One Week Later

I've spent the last week digesting the news, trying to sort out all the layers of what the election results mean to me, how they've affected me, and how they will impact this country. It has been hard. It has been really hard. 

I can see how Donald Trump appeals to those who have grown tired of being asked to empathize with immigrants, with people of color, with LGBTQ people, with women, with people whom they do not consider "real" Americans. I can see how Donald Trump represents dreams of money and power and freedom. 

I wish there were a way to sum it up so that those who voted for Trump might be able to hear me, to be in conversation with me, to empathize with the hurt that so many of us are feeling right now. That will explain the rage that so many of us are feeling right now. I want so badly for that to be possible.

I woke this morning with my composure cracked because the implications of Trump's win have become more clearly articulated in my mind.

• I am the child of refugees. The inherited trauma of what my parents and grandparents and older family members have been through has been triggered in a way that I have never felt before. We have talked at length and often about the difficulties, the terror, of their years in Cambodia during Khmer Rouge rule. I consider how things were in Cambodia before April 17, 1975. How there were those who could see what was coming and fled to the US, France, Australia, before tanks began traveling down the streets. And there were those who perhaps could see it but could not leave, those who had some sense of dread, but could only go about their lives affecting normalcy. I have a suspicion that "normal" changed by slow, small degrees, much as Trump's presidency and cabinet appointments are being normalized now.
  
  And I recognize how I have been grieving and angry but for the most part still living life as normal, going to the ceramics studio, working, cooking, seeing friends. How news fatigue settles in. How this is what many of us are doing. And there is a feeling in the pit of my stomach that hunkering down is not and has never been enough. That perhaps it would help me survive, but that the cost might be higher than I can stand.
  
• I am an outdoor educator. On expeditions, it is imperative that groups build trust and respect. We emphasize valuing diversity and inclusion, and I work hard to hold my students to high standards in their behavior and language toward one another. Our safety depends on being able to work together and take care of one another.
  
  Trump's win is an affront to everything I've been trying to teach. It tells us divisive, rude, sexist, Islamophobic, and racist behavior will not keep a person from winning the top office in this country. That so many in this country do not hold him to anything near the standards that I have asked of my students. 

Many people want to argue in abstract terms, many request not to be lumped in with white nationalists, racists, misogynists, Islamophobes, homophobes. I don't have the energy to provide that kind of reassurance right now. There is fear and dread, there are echoes of horrific histories, and there is an enormous grief. 

There is a part of me that still does not believe that Trump's administration will actually take power in January. And I know that I have to fight against that disbelief because what we need now is to strategize against that event. 

"Life Line" by Bambu feat. The Fighting Cocks // Reform Healthcare!

Someone needs to play this song on the floor of the House today. 

"Life Line" - Bambu feat. The Fighting Cocks



This isn't some ploy to lobby for health care reform; this is a true story. The story was lived and the song was written long before Obama took office and long before the current debate.


The opening lyrics of "Life Line":


I been waitin' in this line
'scuse me sir
do you have the time?
'cause i been here for a long, long while
and I'm sure we'll never be seen soon


Rest in peace Arnold Moreno
your brothers in Echo remember your smile
And never forget the reason you gone
And you not standin' here with us now--


See the homie went down
The ambulance came
and handled that fool (?) like a rag
from one emergency room to another he went--
insurance, he did not have

He was hurt, but nurse 
could not do work
until she knew she was paid--
Is the nurse or the system 
the reason no breathin' is comin' from Arnold today?


Play songs for those
who know what it's like
to sign up for county aid
From LA to Bay to the A to the Chi to the boroughs of NYC


We all the same
bleed the same
treated the same
all in the name of a Jesus
who seems to like the people
with ch-change

...


People die because of our current healthcare policies. This bill isn't perfect, but we have to start doing something. People have died. People are dying. People will keep dying before they have to, because our government decides to do nothing. Those of us who can't afford healthcare-- our numbers are growing with every single month that passes in these harsh economic times-- will die. Something has to be done. Now.

In all honesty, I think a major shift in the way we think about health care needs to happen in this country, and working within the current system can only go so far, but we have to keep moving in a positive direction. Let not the perfect be enemy of the good.

After The Faire: Thinking about history, intergenerational dialogue, & activism

Last weekend, I went to the Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California's Author/Artiste Faire at Katy Geissert Civic Center Library in Torrance. I went to support traci kato-kiriyama, Founder/Director of Tuesday Night Project, but I also went to get a glimpse of an Asian America that I have had little interaction with, despite my time as an organizer in Asian Pacific Student Association at UC Irvine: the community of Asian Americans who are older and who have been in the U.S. for generations.

Growing up as a 1st/2nd (depending on how you count) -generation Khmer American in Southern California, I had little interaction with Asian Americans who have been here for generations. Those few paragraphs in our elementary school history books on Chinese immigrant rail workers never gestated in my mind the understanding that Asians have been in this country for centuries. In Bellflower and Little Saigon, most of my Asian peers were also children of immigrants. I always felt new. Yes, the presence of Southeast Asians in the U.S. is very new, comparatively, but I wish I had gained an awareness of Asian American history much sooner.

When I first met older Asian folks who spoke perfect English late in high school, I was both impressed and bemused. An Asian person over thirty without an accent? Wha? It wasn't until college that I really began to fully grasp it-- the existence, presence, and contribution of Asian Americans in U.S. history. Regretfully, in my haste to graduate with my B.A. in English on time and my work organizing with APSA, Irvine Queers, and the Cross Cultural Center, I never took an Asian American studies class (except for Asian American Performance & Writing with Denise Uyehara, which was a wonderful exploration of interdisciplinary art).

Thus, my knowledge of Asian American history has come primarily through a few workshops at conferences, reading on my own, and, most of all, being around people who know much more about it than I do. I've been out of college for nearly three years now, but my education hasn't stopped. In fact, I feel like it has increased exponentially. A big part of that is due to my involvement in Tuesday Night Project and working with traci and other folks who were actually there in the 1990s working to get Asian American Studies in the university, people who were in the student movement then and took lessons from the activists who came before them in the anti-war movement and civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s. (traci is, by the way, the first student ever to graduate with a minor in Asian American Studies from Cal State Fullerton.)

As valuable as any Asian American studies literature I might read about the movement is the chance to talk to people who were there, who have been through it, and who are still in the movement, often as teachers.

I was one of the youngest (if not the youngest) person at the JAHSSC Authors/Artists Faire in Torrance. When I looked around, I wondered Where are the young people? Where are the people my age? I looked around and saw books about Japanese American internment experiences, Buddhism in the camps, books about Los Angeles' diverse cultural history. And the people who wrote the books were there, within arms' length (often closer, as it was a packed event), incredibly accessible.


I have this urge to say "Well, it was an event at a public library, and not particularly close to any university, and I mean, the demographic of the attendees doesn't really reflect whether young people are interested and engaged with our predecessors." I want to say that as a sort of disclaimer, but in all honesty, the lack of young people at the event really shook me.

I suppose one of my primary anxieties is the under-valuing of speaking, really speaking, with elders. Not merely respecting them, but listening to them, coaxing out their stories, perspectives, opinions. This comes in part from often feeling disconnected from elders in my own family and from regret that I did not take the opportunity to learn from and talk to my grandmothers as much as I could have when I had the chance.

These personal forces notwithstanding, I still believe that inter-generational dialogue--and not only dialogue, but genuine connection--is utterly necessary to the Movement, whatever specific issue or portion of it we are engaged in (and when I say Movement, I also mean Life and living). Because there is something to learn from what those who came before us know and feel, and there is also something to learn from what they don't.

...

This is turning out to be a much longer thought than I expected. To be continued.

Left in the Meter

Parking meters. Hate them. Especially when, in many parts of the city, the rates are as high as $3 per hour. It's scary that we can now pay for metered parking with credit cards. How much more expensive are these things going to get? Hideous.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but when I put too much change in a meter and come back well before it's up, I get a bit frustrated. I get this feeling that I should stick around just to get my money's worth or something. Weird, I know.

I did that today, but it was after arriving at a meter that already had time in it. And I remembered how happy--almost giddy-- I get when I park at a meter and find that there's still time on it.

So I let go of my annoyance at spending a quarter needlessly, knowing that the next person who parked in that spot would experience that same pleasant surprise and (hopefully) goodwill toward the universe that I felt when I found time left on the meter.



Image by get directly down

What's In A Headline?

Within South L.A.'s killing zone, a haven from violence is about "a mile-wide area bounded by Hoover Street, Halldale Avenue, 73rd Street and 85th Street in Vermont Knolls [that] has had no homicides in the last three years."

The title of this recent article in the LA Times bothered me. A lot. It perpetuates the idea that South LA is a violent, terrible, scary place-- I'm not saying that the area is actually safe, but using this sort of language to talk about South LA does nothing to help dispel the lore of the neighborhood that made the City change the name from "South Central" to "South" LA.

The article itself delves into the ways that the people of that community have created a neighborhood where sometimes they "fall asleep with the doors unlocked because it's so comfortable" because there, "people keep an eye out." To know that an area like this can exist in South LA is definitely news that should be discussed.

The rest of the article, however, points out how dangerous the surrounding area is. It discusses the troubles that plague South LA: gangs, unemployment, lack of opportunity, violence. Then it ends with a story of a 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed, with the hypothesis that it happened because he refused to join a gang.


I don't deny that the facts are there. I can't take issue with facts. What I can take issue with is the way this article is arranged-- the way that it talks about South LA makes it sound like the "haven" in Vermont Knolls is a fluke, a stroke of good luck more than a result of people putting in time, energy, and effort into building a safer community.

Why did the headline have to say "killing zone"? Why wasn't it something like "South LA residents work together to create a safe zone in a troubled area"? Would something positive simply not garner enough interest in the readership?

Well, it got my attention, so the ploy worked. I'm still not okay with it.

I haven't lived in this supposed "killing zone," but calling it that isn't going to help the community get better. The article could have used Vermont Knolls as an example of possibility and hope for South LA, but it didn't. That's upsetting.