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Texas Lawmaker Says Asian Americans Should Change Names to be “Easier to Deal With”
Wow, there has been a lot of buzz about the question of whether Asian American citizens should have to change their names to be “easier for Americans to deal with,” and, whether or not minorities should have equal protection with regard to the right to vote.
I say no for the first, yes for the second. Click here to read an article that explains it all in a way that is fair to both sides.
And here is a video of the exchange between Rep. Betty Brown and Ramy Ko. Ramy is a friend of mine who did a great job responding to Rep. Brown, and has a really hard name to deal with.
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Twitter and TinyURL have made internet updates a lot easier!
http://twitter.com/annabelpark
You can also catch up with us on Facebook. We are finishing up a documentary called “9500 Liberty” and looking forward to making narrative films again after some of our political goals are achieved.
I will post here when I need more than 140 characters to say something. I have been thinking a lot about marriage equality, as many Americans have been due to recent events.
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Awfully Disappointed with Bobby Jindal
If you missed Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s dreadful performance on Meet the Press yesterday, click here to see a man with a promising future throw it all away for cheap political points.
Time Magazine’s Joe Klein said it best, from both an economic policy and political perspective.
But to truly appreciate how foolish Jindal made himself look on Sunday, you need to watch the subsequent interview with Florida Governor Charlie Crist rejecting Jindal’s petty partisanship.
Crist supported John McCain in the election, but says in “take 2” of his interview, “When the campaign’s over, it’s over.” He also praised President Obama’s first weeks in office, and said he hopes he succeeds. Jindal has another agenda. He is siding with the Rush Limbaugh wing (the extremist wing) of the Republican Party. If they howl and whine about Obama’s efforts to rebuild the economy, they can say “I told you so” if their hopes come true and America falls deeper into recession. This is Jindal’s path to the White House in 2012, or so he thinks. But how much pain is he willing to inflict on the people of Louisiana in order to get his chance?
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Changes in GOP = Changes for America
It’s clear that Barack Obama has captured the spirit of civic engagement that awakened in millions of Americans, aided by netroots techonology, and propted by the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, two of many disasters that have resulted from 8 years of partisan politics without effective governance. But it may be that the most important changes are taking place within the Republican Party.
That is why I enjoy reading columns by conservative Republican authors like David Broder, who are telling the story of the transformation of the Republican party from the inside out.
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Eric and Annabel 2009 University Visits
Eric and I have spoken at dozens of universities and conferences, including: U of Miami, UVA, George Mason, Georgetown, U of Maryland, ECAASU, MAASU, Rutgers, U of Vermont, Vassar, Yale, Wesleyan, Swarthmore, U Penn, NYU, Columbia, MIT, Harvard, Tufts, UCLA, UCSB, U of Arizona, Berkeley, USF, UIUC, Northwestern, Depaul, and U of Chicago. In 2009 we will be completing the feature length version of 9500 Liberty, advocating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and coming to a campus near you.
New Media Activism and the American Democracy
Film directors Eric Byler and Annabel Park have reached over a million people with video essays on YouTube, combining new media and grassroots activism to voice opposition to the Iraq Occupation, to defend the rights of immigrants, to address WWII atrocities in Asia, to elect Virginia Senator Jim Webb, and to elect Barack Obama as President. In this workshop they will describe what motivated their transition from a narrative film (Byler is the director of Charlotte Sometimes, My Life Disoriented, and Americanese) to a “new media activists” introducing America to innovative and exciting ways of participating in our democracy. They will outline a philosophical and strategic approach developed over the past 2 years, and demonstrate how skills you already possess can empower you to be change you want to see in your government (without giving up your life).
Below is a short film about immigration that we did for the San Diego Asian American Film Festival, followed by a selection of our other YouTube videos.
Daniel Dae Kim Calls Upon Asian Americans to Vote
Asian Americans and the 2006 Virginia Senate Race
Obama Music Video “Si Se Puede Cambiar”
Kelly Hu, Asian Americans for Obama
Yul Kwon For Resolution Calling on Japan to Apologize
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The Moment We Knew: Barack Obama Wins Virginia & The White House
Words couldn’t describe it, so here is some video:
But this article in the Washington Post explains what a long journey it has been in Virginia to overcome Republican dominance that has existed ever since Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of playing to white resentment by blaming Democrats for the Civil Rights movement. The article focuses on the more recent past, of which Annabel and I have been a part.
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Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans Siding With Obama/Biden
After reading this article in today’s Washington Post, I’ve been thinking about how the collapse of the Republican Party directly corresponds to its abandonment of any pretension of reaching out to communities of color. But which came first?
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Asian Pacific Americans Volunteering for Obama/Biden (In Droves!)
The videos and writing below are my best pitch to get Americans, especially Asian Pacific Americans, to volunteer for Obama/Biden this weekend. Click here to volunteer through your local campaign office (or just look up the address and show up!). Click here to learn about a canvassing effort in Las Vegas with groups driving in from Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.
Annabel and I have been volunteering three or four days a week for the Obama/Biden campaign in Northern Virginia, and will do the same down south in Charlottesville (home of Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia) this weekend. With only a few days left before election day, duties as a volunteer are as rewarding as they are fun. Barack Obama’s vaunted get-out-the-vote effort has already narrowed the field down to people who are probably supporting Barack Obama, so as you go door to door, you’ll be unlikely to be confronted with hateful idiots who still think Obama is “an Arab” (not that there is anything wrong with being an Arab of course). Your job as a volunteer is to make it more likely that people who already support Obama/Biden will make time to go out and vote.
Last weekend, Annabel and I visited the home of a 78-year-old woman who had immigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan. She said she very much wanted to vote but was too old to leave the house. We helped her fill out a vote-by-mail application and explained to her that she will be able to vote after all. She was very happy about this, and it made us happy to know we’d given her the opportunity to participate in a historic election, and made a small contribution to the expansion of the American electorate.
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One Week Before the Election, a Breakfast Epiphany
If future historians ever wish to find a window into the American political zeitgeist prior to the 2008 election, they should refer to the op-ed page of the October 28th, 2008 Washington Post, which today features yet another prominent Republican (this time a Republican dynasty former U.S. Senator) and a highly respected Independent woman explaining why they are voting for Barack Obama and not for John McCain. Today’s op-ed page, which I savored over coffee and pancakes this morning, also features two superbly written deconstructions of the McCain/Palin campaign, one of which unmasks the plot to unleash upon America the “Palin mystique.”
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Barack Obama’s “Cool” is Asian Cool!
A few days ago in Northern Virginia, I attended a press conference headlined by a hero of mine, U.S. Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA), at which Barack Obama’s “Blueprint for the Change We Need for Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders” was unveiled for local newspapers.
After the event, an Asian Pacific American reporter asked me an interesting question:
As a mixed race Asian American, do you feel an added connection to Barack Obama, who is also mixed race and has Asian roots?I must have said something the reporter found interesting, because she asked me to expand upon it twice. I said, “Barack Obama carries himself with Asian dignity: you can see it in the debates.”
Journalists describe the quality I’m speaking of as a “steady disposition,” and praise Sen. Obama as “calm under fire” and “calm, cool, and collected.” The word that springs to mind for me is “poise.” Poise was a measure of strength that was instilled in me when I was growing up in Hawai’i (Obama’s boyhood home), by Asian male role models such as teachers and baseball coaches. My mother, who is Chinese American, pointed to “quiet confidence” as a quality she admired in her father, Donald Tom, as a quality to which I should aspire. (If you have seen my narrative films, my Asian American male characters often exhibit poise and quiet confidence.)
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