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VOL 41 NO 26 JUNE 25 – JULY 1, 2022
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Community leaders: Sound Transit in a “land grab” for the CID For over a century, mainstream society has encroached on Asians and their land, say community leaders from the Chinatown-International District (CID). Now, it wants to take the rest of it, they say. Bettie Luke and others last week denounced Sound Transit (ST)’s plans to build through the CID and keep the area occupied with noise, pollution, traffic, and business blockages for a decade. This is yet another invasion in a long series of assaults upon their community.
“ENOUGH! Do not inflict another land-grabbing and exploitive encroachment on our neighborhood!” she wrote in an open letter to the Sound Transit Board of Directors and the Seattle City Council. The letter, copied to other leaders of the Asian American community, evoked a strong response and elicited similar outrage over what leaders said was institutional racism that had been enshrined in the entire history of their experience in the region. ST’s plans to rip up and choke off the CID, they said, is the culmination of see SOUND TRANSIT on 15
Graphic
by Han B
ui
By Mahlon Meyer NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Capitol riot investigation
Detroit honors Vincent Chin, Asian American killed in 1982 40th anniversary
DETROIT (AP) — Decades before Chinese immigrant Yao Pan Ma was attacked while collecting cans in New York and Thai American Vicha Ratanapakdee was fatally assaulted in San Francisco, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat in Detroit by two white men who never served jail time. Forty years later—and amid a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans— Detroit has partnered with The Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication Coalition on a four-day commemoration to honor civil rights efforts that began with Chin’s death and declare the city’s commitment against such violence. “Although hate crimes existed, Vincent Chin did bring out a flash point for Asian Americans,” Stanley Mark, senior staff attorney at the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said, calling Chin’s death “a seminal moment among Asian Americans.” Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese immigrant, was at the Fancy Pants Tavern strip club in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park for his bachelor party on June 19, 1982, when a fight erupted. Federal authorities said two autoworkers blamed
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AP Photo/Corey Williams
By COREY WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
Asian American on House Select Committee
Activist and author Helen Zia poses Thursday, June 15, 2022, next to a painting of Vincent Chin in Detroit.
Chin for layoffs at car factories due to Japanese imports. After Chin left the club, the two men tracked him down at a fast food eatery and attacked him, authorities said. Chin later died at a hospital. see CHIN on 14
Rep. Stephanie Murphy
Byung “BJay” Pak
Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, one of the nine members on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, said that she was “proud” to serve on the panel—and called its work essential to “guard our democracy.” The first Vietnamese American woman elected to Congress, Murphy said that while the events of the riot were “shocking,” perhaps the “most insidious things” were
what transpired prior to the insurrection. Murphy said that it’s her hope that people watch the hearings “not as Democrats or Republicans or Independents, but rather as Americans to hear the facts about how an elected politician wanted to retain power, and wanted to ignore the will of the people.” On June 13, former Atlanta-based federal see INVESTIGATION on 14
THE INSIDE STORY A&E Olympic filmmaker needed 2 movies to cover Tokyo turmoil
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A&E South Korean pianist is youngest winner of Van Cliburn International Competition
CONTEST AAPI Heritage Month video & photo contest
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