The PublicAsian - May 2012

Page 1

The PublicAsian

May 2012 | A Voice

for

the

Asian Pacific American Community

at

the

University

of

Maryland, College Park | Volume 18, Issue VI

Inside

APAs speak out on death of Martin

Say Sorry Barry

For APAs, the shooting of Trayvon Martin serves as a reminder of the Vincent Chin case| Page 5 Features

APAs demand apology for racist remarks

By Angela Wong Staff writer

Freedom from North Korean camp North Korean refugee Shin Dong-hyuk is the first person who was born in a labor camp to escape | Page 7 Zoomed

PHOTO CREDIT: GRAEMES JENNINGS FOR EXAMINER // EDITED BY: ANGELA WONG

Newsfeed

in

At least 600 people are demanding an apology from Marion Barry. Outrage over the D.C. council member’s comments about Filipino nurses and “dirty” Asian shops led to the launch of a “Say Sorry Barry” email campaign. Organizers are asking Barry (D-Ward 8) to apologize and meet with Asian Pacific American community leaders to discuss his comments. Five hours after the launch of the email petition expressing disappointment in Barry, more than 350 emails were sent through the petition, and 500 Facebook posts about the petition were shared, according to campaign organizer Vincent Villano. And as of the last week of April, it gathered 600 signatures and more than 1,000 Facebook shares, reaching more than 3,300 people. The campaign, which began a day after Barry’s comments about Filipino nurses, is spearheaded by the D.C. chapters of Asian Pacific Americans

Take a look at all the events held in honor of Asian Pacifc American Heritage Month | Page 12 Online Exclusive

We sat down with YouTube star Kina Grannis after her concert at the 9:30 Club.

www.publicasian.com @publicasianumd

[Barry seems to be saying] Asian Americans and immigrants aren’t a part of D.C. – that we don’t consider D.C. to be home.” – Olivia Chow

Co-chair of Asian Pacific Americans for Progress

for Progress (APAP) and Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA). Signing on are 24 other APA advocacy organizations who want Barry to apologize for his racist remarks. “If you go to the hospital now, you’ll find a

BARRY, Page 2

BBBooks works to help students in Philippines By Linda Poon Co-Editor-in-Chief

Look back on APAHM

number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines,” said Barry on April 23. “And no offense, but let’s grow our own teachers, let’s grow our own nurses, and so that we don’t have to go scrounging in our community clinics and other kinds of places, having to hire people from somewhere else.” “Using the word ‘scrounging’ around [looking for nurses] makes them sound subpar or not on the same level with others in the occupation,” said Katrina Dizon, a Filipino immigrant and the president of the DC chapter of APALA. Earlier in April, Barry also said, “We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go; I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African American businesspeople to be able to take their places too.” Richard Chiang, the owner of Asian grocery store Da Hsin Trading Corporate in Chinatown,

All it took was a visit to the Philippines, an encounter with a 12-year-old girl named Can Can and $10 to trigger the idea for Balik Bayan Books (BBBooks), senior Tam Nguyen’s biggest idea yet in the field of philanthropy. Nguyen’s uncle had woken him at 5 a.m. during his visit in 2009 to Santa Catalina, a small fishing village located at the southern tip of the Negros island. Come down to the boulevard, he had told him. There, the local fishermen had already been up and about and among them was Can Can, whom he had met only a couple days ago. She had also been up, cooking breakfast for the fishermen; a traditional Filipino dish consisting of chocolate and rice. For the fishermen, that was their morning coffee. To Can Can, that was how she earned money for her family and her ailing father. With her father battling pancreatic cancer, Can Can had given up school so the money – the 500 pesos, or $10 here in the States, required to get her through one year of education – could help pay for his pain medications. We wanted him to be able to rest in peace and not in pain, she had told him.

Amazed, shocked and without a second thought, Nguyen pulled out 500 pesos from his pocket. “I told her, ‘let me give you this $10, I can give you the $10 right now,’” he said. “Goodness gracious ... just that little thing, you know, that $10, to go to [school] for a whole year ... it’s just incredible to me.” Later, he would give her even more. “He is someone who ... wants to help people in every way that he can,” said Ly Nguyen, a graduate public policy student and a friend who is working with him on organizing BBBooks. “Just that desire to help people and, in a cliché way, to make the world a better place.” On his latest venture, Tam, a computer science major, challenged himself to help those halfway across the world by collecting both children and college level books for students in the Philippines. BBBooks was a nonprofit organization first designed as an assignment during his sophomore year for the university’s Global Communities Living Learning program. But by his senior year, Tam had a goal to complete the organization’s current project: to collect enough books to fill a library in Don Mariano Marcos, a small Filipino community in southern Philippines where only a small number of students actually go on to college and where the

PHOTO COURTESY OF TAM NGUYEN

Balik Bayan Books has already collected more than 2,000 children and college-level books and has sent 600 to the Philippines since spring 2010.

number of books is limited. “The people in this village, they don’t have the necessary knowledge or the necessary resources in order to manage a library,” said Tam, who has teamed up with Lt. Alexandre

BOOKS, Page 7


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