zeng never made it to his 34th birthday party. He was killed trying to chase down thieves who stole his laptop from a Starbucks in Oakland, Calif., reports CBS5.

SHUO ZENG

His friends say they were scheduled to celebrate his 34th birthday the night of his death.

Witnesses say  Zeng was struck by the thieves' getaway car as he tried to stop their escape. He was dragged for a short distance before eventually falling out of the car.

Zeng’s family is coming from China to identify his body.

“We were actually going over to his place to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but he wasn’t there. We got there at 7 p.m. and were like, ‘Where is he?’ I think just a little after that, the police called us and told us that he passed away. It was also his birthday,” co-worker and friend Peter Tseng said to ABC7 News.

The suspects were arrested and identified as Byron OJ Reed Jr., 22, of San Francisco, and Javon Eugene Lee, 21. Reed faces a charge of murder with the special circumstance of committing a murder during a robbery; Lee faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Both men are charged with second-degree robbery as well as several special allegations, according to the Chronicle.

Both men have previous second-degree robbery convictions — Reed's in an incident in San Francisco on November 22, 2017, and Lee's stemming from another San Francisco incident on February 27, 2017.

According to CBS 5, Zeng immigrated from China to attend Kansas State University for graduate school. He worked as an engineer and research scientist for Aspera, an IBM company in Emeryville.

“I’m shocked. I’m completely shocked,” said Dana Schwartz, a neighbor of Zeng.

“It’s just hard, going to be hard on his family,” another neighbor said.

2019 Review: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up Asian Americans

If there is one thing that the diverse AAPI communities have in common, it is their almost universal opposition to the persistent attempts of the White House-driven policies intending to reduce immigration from Asia.

"The administration has literally every month enacted new fundamental restrictions on the rights of immigrants, and in particular, the rights of asylum-seekers at the border," the ACLU's immigration specialist Lee Gelernt told CBS News.

While the dire conditions at the US-Mexico border receives most of the media attention, immigration from Asia, now the source of most of US-bound immigrants, is affected by the hardline policies proposed by the Trump administration.

These policies or proposals include:

• The end of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in which thousands of AAPI young people who were brought into the US illegally by their parents. DACA allows them to stay and work in the US where they were raised

• A reduction of who qualifies as family threatens to separate siblings and parents of new immigrants. About 70% to 80% of Asian immigrants come to the US through family-based immigration.

• Rules to look into would-be immigrants' social media use to make sure they are not anti-Trumpers;

• A measure to make sure that visa applicants would not be a financial burden to the US by becoming a "public charge," by using any form of government assistance including SSI, food stamps or a school's free lunch program;

• Raising the fees -- almost double -- for greencard holders to become citizens;

• New limits of H1-B visas that allows workers with special skills needed in the US, to move to head of immigration que; and student visas that permit foreign students to study here and in many cases, after their studies, remain in the US;

• The deportation of refugees from Southeast Asia refugees who might have run afoul of the law for even minor infractions such as a DUI or possession of small amounts of marijuana. Although they served their sentences, ICE often awaits to detain them as soon as they step out of jail;

• And for good measure -- perhaps simply because a rule was approved by President Obama -- the administration seeks to eliminate the so-called parole program that allowed family members to join and care for elderly Filipino WWII vets who were granted US citizenship.

Although most of policies have been mired in the court system because of legal challenges filed by various states and immigration advocates, the government keeps appealing them hoping that they will eventually make their way to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.

Many people believe, including AAPI members of Congress, slowing the numbers of immigrants of color to keep America white, is at the heart of the Trump anti-immigrant policies. Hundreds of congressmembers have written a letter asking Trump to fire Stephen Miller, the alleged white supremacist who is the mastermind behind the reforms restricting immigration.  

"What has been going on at the border is so visual and so visceral that I think it's the thing that has absolutely dominated everybody's attention with respect to immigration issues," León Rodríguez, the last U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director under President Obama, told CBS News. "A lot of these other issues are very bureaucratic, very technical but very impactful for the families that are affected."

"The overall thrust of what the administration has been doing is pretty much at every turn to restrict immigration, both in terms of the overall numbers of people who are able to acquire immigration benefits, but also as to any individual applicant or petitioner, to make it infinitely more difficult for them to attain those benefits," Rodríguez said.


2019 REVIEW 
Part 1: AAPI political visibility explodes on nat'l scene
Part 2: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community
Part 4: Hollywood 'discovers Asians

Star Wars' Rose Tico fans not satisfied with explanation

DISNEY

Rose Tico and Finn in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" became a promising couple fans hoped to see again.

Hmm. Before the final cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released in theaters last Dec. 20, Vietnamese American actress Kelly Marie Tran was pretty excited about the important role her character, Rose Tico, would have in the movie.

Interviews done before the The Last Jedi premiere that appears to undermine the statements of the screenplay writer of the final chapter of the 9-movie space saga.

“Yeah, it was probably one of the biggest sets I had ever been on,” Tran told The Hollywood Reporter about the Battle of Exegol, one of the climactic action scenes in "The Rise of Skywalker." “It was incredible to see what the stunt teams did. It was also insane to be running across this platform — which I know you only see for a second in the movie — but we shot it so many times. I remember having bruises on my knees the next day because we kept running and then we would fall onto our knees and do some more shooting stuff. I don’t think that’s in the movie. It was definitely organized chaos as stormtroopers were flying, people were on horses.  . . .  It was pretty insane.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in November, Tran alluded to scenes that she supposedly shared with this trilogy's new Jedi knight Rey (Daisy Ridley), even though none of their scenes together made the final cut.

"I think it’s really cool at all that they are even in scenes together because in ‘[The Last Jedi]’ we weren’t in any scenes together," Tran told EW. "It was really cool to have feminine energy on set. I wish I could tell you more but I’m really excited for people to see [Rose and Rey] interact. They both have the some objective which is to fight for the things you believe in and the people you love."

Unfortunately, neither of these scenes made the final cut. And neither involved any interactions with Princess Leia which seems to make a tipid explanation offered by writer Chris Terrio.

"One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie’s footage in the way we wanted to," Terrio told several media in an interview published earlier this week. "We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film."

He added, "The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia."

The argument Terrio gave was meant to temper the onslaught of criticism of the reduction of Tico's role to that of an extra after playing such a major role in the rebel resistance in The Last Jedi, the movie preceding the current release. The Last Jedi ended with the hint that Tico's heroics that saved the life of another major character, would lead to an even bigger role in the final chapter.

Terrio later clarified that his comments referred to “a specific scene in which Leia’s emotional state in Episode 7 did not seem to match the scene we wrote for use in Episode 9, and so it was cut at the script stage (before the VFX work was done).” 

Oh, so the scenes were cut at the script stage, not in the editing. What that means is poor writing was the reason Tico's onscreen time was reduced to 1 minute, 16 seconds.

What angers Tran's/Tico's fans is that it appears that the producers yielded to the racist and sexist fanboys who hated Tico, the first Asian American woman, the first woman of color, with a major role in the nine movies that defined the Star Wars universe.

To fans, it appears that lines and actions that could have been for Tico were given to newly introduced characters who were unnecessary in order to move the story forward.

Rose Tico deserves better. Kelly Marie Tran deserves better. Star Wars fans deserve better.

Six arrested in mass shooting that shook Fresno’s Hmong community

FRESNO POLICE DEPARTMENT

Fresno Police Chief Andy Hall at a press conference Dec. 31.

ASAM NEWS

Fresno police announced New Year's Eve the arrests of six people in the killings of four members of the Hmong community and injuries to several others, reports the Fresno Bee.

All six suspects have been identified as members of the Mongolian Boys Society Gang. The killings on November 17 at a backyard party were in retaliation for another homicide  earlier that day of Randy Xiong, 28.

The Visalia Delta Times reports at least one of those attending the party was a member of the Asian Crips, a rival gang the Mongolian Boys blamed for Xiong’s killing.

Police would not say if any of those shot at the backyard party were members of the Asian Crips.

“We see them as victims,” said Police Chief Andy Hall, according to the Delta Times.

Under arrest are Billy Xiong, 25; Anthony Montes, 27; Porge Kue, 26; Jhovanny Delgado, 19, Pao Vang, 30, and Johnny Xiong, 25; all of Fresno.

Prosecutors say it’s possible they may go for the death penalty in the case, although they did not say which of the suspects arrested carried out the shooting.

According to the Fresno Bee, the case broke open during a Dec. 17 traffic stop in nearby Clovis.Police discovered a fully automatic Glock pistol in Billy Xiong’s car which was traced to the backyard party shootings.

Sia Vang, 23, a person of interest in the mass shooting, remains outstanding.

"The shooting affected not only the city but also really impacted our Hmong American community," Hall said in the Tuesday press conference.

Members of the Fresno Hmong community were concerned that the apparent links to Asian gangs would cast a negative light on the entire community.

The Hmong fled their traditional native lands after the US left Vietnam in 1975 because they had allied themselves to the US.

After fleeing to Thailand, about 300,000 were granted refugee status and allowed to come to the US. Fresno is home to about 30,000 Hmong, the largest Hmong community in the US.

About 46 people had gathered at a Fresno home Nov. 17 to watch a football game. Sixteen men were in the backyard when one or more of the suspects entered the yard and began shooting. 

Killed in that shooting were Phia Vang, 31; Kou Xiong, 38; Kakaxang Thao, 40 and Xy Lee, 23.

"We will work hard to bring peace and comfort to the city of Fresno as we close the page on a very difficult year," Mayor Lee Brand said of what he called a "terrible event that shook Fresno to its core."

"The promise of protection can’t stop with arrests," he said. "We have to remain vigilant and stay alert."

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

2019 Review: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community

A small but vocal group of conservative Asian Americans were used by the anti-affirmative action Students for Fair Admissions to attack affirmative action. The courts ruled in October 2019 that Harvard admissions process did not discriminate against Asians. 

Meanwhile, the conservative Asian Americans were successful in the state of Washington, where voters upheld a 20-year old law, Initiative 200, that forbade the use of affirmative action.

Students for Fair Elections, led by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, argued that Asian Americans with high test scores were being denied admittance to Harvard while applicants with lower test scores were being accepted.

During arguments in 2018, it was learned that school's admission process had some significant flaws, specifically the portion about personality where Asian American applicants allegedly received lower scores.

The battle for affirmative action also put a spotlight on the wide differences within the Asian American community between mostly new immigrants from China with older Asian American groups which had aligned themselves with other people of color in support of affirmative action. The fracture threatens to widen even further as conservatives try to use the differences to pit Asians as a wedge against other communities of color.

In Washington State,  the New York Times reports that the state's Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises found that before the ban, about 10 percent of government contracts awarded to businesses certified as being led by minorities or women. Since the ban was instituted, that proportion has dropped to about 3 percent.

The University of Washington's main campus in Seattle is the most competitive in admissions in the state has had the greatest impact.

The most recent federal data show the university's student body mix has more Asian Americans (25%) than their share of the state population. But the shares of white (42%), black (3%), Latinx (8%) and Native American (less than 1%) students lag their share of the state population.

Much of the opposition in Washington was led by a well organized Asian American group, who worried that affirmative action could affect their record of success in university admissions. Like the Harvard case, affirmative action opponents were made up of newer immigrants from Asia, primarily China.

The majority of Asian Americans support affirmative action but mainstream media - as in the Harvard case - kept reporting the story as if the anti-affirmative action group represented the general view of the AAPI community, effectively using Asian Americans as a wedge between the AAPI communities and other people of color.

Lawmakers in other states, such as California, Texas, Michigan, Florida and Arizona, which have similar bans on affirmative action, watched the Washington results with interest as they consider overturning those bans.

The court ruling on Harvard Admissions is being appealed and will probably end up at the US Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority thanks to Trump and Senate Pro Tem Mitch McConnell, which in 2015-2016 thwarted President Obama's Supreme Court appointment of Judge Merrick Garland.

2019 REVIEW 
Part 1: AAPI political visibility explodes on nat'l scene
Part 3: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up AAPI communities
Part 4: Hollywood 'discovers Asians

2019 Review: AAPI political visibility significantly increased

CAPAC

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus inducted a record number of members.

In the area of politics AAPI stepped into the big stage in a big way in 2019. For the first time in US history, three AAPI candidates threw their hats in the three ring circus known as the race for president. 

Businessman Andrew Yang, was the first to declare his intention in 2018 and with no name recogntion, he has doggedly persisted against all addCalifornia Sen. Kamala Harris declared her candidacy with an impressive Oakland rally with 20,000 of her closest friends. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii joined the largest field of Democratic candidates. By mid-year there were 24 Democrats vying for the partyi's nomination.

Harris, undoubtedly the strongest candidate of the three, surprised almost everyone by being the first to withdraw after Thanksgiving. Yang continues to gain steam while Gabbard is hanging in there.

In addition to the three presidential candidates, three more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were sworn into office in January. Andy Kim became the first AAPI congressman to represent New Jersey; TJ Cox eked out a victory in California to become only the second member of Congress with Filipino heritage; and Michael San Nicolas, represented Guam. With the three new congressmembers, the number of AAPI representatives rose to the most ever at 18.

AAPI lawmakers, all of them Democrats, were in the forefront in opposing Trumps racist and restrictive immigration policies, the citizenship question in the 2020 Census and the rise of hate and white supremacists and the GOPs attempts to dismantle the Obama healthcare program They also supported strengthening voting rights, disaggregating data and DACA.

AAPI voters helped turn long-time GOP districts into Democratic districts in 2018 and continued their political activity with voter registration drives for the 2020 elections and demanded the Republicans and Democrats address their issues at the federal, state and local levels.

2019 REVIEW

Part 2: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community

Part 3: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up AAPI communities
Part 4: Hollywood 'discovers Asians

Rose Parade Chinese American float honors American heroes of color

By Erin Chew

ASAM NEWS
In mid-November I was invited by founder of the Chinese American Heritage Foundation (Boston based), Wilson Lee, to check out the early progress of the Chinese float which will grace the streets of the Rose Parade on New Years Day 2020. 

At that time, it was still in the very early stages and it was difficult to envision what the real life float would look like, even though I was shown a poster of the design. Having the opportunity to meet founder Lee and his wife Esther Lee, who serves as the foundation’s chairperson and president, I was inspired by their resilience and determination to ensure Chinese Americans were represented at the parade.

CORKY LEE

This has always been their resolve, despite setbacks such as the Chinese American float for the 2019 Rose Parade catching fire and having to be towed off the route.

That year, the float commemorated the Transcontinental Railroad workers 150 years ago and featured a number of descendants of the Chinese railroad workers, Lee being a descendant himself.

At that time, he told Pasadena Star News that:

“If the float endured a little mishap, so be it,” he said. “It pales in comparison to the hardships that our ancestors endured 150 years ago to make the railroad complete. Think about it — the difficulty in building the Transcontinental Railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains, across valleys, across deserts, that’s the hardship.”

Wilson Lee, founder of the Chinese American Heritage Foundation, stands in front of the float which was under construction.

It is this “enduring” attitude and determination which I saw when I met him and his wife and was completely enamored and inspired by this simple act of ensuring Chinese American voices past and present are heard in the parade (where there traditionally was none). As Lee gave me a guided tour of the work being done on the float, with the 2020 theme commemorating “American Heroes”, I asked him why he and his wife Esther wanted to do this, and even lay down their own money as a deposit to book a spot at the parade while they fundraised.

CORKY LEE

“It is important that we have a voice at this parade and show the current and future generations of Chinese Americans that we are present. Esther and I have been working in the Chinese American community for a long time (particularly in Boston), have seen and experienced many things and this is a great way to give back and show how visible we are.”

Despite this being a “Chinese American” float, Lee tells me that it is titled “American Heroes” to commemorate ALL “American Heroes” of color. He told me that it is more important to unite as people of color, because we all experience commonalities in terms of cultural values and the perils of racism and discrimination in the past and present. Lee also stated that Americans of color have greatly contributed to the fabric of the USA and have fought many wars and conflicts for the US, yet they are still not as “visible” as they should be.

“As a proud Chinese American, I am a firm believer that we must all work together as “Americans of color”. Our float commemorates this and we will have “American heroes” who represent this diversity displayed and on our float on the day.”

Among those who will be on the float are former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and his wife Danealia, Congresswoman Judy Chu, actress Nancy Kwan, and veterans Maj. Gen Garrett Yee, USA and Lawson Sakai.