Subversities

In Memoriam: Judith Ladinsky, True Friend of Vietnam

2012-01-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

Prof. Ladinsky, left, receives health award from Vietnam in 2004.

A true friend of Vietnam has died.

Judith L. Ladinsky, a humanitarian and population health sciences professor from the University of Wisconsin, who devoted her life to improving the health of the Vietnamese people, died 12 January 2012 at the age of 73 in Madison, Wisconsin.

In 1984, Ladinsky had succeeded as head of the Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Viet Nam [Uỷ bạn Hợp tác Khoa học Mỹ-Việt](USCSC),another humanitarian who devoted his life to Vietnam, Ed Cooperman (Prof of Physics Emeritus at Cal State Fullerton), who was assassinated in his Orange County, California, office in 1984 (about which more in a later blog).

A cultural profile site still lists her contact information and describes the committee as follows: "Composed of scientists, physicians and scholars from across the USA, the US Committee for Scientific Co-operation with Việt Nam (USCSC) seeks to alleviate the academic isolation suffered by the people of Việt Nam by working with their counterparts at Vietnamese institutions, hospitals and universities on joint training and research programmes and projects that empower people to pursue their own development. In the cultural field the Committee sponsors tours by Vietnamese performing artists, Vietnamese film festivals and exhibitions of work by Vietnamese artists in the USA."

Her obituary is here.

The U.S. Government has officially mourned her passing as a "great loss to both countries": U.S. Embassy, Hanoi statement. In Washington, Vietnam's Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong also lauded Ladinsky as a person who "devoted her life-long passion and energy to the cause of improving the medical education and health of many people in Vietnam": Vietnam Embassy, Wash. D.C. statement.

In Little Saigon, news of her death has been covered in the English-language Nguoi Viet 2.

Here's the eulogy prepared to be read by Vietnam's Minister of Science and Technology , courtesy of Vern Weitzel, who chairs the Australian Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Viet Nam.

SPEECH IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR JUDITH L. LADINSKY

Read by Minister Nguyen Quan at the Memorial Service held in honor of Professor Judith L. Ladinsky on January 17, 2012, at the Ministry of Science and Technology

Ladies and Gentlemen, (if the U.S. Ambassador is attending, address him first)

We are deeply saddened by the death of Professor Judith Ladinsky – a beloved friend of the Vietnamese people. She passed away Thursday, January 12, 2012, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital, after more than 30 years helping to improve Vietnamese people’s lives by providing asssistance in the fields of education, health, and science and technology. Her assistance was of great value to Vietnam, especially during the post-war period, when Vietnam was facing many hardships and difficulties.

Today we gather here to remember Professor Ladinsky and honor her contributions to Vietnam’s science and technology, education, and health sectors, as well as to the relationship between Vietnam and the United States.

Professor Ladinsky was born on June 16, 1938, in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in New York City and received degrees from the University of Michigan and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She was a professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the UW Medical School for over 30 years and was the Director of the Office of International Health. She held affiliation with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. In the early 1970s, she changed her career focus to preventive medicine on a community level linking rural clinics to centralized specialty care. She began this work in rural Wisconsin, progressing to the Indian Health Service, and finally to Southesast Asia, particulary Vietnam.

Professor Ladinsky made the first trip to Vietnam in 1978, when Vietnam and the U.S. did not have diplomatic relations. “She developed an instant passion for the nation and its people” - said by her colleagues. In 1980, she became the Chair of the Health Committee of the U.S. Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Vietnam at the invitation of the then Chair, Dr. Edward Cooperman. In 1984, after Dr. Cooperman was murdered, she assumed Dr. Cooperman’s chairmanship and was determined to continue his work in Vietnam.

Until she died, she had made about 106 trips to Vietnam during which she delivered tons of medical supplies, books and journals to medical trainees and professionals throughout Vietnam. She also managed to mobilize millions of dollars to her humanitarian work and research in Vietnam. She paid special attention to rural health and the issue of shortage of doctors and nurses in Vietnam’s rural areas. Therefore, she assisted with lab development, training of scientific technicians and surgeons, teaching in a wide range of disciplines alongside her village health work.

She conducted extensive research and developed projects on a variety of health care topics in Vietnam, such as rural health, primary care, surgery, nutrition, HIV/AIDs and cancer treatment, and most recently on malaria, diabetes and Japanese encephalitis. She organized TOEFL tests twice a year for Vietnamese students and helped obtain scholarships for hundreds of Vietnamese students, researchers, and government officers to study and carry out research at U.S. universities. She also facilitated the treatment of numerous critically ill Vietnamese children at U.S. medical centers, enabling their receipt of life saving therapies not available in their homeland.

It’s hard to list all the difficulties she encountered during all these years, especially when Vietnam was still under U.S. embargo and later when she aged and became weaker; however, with her her great love for Vietnam, she managed to do so many meaningful things as mentioned that Vietnamese people would never forget. Professor Ladinsky was not only a respectable scientist and colleague of ours, a kind American with a goodwill towards Vietnam, but for many Vietnamese people, she was the one to whom they would be forever grateful for how she changed their lives for the better.

For her undaunted efforts and extraordinary medical service to Vietnam, she was honored by various ministries and organizations both in Vietnam and in the U.S.

She was awarded 5 medals by leaders of the Vietnamese State, ministries and organizations, including the Friendship Medal by President Tran Duc Luong in 1999, the Medal for the Cause of Education by the Ministry of Education and Training in 2001, the Medal for Dedication to the health of the people by the Ministry of Health in 2004, the Medal for the Cause of Vietnamese Women Liberation by Vietnam Women’s Union, and the Medal for the Cause of Science and Technology by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2007, recognizing her contributions to Vietnam-U.S. science and technology cooperation over 30 years.

Most recently, in 2011, she received the prestigious 2011 Peacemaker of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice for her long-term dedication to the cause of improving people’s health in Vietnam.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Not many people make great contributions that are remembered and appreciated even after they die. Only a few great people continue to live after death in people’s memory. For Vietnamese people, Professor Ladinsky is one of those. Many Vietnamese people love her and call her lovingly “Madame Vietnam”. She was considered a U.S. unofficial diplomat to Vietnam, and even was mentioned by the first U.S. Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Pete Peterson, as Vietnam’s real “first ambassador”.

Now Professor Ladinsky is gone forever but we will never forget her. May she rest in peace!

Once again, on behalf of Vietnam’s science and technology community, I would like to share the great sadness for the loss of Professor Ladinsky’s family, friends and colleagues.

May I please request that we spend one miniute of silence to remember our beloved friend and colleague, Professor Ladinsky.

(1 minute of silence)

Thank you very much for your participation in this ceremony.

Looking Back at 2011 and 9/11

2011-12-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

Looking back on this year, I came across as I was googling, a letter I wrote after 9/11 that was published first on 13 September 2001 and then reprinted this past September 13, 2011 when the Orange County Register republished letters reacting to 9/11.

Here's what the OC Register republished 13 September 2011, under the heading, "9/11 archive for Sept. 13: Another day of anger, grief," on the blog written by letters editor Betty Talbert. I like to think that my words still hold true a decade or more later:

IRVINE, Daniel C. Tsang: Not to condone the massacre and the horrible loss of life, but if the United States isn’t perceived as such an imperialist power causing havoc in the Third World, this country would not be a target of terrorism. To be sure, find and prosecute the perpetrators. But will the real lesson be learned? As a political entity, the United States needs to reassess its foreign policy. But no doubt, repressive legislation and repressive actions will follow instead.

They say it is a second Pearl Harbor. Will roundups and concentration camps be next? Let’s not go overboard on our reaction. If four crazy hijackers want to be suicidal, it’s not because of their religion.

Let’s not go overboard either on patriotic fervor. If this is war, civil liberties will become one of the first casualties unless we speak out. Sanity, calm and reflection are what is needed now, not vengeance. No more violence.

Tom Hayden, at UCI, Looks Back and Ahead

2011-12-13T18:06:00.001-08:00

Hayden as professor. To listen to the audio of Hayden's talk, click here. Presented with the kind permission of Tom Hayden as another Subversity Online podcast. All photos © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

60's activist Tom Hayden ventured on to the UC Irvine campus late last month, to espouse his views to a new audience of largely undergraduates organized by graduate student Alfredo Carlos and Social Ecology Prof. Rodolfo D. Torres.

A former California State Senator, Hayden spoke about "Economic Democracy and Alternative Futures" 29 November 2011 at UCI's Humanities Gateway, at an event sponsored by the Chican@/Latin@ Graduate Student Collective.

Hayden, a one-time Chicago 7 defendant who had authored the Students for a Democratic Society's manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, while a student at the University of Michigan, sounded more reformist than perhaps some old Sixties radicals would have liked. He said one needs take a long view of social movements, given that success may be elusive for decades, even for 80 years.

A pensive Hayden

He called the Dream Act undergraduates the "bravest" and said the cause of undocumented students in California is so "popular" that politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt.Gov. Gavin Newsom could take on that campaign with nothing to lose.

He said the "Sixties were stolen" by assassinations, of JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers. With the dreams stolen from them, "no wonder people become anarchists..."

But before his hour and half discourse on the Sixties through Obama ended, he called on the "fine" dean of the UCI Law School (without naming Erwin Chemerinsky) to have UCI law faculty conduct classes there debating the concept of corporations as people having First Amendment rights to spread propaganda. He avowed that such courses could well "fire up" students and spread across the nation, leading to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the notorious 2010 case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Hayden answers questions from the audience

Historian Art Hansen on Orange County Nikkei Experience in WWII

2011-12-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

Art Hansen right before his talk. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

KUCI Subversity Online Audio link: 19 October 2011 Talk. Permission kindly granted by Prof. Hansen to post the audio online.

A LOOK BACK on 2011: Orange County's top historian on Japanese Americans gave a vivid and fascinating talk on a segment of OC history that many do not know or may have forgotten if they knew it.

At the Nikkei Heritage Museum on 19 October 2011, Cal State Fullerton Historian Art Hansen focused on the life of OC-born Kazuo Masuda and the conditions faced by Japanese Americans in Orange County at the time. Masuda went from what became Fountain Valley to concentration camp (NOT "internment" camp as the US Government euphemistically called it) to fight for the US in the famed 442nd regimental combat team made up of Japanese Americans. After he was killed in battle in Italy, his body was initially refused burial in Westminster Memorial Cemetery because of his ethnicity, although the cemetery later relented after the Japanese American Citizens League and others raised a ruckus. It was Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell who flew to Orange County to bestow the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945 on his sister.

At an OC rally after the ceremony, Hollywood celebrities joined a multi-ethnic crowd. Among the guest speakers was a Capt. (Ret.) Ronald Reagan who declared, after turning to the Masuda family to thank them for Kazuo as a "true American": "Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all one color."

Decades later the Masuda family reminded Reagan (by then president) of this 1945 speech when he seemed initially unwilling to sign the redress bill that compensated who survived the incarceration. Masuda's sister, June Masuda Goto, wrote to Reagan and convinced him to support the bill. Reagan invited her to Washington and she was present when the president signed it in 1988. In 1975 an school in Fountain Valley had also been named Kazuo Masuda Elementary School.

Art Hansen illustrated Kazuo Masuda's life with slides depicting the various events in the Japanese American's life. The story of this Nissei war hero from OC is also told in a book available at the event, From the Battlefields to the Home Front: The Kazuo Masuda Legacy by Russell K. Shoho and published by the Nikkei Writers Guild, a division of Japanese American Living Legacy, a non-profit.

Participants also heard from Irvine artist Chizuko Judy Sugita DeQueiroz, whose book, Camp Days, 1942-1945, documented, in text and artwork, her years of incarceration. She presented excerpts from a new documentary DVD about her life. Her artwork is currently on display at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose until December 31, 2011.

Free Speech At UCI: Shut Down Access Roads!

2011-12-01T11:50:00.000-08:00

Let's not cross the police! Police lines block access to free speech area

___________________________________
Update (6:30 pm): Chancellor Michael Drake issues a statement saying "Our campus policies treat all speakers equally. We regulate only the time place and manner of speech on a 'content-neutral' basis, as required by state and federal law and university policy. This is true no matter how strongly we may disagree with the speaker or how antithetical the speaker’s message may be to campus values and principles" but Drake does not address the earlier report of UCI telling Jones he would be arrested should he show up.

Update (2:29 pm): Jones threatened with arrest if he shows up... UCI spokesperson says: ""We're not denying him access to the campus, just that particular area because it was already spoken for", while Jones says that "The Event Services department informed us that the entire university campus is free for public speaking at any time." Dispatch in Daily Breeze. See also OC Weekly update, where another UCI spokesperson said "Jones was in contact with UCI officials this morning, and was told he would be arrested if he returns in order to 'protect the safety of UCI students and the campus community'."
___________________________________

It may be the biggest non-event in UC Irvine history. This morning, campus police at UC Irvine shut down roads leading to the flagpoles area (where speakers usually gather) and even restricted pedestrian traffic. All because, as UCI employees soon found out, Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who burned the Koran last March, was rumored to be speaking on campus.

Is this how UCIPD will react to controversial speakers post-UC Davis pepper-spray? Forget all the talk about the UCs being open to free speech. Let's just shut down part of the campus so no one can address anyone. If this is not content-based restriction, masking under the fig leaf of security, what is?

I first encountered this heightened state of security, it turned out, when I attempted to drive to my usual parking spot across from Langson Library this morning. The road was blocked and I had to park in a parking structure some ways away. But I was not allowed to walk on the road to the Library. Instead, a man wearing a UCI parking jacket said it was for "protest detail" -- and that I had to go through the student center building and walk another way to my office.

Chalk asks if tuition is paying for this police action

A 9:55 am email from a unit of the Libraries informed me that: "Without any advance notice from campus, the delivery access to Langson
Library has been closed off from Pereira. I don't have any information
at this time other than campus PD is enforcing this. Therefore,
deliveries (mail, vendors, etc.) today will be off schedule...."

A campus-wide ZOTAlert soon followed at 10:33 am: ZotAlert: Anteater Plaza, Ring Rd, flagpoles, and Pereira are closed immediately to pedestrian and vehicular traffic until further notice for security reasons.

This was followed at 11:23 am by a Safety Update: Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who made news by burning the Quran last March, announced he would be speaking in the area of the flag poles at 11:30 on Thursday, Dec. 1. Intelligence received by UCIPD
indicated suspicious activity that raised concern about the safety of
the event. As a precaution the area has been closed and no events will
take place in this area. Other campus activity is continuing as normal.

News photographers wait for missing pastor

Further ZotAlerts followed two minutes later: The pastor who made news by burning a Quran, announced he would speak at the flag poles today. UCIPD has intell of suspicious activity raising safety concerns.

And at 11:26 am: As a precaution, the area has been closed and no events will take place. Otherwise, the campus is open and operating normally.

As the UC begins reviewing police practices systemwide, today's campus police response should serve as an excellent case study of how not to over-react in a free speech situation. The police department has a lot of explaining to do. At a minimum, reveal what the "security concern" was and let the public judge. -- Daniel C. Tsang.

All photographs © 1 December 2011 Daniel C. Tsang

UCI Police Interpret When to Use Force

2011-11-29T18:02:00.001-08:00

UCIPD officers begin arresting Irvine 17 protesters outside UCI Chancellor's Office in February 2010.
Photograph copyright 2010 Daniel C. Tsang

Three hours after UCI History Prof. and a leader in the UC Council of Faculty Associations Mark Levine and I met with UC Irvine assistant police chief Jeff Hutchison and Lt. Joe Reiss, where we were given a copy of UCI Police's Use of Force policies, UCI Chancellor Michael Drake released on the web copies of the same policies.

This meeting occurred before Thanksgiving, on Monday November 21. Right before leaving the one-hour meeting, I asked Asst. Chief Hutchison if he would consider posting the policies online, given they are "not secret".

In fact, the 17 pages of various use of force policies that saw the light of day hours after our meeting were just a miniscule portion of the 434-page policy manual followed by the UC Irvine Police Department.

What was given to us and made publicly available later were policies 300 (Use of Force), 308 (Control Devices and Techniques), which includes Chemical Spray Guidelines, 309 (TASER Guidelines), and 424 (Rapid Response and Deployment Policy).

Hutchison argued the campus cops would "not use" chemical spray for
"passive resistance," although he suggested that passive resistance is no longer passive if protesters link arms and refuse to budge. That's because it may lead police to use "intermediate force" to break people apart. But if there is no urgency to act, the police would rather wait and consult with other campus authorities, we were told. Cold comfort! Campus protesters will be surprised to learn that passive resistance (locking arms) can be deemed active resistance. Despite all the campus rhetoric about Free Speech, it seems the campus cops do not consider civil disobedience to be passive resistance if the protestors link arms and refuse to budge.

Drake also released a page of UCI Police Manual Policy 352 on Outside Agency Assistance, which we were not given at the meeting nor discussed.

I'll have more on this meeting, but one big question that is left hanging: Why not release the entire policy manual, and for that matter, from each campus police department? What is there to hide?

More soon...

Occupy Orange County - Day 3: Petition Seeks Right to Encamp

2011-10-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Occupy Orange County is now entering its third night after hassles from Irvine police the first night. According to Occupy Orange County, Irvine police, after promising the protesters they could stay overnight on the sidewalks, but not the lawn, in a classic "bait and switch", at 10 p.m. Saturday, after forcing them to move from the lush green lawn, insisted they could not sleep on the sidewalk after all. Police told them they must keep walking all night on the concrete sidewalk surrounding the grass.

Alessandro Levine sings on the piano; author in silhouette on Day 1 of Occupy OC. Photo copyright Daniel C. Tsang 2011

Does Irvine police intend to inflict torture on the protesters? This is akin to what Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai once told me, that he was forced to stand for hours on end while incarcerated by Chinese authorities in Beijing. That is really painful.

Of course, the Occupy OC protesters managed to sneak in some rest, since after all, they are not in prison or under constant surveillance. But does Irvine want to be known as a police state whereby it quashes any dissent from citizens and residents who just want to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest?

Indeed that's what the organizers of Occupy OC now say, that they don't need a permit, the First Amendment is all they need to encamp in Irvine. Also, the excuse the police gave that sleeping on the sidewalk would impede pedestrian traffic overnight is specious. No one is up that late except the protesters and the occasional police drive-bys.

Meanwhile, a legal representative of the protesters has sent a letter (redacted online) to the Irvine police, protesting its turnaround.

Tents went up again during the daylight, but the situation seems at a stalemate, with the police refusing to budge. An online petition has been set up, asserting the protesters' rights to peacefully assemble. It boldly proclaims "OUR PERMIT TO OCCUPY PUBLIC SQUARES AND PARKS IS THE FIRST AMENDMENT, which affirms 'the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances'." As of late Monday, over 460 people had signed, some anonymously. Signatory 453 Christina Weidner, wrote: "Please let us continue our demonstration in a peaceful, dignat, respectful manner! Respect us, as we respect you! There is no harm in allowing us this privilege! Thank you!" After all, the Irvine police web site declares respect as one of its defining attributes.

Today, on Day 3, the organizers appealed to Orange Countians to "get involved". The protesters aren't calling it quits and assert they are "committed to keeping the encampment" at the Irvine Civic Center, Alton and Harvard.

See also the latest updates from OC Weekly.

Occupy Orange County - Day 1

2011-10-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Mother of two solders holds flag upside down ("distress call") with sign "Bank Owned" at today's rally of Occupy Orange County. All photos © Daniel C. Tsang 2011

Subversity Online bring's you audio from today's rally: click on: .

In a historic first, the occupation of Orange County has begun! Today, hundreds of people marched to Irvine's financial district to protest corporate greed and political corruption while finally encamping on the grass lawn in front of Irvine Civic Center at Jamboree and Harvard. Befitting Irvine's new reputation as a city that welcomes all nationalities, the protesters ranged from children to senior citizens, of many ethnicities.

Speakers at a rally and open mike included UC Irvine History Prof. Mark Levine (pictured), who read a poem from an Egyptian poet at Egypt's Tahir Square during earlier protests there. Levine said that the latter had given Rage against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello the poem to read at the protests in Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this year. Those protests, Levine said. led to the current spate of protest occupations. Levine, with the poet's permission, he said, inserted Irvine into the poem.

Later, Levine's son, Alessandro (below) just 10, captivated the crowd on the piano while singing various songs. Other speakers included several unemployed and one who exhorted to crowd to stop consuming so much (e.g. iPhones).

Another speaker revealed that organizers had earlier met with Santa Ana police, who insisted that there could be no camping there. Hence, instead of Santa Ana, with a large Latino population, the protesters chose Irvine, Orange County's "financial center" as one rally speaker called it, to be the site for Occupy Orange County.

Tonight some protesters are expected to begin camping overnight, but protesters are urged to stay "within the letter of the law" until things are worked out with Irvine authorities, including the serving of food, portable toilet facilities etc. Until then, only packaged food can be distributed and an adjacent park offers toilet facilities until 11 p.m. Since cars parked in the city lot (maximum two hours) can theoretically be towed away, a rally speaker urged protesters to have someone drop them off if they were to camp out overnight.

Note: Irvine Councilman Larry Agran was nowhere to be seen, nor were any uniformed cops.

Stay tuned for more developments (and more pictures etc.).

Director Stephane Gauger on "Saigon Electric"

2011-10-03T13:15:00.001-07:00

To listen this our interview with director Stephane Gaugher in this special online edition of KUCI's Subversity program recorded 1 October 2011, click on: .

Orange County film director Stephane Gauger (right) has an interesting background. Born in Saigon, he was raised in a French Vietnamese family so became well versed in both Vietnamese and French cultures.

He brings to Orange County and across the big screen nationally October 7 a new film on Saigon's hip hop phenomenon, focusing on the stories of two young dancers, Kim, a street-smart girl into hip hop, and the other, Mai, a traditional ribbon dancer aiming to get into Hanoi's prestigious dance academy.

In case you think this is all too sweet and syruppy, there is an element of tension involving outside developers (perhaps predictably from Taiwan). The government bureaucrat overseeing culture, meanwhile, is depicted as someone with a humane heart. That's because, says, Gauger, he prefers to paint a positive spin on things in Vietnam. Which is one reason the censors cleared his film with no problems.

Gauger has a keen eye for capturing youth vitality and exuberance and he mixes in American culture with Vietnamese (for example, he notes in the interview that Vietnamese hip hop dancers just perform for fun, not, like in America, for donations).

Saigon Electric, fast-paced and frenetic, shot in just a month or so, gets its commercial screening in OC October 7 at Edwards University Center, across from the UC Irvine main campus. It hopes to screen for four weeks! This is your chance to catch and watch something different about Vietnam.

In this special olnline edition of KUCI's Subversity program, show host Daniel C. Tsang is the interviewer.

SAIGON ELECTRIC (US Teaser) from Anderson Le on Vimeo.

Visions of Resistance and Survival: Looking Back at the Hong Kong Vietnamese Detention Camps

2011-09-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Figure 8.3 Hope of Freedom. Original by Trinh Quoc Lan, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries. Project Ngoc Records on Southeast Asian Refugees (MS-SEA016).

My article on the artwork and literature from the Hong Kong Detention Camps after the Vietnamese boat people exodus is now out as a book chapter.

The chapter is: "Visions of resistance and survival from Hong Kong detention camps." It's chapter 8, pp. 99-115 in the book, Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora: Revisiting the Boat People, edited by Yuk Wah Chan of City University of Hong Kong, from Routledge. It is the outgrowth of a workshop I was graced to attend at City University of Hong Kong back in October 2009.

The essay analyzes in detail just some of the artwork and literature from the refugee detention camps in Hong Kong, preserved in the Paul Tran and Project Ngoc Papers, originally given to University of California, Irvine's, Southeast Asian Archive, then under Anne Frank.

I write on the "barbed wire" theme and there are extended references to variations of the "chicken wing" metaphor. There is also a page on the Project Ngoc's "Proposal for Libraries in Refugee Camps." I also include figures on ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who were admitted to Hong Kong. The strange thing is when they arrive in the United States, their Chinese ethnicity is erased and they are treated as Vietnamese refugees. In total, almost half a million ethnic Chinese left Vietnam before September 1979, and at one point, some 60-70 percent of the boat people were ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, according to another contributor to the book, Ramses Amer. In my chapter, there are 25 citations (see below) including several to UC Irvine Libraries' Special Collections and Archives finding aids: Guide to the Paul Tran Files on Southeast Asian Refugees and Guide to the Project Ngoc Records.

Figure 8.4. Camp protesters. Original by Pham Tien Dung, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine. Paul Tran Files (MS-SEA002).

Little Saigon community activist Paul Tran donated much of the materials from the Detention Centers to UC Irvine. The book notes: "When the material were given to Mr. Tran at the time, the authors' intentions were to get their voices heard in the outside world, and the materials were not meant to be sold commercially." Project Ngoc was a student group that sent UC Irvine students and other volunteers to help out the refugees in the camps. I hope this essay sparks further research interest in the collection.

Figure 8.6 Forced repatriation. Original by Tran Ngoc Dong, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries. Paul Tran Files (MS-SEA002).

There is more meaty stuff in the volume, so hopefully your library will pick up the unfortunately pricey volume. I found myself learning a lot more about the topic, including that Cholon is misnamed as Saigon's Chinatown (read Li Tana's chapter). More information on the contents of the volume is
here:

Part I: Revisiting an era of Refugees and Boat People 1. Revisiting the Vietnamese Refugee Era: An Asian Perspective from Hong Kong - Yuk Wah Chan 2. Rethinking the Vietnamese Exodus: Hong Kong in Comparative Perspective - David W. Haines 3. The Boat People Crisis of 1978–1979 and the Hong Kong Experience Examined through the Ethnic Chinese Dimension - Ramses Amer 4. In Search of History: The Chinese in South Vietnam, 1945–1975 - Li Tana Part II: Hong Kong Vietnamese Boat People and Their Settlement 5. The Vietnamese Minority: Boatpeople Settlement in Hong Kong - Yuk Wah Chan And Terence C.T. Shum 6. Vietnamese Youth and Their Adaptation in Hong Kong - Ocean W. K. Chan 7. Thanh Loc- Hong Kong’s Refugee Screening System: From A Refugee Perspective - Peter Hansen 8. Visions of Resistance and Survival from Hong Kong Detention Camps - Daniel C. Tsang 9. Vietnamese Boat People in Hong Kong: Visual Images and Stories - Sophia Suk-Mun Law Part III: Hong Kong and Beyond 10. Sojourn in Hong Kong, Settlement in America: Experiences of Chinese-Vietnamese Refugees - Jonathan H.X. Lee 11. Dark Tourism, Diasporic Memory and Disappeared History: The Contested Meaning of the Former Indochinese Refugee Camp at Pulau Galang - Ashley Carruthers and Boitran Huynh-Beattie 12. The Repatriated – From Refugee Migration to Marriage Migration - Yuk Wah Chan 13. Epilogue - Yuk Wah Chan.

Another contributor visited UC Irvine and Little Saigon last year to talk about the detention camp artwork. Sophia Law, of Lingnam University in Hong Kong, was interviewed on Subversity then.

My thanks to Trinh Luu for helping with the translations.

To facilitate further research, here are the references in my article:

Amer, R. (1991) The Ethnic Vietnamese in Vietnam and Sino-Vietnamese relations,
Selangor: Forum.

Bale, C. (1990) 'Vietnamese boat People', in R.Y.C. Wong and lY.S. Cheng (eds), The
Other Hong Kong Report 1990, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. p. 171.

Brook, R. (1996) 'Arbitrary detention of Vietnamese asylum seekers', Hong Kong Human
Rights Monitor Newsletter, June, www.hkhrm.org.hk/english/reports/enw/enw0696b.
htm (accessed 7 September 2009).

Fassi, L. (2010) 'Terra incognita: Luigi Fassi on the art of Danh Vo', Artforum, 4S(6):152- 59.

Fujita-Rony, D. and Frank, A. (2003) 'Archiving histories: The Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine', Amerasia Journal, 29(3): 155.

Guide to the Paul Tran files on Southeast Asian refugees (2003) MS-SEA02, Special
Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine, Libraries, www.oac.cdlib.
org/findaid/ark:113030/tfSf59pltgl (accessed 6 September 2009).

Guide to the Project Ngoc Records (2003) MS-SEA016, Special Co\1ections and Archives,
University of California, Irvine, Libraries, www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid /ark:1130301
ktSz09pSpd?query=Project%20Ngoc (accessed 30 August 2009).

Hong Kong Government (1991) 'Ethnic origins of arrivals' 1991, in Monthly statistical
report (arrivals and departures) (March), SRD 704/ 1/1, located in Project Ngoc
collection, MS-SEAOI6, Box 1, Folder 42, Special Collections and Archives, University
of California, Irvine, Libraries.

Hunt, P.G. (1996) 'Dragons and chicken wings: the anomalies of the involvement of
Vietnamese refugees in crime in Hong Kong, 1989- 95', Master thesis, University of
Hong Kong, http://hub.hku.hk/handleI123456789/25752 (accessed 8 May 2010).

Knudsen, J.C. (1992) Chicken Wings: Refugee Stories from a Concrete Hell,
Bergen: Magnat Forlag.

--(2005) Capricious Worlds: Vietnamese Life Journeys, Lit Verlag, Muenster.
Lam, A. (2005), Perfume Dreams, Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, Berkeley,
CA: Heyday Books.

Lam, L. (1994) 'Hong Kong Chinese: facing the political changes in 1997', in H.
Adelman (ed.), Legitimate and illegitimate Discrimination: New Issues in Migration,
Toronto: York Lanes Press, pp. 135- 52.

Law, S.S. (2008) 'Art in adversity-C.A.R.E. at Lingan University,' in Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, pp. 143-63.

Nguyen, C. (2000) 'Hainan, Hong Kong, and Tuen Mun camp', in M.T. Cargill and J.Q.
Huynh (eds), Voices of Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and
Survival, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., pp. 99- 106.

Project Ngoc (1988) The Forgotten People: Vietnamese Refugees in Hong Kong: A
Critical Report, Irvine, CA: The Project.

Robertson, G. (2002), 'Pam Baker: Hong Kong lawyer who fought for rights of
Vietnamese refugees', The Guardian, 27 April, www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/
apr/27/guardianobituaries (accessed 7 September 2009).

Rumbaut, R.G. (2007) 'Vietnam' in M.C. Waters and R. Ueda (eds.) The New Americans:
A Guide to Immigration Since 1965, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
pp.652- 73.

Skeldon, R. (1994) 'Hong Kong's response to the Indochinese influx, 1975-93', The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 534.

Tran, D.T. (1990) Writers and Artists in Vietnamese Gulags, with Choe's Cartoons from
Vietnam, Idaho: Century Publishing House.

Trieu, M.M. (2008) 'Ethnic chameleons and the contexts of identity: A comparative
look at the dynamics of intra-national ethnic identity construction for 1.5 and second generation Chinese-Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans,' PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine.

--(2009) Identity Formation among Chinese- Vietnamese Americans: Being, Becoming,
and Belonging, EI Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

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Procedures under the Comprehensive Plan of Action, Washington, DC: The General
Accounting Office.

'Visions from Prison' (1995) in N. Morris and OJ Rothman (eds.), The Oxford History
of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 8 pages of unnumbered plates between pages 274 and 275.

Zinoman, P. (2001) 'Reading revolutionary prison memoirs', in H.T.H Tai (ed.), The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 21-45.

Remembering Bob Jones

2011-09-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Updated 10 September: Prayers will be said for Bob Jones at St. Anselm's Cross Cultural Community Center [correction: NOT today] next Saturday September 17 at 5 pm, according to Nguoi Viet [Correction: which gave the wrong date. The correct info is posted [see image below] at the center's door.] Address: 11277 Garden Grove Blvd [at Euclid] Garden Grove, CA 92843. See also video of dedication of Bob Jones Building in Rochester MN earlier this year where daughter Kieu Oanh spoke.

Bob Jones, a former American diplomat in Saigon, and longtime community activist most recently in Little Saigon, passed away after a long illness. He was a friend and believer in archiving the histories of diverse immigrants, especially Vietnamese, having mastered Vietnamese during his time in Saigon, where he befriended Yen Do, who would later found Nguoi Viet Daily News in Westminster, California, frequenting book stalls in Saigon with him in quest of Vietnamese literature, in the war years, he once told me.

I had a long phone conversation with him a few months ago, at a time when he was being treated for colon cancer, when we discussed his being a guest on my show to reflect on his full life. Unfortunately, it never came to be. I regret not capturing for posterity his reflections on his life's work. (Perhaps the NSA has the audio of that phone conversation that lasted over an hour.) In Saigon, he collected a massive amount of Vietnamese literature and art, which he shipped to the United States. I hope that collection finds a good home. His smaller collection of gay community publications went from a storage locker in Orange County to a community archive in the Midwest, he told me.

He also served actively for many years on the advisory board of UC Irvine's Southeast Asian Archive at UCI Libraries, giving his time, effort and wisdom to the collection here. I remember him as a warm friend, living in a small apartment in the heart of Little Saigon, who would regularly turn up at UCI Libraries with latest issues of local community magazines and newspapers he had picked up, for the archive. He was a true community activist who gave himself fully to the community, and worked to make sure the written record was not erased. His colleagues at St. Anselm's Cross Cultural Community Center plan a local memorial event, forthcoming. - Daniel C. Tsang.

An obituary released today by his daughter, Kieu Oanh follows.

________________________________________

OBITUARY

Robert R. “Bob” Jones III, 69, a longtime resident of Rochester, died peacefully at his home on Monday (Sept. 5, 2011) from complications of colon cancer.

Bob was born May 25, 1942 to Dr. Robert and Dorothy (Stewart) Jones at Jersey City Medical Center, New Jersey. He moved with his family to Rochester when his father, an Army doctor, joined the Mayo Clinic in the 1950s. Bob graduated from John Marshall High School in 1960, attended Lake Forest College and the University of Minnesota, majoring in International Relations. During the summers of his college years, Bob held jobs ranging from working at a lodge high in the Colorado Rockies, to serving inner-city mothers and children on a hospital ship anchored in New York harbor.

During the Vietnam War, Bob served in the U.S. Army at the Presidio of San Francisco and at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Following his discharge, he was asked to continue on the Embassy staff where he remained from 1966 to 1975, becoming known as the “institutional memory” of that era. During that time, he helped design and monitor for Vietnam what was, at the time, the world’s only comprehensive data processing system for reporting political, economic and security conditions at a nation’s “grass roots” level.

Bob fell in love with Vietnamese history and culture, learning to speak the language fluently and was often sought after by visiting diplomats and journalists who relied on him for information and insight into Vietnamese affairs.

Upon his return to Rochester, he was asked by the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona to establish a program under the auspices of Catholic Charities to coordinate the resettlement of the newly arriving refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. For the following 15 years, he worked tirelessly to develop sponsorship opportunities and supportive programs for refugees arriving in the Diocese from around the world.

During his years as Resettlement Director, he was also active at the state level as founder and longtime Chair of the Minnesota Consortium of Refugee Agencies.
In 1991, Bob was called to Washington, DC, to receive the John McCarthy medal, the highest award bestowed annually by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for service to the world’s refugees.

Bob also believed strongly in the need to empower refugees to develop and lead self-help programs and to plan and coordinate cultural events. To achieve that goal, he brought together refugees and Rochester community leaders to raise the necessary support and funding to found a new agency, the Inter-Cultural Mutual Assistance Association (IMAA). The IMAA has become over the years a national model, and in March 2011 the building was dedicated as the Robert Jones III building.

Bob was also active in civic affairs. He helped found the Rochester International Association (RIA) and regularly assisted with its annual Rochester World Festival. A civic highlight for Bob was his selection by then Rochester Mayor Chuck Hazama to be a member of a team of city leaders, which worked tirelessly to develop a presentation, which they took to Houston, Texas to compete for and to bring back to Rochester the much-coveted “All-American City” designation. He also served one year as Interim Director of Rochester’s newly emerging Habitat for Humanity Program.

From 1998 to 2008 he moved to Westminster, Ca. where he taught citizenship classes in the area of Orange County, California, known as “Little Saigon.” At St. Anselm’s Cross-Cultural Community Center, Bob developed and taught classes which graduated hundreds of new US citizens. He was widely and fondly known in the community as “Thay” (teacher) Bob. He returned to Rochester in 2008.

He was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rochester, the Institute of Vietnamese Studies and the Association for Asian Studies. He also served on the Boards of the National Association of Vietnamese-American Social Agencies and the Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California-Irvine.

His family would like to express their deepest appreciation to the Mayo Clinic doctors and nurses who cared for Bob during his illness and Lynn Nomann, RN, with Saint Jude Hospice in his final days.

He is survived by his daughter - Kieu -Oanh (John McInnis) of Madison, WI, his mother Dorothy of Wabasha, MN, his sister Sharon (Frank) Stewart of Goleta, CA, brother, Dr. Roger (Cheryl) Jones of Elko, NV and many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his father and his sister Linda Brandolino.

A funeral service will be held at 5:00 P.M. on Friday (Sept. 9, 2011) at Christ United Methodist Church , 400 5th Ave. S.W. , in Rochester, with the Rev. Dr. Carol Hepokoski of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester, officiating. Friends may call from 3 to 5:00 P.M. on Friday at the church. A private family burial will take place on Saturday at Riverside Cemetery in Wabasha. The family asks that memorials be made to IMMA, Minnesota Public Radio or Saint Jude Hospice, Rochester in lieu of flowers. Arrangements are with Griffin-Gray F.H, in Stewartville,Mn.

Saving Chinatown, Riverside

2011-06-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Efforts in Riverside, California, to preserve its historic Chinatown may get a boost if enough netizens vote by Thursday early afternoon to support those efforts in the This Place Matters Community Challenge offered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

These grass-roots efforts, with the active support of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, are among 100 preservation projects seeking to win 3 cash awards.

For more information, you can check out this web site. Voting ends June 30, 2011 at 1:59 PM Pacific time. A link there allows one to vote after registering one's email and zip code and receiving a password. The Riverside Chinatown efforts are listed as: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California - Riverside, California Riverside Chinatown. As of this posting, the group is ranked 29 out of 100 unless more people decide to vote.

The local preservationists have formed a Save Our Chinatown Committee which is seeking to stop development above what has been partially uncovered as the remains of historic Chinatown, first founded in 1870, [CORRECTION: actually the second Chinatown, in 1885, after residents of the first Chinatown were forced out,] with its residents responsible for much of the citrus activity in the county. The Los Angeles Times recently profiled the struggle, including the activism of a UC Riverside librarian, Judy Lee.

A facebook site has also been set up: Save Riverside Chinatown.

Edgy City: Urban/Rural Space and Ho Chi Minh City

2011-06-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

Link to audio of program: .

As Ho Chi Minh City races to be Vietnam's most modern metropolis, some outlying areas are left behind. Yet they become interesting because they exhibit many of the tensions that face the developing country after decades of war, as Vietnam copes with being nominally Socialist but practically capitalist, and races to modernize itself, at the risk of leaving behind peasants in the largely rural country.

Erik Harms, who teaches Anthropology at Yale, has offered a revealing look at the social lives that intersect each other in the wake of this modernization race. Focusing on Hóc Môn, on the edge of Saigon, he writes like a journalist [I mean his writing is readable], revealing social lives as otherwise marginalized residents of this region on the Trans-Asia Highway are able to tell their stories through his new book, Saigon's Edge: On the Margins of Ho Chi Minh City, now out from University of Minnesota Press.

Harms is interviewed by KUCI Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang, in the first show of this 2011 summer online series, as Subversity takes a break from radio broadcasts for the summer. The interview is exclusively available online, and as podcasts, with a official posting date of Monday 20 June 2011 but the interview was taped earlier today, 17 June 2011 at KUCI's studios.

Interview with Harms by Yale University posted on YouTube:

Greg Louganis Speaks at UCI

2011-06-13T16:33:00.001-07:00

Updated: Link to audio of program: .

Louganis in video feed

In an inspirational speech Olympic twice-gold medalist Greg Louganis, of Samoan/Swedish heritage, and a UCI drama alumnus, Friday 10 June 2011 addressed graduating seniors at UCI's Arts School graduation (the event also included graduates from the Physical Sciences).

Louganis, who was HIV-positive when he won the two golds in diving in the 1988 Olympics, said he is proof HIV/AIDS is no longer a "death sentence." He exhorted UCI's graduating students in the Arts and in Physical Sciences to be imaginative {"to explore your imagination") and have trust in fellow human beings, even though he himself was at times overly trusting of others ("I'd rather trust... than be cynical").

The UCI drama alumnus said this was his first graduation he ever attended.

On the last Subversity show of this quarter, we air an edited version of his talk in the first part of Subversity this evening, 13 June 2011, at 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and simulcast via kuci.org.

Subversity is taking a break this summer and expects to return with the KUCI fall season in late September.

Catholic Priests and Sex: The Research

2011-05-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

To listen to the first part of the show with the Karen Terry interview as recorded, click on: .

To listen to the second part of the show with the Bill Andriette interview, click on: . NEW 6/23/11: Transcript of that interview here: Transcript.

The issue of sex with altar boy (and girls) by Catholic priests has saturated the media, but what does the research tell us? On the next edition of KUCI's Subversity program, airing this evening at 5 p.m., we talk with UCI alumna and criminologist Karen Terry about the 143-page report that her research team at John Jay College just submitted to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Her key finding in The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors
by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010: Only 5% of the priests were "pedophiles" (sex with pre-pubescents), with the majority of the cases relating to sex with pubescent or adolescent boys.

We also discuss the report with former Guide features editor Bill Andriette, who has written on sex panics. [ADDED: He critiques the report for its ignoring research on youths who did not regard sexual relationships with priests as "abuse."]

Andriette has been a frequent guest on Subversity.

The show airs today 23 May 2011 from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. A podcast will be posted later here.

Larry Agran on Irvine: Town and Gown

2011-05-09T11:00:00.001-07:00

To listen to the second part of the show with the Agran interview, click on: .

The UC Irvine Libraries celebrate the history of Irvine, California with an exhibit, Irvine: the Vision, the Plan, the Promise, curated by UCI librarian Yvonne Wilson, opening later this week (Wednesday May 11) at Langson Library on the UCI campus.

On the next edition of KUCI's Subversity, we talk with a speaker slated for the exhibit opening, Irvine council member and long-time politician Larry Agran (pictured), about the City of Irvine and his perspective on issues of "town and gown" over the years. Agran also made an unsuccessful bid to run for President in 1992.

According to his published profile, Larry Agran graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966, majoring in both History and Economics. In 1969, he graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he specialized in public interest law.

Agran has served as Legal Counsel to California State Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. He has taught legislation and public policy at the UCLA School of Law and at the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine.

He first served on the Irvine City Council from 1978 to 1990, including six years as Mayor. Under his leadership, Irvine received national recognition for its pioneering programs in child care, affordable housing, recycling and open space preservation.

As a "highly respected public interest attorney and public policy expert", Agran founded and, in the 1990s, led a number of non-profit organizations: the Local Elected Officials Project; the Center for Innovative Diplomacy; and CityVote. As the founder and volunteer chair of Project ’99, from 1994 to 1999, Agran was especially active in working to promote creation of the Orange County Great Park at the former Marine Corps Base at El Toro.

Agran returned to service on the Irvine City Council when he was elected to the Council on November 3, 1998. On November 7, 2000 he was elected Mayor of Irvine, and on November 5, 2002 he was re-elected Mayor. After completing two consecutive terms as Mayor, Agran was elected to a four-year term as an Irvine City Councilmember on November 2, 2004, and was re-elected on November 4, 2008. He was re-elected to a four-year term in November 2010.

Councilmember Agran served for six years as the Chair of the nine-member Board of Directors of the Orange County Great Park Corporation. The Great Park Corporation is the entity designated by the Irvine City Council to help bring about the design, construction and operation of the Great Park, America’s first great metropolitan park of the 21st century.

For today's special, expanded edition of Subversity, which will run from 4-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, we focus on the 2011 fund drive. Please help support this free speech station! Call 949 824 5824 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 949 824 5824 end_of_the_skype_highlighting to pledge your support! Our interview with Agran airs from 5:05 p.m. The program is simulcast via kuci.org. A podcast of the interview will be posted here later.

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Award Winners Announced

2011-05-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

Shooting scene from Bang Bang

First-time Director Byron Q has won the Best First Feature award for Bang Bang among the other juried awards announced by the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Byron Q was interviewed last Monday on KUCI's Subversity program.

Another Subversity guest, Mun Chee Yong (interviewed recently for an online edition of Subversity) directed another film, Where the Road Meets the Sun, which won two festival awards: Special Jury Award for Narrative: Best Ensemble Acting by actors Eric Mabius, Fernando Noriega, Will Yun Lee and Luke Brandon Field. The film also garnered for cinematographer Gavin Wills the Special Jury Award for Narrative: Outstanding Cinematography.

Actor Will Yun Lee as Takashi in Where the Road Meets the Sun.

COMPLETE LIST OF WINNERS:

2011 LOS ANGELES ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL AWARD WINNERS

Documentary Feature:

Grand Jury Award, Documentary

THE HOUSE OF SUH

Directed by IRIS K. SHIM and Produced by GERRY KIM

Special Jury Award, Documentary: Outstanding Director

IRIS K. SHIM

THE HOUSE OF SUH

Special Jury Award, Documentary: Outstanding Cinematography

JASON WOODFORD

ONE BIG HAPA FAMILY

Special Jury Award, Documentary: Outstanding Editing

JEFF CHIBA STEARNS

ONE BIG HAPA FAMILY

Special Jury Prize for Human Rights

FINDING FACE

Directed by Skye Fitzgerald and Patti Duncan

Narrative Feature:

Grand Jury Award, Narrative Feature

LIVING IN SEDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES

Directed by Ian Gamazon and Produced by Quynn Ton

Special Jury Award, Narrative: Outstanding Director

IAN GAMAZON

LIVING IN SEDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES

Special Jury Award, Narrative: Outstanding Screenplay

STEPHANE GAUGER

SAIGON ELECTRIC

Special Jury Award, Narrative: Outstanding Cinematography

GAVIN KELLY

WHERE THE ROAD MEETS THE SUN

Special Jury Award, Narrative: Best Ensemble Acting

ERIC MABIUS, FERNANDO NORIEGA, WILL YUN LEE and LUKE BRANDON FIELD

WHERE THE ROAD MEETS THE SUN

Special Jury Award, Narrative: Best First Feature

BANG BANG

Directed by BYRON Q

Special Jury Award – Breakout Performance for New Actor

RYAN GREENE

ONE KINE DAY – Directed by Chuck Mitsui

Short Film:

Festival Golden Reel Award

TEAMWORK

Directed by HONG SEO YUN

Linda Mabalot New Directors/New Visions Award

FIRECRACKER

Directed by SOHAM MEHTA

AUDIENCE AWARDS:

NARRATIVE FILM

RAKENROL

Directed by QUARK HENARES

DOCUMENTARY FILM

AMONG B-BOYS

Directed by Christopher Woon

KUCI's Subversity Fights Subpoena [A Look Back]

2011-05-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

KUCI's Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang back in the early years of the show which started in 1993.

This essay was first published in 1995 and is reprinted here during our 2011 KUCI Fund Drive. To support the station, click on: Fund Drive

Irvine -- Freedom of the press often appears to be just a slogan, but this year, working at KUCI made me appreciate its importance. As host and reporter for Subversity, the weekly public affairs interview program that tries to uncover what the mainstream media will not cover, I recently was covering a couple of trials largely ignored by the rest of the media.

The first trial involved a civil lawsuit brought by Loc Minh Truong, a Vietnamese immigrant, now in his late 50's, who had been bashed almost to death because the assailants thought he was gay. One of those sued, a teenager who had been an Explorer Scout at the time of the incident, was represented in court by an attorney who saw me interviewing the victim, Truong, during a break in proceedings. The next day, this attorney approached me and shoved a piece of paper into my hands. I thought it was a press release. Instead, it was a subpoena to appear in court and produce "any notes, writings, photographs produced or made by" me regarding the case.

Now, I had been covering this case -- for various alternative media such as AsianWeek, RicePaper, and Frontiers -- ever since the beating several years before, and had accumulated quite a lot of material. I'd even written an opinion piece on the beating for the Los Angeles Times. I knew there was no way I would voluntarily turn over my reporter's files. In court papers the judge had previously approved, permitting me to record the proceedings, I was listed as a KUCI reporter. I next spent a frantic day searching for legal help. The seriousness of the endeavor is reflected in a Chinese-language news account of my dilemma in the Chinese Daily News, which proclaimed that I had risked a "jail term."

Jail was, in fact, a distinct, if remote possibility, if the judge found me in contempt of court for refusing to turn over my files. I later discovered that I was in good company. In fact, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press regularly reports on hundreds of subpoenaes served on reporters and media outlets every year, most ending up being quashed or withdrawn. I also contacted Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, based in Sacramento, who along with other civil liberties attorneys, including from the ACLU, offered invaluable, free advice. At the station, KUCI managers, especially John Lewis, offered important moral support.

In this instance, the subpoena was withdrawn, after my volunteer attorney, Marc Alexander, normally a highly placed corporate lawyer, but with civil liberties leanings and a heart of gold, took up my case gratis, and faxed opposing counsel a request that they withdraw the subpoena.

Marc's legal expertise was put to work over an entire weekend, resulting in a well-argued brief exploring the legal rights reporters have under the state Constitution and Evidence Code, which I wished he had the opportunity to submit. Because the subpoena was withdrawn, the issue became moot. Nonetheless, Marc's crash legal research uncovered that for many years, there has been a "shield law" protecting reporters' files of unpublished work from forced disclosure here in California.

According to my counsel, "Mr. Tsang has a trial to cover. The subpena is blatantly oppressive and harassing. If a news reporter such as Mr. Tsang had to testify about information that he gathered as a reporter, disclose sources, and produce his notes, his sources would rapidly dry up, and his outstanding reputation as a reporter would take a severe beating." No kidding; he actually wrote that, on legal paper no less.

I also prepared a declaration "in support of motion to quash subpena duces tecum," in which I outlined my press credentials. Attached as exhibit 1 was a photocopy of my KUCI press badge. Another exhibit was my 1993 L.A. Times opinion essay, "Laguna Beach Beating Opens Closed Asian Door." Also I attached a copy of the court form, "Re quest to Conduct Film and Electronic Coverage," signed by the judge with her notation: "No flash; No noisy auto wind; No photographs or videos of jurors." This form is standard for all reporters seeking electronic coverage.

The next court date, Marc showed up in court to represent me, telling the judge that I was protected by the state shield law. Judge Nancy Wieben Stock ruled I could continue to cover the case and tape the proceedings.

But the story did not end there. A few days later, Jeffrey P. Koller, the attorney who had subpoenaed me, even though the summons had been withdrawn, himself ended up on the witness stand, questioned by a colleague, and was asked what he had observed in the hallway that fateful day when I had interviewed Truong. Koller testified that he heard me ask for his address, and saw Truong write something in my address book. On the stand earlier, Truong had stated he couldn't remember where he lived. As Koller testified, he told jurors that I was the individual right then pointing a camera at him.

Who knows what effect Koller's testimony had on the jury, who in the end awarded Truong over $1 million in damages, but a lot less than he had sought.

As if this was not enough to stress out any reporter, after I went back to the Orange County Courthouse to cover another story, that of UCI student Dan Hoang, charged with attempted murder with gang enhancement in the Alton Square, Irvine, shootings last year, the prosecutor, Robin Park, tried to get the judge to throw me out of the courtroom, questioning my press credentials on a day I wasn't there. Park knew I was also an activist with AWARE, the Alliance Working for Asian Rights and Empowerment, from my involvement in an earlier case, that of Tu Anh Tran, a college student shot in the back but ironically charged with murder, whom I had also interviewed for Subversity both while he was in OC Jail and after his release. To his credit, Judge Daniel J. Didier told Park that to be fair to me, they should discuss the matter when I was there.

The next day I showed up in court late, proceedings having already started. One of the shooting victims was on the stand testifying. As I walked in with my tripod in hand the marshall made a motion with his arms that I could not take any pictures or make any recordings. Judge Didier then asked the witness to leave the stand, and cleared the jury from the courtroom.

The judge then held an impromptu hearing on whether or not I was allowed to continue to cover the hearing as a reporter. After I explained what KUCI was and why I was recording the proceedings, and the prosecutor claimed that the victims were worried about their safety, the judge asked me if I would be content with merely audiotaping the proceedings, although I could continue to photograph the courtroom in the absence of jury and witnesses. I readily agreed. And thus remained the only reporter to cover the case of this UCI student that the prosecutor compared with "Al Capone" and used the model minority myth (she referred to the many Asians who graduate each year with honors from UCI) to stereotype the defendant, who unfortunately was convicted and faces a minimal fifteen-year prison term.

The mainstream media only covered Truong's civil case sporadically, and Hoang's trial not at all. Through Subversity, KUCI was the only media outlet to broadcast testimony from Truong's civil trial (including a convicted gaybasher's chilling testimony as to what happened) and to report on Hoang's case, including a broadcast jailhouse interview with Hoang, and a later show with his brothers as guests). Incarceration of Asians is almost totally ignored by other media. I hope you will continue to support KUCI's public affairs programs and especially tune in and call in to Subversity, now on a new day and at a new time, Tuesdays from 5-6 p.m. Join us to celebrate freedom of the press; KUCI needs your support to continue to bring you news and reporting that subverts the Orange Curtain. -- Daniel C. Tsang

Bibliography:

Alexander, Marc, "Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Suppoort of Motion
to Quash," March 7, 1995, unpublished legal brief (not submitted).

Chou, Jerome, "Radio Activism," A. Magazine, April/May 1995, pp. 32-34, 82.

Flash: The Membership Bulletin of the California First Amendment Coalition.
926 J Street, Suite 1406, Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 447-2322
E-mail: coalition@aol.com. Welcomes individuals or media outlets as
members.

Gao, Man, "Court Subpoenas Asian Reporter: Judge Protects Reporter's Rights,"
Sing Tao Daily, March 8, 1995, p. 24. [In Chinese.]

[Hsiao, Esther], "Successfully Utilizing Calif. State Journalists' Protection
Law, Tsang Chun Tuen Avoids Jail Term Disaster," Chinese Daily News,
March 7, 1995, p.B3. [In Chinese.]

Hoffstadt, Kelly, "KUCI Reporter Fights Subpoena for Notes on Gay-bashing
Case," New University, March 13, 1995, p.4.

Lycan, Gary, "Airchecks," Orange County Register, March 26, 1995, p.Show 34.

Tsang, Daniel C., "Asian American Gangbanger Stereotype Sentences UCI Student
to 15 Years in Prison," New University, April 17, 1995, pp. 16-17.

Tsang, Daniel C., "Laguna Beach Beating Opens Closed Asian Door," Los Angeles
Times, January 18, 1993, B5 (home edition); B9 (Orange County edition).

Tsang, Daniel C., "UCI Student Convicted of Attempted Murder, Faces Long Prison
Term," AsianWeek, April 21, 1995, pp. 1, 4-5.

Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved. Originally published in 1995.

Byron Q's Bang Bang; Billie Rain's Heart Breaks Open

2011-05-02T14:18:00.000-07:00

To listen to the show, click on: .

UPDATE 6 May 2011: Bang Bang has won the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Festival's Special Jury Award for Narrative: Best First Feature!

Visual Communications' Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival continues this week with a path-breaking lineup of independent films. On KUCI's Subversity program, we talk with two indie directors.

First we talk with Byron Q, the director of Bang Bang, a film about gang life. Bryon Q studied under renowned French New Wave director Jean-Pierre Gorin at UCSD and this is his debut film. It features Justin (Thai Ngo), trapped in the gang lifestyle, and his rich Taiwanese best friend Charlie (David Huynh), in the film's strongest role. The multi-ethnic cast brings additional realism to the film. The ever youthful looking Huynh (actually a Vietnamese from Canada) was the focus of a Subversity interview back in 2007.

Bang Bang screens tomorrow at 9 p.m. at CGV Cinemas 3 in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Ticket information

We also talk with Act Up and Riot Grrl activist turned director Billie Rain about his new film, Heart Breaks Open, featuring queer activist and poet Jesus (Maximillan Davis) whose life implodes when he finds out he is HIV-positive. Set in Seattle, the film shows how Jesus comes to rely on his friends as he struggles to make sense of his predicament.

Hear Breaks Open screens tonight at 9:15 p.m. in CGV Cinemas 3 in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Ticket information.

Subversity airs this evening from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. A podcast will be posted later.

Tony Nguyen's Enforcing the Silence Dares to Address Anti-Communist Violence in the Vietnamese Diaspora in San Francisco Bay Area

2011-04-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, which is an Internet-only edition for the second part of the April 25, 2011 show because of a jazz program pre-empting the live show -- click
on: . The audio leads off with Tony Nguyen giving the background leading up to his making this film. Updated blog entry follows:

Youth advocate Lam Duong as he appeared on the only videotaped interview before he was slain

A bold new documentary dares to address something only whispered about in the Vietnamese diasporic communities in North America -- the existence, especially in the 1980s, of a violent group of thugs -- masquerading as "freedom fighters".

Enforcing the Silence director Tony Nguyen, himself having been a youth advocate in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, in resurrecting the shortened life of Vietnamese immigrant activist and journalist/editor Lam Trong Duong [in Vietnamese: Dương Trọng Lâm], pays tribute to those in the Vietnamese diasporic communities that were anti-war and progressive. Lam Doung founded the first Vietnamese youth center in America (Vietnamese Youth Development Center), and published a progressive Vietnamese-language newspaper, Cai Dinh Lang, that reprinted stories from Hanoi. That he supported Ho Chi Minh -- he was an early immigrant in 1971, prior to the fall of Saigon, and he attended Oberlin High on an American Field Service exchange and later stayed to attend Oberlin College -- may have led to his murder in 1981 at the young age of 27.

A youthful Lam Duong

I say "may" because that's what the director says, given that the murder case remains unsolved, much like the half-dozen or so other cases of Vietnamese journalists and activists who were murdered. (The director does mention the 1987 Orange County case of Garden Grove-based Vietnamese magazine publisher Tap Van Pham, but leaves out another OC murder, in 1984, of CSUF Physics Prof. Edward L. Cooperman, whose activism in scientific exchange with post-war Vietnam is believed to have caused his murder by a Vietnamese student he mentored). Two locals are interviewed: Former OC Register Little Saigon reporter Jeff Brody (he's now teaching journalism at CSUF) and OC Weekly investigative reporter Nick Schou.

The film focuses on interviews with activists (including Lam Duong's colleagues at the youth center), and law enforcement (SFPD and FBI), and raises the possibility that a key Reagan and later Bush administration figure may have been the link with National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam founder Hoang Hoang Co Minh, now deceased.

This powerful hour-long film is testimony to the best in documentary work, uncovering a hidden subject. That it did not get a screening at the just-concluded VIFF (Vietnamese International Film Festival) is a sad commentary on the fear that still pervades the Vietnamese diasporic communities. It is a fear that continues to intimidate some artists and film folks as well as some in the community at large. In rejecting the film, VIFF missed an opportunity to take a stand in support of artistic freedom while simultaneously continuing to enforce the very silence Tony Nguyen's film addresses.

In feedback on the Diacritics site after USC Prof. Viet Thanh Nguyen suggested interviews with anti-communist leaders might have "humanized" them, the director Tony Nguyen says he was not able to contact any Front officials. (Although the director passed through Southern California in making the film, he didn't manage to interview then-Front spokesman Do Diem, who once incidentally even sat on the advisory board of the Southeast Asian Archive at UC Irvine. -- See my piece in the OC Weekly on a Front spinoff. ADDED: See also my profile in OC Weekly of Do Diem: Guerrilla in the Midst)

Director Tony Nguyen has an appeal online to raise funds for distributing the film.

I talk with director Tony Nguyen about his courageous new documentary and how he will distribute it. UNFORTUNATELY THE SUBVERSITY SHOW TODAY IS PRE-EMPTED BY JAZZ so I'll post the interview online asap.

The film screens Saturday 30 April 2011 (5 p.m.) at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival at Laemmle's Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd (at Crescent Heights) West Hollywood, CA 90046. PARKING: Free for 3 hours with validation. See film schedule for more information: http://laapff.festpro.com/schedule/ -- Daniel C. Tsang

Singapore Woman Director Mun Chee Yong's Take on Surviving in Los Angeles

2011-04-25T14:53:00.001-07:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, which is an Internet-only edition for the first part of the April 25, 2011 show because of a jazz program pre-empting the live show -- click
on: .

UPDATED 6 May 2011: Where the Road Meets the Sun has won two festival special jury awards: Gavin Kelly has won the festival's Special Jury Award, Narrative: Outstanding Cinematography. And the actors Eric Mabius, Fernando Noriega, Will Yun Lee and Luke Brandon Field have won the festival's Special Jury Award, Narrative: Best Ensemble Acting.

Takashi (Will Yun Lee) reflects on his memory loss in Where the Road Meets the Sun.

If ever there is a list of the top films that address the underside of Los Angeles, Mun Chee Yong's Where the Road Meets the Sun will surely be on that chart. A multicultural cast interact in various languages (mainly English) as they seek to survive on the rough streets of urbanized Los Angeles.

Not a documentary by any means, Mun Chee Yong's script casts four men whose lives intersect at a decrepit hotel as they live from day to day, job to job, interspersed with Guy's hetero liaisons mostly with sex workers.

Takashi, whose memory loss from a car accident enables him to experience a rebirth away from his gangster life back in Japan, is played by the dashingly convincing, Korean American actor Will Yun Lee who sometimes lapses into Japanese. He develops a friendship with Blake (Eric Mabius) the hotel manager. At the same hotel, Julio (Fernando Noriega), a Spanish-speaking undocumented worker from Mexico who works at an Indian restaurant, befriends fellow kitchen Brit packpacker/fellow worker Guy (Luke Brandon Field), who sports an authentic British accent. Blake struggles to make ends meet when both are unceremoniously fired from the restaurant (without collecting their pay)while Blake manages to hit his dad in England up for more dough.

It's a (male) buddy film with some of the hetero and tough guy jinks -- and one gets to see scenes of Silver Lake and other Los Angeles locales.

A Singapore/Indonesia/US co-production, the 93-minute film has just been released this year. The director is a LSE (London School of Economics) graduate in monetary economics, with an MFA degree in Film Production from USC.

UNFORTUNATELY THE SHOW IS PRE-EMPTED BY JAZZ so I'll post the interview online asap.
On KUCI Subversity program this evening, we talk in the first half-hour withdirector Mun Chee Yong about his latest film. A podcast will be posted later.

The film screens at Saturday night (10 p.m.) at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival at Laemmle's Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd (at Crescent Heights) West Hollywood, CA 90046. PARKING: Free for 3 hours with validation. See film schedule for more information: http://laapff.festpro.com/schedule/

VIFF Filmmakers' Panel Discussion: Expanding the Audience Base

2011-04-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, click
on:

The 2011 Vietnamese International Film Festival ended its exciting two week run last night with a daring, sexually explicit film, "Bi, Don't Be Afraid" directed by Phan Dang Di. The film, set in a hot and steamy Hanoi summer won the festival's Grand Jury prize for Best Film. Viewers in the audience saw a version that was more sexually explicit than that released in Vietnam, with masturbation (female and male), frontal urination (by a male student) and various scenes of heterosexual intercourse.

For this evening's edition of Subversity, we can't bring you that film, but will instead offer audio of the 10 April 2011 Filmmakers' Panel Discussion on "Expanding the Audience Base" that took place at UC Irvine.

Panelists were: Anderson Le, director of programming at the Hawaii International Film Festival; Ann Le, with international division of Universal Pictures; Charlie Nguyen, director of The Rebel; Fool for Love; James Nguyen, director/writer, Birdemic: Shock and Terror; Jenni Trang Le, Assistant Director, Bi, Don't Be Afraid, and of Clash; Khoa Do, Director/Writer, Footy Legends, Mother Fish; Le Thanh Son, director/writer, Clash, and Nguyen Nu Nhu Khue, producer with HK Films in Vietnam.

The program airs this evening from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast via http://kuci.org. Podcast to be posted later.

Filmmaker with Conscience Khoa Do; Hazards of Nail Salons

2011-04-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, click
on:

Director Khoa Do embraced by a fan after his film screened at VIFF 2011. Photography &c Daniel C. Tsang 2011

He's a Viet Kieu filmmaker with conscience. Hailing from Australia, and emerging as one of the most exciting new filmmakers from the Vietnamese diaspora, Khoa Do presented "Mother Fish," his dramatic and creative take on the boat people's exodus to the West at the 5th Vietnamese International Film Festival ongoing at various venues in Southern California, including UC Irvine. As he discusses in the interview, he made this film to counter anti-refugee prejudice in Australia against a current wave of boat people from more current wars.

We talk with this award-winning director who charmed audiences at the last VIFF with his Footy Legends, about a multi-ethnic sports team, with a strong background in community service as a volunteer in a community-based organization in Sydney, where he made an earlier documentary, Finished People, about homeless people on the streets.

Khoa was named the 2011 VIFF Spotlight Award winner Saturday at a special event co-sponsored by Vietnamese American Community Ambassadors and the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive prior to that evening's showing of Mother Fish.

The festival continues at UCLA, Bowers Museum (free to high school students) and UC Irvine. Among the films is "Touch," directed by Minh Duc Nguyen, a feature film about romantic liaisons among Vietnamese nail salon workers and their clients. It screens Saturday, 16 April 2011 at 7:30 p.m. HIB (Humanities Instructional Building) 100 on the UCI Campus.

For the second half of Subversity, we air Making Contact's report on the Toxic Truth about Nail Salons. It focuses on the health effects of prolonged chemical exposure on the salon workers and the move toward "greener" salons.

Also showing at VIFF is director Nguyen-Vo Nhiem Minh's second Vietnam production, Don't Look Back, a ghost story that is a takeoff on the Orpheus myth. Nguyen-Vo, who was last on Subversity discussing his "Buffalo Boy", is a scientist turned Vietnam filmmaker. Don't Look Back screens the same day, Saturday 16 April 2011 at 4 pm at HG (Humanities Gateway) 1070 on the UCI campus.

Subversity airs this evening from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Yemeni Regime Collapsing? Who are the Protesters? And What Comes After?

2011-03-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, click
on:

February 3, 2011 protest poster.

With more countries in the Middle East erupting in protest, we return again to a focus on one of those, Yemen, whose president seems tottering on the verge of quitting. Who are the protesters? And were the pro-U.S. regime to fall, what comes after?

On this evening's edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with William Picard of the Yemen Peace Project again about those questions and analyze recent developments, some horrific, some encouraging.

For your information, the Yemen Peace Project has posted a link to donations on its web site, with a plug to: "Support Yemen’s Peaceful Protesters:
Hundreds of thousands of brave Yemeni citizens are risking their lives and livelihoods to make their country a better place. Help them by supporting those that provide urgent medical care to protesters injured by state security forces."

William Picard is a political and historical researcher and analyst based here in Orange County. He has spent a decade studying Southwest Asia, with a particular focus on the modern history and current affairs of Yemen. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Arabic, Persian, and Pashto, and completed a double major in Modern Middle East Studies and Southwest Asian Conflict Studies. In late 2009 he helped found the Yemen Peace Project (YPP) with Dana, a peace advocacy organization that seeks to educate the American public about Yemen, advocate for peaceful and constructive foreign policy, and facilitate communication between Yemenis and Americans. He directs the YPP’s research and public education efforts, manages the organization’s Twitter activity, and writes frequently for the Directors’ Blog.

Picard was previously on Subversity February 7, 2011 with UCI graduate student Dana Moss, also of Yemen Peace Project. Moss also appeared subsequently a week later on Subversity.

Picard is interviewed by Subversity Show host Daniel C. Tsang. The show airs from 5-6 p.m. today on March 28, 2011 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcasts will be posted here shortly.

Egyptian Women; Avoiding Another Korean War

2011-03-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

During this spring break at UC Irvine, Subversity takes a break of sorts and airs two programs from Making Contact, from the National Radio Project.

Egyptian Women on the Frontlines of Change takes a look at the most recent Egyptian Revolution and the role of women in political change, in the context of the history of women's activism there.

As the US and its allies drop bombs on another country, we air another Making Contact program - that on Avoiding a Korean War.

The links bring more information as as well audio links to those two programs.

The Subversity show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, from 5-6 p.m. Pacific time, today, 21 March 2011.

Perils of Natural Gas Drilling. Also: WikiLeaks, Free Speech & Future of the Internet

2011-03-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

On the 14 March 2011 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we air two dispatches from the National Radio Project's
Making Contact
series.

In the wake of the horrific twin disasters in Japan, there is growing concern about the efficacy of nuclear power. The Making Contact
program in our first half hour looks at an another energy source, natural gas, and the perils of that resource: Still Fracking: The Perils of Natural Gas Drilling

In our second half hour, we will focus on another topic eclipsed by last Friday's events in Japan. Making Contact has released this
program, WikiLeaks, Free Speech & The Future of the
Internet.

Our thanks to National Radio Project for their work.

Today's program airs from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California.

Treat Protests as "Teachable Moments"! Sixty-two UCI Faculty Urge Chancellor Drake to Tell DA to Drop Criminal Charges

2011-03-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

Non-violent and loud sit-in outside UCI Chancellor's Office 24 February 2010. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

Sixty-two UC Irvine faculty members earlier today urged UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and the Chair of the Academic Senate, Prof. Alan Barbour, to publicly ask Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas "to drop the criminal charges" against the UCI students involved in the "civil disobedience" outside the Drake's Office on February 24 last year, suggesting that "political action" can better be regulated by campus rather than "external" authorities.

The signatories to the three-page letter, dated today and delivered this morning to the Chancellor's office, notably include four Department Heads: Jared Sexton, Chair of African American Studies, Jennifer Terry, Chair of Women's Studies, Susan Jarratt, Chair of Comparative Literature, and Jim Lee, Chair of Asian American Studies. It also includes two Distinguished Professors, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, of English and Comparative Literature, and Etienne Balibar, of Humanities, French and Italian, and Comparative Literature. One-third of the signatories are Full Professors, the rest mainly Associate Professors.

"We ask that the university return to an environment engaged in teaching and learning. Student activism and campus debate should be treated as teachable moments, lead to open discussions about the meaning of civil disobedience, the history of social movements, and the wide variety of political discourse within our community," the letter urges the Chancellor.

It concludes: "These and other actions can affirm the mission of the university as one of teaching, learning, supporting a wide range of ideas, opinions, and political actions."

There were actually altogether 19 defendants in the case, not all of whom are UCI students, with many active in the UCI Worker-Student Alliance on campus. The protest outside the Chancellor's office had focused on poor labor conditions facing outsourced workers at UCI.

Today's letter comes in the wake of another, signed by 100 UCI faculty members, urging the Orange County District Attorney to drop criminal charges against the 11 Muslim students involved in protesting the talk given last year on campus by the Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren. That letter was heavily promoted by the UCI Communications Office and posted on the UCI web site as a featured story.

UCI Police begin the arrests of the protesters outside the Chancellor's Office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 24 February 2010.

The Full Text of the Letter and Signatories Follow:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Dear Chancellor Michael Drake:

CC: Michael R. Gottfredson, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
Dr. Rameen Talesh, Dean of Students and Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
Edgar Dormitorio, Director, Student Conduct and Assistant Dean of Students
Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D., Interim Vice Chancellor Student Affairs
Alan Barbour, PhD., Chair, Academic Senate

We write to express our concern about the current campus climate regarding student activism, political debate, and social action.

We have been dismayed to learn that the Orange County District Attorney has criminally charged students who engaged in an organized act of civil disobedience on February 24, 2010 outside of the Chancellor’s office in Aldrich Hall. Taking a cue from a long history of activism on University of California campuses, the student coalition had organized a protest to call attention to a variety of pertinent issues on our campus including tuition and fee increases and a hostile environment for students of color. While two students barricaded doors and engaged in other actions that we may not support, political action on campus should be regulated by the university and not external authorities.

Under the purview of the Student Conduct Director of the Office of the Dean of Students, students were placed on academic probation for a year, required to complete 30 hours of community service, a five-page reflection paper on community service hours, and a ten-page paper on the First Amendment. It is our understanding that students have completed or are in the process of completing this punishment set by the university.

On December 9, 2010, these UCI students were charged by the Orange County District Attorney for disorderly conduct. It is our position that this criminal prosecution is incommensurate with the student actions: There was no bodily harm and no property destruction of any kind. The UCI police, not the protesting students, called for an evacuation of Aldrich Hall. Unlike similar incidents, the student protestors were arrested without the usual intervention of the Student Conduct unit. Lastly, it is striking that the criminal charges were filed ten months following the event, two months before the statute of limitation, and on the last day of the quarter.

• We ask that the university explain its role in the Orange County District Attorney proceeding with criminal charges when usually these acts of student civil disobedience have been handled internally.
• We ask that the Chancellor and the Chair of the Academic Senate issue a public statement asking the Orange County District Attorney to drop the criminal charges.
• We ask that the university return to an environment engaged in teaching and learning. Student activism and campus debate should be treated as teachable moments, lead to open discussions about the meaning of civil disobedience, the history of social movements, and the wide variety of political discourse within our community.

These and other actions can affirm the mission of the university as one of teaching, learning, and supporting a wide range of ideas, opinions, and political actions.

Sincerely,

Jean-Daniel Saphores, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Paul Dourish, Professor, Informatics
Jared Sexton, Associate Professor & Chair, African American Studies
Scott Bollens, Professor, Endowed Professor in Peace and Intl Cooperation
Francesca Polletta, Professor, Sociology
Lilith Mahmud, Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
Mike Burton, Emeritus Professor, Anthropology
Jennifer Terry, Associate Professor and Chair, Women's Studies
Catherine Liu, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Assistant Professor, African American Studies
Catherine L. Benamou, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Frank Cancian, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
Rodrigo Lazo, Associate Professor, Department of English
Heidi Tinsman, Associate Professor, History
Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies and Sociology
Annette Schlichter, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Eyal Amiran, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and FMS
Jessica Millward, Assistant Professor, History
Etienne Balibar, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, French and Italian,
Comparative Literature
Victoria Bernal, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Tom Boellstorff, Professor, Anthropology
Jeanne Scheper, Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
Ellen S. Burt, Professor, French and Comparative Literature
Roxanne Varzi, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Film
Keith M. Murphy, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Robert Garfias, Professor, Anthropology
Julia Elyachar, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Kris Peterson, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Steven Topik, Professor, History
Michael Montoya, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Chicano and Latino Studies,
Public Health, Nursing Science
Elizabeth M. Guthrie, Senior Lecturer, SOE (Retired), French
Claire Jean Kim, Associate Professor, Political Science and Asian American Studies
David A. Smith, Professor, Sociology
Luis F. Aviles, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Cecelia Lynch, Professor, Political Science
Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor, English
Daniel M. Gross, Associate Professor and Director of Composition, English
Rebecca Davis, Assistant Professor, English
Deborah Vargas, Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies
Santiago Morales, Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Distinguished Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Carolyn Boyd, Professor Emeritus, History
Susan Jarratt, Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature
Karen Leonard, Professor, Anthropology
Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Irene Tucker, Associate Professor, English
Adriana Johnson, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Ivette N. Hernandez-Torres, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Charles Chubb, Professor, Cognitive Sciences
James Fujii, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Dina al-Kassim, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Professor Emeritus, Chicano Latino Studies
Jon Wiener, Professor, History
Kavita Philip, Associate Professor, Women's Studies
Frank B. Wilderson, III, Associate Professor, Director, Humanities & the Arts,
Drama & African American Studies
Alice Fahs, Associate Professor, History
Lynn Mally, Professor, History
Raul Fernandez, Professor, Chicano Latino Studies/Social Sciences
Laura J. Mitchell, Associate Professor and Vice Chair, History
Arlene R. Keizer, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies,
Director, PhD Program in Culture and Theory
Jim Lee, Chair, Asian American Studies
Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Assistant Professor, History

Subversity Host Reflects on Activism Off and On the Air

2011-03-07T15:39:00.000-08:00

To listen to the podcast of this program, click
on:

Self-portrait in the UCI office, taken right after taping of the interview 4 March 2011 for East 306. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2011.

An enterprising Asian Studies undergraduate class at McGill University in Montreal has an intriguing mission: Create an experimental radio program to document social change in Asia and the Asian diaspora by interviewing activists, scholars and the like.

So I was honored to be one of those interviewed in the project, East 306, whose blog posts audio of past interviewees. Its post today profiles Subversity and my work on and beyond the show.

The back story: The class is co-taught by the superlative Adrienne Hurley, a Japanese Studies doctoral graduate from UC Irvine. The first scholar interviewed by East 306's team of earnest students was another Japanese Studies Ph.D from UCI, Kota Inoue, who is now teaching at my alma mater (see below). The interview with me was conducted using the facilities of a pioneering radio radio station at McGill, CKUT, which is expected to also air this program.

Here's what the students wrote in generously profiling me (taken from their blog) [hyperlinks revised]:

Since the program first aired in 1993, Daniel Tsang has been the host of Subversity on KUCI, the student and community radio station at the University of California, Irvine. Every Monday at 5pm (8pm in Montréal), he airs critical commentary and conducts in-depth interviews for this internationally recognized program that serves as an open seminar via radio. You can listen live via the KUCI website and browse past interviews and topics here (where you’ll also find a web-exclusive archive). On Subversity, Dan makes available to the masses the voices and ideas of activists, librarians, dissidents, and scholars, including Prof. Dylan Rodriguez, with whom Dan spoke shortly after the last U.S. presidential election. He has interviewed the actor Dustin Nguyen and the director Stanley Kwan, and he has covered a wide array of topics ranging from breast cancer (in a memorial tribute to UC Irvine graduate student Robyn Shikiya) to the ideological screening out of radicals in graduate and professional schools (in an interview with Jeffrey Schmidt).

Dan Tsang is also Data Librarian and Bibliographer in Asian American Studies, Political Science, and Economics at the University of California, Irvine, where he organized the Immigrant Lives Exhibit to debunk ‘The OC’ TV image of Orange County. He maintains Subject and Course Guides in fields such as Asian American Studies, Political Science, Economics, and the Social Sciences. He earned his B.A. in Government from the University of Redlands, where Professor Kota Inoue (interviewed in our very first podcast) currently teaches. Dan Tsang went on to earn two graduate degrees at the University of Michigan, an M.A. in Political Science and an M.L.S. in Library Science. As a journalist, Dan has authored numerous articles and opinion pieces, as well as scholarly publications, which you can see listed here. In today’s podcast, Dan mentions Elaine Black Yoneda, a white woman who joined her Japanese American husband in the internment camp. Dan’s biographical entry on her is the last entry in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004), Vol. 5, 707-709.

Dan edited the magazine Gay Insurgent in Philadelphia in the early 1980s. He was a Fulbright research scholar at the National Academy of Social Sciences in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2003-2004, and contributes greatly to our collective survival as a radical archivist, data librarian, indexer, and bibliographer. He also sued the CIA for spying on him and won. (He discusses this case in today’s podcast.)

Samantha Chrisanthus, who studies Political Science and Women’s Studies at McGill, interviews Dan Tsang about his work in libraries and radio stations, as well as his efforts to document and archive injustice and harm. Sam begins by asking Dan how Subversity started and what led him to radio. In this lively and very informative interview, Dan discusses topics such as how to document police harassment and abuse, the chilling effects of the current case of the Irvine 11 on student movements and student activism, and why we need data liberation movements and radical archiving. Dan also talks about obtaining FBI files on dead activists (and philosophers) and why we should think about preserving our own archives while we are still here and making them.

As host of Subversity I usually get to interview activists; given that they have turned the tables on me, let me return the favor and air the interview on KUCI as well.

The show with this free-wheeling interview by Sam Chrisanthus of myself airs this evening from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

UCI Interim University Librarian Gerald R. Lowell Reflects on Career in Librarianship

2011-02-28T15:19:00.000-08:00

Updated 1 March 2011: To listen to
the podcast of this program, click
on:

Gerald R. Lowell in a relaxed mood. Photography © Daniel C. Tsang 2011

In his short tenure of less than a year heading UC Irvine Libraries, Interim University Librarian Gerald Ray Lowell has managed to uplift library morale and flatten the administrative structure so that more people have been involved in making decisions that affect those of us who work here. He has also taken an important stab at streamlining the academic review process for librarians.

Having already suffered millions in budget cutbacks in recent years, UCI Libraries will no longer be the same, no longer the research library many have learned to rely on. Instead, the financial crisis has imposed so severe a toll that in future, research collections will be smaller, and the focus will be on service rather than building up in-depth collections. The UCI administration, in applying its budget-slashing formulae, has startlingly taken to considering the libraries as an administrative unit on campus, rather than an academic one.

This interview with Gerald Lowell -- Jerry as he was known to us -- is being aired today, his last day of work at UC Irvine. He looks back at his extensive career in librarianship and reflects on his life's work.

He explains why he came over the to the libraries from the Arts School (where he had been an assistant dean) after he had already headed the research libraries at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, and offers his take on the future of academic libraries, including UCI's.

He soon heads off with his partner Mitchell to Spain, where they look forward to a well-deserved retirement far away from the volatile political rhetoric emanating from the airwaves state-side.

To listen to the interview, where Jerry Lowell talks with Subversity host Daniel C. Tsang, tune in to KUCI, 88.9 FM at 5 p.m. this evening, or listen online via kuci.org. Subversity is a weekly KUCI public affairs show. A podcast will be posted later on this site.

New University Comes Under Scrutiny

2011-02-27T17:15:00.000-08:00

Front page of New University scoop.

In scooping other media with the months-old story of UC Student Regent Jesse Cheng's arrest -- and subsequent refusal of prosecutors to file charges -- for attempted sexual battery and attempted rape, did the UCI student-run newspaper, New University rush the article into print? I ask this even though I realize that the Student Regent declined to speak on the record with the paper initially.

In almost two weeks since the story, "Student Regent Under Investigation" written by managing editor Traci Garling Lee and editor in chief David Gao [The names are reversed in the print edition], originally ran, it seems abundantly clear that the New University was ill-equipped to handle such a news story, just as it mishandled, just several weeks earlier, a news account, which it similarly posted prominently on its front page, relating to a new development in UCI's decade-plus-old fertility scandal, of which more later in this blog entry.

Even before a few days had passed, critics of the New University coverage had chimed in online, suggesting on its web site that it had been "used" by Jesse Cheng's former partner, the anonymous Filipina American UCLA law student who went to the Irvine police with the initial allegations against Cheng, a popular UCI fifth-year Asian American studies major who still had months left in his tenure as an appointed UC Student Regent.

Suzanne Kordi engaged in a series of online exchanges with Current Student, with Suzanne, who wanted to submit a piece about Jesse Cheng's innocence and also on the Egyptian revolution, commenting 15 February 2011: "Apparently degrading someone’s reputation is more important than the Egyptian Revolution?" She also wrote: "Also, I don’t understand why the 'series of e-mails' was maliciously turned over the the New University. If this were not solely intended to assault someone’s integrity, I would have turned the details over to a legitimate news source."

After Suzanne Kordi questioned the campus paper's journalistic ethics and gave a link to the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code, Current Student responded that same evening, 15 February 2011: "are you, a non-journalist, using your untrained google web skillz [sic] to inquire into the reporters reporting ethics? did you know that UCI LJ majors take a class, taught by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, on this exact specific topic before they are even allowed to practice their major? and did you also know that UCI LJ majors have, to some extent, this guy (http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/profile_h_weinstein.html) for reference, among many others? I mean, the reporter probably conferred with at least one of them, at least once, before publishing this story, right?" I wouldn't have made that assumption. The reference in Current Student's comment is to Pulitzer Prize-winning former Los Angles Times legal affairs journalist, Henry Weinstein, who teaches in the UCI Law School and has a joint appointment in Literary Journalism.

On 16 February 2011, "Observer B" commented in part: "I can understand why he wouldn’t speak to the New U. Just last month, it ran another front-page article calling someone a 'criminal' who had not yet been brought to trial on the charges. (The writing is awful, too, mentioning 'unethical crimes,' as opposed to the ethical ones, I guess.)"

Observer B ended: "I think this poor reporting is a function of long-term underfunding (deliberate on the part of administration to prevent good reporting from happening), the weekly nature of the New U, which disallows follow-up reporting and related stories, and the lack of a journalism program at UCI. Literary Journalism doesn’t necessarily count. Isn’t the 'literary' part about being able to make stuff up and assertively inject the writer’s subjective take? Good stuff for some media, but for a newspaper article that could erroneously destroy someone’s career? Not so much."

"LJ Defender" shot back 18 February 2011: "Literary Journalism is not about being able to “make stuff up and assertively inject the writer’s subjective take” … it is about conveying the facts from a creative angle. That doesn’t mean it gives license to fabricate, NO form of journalism would allow that. The truth is still the truth, no matter how you approach it, whether it is through the inverted pyramid form of straight reporting or the magnifying glass of literary journalism. Just clarifying. But I do agree with you on the New U’s history of poor reporting and even poorer writing. Publishing this article was premature and insensitive given the lack of evidence."

A "Former Journalist" also commented online, suggesting that a class in journalism does not a journalist make. He wrote 16 February 2011: "As a former journalist, I can tell you that taking a class about journalistic ethics is not quite the same as practicing journalistic ethics. The latter often comes from years of experience or the benefit of an editor with years of experience, neither of which is evident at the New U. And if your Pulitzer Prize-winning professor hasn’t mentioned it yet, reporters rarely have the luxury of all the facts. That’s simply part of the job and why practicing journalists are obligated to exercise better judgment than the New U has shown here."

He ended: "There may be a good chance that the New U has allowed itself to be used. And your snide response to Suzanne Kordi suggests you have a bit of growing up to do. Not a good quality for a student journalist whose article may destroy someone’s reputation without any legal charges being filed."

Reacting to feedback online, he added: "The New U has the right to report almost anything. That’s not the issue. The question is whether they should and when they should. As you suggest, I don’t know Ms. Lee or Mr. Gao’s intent. However, the lede refers to a victim, not an alleged victim, and the second graf says Cheng does not 'currently' face charges. This implies he may face charges. Precision counts. Among other things, this could be why some readers perceive bias. Covering one’s bases, doing due diligence and seeking counsel are the minimum for reporting a story like this. Reporters don’t get extra credit for that."

Indeed, the New University does not have a formal structure of of built-in journalism advisers, unlike typical student newspapers.

Most telling is the fact that two weeks after the campus paper broke the story, neither of the two mainstream newspapers covering Orange County, the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times has yet to file a single story on it, not even a blog entry. It is apparent that, despite the arrest, the fact that the Orange County District Attorney's office failed to press charges means the story -- months old -- is one that mainstream journalists would prefer not to bring to print, no doubt in fairness to the accused: It's a non-story. (It's another matter whether it should cover the growing split in the activist community over Cheng.)

Even the alternative OC Weekly, for which I freelanced under its founding editor, Will Swaim, a graduate of UCI's history department, in its first print story after running blog updates on the New University revelations, sought to cast the story in a way that can only be seen as sympathetic to Cheng, and countering the New University's one-sided initial account.

In a blog-turned-into print story, UCI's Ex Scandal, written by Matt Coker, who used to edit my stories, a sub-head declared "student regent Jesse Cheng fights off ex-girlfriend's attempted rape allegation". The ambiguous reference to an ex-scandal could be read two ways: As a scandal involving Cheng (the girlfriend's ex), or a scandal involving his ex, the former girlfriend.

Even the New University, in reporting Cheng's denial of his ex's story, must have learned from the online feedback, giving this heading to its story, "Student Regent Speaks on the Record, Responds to Allegations," by David Gao and Traci Garling Lee. In addition to correctly calling the ex girlfriend's accusations "allegations", it also called her an "alleged victim" -- something it most famously failed to do in the story it ran with initially.

Other UC campus papers have also chimed in, including UC San Diego's The Guardian, which pointed out in its 24 February 2011 story by Jonathan Kaslow headlined "Battery Charges Dropped Against Student Regent," that the "New University received criticism from students for using condemnatory language against Cheng while only citing the anonymous source, Laya. Students expressed doubts about the accuracy of New University’s Feb. 16 “Student Regent Under Investigation” article. 'Personally to me, NewU has often inaccurately reported certain events (to some extent), especially this event,' one comment read. Some also resented the article’s insinuation that Cheng was not charged due to his status."

Is there any doubt that New University lacks the experience and knowledge of journalistic standards when covering a crime story, that other campus newspapers, such as the Guardian, have exhibited?

If you want further proof, I offer this exchange of emails with me and New University editors that I initiated last month, before the revelations about Cheng came out.

I was appalled that in its 18 January 2011 edition, the paper ran a front-page story by UCI student Shruti Shantharam on one-time UCI faculty superstar hire Dr. Ricardo Asch, a key figure from the 1990s fertility scandal, who had been located in Mexico and was in the process of being extradited back to Santa Ana to face federal charges. Unlike other mainstream coverage, the New University, contrary to all journalistic standards, depicted Ash wrongly and unfairly as "a doctor who committed unethical crimes at UC Irvine’s Center for Reproductive Health Fertility Clinic in the 1990s."

For comparison, see how real journalists at the Los Angeles Times' L.A. Now blog, covered the development.

To compound the grievous lack of adherence to journalistic standards, the article was picked up by the news site, Huffington Post, and posted verbatim, without any corrections, on Ariana Huffington's million-dollar aggregator of other writer's news and blog entries. [I have in the past also contributed material to the HuffPost.)

I waited a week for the campus paper to print a retraction, but failing to see any, I wrote 24 January 2011 to news editor Maxine Wally:

Maxine, I am writing to express my concern about the front-page article the New U published last week on the Asch fertility scandal arrest.

The article as you know was replete with what I am sure the attorneys for the accused mentioned would consider libelous statements. I am wondering if you screened the article before publication and if anyone with any journalism background (and I don't mean literary journalism) reviewed it before it was published. On the face of it it fails any basic test of good journalism. I expect to be blogging about it and hope to get your response.

She wrote me right back, inviting me to submit a letter to the editor and adding: "Every article is edited and checked by the staff, all of whom are properly trained in all areas of journalism, including literary and standard.
I look forward to seeing your blog post."

Editor in chief David Gao emailed me the next day, 25 January 2011: "I received your e-mail of complaint to our news editor, Maxine Wally. Would you please detail the exact areas of libel that you claim are in this article? We would love to discuss the issue at hand. Thank you for your readership." Given that the chief editor seemed to be clueless about what the paper did wrong, I wrote him back the next day offering some assistance:

David, I am not a lawyer, but the article assumes guilt ("crimes committed" (in subtitle), "criminal", "committed unethical crimes" etc.
Where is the presumption of innocence under our justice system? If
"harvesting human tissue was not illegal" at the time, what is the
justification for calling Asch a criminal?

David Gao wrote back 27 January 2011: "Thank you for your concern. Our editing process was out of the norm that week, and it regrettably slipped through the cracks. There will be a correction in an upcoming issue.Thank you for your concern. Our editing process was out of the norm that week, and it regrettably slipped through the cracks. There will be a correction in an upcoming issue."

Finally, on 8 February 2011, the New University did print a retraction, typically hidden inside the paper, with none of the prominence its front-page smear on Asch provided. It stated: "In the Jan. 18, 2011 issue of the New University, Shruti Shantharam's article 'Fertility Scandal Goes South,' incorrectly stated Ricardo Asch as a 'criminal' and 'having crimes committed in 1995.' Ash has actually to date neither been convicted nor indicted of his tax evasion and fraud charges."

Unfortunately, in contrast to what many mainstream newspapers do, the correction was not appended to the original offending article online on the New University web site, so the Huffington Post (and others) would not find out about it online unless they read this blog post.

Incidentally, for real investigative journalism on this fertility scandal, read the Pulitzer Prize-winning articles from the OC Register, former UCI Ph.D student Mary Dodge and UCI Prof. Emeritus Gilbert Geis' 2003 book, Stealing Dreams: A Fertility Clinic Scandal, or listen to my interview with Dodge on an online edition of Subversity.

Thus it is not surprising that the campus paper would, several weeks later, rush to publication in providing its front page with a one-sided attack on the Student Regent.

Jesse Cheng, the target of the original scoop, is surprisingly generous in his defense of the paper that printed his ex's allegations against him initially, telling the OC Weekly that "I'm going to be real: It's a campus newspaper. I support the work they do. I might not like it, I might think this was a harsh article, but I support the work they do." Although he was quoted as adding a caveat about possibly suing if "they go ahead and add something else," Cheng told me later that all he meant was that he did not want to predict anything in the future. As a writer, I must say that libel suits are harder to win if one is a public figure, and definitely not recommended. Let's battle this out in the court of public opinion, but be fair about it.

I am all for advocacy journalism, having earned my spurs as a journalist in the alternative media, and I concede that the New University tries hard to be an advocate for students at UC Irvine. But this advocacy must be tempered with journalistic standards and actual training, not just taking some literary journalism classes. Ethical reporting guidelines, as suggested by the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code, tellingly include this admonition under minimizing harm to sources and subjects: "Be judicious about naming criminal subjects before the formal filing of charges."

My recommendations: The New University when printing corrections or retractions should append the revision or correction to the original articles. The paper should also institute a formal advisership relationship with an experienced journalist. As a one-time activist in the writers union, I also recommend individual freelance writers there and elsewhere join the National Writers Union. - Daniel C. Tsang.

A Look Back: "Subversity" Goes Viral

2011-02-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

Rightwing video seeks to tie Obama to Ayers with audio from KUCI's Subversity show.

Anarchism and anarchists are convenient scapegoats in mainstream politics.

Just recently, when the Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackhaukus charged the Irvine 11 Muslim students and former students with conspiring to disrupt Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s 2010 UCI talk, he invoked the specter of anarchy: “We must decide whether we are a country of laws or a country of anarchy,” he proclaimed, giving credence to the widespread belief among activists on campus that he was on a political crusade.

Thus it is no surprise that it was because of the "A" word, back in 2008, when "Subversity" , the KUCI show I host that has often featured controversial speakers, inadvertently got swept up in the presidential race.

On 6 October 2008, knowing it would be newsworthy, I re-aired Subversity interview, originally conducted 12 April, 2002, with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers - who had in 2002 written a biography Fugitive Days, about his life.

Turns out Barack Obama lived in the same Chicago neighborhood as Ayers and had served on a committee with him at a community-based organization after Ayers surfaced. When she discovered that, Sarah Palin, whom Obama's Republican opponent in the race, John McCain, had picked as his Vice Presidential running mate, accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists". As the AP noted in a story then (4 October 2008), this was Palin's attempt at stepping up her campaign's effort to paint Obama as "unacceptable to American voters".

Within days of the re-airing, the right wing media went ballistic, with someone creating a video incorporating audio from that 2002 Subversity interview. That video, subsequently posted on YouTube, assailed Ayers' statement on Subversity: “I mean I am as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist.”

The video even credited me as a source of the audio clip just as Obama's image appeared on screen - - while calling KUCI college radio from the "University of Irvine.” By Election Day, some 80,000 viewers had clicked on the video clip, and Ayers' 2002 interview comments were covered on conservative and such rightwing media as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly Factor, National Review Online.

"Amazing Audio Uncovered from Same Week Obama Worked with him! Extremist Ayers Obama Views Matched Almost Word for Word!" proclaimed the Naked Emperor News, which posted the video on YouTube on 19 October 2008. And Bill O'Reilly boasted: "New Information about Ayers and His Association with Obama" (22 October 2008).

Luckily for Obama, the smear campaign failed. As a counter-point, OC Weekly that same week in October named KUCI Orange County’s "Best Radio Station," while mentioning Subversity as one of KUCI's "long-running programs." [The show first aired in Fall, 1993.]

As for Ayers, whom I interviewed 15 December 2008 after the elections, on educational reform, he laughed at the attempt to portray Obama as an anarchist.

But these days, I wonder whether some other old interview on KUCI might surface in a future political campaign. By the way, the video using the Subversity audio - -without permission I might add -- has now been seen by at least 104,357 viewers, some 24,000 since the 2008 election.

- Daniel C. Tsang, Subversity show host.

Notes: Links to articles mentioned are at the Subversity section [scroll down that page] of the KUCI Full-Text Archive. This essay first appeared in a slightly different form in the current, print KUCI 88.9 fm program guide released earlier this month (February 2011).

Jesse Cheng Proclaims His Innocence

2011-02-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

Updated 21 February 2011: To listen to the podcast of this program, click
on:

Jesse Cheng in his Student Regent office Friday, 18 February 2011. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

Under seige by fellow activists seeking his resignation as Student Regent of the UC system, Jesse Cheng, a fifth-year Asian American studies major, finally issued a a statement today clarifying his take on his self-described "messy breakup" with his ex girlfriend, a UCLA law student. After the breakup, his former partner, a former UCI Filipina American student, went to the Irvine police, which arrested him last November for attempted sexual battery and attempted rape, but the Orange County District Attorney's Office ultimately decided there was insufficient evidence to justify prosecuting him on misdemeanor charges.

Last Tuesday, the day the New University published a front-page article containing his ex-lover's accusations, Jesse Cheng told me, "I am innocent... this is just so crazy." Last Friday, I met up with the embattled student leader and found him to be still characteristically forthcoming, admitting that he was "stupid" to have agreed to send back to his ex girlfriend words he now regrets agreeing with, in an email now touted by his partner's supporters as a "confession."

Given how activists (including Jesse Cheng) tend to act politically correct on the issue of violence against women, it is not surprising to see the former partner's supporters demanding retribution, while even their target would feel he had to use the same politically correct language. As he expressed in his statement today, "I thought that by adopting her language and meeting the standards she set out, we could both move forward." As he indicated to me on Friday, her former partner had drafted the language while insisting he agree to the wording. As he added in his statement, "I regret lying to her in those e-mails, and it was a mistake to capitulate just so she would stop calling me incessantly." Despite the email, he did not feel he needed to resign as Student Regent.

On today's edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs show, we look back at the controversy that has shaken the campus and indeed the activist communities, as well as hear from Jesse Cheng himself during his earlier appearances on this show.

The show airs from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcast audio will be available later.

His public statement follows this earlier photograph of Jesse Cheng.

Jesse Cheng at a happier time in 1999. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 1999.

Statement released today by Jesse Cheng:

I'm writing this statement to respond to a number of accusations made about me in various media outlets in the last week. Initially, I did not feel it was appropriate to comment because I was trying to defend the interests and privacy of all the students involved, including my former partner. I now feel like I have no choice but to explain fully what occurred.

I am innocent of all accusations made. These accusations have been extremely painful for me, especially because I have tried to acknowledge the privileges that I have as a man and support gender equality issues throughout my college career. It is work that is essential to my identity, and I would never engage in behavior that would compromise those values.

My former partner and I were in a committed relationship for almost a year. Near the end of the year, it was clear that the relationship was not working out, and I initiated the break up.

Afterward, we agreed to remain friends. We saw each other three times after the relationship ended, all three times we engaged in varying levels of consensual physical contact, none of which was forced or coerced, none of which was intercourse. The first time she invited me to be her date to a UCLA graduate school event. The next week, on Oct. 3, the night that would become the source of the accusations against me, I invited her over for dinner at my apartment in Irvine. That night, although we we engaged in kissing, all contact was consensual and we did not have sex. Afterward, we ate dinner at my apartment and watched a movie.

A week after this visit, she called me, and accused me of sexually assaulting her the week before. The phone conversation lasted for hours. My reaction during the phone call was that her description of events did not happen. In the following weeks, I would get as many as 50 calls a day from her. The amount of phone calls became extremely stressful and disruptive.

During the time of these phone calls, she requested I meet her personally at her apartment. I visited her apartment two weeks after Oct. 3. During that visit, she initiated and engaged physical intimacy. It was the third time we met after the break up, and a few weeks after the night she had claimed I behaved inappropriately.

The phone calls continued, and began to have a serious toll on my well-being. She demanded that I write e-mail apologies to her, and specifying exact language that she wanted to see in those e-mails. Exhausted, I sent out those e-mails. What I said in those e-mails are not true and did not reflect my behavior, but I thought that by adopting her language and meeting the standards she set out, we could both move forward. I regret lying to her in those e-mails, and it was a mistake to capitulate just so she would stop calling me incessantly.

On Nov. 4, the police arrested me on campus and took me back to the police department for questioning. We spoke about the relationship, that particular night and the entire situation. Three hours later, the police released me, and the DA declined to press any charges.

I know this last week has been extremely difficult for the campus community. It has been difficult for me and my friends. I would ask people to please thoughtfully consider both sides of a story and the entire context of a relationship before jumping to conclusions or making assumptions. I do not know why my former partner has chosen to make these accusations or make them at this time. I loved her very much, and I really wish for her the best in the future.

Egypt's Revolution in Historical Context

2011-02-14T13:23:00.001-08:00

Updated 15 February 2011: To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:
.
See also Prof. Makdisi's piece in Huffington Post: "Egypt: Why Is The United States Afraid Of Arab Democracy?".

The successful revolt in Egypt has laid bare the limits of U.S. attempts to impose its will over the Middle East. For the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with Prof. Ussama Makdisi, a Rice University professor and the first holder of the Arab American Education Foundation Chair of Arab Studies there.

We also expect to provide listeners with a news update on the street protests in Yemen by UCI sociology graduate student Dana Moss of the Yemen Peace Project. She last appeared on Subversity last Monday.

Makdisi is the author of the new, critical analysis of U.S. interference in the region, Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001, New York: Public Affairs, 2010.

According to his Rice profile: "His previous books include Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008), which was the winner of the 2008 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association, the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and a co-winner of the 2009 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize given by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Makdisi is also the author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California Press, 2000) and co-editor of Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Indiana University Press, 2006). He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East. Among his major articles are “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History” which appeared in the Journal of American History and “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity” both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. Professor Makdisi has also published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and in the Middle East Report.

"By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, his work counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world.

"As a professor at Rice, Makdisi is interested in encouraging a new transnational approach to the study of American foreign relations as well as a more contextual understanding of the modern Middle East. He is also interested in new scholarship on overseas missionary work."

Subversity airs from 5-6 p.m. today on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. He is interviewed by show host Daniel C. Tsang. A podcast will be posted later.

Beyond Egypt: Yemen Erupts in Protest

2011-02-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

Updated 8 February 2011: To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:

February 3, 2011 protests poster.

The ripple effect from the Tunisian turmoil has reached not only Egypt but also other states in the region, including Yemen. For the next edition of KUCI's Subversity program we look into the evolving situation in Yemen, as protesters and the state deal with the fast-changing political situation.

We talk with two activists, one a graduate student from UC Irvine, who collaborated in co-founding the Yemen Peace Project.

Dana Moss is a graduate student at UCI's PhD program in Sociology where she studies comparative social movements, social change and the Middle East. She received her B.A. from Loyola College in Maryland and an interdisciplinary M.A. from Villanova University with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Studies. She spent the summer of 2009 studying Arabic at the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies with Will Picard, and co-founded the Yemen Peace Project with him and two other colleagues, Aliya Naim (UGA) and Tiffany Aurora. Dana has been researching women's issues, social movement organizations, and politics in Yemeni society for several years.

William Picard is a political and historical researcher and analyst based here in Orange County. He has spent a decade studying Southwest Asia, with a particular focus on the modern history and current affairs of Yemen. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Arabic, Persian, and Pashto, and completed a double major in Modern Middle East Studies and Southwest Asian Conflict Studies. In late 2009 he helped found the Yemen Peace Project (YPP) with Dana, a peace advocacy organization that seeks to educate the American public about Yemen, advocate for peaceful and constructive foreign policy, and facilitate communication between Yemenis and Americans. He directs the YPP’s research and public education efforts, manages the organization’s Twitter activity, and writes frequently for the Directors’ Blog.

They will be interviewed by Daniel C. Tsang, Subversity show host.

The show airs from Monday, 7 February, 2011 from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, Calif., and is simulcast via kuci.org. A podcast will be posted later.

Grand Jury Investigation of UCI Protesters Gives Lie To UCI's Commitment to Free Speech

2011-01-31T13:50:00.000-08:00

Updated 11 February, 2011: 100 UCI faculty sign letter against criminalizing campus protests.

Updated 4 February 2011: Conspiracy Charges are brought by DA against Irvine 11: LA Times blog entry.

Updated 1 February 2011: To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:
There is now a petition online against criminalizing the student protests: petition.

Despite UC Irvine's professed commitment to the First Amendment [watch UCI video above on Free Speech], troubling recent signs indicate that the heavy hand of the law is coming down on student protesters on campus, reinforcing UCI's new reputation as a new site of student resistance (and repression).

A criminal pretrial for 19 UCI students who staged a labor protest last year is imminent (March 7, 2011) while a grand jury has apparently been empaneled to investigate the activities of UCI's Muslim Student Union.

For this evening's edition of Subversity, we talk with Carol A. Sobel, a SantaMonica- based civil rights attorney for six MSU students and former students who were called in January 2011 to testify before the Orange County grand jury investigating, apparently, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor! One, a UCI student, was subpoenaed outside a classroom. The MSU was suspended during Fall Quarter 2010 for an incident relating to protests during the talk given by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last year on campus. Even UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who appeared on Air Talk on KPCC late last week with Carol Sobel, agreed that criminal charges should not be pursued. All this crackdown on free speech makes one wonder about UCI's real commitment to the First Amendment. Is it all just talk?

To listen to Carol Sobel and show host Daniel C. Tsang on KUCI discussing the ramifications of this widening legal tangle facing UCI students, listen to Subversity this evening at 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California. The show is also simulcast via kuci.org at the same time.

Full disclosure: Carol Sobel was one of the show host's attorneys when he successfully sued the CIA for spying on him.

Sexual Minorities To March Again at Tet Parade on Bolsa

2011-01-24T14:29:00.000-08:00

Updated 1 February 2011: To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:

A year after participating in the first such Tet parade on Bolsa at in Westminster, a contingent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese plan to march again.

We talk again to Gina Masequesmay, from CSU Northridge, about the planned march and whether or not this year's event, slated for 9:00-noon on 5 February, is happening with less controversy than the previous year.

The organizers also plan to have panel discussion from 2-3:30 pm at the Nguoi Viet Daily News Community Room, 14771 Moran St. Westminster, CA 92683.

The show airs from 5-6 p.m. today on 24 January 2011 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and More

2011-01-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

On this federal holiday commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we bring you portions of his speech at Riverside Church in 1967 a year before his assassination where he spoke out against the Vietnam War. He linked racism, poverty, and militarism.

The program comes from Making Contact, the National Radio Project: Beyond the Dream: MLK and the Anti-War Movement, which first aired in 2003.

We also air another Making Contact program, where Harvard law prof. Charles Ogletree talks about the arrest of Harvard prof. Henry Louis Gates that ended up eventually with the famous "beer summit" at the White House. Ogletree has written a new book, “The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America.” The Making Contact program, The Presumption of Guilt: Charles Ogletree on the Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., was first recorded by the National Radio Project at the African American Art & Culture Complex of San Francisco, on October 21st, 2010.

Our thanks to National Radio Project for permission to air their programs.

The Subversity show airs from 5-6 p.m. today on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Remembering KUCI DJ Jessica Hoke

2011-01-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

Update: Due to unforseen circumstances, this program was not re-aired.

Beginning the new KUCI Winter Season 2011 on a somber note locally, Subversity again remembers KUCI DJ Jessica Hoke (left). We air the first hour or so of the memorial service held 10 December 2010 on the Gateway Plaza below Langson Library at UC Irvine.

Subversity show, a KUCI public affairs program, airs on Monday, 10 January 2011, from 5-6 p.m. on 88.9 FM, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

The most recent report on the memorial service appeared in the New University:
Memorial Held for Hoke.

See also other articles on Hoke under her show name, "The Exposure", on the KUCI Full-text Archive.

Musical Interlude with Award-winning UCI Student Wan Yeung on the Pipa

2011-01-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

Subversity, a KUCI radio public affairs program, kicks off the new year with a musical interlude and airs a live performance by an award-winning UCI student musician specializing in the Chinese string instument, Pipa.

Currently a guitar major at University of California, Irvine, Wan Yeung (Yeung Ngai Wan) began playing the Pipa when he was 12 while living in Hong Kong. By the age of 18, he was honored as the champion of the Student Chinese Instrumentalists in Hong Kong. The following year (2007) he received an award for being the champion of the Hong Kong Student Pipa soloists.

Wan recently won a gold medal in the Amateur Adult Category at the 2010 Chinese Instrument International Competition U.S.A held at California State University, San Jose.

At UC Irvine's School of Music, he is a recipient of The Regents’ Scholarship as well as The Edna Helen Beach Scholarship.

Wan’s first CD of traditional Chinese Pipa music, “Restoration”, was released in late 2009.

He has acquired quite a following in the local Asian community and performs often when a Chinese lute soloist is requested. For more information about his music, see his web site.

The Subversity radio show airs from 5-6 p.m. Monday 3 January 2011 on KUCI, 88.9fm in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. The show host is Daniel C. Tsang.

Ryan Davis Remembers Jessica Hoke

2010-12-13T14:52:00.001-08:00

Ryan Davis (center) passes out UCI PD citations for "failure to disperse" after 24 February 2010 sit-in. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

For UCI student Ryan Davis, the past two weeks must have been simply awful. Last week, his roommate, recent KUCI DJ Jessica Hoke died from injuries sustained when she was hit by debris from a three-car accident in Costa Mesa as she was walking to work at H&M in South Coast Plaza.

The day before this past Friday's memorial service at UC Irvine -- the Orange County District Attorney's Office charged Davis -- and 18 others -- with misdemeanor counts stemming for a sit-in outside UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake's Office back in February this year. Those arrested potentially face up to one year in jail.

Labor protesters outside UCI Chancellor's office. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010

As Davis recounted at the UCI memorial for Jessica Hoke Friday 10 December 2010 on Gateway Plaza next to Langson Library, he had asked Jessica if she would participate in the sit-in, to which Jessica responded, she could go take pictures. Jessica, as many noted at the memorial, was a talented photographer. Davis called her his "personal photographer".

Davis, who wore Jessica's clothes to the memorial, told the 200 gathered that Jessica was wonderfully accepting of his gayness and the two had become close friends, a "partner" he "loved". They became each other's confidant.

The 19 charged -- 15 UCI students and 4 supporters -- face a December 28, 2010 arraignment, effectively eliminating their holiday break. Most of those arrested are represented by Jacob White, an AFSCME 3299 attorney, given they were participating in a labor protest at the time.

Davis was among the student actiists who appeared on the 1 March 2010 Subversity show covering the protest. The February 24 protest was also picked up by Huffington Post.

We'll follow-up on the memorial service and arrests of the 19 on today's edition of Subversity on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, at 5 pm -- it is also simulcast via kuci.org.

Louis Wolf on Investigative Reporting Before WikiLeaks

2010-12-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

Updated 12/7/10, 11:21 AM: To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:

Before there was WikiLeaks there was CounterSpy (1973-1984) and
CovertAction Information Bulletin (later Covert Action Quarterly), which ran from 1978-2005.

These alternative magazines exposed U.S. government shenanigans, sometimes relying on leaked documents.

On KUCI's Subversity show today, we talk with the co-founder of CovertAction, Louis Wolf, who also co-edited the massive CIA-focused missives, Dirty Work (with former CIA operations officer Philip Agee, 1978) and Dirty Work 2 (1979).

We discuss with Wolf how his and Agee's work at exposing U.S. imperialism and covert action was a pioneering prelude to WikiLeaks today.

Agee, like WiikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, was hounded from country to country, a scenario recounted in Agee's biographical "On the Run" (1987). A frequent guest, Wolf last appeared on Subversity in January 2008 when we aired a tribute to Agee.

The show airs today, 6 December 2010, from 5-6 p.m. Pacific time on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Cal State LA Asian American & Asian Studies Program Faces Threat

2010-11-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Cal State LA Asian American & Asian Studies Program Threatened

In a sign of the times, ethnic studies programs have to fight for their survival, making some wonder if California is turning
into an Arizona battle zone.

A dean at the multi-ethnic California State University, Los Angeles, ahead of a academic program review, has arbitrarily
decided he wants to suspend its Asian American and Asian Studies Program. He did say he would meet up with faculty Monday 29
November to hear what they had to say, but the dozens of faculty members who showed up, from a diverse group of ethnicities
and disciplines -- as well as concerned students carrying signs declaring AAAS = Diversity etc, were confronted with an
unreceptive dean, who would only promise to get word back by Christmas.

On KUCI's Subversity program an hour or so after the meeting Monday, ChorSwang Ngin, the Anthropology professor who chairs
the Asian American and Asian Studies program told show host Daniel C. Tsang she was impressed and gratified by the turnout,
revealing the University had never shown much commitment to the program over the years, and that enrollment was "growing". She
suggested that to "suspend" the program meant its end, which would be quite contrary to the University's commitment to
diversity.

To listen to the podcast of this program, click on:

In Memoriam: Roger B. Berry, Consummate Librarian

2010-11-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Roger Berry, an esteemed, retired colleague, passed away this past summer. My friend and retired colleague Eddie Yeghiayan pens the following tribute, with thanks to the Berry family.

An immaculately attired Roger Berry points to materials in UCI's Special Collections as Eddie Yeghiayan looks on. Photograph courtesy Eddie Yeghiayan.

Remembering Roger Berry
by Eddie Yeghiayan

Roger was an outstanding scholar, and at 16, was awarded a four-year scholarship to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. His roommate at the University was Jack Kevorkian, the advocate for assisted suicide. Roger earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in History from the University of Michigan. His specialty was Early American History, especially in the era of John Adams, during the Revolutionary War Period. He was drafted into the Army before he could complete his doctoral dissertation.

He became a History professor at Kent State University in Ohio and State University of New York in Potsdam, New York. He earned a masters degree in Library Science from the Library School at the University of California in Berkeley. Professor Robert Harlan of the UC Berkeley School of Information and a former Dean of the School and series editor for Bibliographies at the University of California Press became a close colleague of his, picking Roger as an anonymous reviewer of manuscripts for the Bibliographies series of the Press. Roger Berry was a masterful bibliographer himself.

He worked at the Newberry Library in Chicago before coming to the UC Irvine Libraries in 1969. He was at first a member of the Reference Department. He moved to the Special Collections Department when Elizabeth Karsher was Head, Evelyn Houston was the Assistant University Librarian and John Smith the University Librarian. Roger eventually became the Head of the Department through his retirement in 1991. He was succeeded as Head by Jackie Dooley in 1995.

In 1989 on the occasion of the Centennial of Orange County, Roger and Sylvester Klinicke, the cataloger of Special Collections, compiled and published, with the input of librarians in Orange County, a bibliography on the history of the county as a whole and its individual cities. The compilation would later win the Donald Pflueger Local History Award.

Roger enjoyed living for many years in an apartment on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach with an excellent view of the Pacific Ocean. Next door in the cove closer to the secluded beach area was the actress Bette Davis’ house with a large letter D on it. Once in a Laguna bar Roger met and conversed with the reclusive and camera-shy author Thomas Pynchon, who was bumming cigarettes from other patrons. Roger later saw him sitting on a bench waiting for a bus.

Roger was a fastidious and meticulous person whose prose style was as fine as any and he had mastered all the different areas of the materials which comprised the Special Collections Department of the University of California, Irvine Libraries and which he had developed for several decades. He substantively and unstintingly supported the research and publishing and teaching efforts of the UCI faculty in several academic departments, and countless visiting scholars to the Library.

Roger was proud to be selected as tenor soloist for the Army Corps presentation of Handel’s Messiah. He loved musical theater almost as much as he enjoyed playing his grand piano which he had moved from Michigan to his apartment in Laguna Beach. He knew the lyrics and could sing the songs of most Broadway musicals.

Roger was always an advocate of higher education. He urged family members to advance in life by taking classes and bettering themselves, while providing them with funds to purchase books and other school supplies.

Bibliography of Works by Roger Berry

Edited (with Wilma T. Donahue and James Rae, Jr). Rehabilitation of the Older Worker. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1953.

“John Adams: Two Further Contributions to the Boston Gazette, 1766-1768.” The New England Quarterly (March 1958), 31(1):90-99.

Review of Arthur M. Schlesinger’s Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (October 1958), 82(4):481-483.

“The Centennial Bibliography of Orange County History.” Journal of Orange County Studies (1989), 2:41-42.

“Publications of the Faculty and Staff, University of California, Irvine, 1969-1970.” 90pp.

Centennial Bibliography of Orange County, California. Santa Ana, California: Orange County Historical Society, 1989. xvii, 339pp. Compiled by Roger B. Berry and Sylvester E. Klinicke. Edited by Shirley E. Stephenson and Roger B. Berry. Managing editor, Louise Booth.

“The focus of this bibliography is on the history of Orange County and its communities, including the history of the region before the official creation of Orange County in 1889. The listings offer extensive coverage of the political, social, economic, religious, intellectual, and artistic aspects of Orange County life. In addition, they record studies of significance for Orange County in anthropology and in the natural and physical sciences.

"The materials listed in the bibliography fall into several main categories: books and pamphlets; great registers of voters; city and county directories to the mid-1960s oral histories; theses, dissertations, and substantial research reports; special newspaper editions; selected documents (federal, state, regional, county, and city); and selected periodical articles drawn from over 230 scholarly and popular journals. Categories of materials omitted with occasional exceptions include fiction, poetry, cookbooks, yearbooks, annual reports, most serial publications, most documents, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Although a few publications of 1989 are recorded, the intensive effort to identify and report, appropriate listings ended with works published in 1988." – From the Introduction.

Acknowledgments & References to Roger Berry

Adams, John. Papers of John Adams. Volume I, p. 59. Robert J. Taylor, editor; Mary-Jo Kline, associate editor; Gregg L. Lint, assistant editor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977-

Bruccoli, Matthew J. and Richard Layman, eds., Dictionary of Literary Biography. Documentary Series: An Illustrated Chronicle. Vol Six: Hardboiled Mystery Writers: Raymond Chandler Dashiell Hammett Ross Macdonald, p. xi. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1989.

Bruccoli, Matthew J. Ross Macdonald, p. xiv. HBJ Album Biographies. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, p. xxiv. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Daly, Ann. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America, p. xvi. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

Folkenflik, Robert, ed., The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation, p. vii. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993..

Horsfield, John. The Art of Leadership in War: The Royal Navy from the Age of Nelson through the End of World War II, p. ix. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Hubert, Renée Riese. Surrealism and the Book, p. xvii. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Lee, Ellen K. Newport Bay: A Pioneer History, p. ii. Foreword by Don C. Meadows. Fullerton: Sultana Press [for] Newport Beach Historical Society, 1973.

Lee, Penny. The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction, p. xi. (Amsterdam Studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, Series III. Studies in the history of the language sciences, v. 81.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1996.

Marder, Arthur. From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in War and Peace, 1915-1940, p. ix. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Nolan, Tom. Ross Macdonald: A Biography, p. 419. New York: Scribner, 1999. Paperback edition, Scottsdale, Arizona: Poisoned Pen Press, 2001.

Sawyer, Richard C. To Make a Spotless Orange: Biological Control in California, p. xiii. The Henry A. Wallace Series in Agricultural History and Rural Life. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1996.

Schwab, Richard N., with the collaboration of Walter E. Rex, with a study of the contributors to the Encyclopédie by John Lough. Inventory of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, p. 1. (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, v. 223) Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire; Banbury, Oxfordshire: The Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution, Oxford, 1984.

Obituary

Roger B. Berry. South Branch, Michigan, 11 May 1929 – Midland, Michigan, 21 August 2010

Roger Berry, 81, of Mt. Pleasant, formerly of Irvine, California passed away on Saturday, August 21, 2010, at MidMichigan Health Center in Midland. Roger was born on May 11, 1929 in South Branch, the son of Ivor and Grace Purks Berry.

Funeral services for Roger were held on Wednesday, August 25, at 11 a.m. from the Helms Chapel of Rowley Funeral Home with Pastor Ronald C. Wigan of the Caro Baptist Church officiating. Interment followed at 2 p.m. in the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery in South Branch.

Roger is survived by his two sisters, Geraldine (Robert) Dillon of Kirkland, Washington and Gloria (Russell) Downhour of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan; and many nieces and nephews and their children. He was preceded in death by his parents, Ivor and Grace Berry; siblings, Ruth (Berry) Murphy, Lawrence Berry, Ivor Berry, Jr., Lois Elaine (Berry) Schwartz, and Shirley Grace Berry.

At the end of April 2010 Roger suffered stroke-like symptoms on his right side affecting his walking, hand movements and speech. Roger's cause of death was a malignant brain tumor.

We are thankful for the efforts of nephews, Alan Schwartz and Jeffrey Berry, who flew to California to bring him back to Michigan; Philip Berry, who cleared out his condo in Irvine, California to his own home; nieces, Gloria (Troy) LaLone and Linda (Dale) Stevenson, who kept a loving, caring vigil by his side during his last days; and Dr. Stephen Schwartz, who led a Scripture reading during his last moments as he slipped away peacefully. – Adapted from the obituary and information from the Berry family.

UC Student Regent Jesse Cheng to Tell Why He Came Out

2010-10-24T22:52:00.000-07:00

Updated 10/25/10 9:44 AM: To listen to the 25 October 2010 show, click here:
. Updated: 10/24/10 11:27 PM adding this photo. Jesse Cheng (right) comes out. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

University of California Student Regent Jesse Cheng is slated to appear on KUCI's Subversity show Monday evening to talk about his decision to openly declare his queer sexuality last Wednesday at a speak-out and vigil in the wake of the many gay teen suicides across the United States.

The Subversity show airs from 5-6 p.m. Monday, 25 October 2010 at KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcasts will be made available here and on various sites, including iTunes shop, sometime after the airing. Show host Daniel C. Tsang will be interviewing Jesse, an Asian American Studies senior at UC Irvine, and a voting member of the UC Board of Regents.

Our report on his coming out has spread across the continent and across the Pacific to China. It was picked up by the Huffington Post and news outlets as diverse as the Harvard student newspaper, Harvard Crimson, and U.S.-based Chinese daily, Qiao Bao or China Press. The account in the pro-China newspaper translated the blog report into Chinese while adding background information on Jesse Cheng and his family. That account was in turn picked up by the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, Ta Kung Pao, as well as other media outlets in China, including China News.

Our Wednesday blog report was viewed some 1600 times whereas the Huffington Post story, posted the next day, has been ~~viewed~~twittered at least 1300 times

UC Student Regent Jesse Cheng Comes Out

2010-10-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Jesse Cheng campaigning on campus. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2009.

Updated 10/26/10 9:24 PM: To listen to the 25 October 2010 KUCI Subversity show interview with Jesse Cheng, click here:
.
Updated 10/25/10 6:33 PM adding corrections.
Updated 10/24/10 11:26 PM: Jesse Cheng to appear on KUCI's Subversity show Monday 25 October 2010 at 5 p.m.; news from this blog travels to China. See subsequent blog entry.

In an emotional, heart-felt address, University of California Student Regent Jesse Cheng, a Chinese American senior from Cupertino, Wednesday evening October 20, 2010, came out as gay. Also identifying himself as bisexual and a "queer Asian American", Cheng, an Asian American studies major at UC Irvine, related what, over the years, led him to this very public declaration.

Years ago, apparently before he attended UCI, he had told his "homie" he liked men but his friends had beaten him up as a result, trying, he recalled, to beat the gayness out of him. He marched at his first gay pride march in San Francisco, but after his mother saw him on television, he denied it was him. At UC Irvine on Wednesday, he explained he "lived for" his mother and could not let him down. After his father found a rainbow flag he had collected, ~~Cheng told his dad~~, his dad, with whom he was "not close," [CORRECTED] told him that he liked the colors. His dad always was watching his back, he told me later. He also contemplated committing suicide. All this history of denial was the backdrop to his dramatic, unexpected coming out during a dark Wednesday evening at the UC Irvine flag poles during the University's speak-out and candlelight vigil against homophobic bigotry and hate in the wake of the suicide of gay Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi last month.

Jesse Cheng (right) comes out. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. Updated: 9:32 AM October 21, 2010 adding this photo.

An emotional Cheng related how he had shared with then-Student Regent Jesse Bernal, the first openly gay Student Regent, after an earlier wave of anti-gay incidents around the UCs, that they should come out together, believing that such hatred should not happen at the UC. But Cheng didn't dare come out then. [CORRECTED: He told me later he did make a public statement as a bisexual, but spoke softly and there was no reaction.] Bernal was keynote speaker at a Harvey Milk Day at UCSC's Kresge College in May this year.

Cheng ended his talk to warm, sustained applause among the hundred or so UC Irvine students, faculty and staff listening to him.

A personal note: I have heard Jesse Cheng many times give inspiring, progressive speeches but this was the first time I felt he wasn't speaking as an activist. In fact, he spoke from the heart. Several times he almost broke down in tears. I had always known he was "one of us" -- another Asian American activist -- but this evening I was happy he was really one of us -- another queer Asian American. I went up to him and embraced him -- whispering into his ears -- "That was really powerful".
-- Daniel C. Tsang.

P.S. Jesse Cheng appeared on my KUCI Subversity show 27 July 2009.

A Call for Justice, Not Vengeance

2010-10-20T13:45:00.001-07:00

An activist group has called for justice, not vengeance, in the case of the Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi (left) who was driven to suicide. See the press release here:

QUEERING THE AIR
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY
ruqueer2@gmail.com

Wednesday, October 19, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE IN CLEMENTI SUICIDE:
Rutgers LGBTQ Community Response to Tyler Clementi¹s Suicide,
March and Rally Planned for October 28

The disappearance of freshman Tyler Clementi from campus and then news
stories about his September 22, 2010 suicide shocked the Rutgers community
and many around the country. Two other Rutgers students, Dharun Ravi and
Molly Wei, face serious criminal charges in connection with the death.

Under the banner of Justice Not Vengeance, Queering the Air will march and
rally on Wednesday, October 28, 2010. This action will decry the rush to
judgment of Ravi and Wei, the racist and xenophobic vitriol used against
them, and raise larger issues about homophobia, transphobia, and lack of
safety on campus.

Rutgers¹ President, Richard McCormick says, "I believe we did all we could
and we did the right thing.² We strongly disagree. Two students are being
scapegoated for the failure of the university to provide a safe environment
for Rutgers¹ diverse community. We continue to demand answers and action on
long-standing complaints about the campus climate for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and other
historically-marginalized populations.

Within days of Clementi¹s death, Garden State Equality, a statewide New
Jersey LGBT advocacy group, demanded they be prosecuted for hate crimes, and
given ³the maximum possible sentence.² Campus Pride, a national group for
LGBT college students, has pressed Rutgers for the pair¹s ³immediate
expulsion² with no mention of an investigation or disciplinary hearing.
18,000 people endorse an online group seeking even more serious charges
manslaughter. Ravi and Wei have become a foil for anti-Asian racism calling
for their ³return to their countries,² and ascribing homophobia to their
cultures as if homophobia were not deeply ingrained in the culture of the
US.

The overwhelming response has been a disproportionate and discriminatory
call for the criminal justice system to act swiftly and harshly. Such
public outrage often fuels vengeance and inequality rather than just
actions. We urge that the principles of fairness and due process be
honored. Passing judgment before there has been time for an investigation,
facts discovered and careful consideration is reckless.

While we do not condone the actions that Ravi and Wei are alleged to have
taken, neither can we stand aside and watch the Rutgers community lay the
entire blame for Clementi¹s death on two eighteen-year-olds. It is
especially ugly that comments about the pair have cast aspersions on their
race, ethnicity, and citizenship. We note the criminal justice system has
historically been tainted by such prejudice.

Ignorance of the lives of others¹ often leads us to physically and
emotionally wound them. This tragedy must be seen as a cause for
reflection, education, reconciliation and reparation. By doing so we honor
the Clementi family¹s ³hope that [their] personal loss will serve as a call
for compassion, empathy and human dignity.²

Queering the Air is a queer-centric social justice organization in New
Brunswick, NJ. We believe that to confront heterosexism and transphobia, we
must also fight racism, sexism, poverty, and ableism. We use lobbying,
protest, and non-violent direct action to achieve our goals. We are
consciously not Rutgers affiliated, but composed of students, faculty,
staff, and community residents, working together to build a safer campus and
a more inclusive community. Queering the Air was formed in Spring 2010.

* * * * *

This Queering the Air statement has been endorsed by the following
organizations: Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) (New York,
NY); LLEGO (The LGBTQQIA People of Color Union at Rutgers); Rutgers
University Asian American Leadership Cabinet; Members of the Collective for
Asian American Scholarship, Rutgers University; Rutgers University BAKA -
Students United For Middle Eastern Justice; and the Rutgers University
Women¹s Center Coalition.

Scholars Tackle Global Yaoi Phenomenon

2010-10-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 18 October 2010 show, click here:
.

A new scholarly work on the globalization of Yaoi has come out and KUCI's Subversity program features an interview with its co-editor and a contributor to this pioneering collection. The Yaoi phenomenon, part of a larger Boys Love visual depiction, features teen male romantic and sexual relationships, originally geared, in Japan, at a female readership. As it spread around the world (and the new book includes a chapter on Indonesia's reception to it), one wonders about its effect on how its readers -- now male and female, young and older -- view same-sex relationships in the real world.

Mark McHarry is an independent scholar. With Antonia Levi and Dru Pagliassotti, he edited a newly published collection of essays, Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre (McFarland). He has contributed to books, scholarly journals and critical popular publications, including Mangatopia (ABC-Clio); LGBT Identity and Online New Media (Routledge); Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television (Palgrave Macmillan); Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context; Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge); Journal of Homosexuality; Z magazine; and Gay Community News. He has presented at conferences in the U.S. and Europe, including the Popular Culture Association, Modern Language Association, Textual Echoes (Umeå University, Sweden), and, this fall, at Écritures du corps (University of Paris). He is researching the life of author-inventor Hiraga Gennai.

Hope Donovan authored the chapter "Gift Versus Capitalist Economies: Exchanging Anime and Manga in the U.S." in Boys' Love Manga. With a double major in English and Drawing, Donovan's only logical career path was comics. Having attained this unlikely goal through legitimate employment editing Japanese and Korean manga as well as developing original series for TOKYOPOP, Donovan fulfilled her dreams by editing one hentai, one yuri, and one yaoi series simultaneously. She has contributed short manga to Happy Yaoi Yum Yum (Yaoi Press) and Yuri Monogatari (ALC). Donovan currently is a freelance manga editor, English adaptor, layout artist, and creator.

Tune in for a stimulating discussion on this global phenomenon that is invading urban and suburban bookstores.

Subversity airs from 5-6 p.m.today, 18 October, 2010, on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Sophia Law Looks Back on Art and Vietnamese Detention Camps in Hong Kong

2010-10-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 11 October 2010 show, click here:
.

In the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with Lingan University Visual Studies Prof. Sophia Law (right) visiting from Hong Kong.

We'll ask her about her project documenting and analyzing some 800 pieces of artwork originally collected by Garden Streams, a local community project, from the Hong Kong detention camps of Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese refugees in the 1980s and early 1990s. How did she become interested in the issue, and what does she hope will come out of it?

Visiting UCI Libraries this week to research the UCI Special Collections & Archive's Southeast Asian Archive collection of materials, including a several hundred pieces of artwork and publications, from Hong Kong refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s, Prof. Law will give two public lectures, Wednesday 13 October 2010 at noon at Room 570, UCI's Langson Library, on narratives of trauma in the artwork in the camps, and Thursday 14 October 2010 at Nguoi Viet community room on Moran Street (north of Bolsa Ave. at end of dead-end street) in Westminster at 7 p.m. on Hong Kong's reaction to the influx of boatpeople several decades ago.

Artwork from Whitehead Detention Camp, Hong Kong, courtesy of Garden Streams

To read more about Prof. Law’s research, see her 2008 essay, “Art in Adversity”.

Prof. Law was also interviewed in Nguoi Viet prior to her visit. [Rough translation from Google]

Prof. Law and Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang first met in Hong Kong in connection with a 2-day October 2009 workshop held at the City University of Hong Kong Southeast Asia Research Centre that brought together scholars on the Chinese/Vietnamese diaspora. The two are among those contributing chapters to a new collection of essays, The Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora: Revisiting the Boatpeople in Hong Kong to be published next year by Routledge, edited by Yuk-Wah Chan of City University.

Subversity airs from 5-6 p.m. Pacific Time on 11 October 2010 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via http://kuci.org.

From UCI Undergrad to Green Party Candidate for U.S. Senate: Duane Roberts

2010-09-26T13:48:00.001-07:00

Update 7:10 pm 27 September 2010: To listen to the September 27, 2010 show, click here:
.

For the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with third party candidate for U.S. Senate, Duane Roberts (left), of the Green Party and a UCI social ecology alumnus.

We ask him why he's running, how his campaign differs from those of the two mainstream candidates, incumbent Barbara Boxer and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and does Roberts care if his campaign ends up getting someone with billionnaires' support, elected, although Boxer is currently leading in the polls? And does he believe third party candidacies have a better chance of being heard this election given voter dissatisfaction with the two-party system?

Duane Roberts most recently attacked the Democrats for being anti-immigrant.

Roberts will be interviewed by KUCI Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang.

The show airs Monday, 27 September 2010 from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.
Podcasts will be available subsequently.

Roberts' biographical statement, adapted from his campaign web site, follows:

Duane Roberts is a well-known community activist from Orange County, California who has been involved in a number of important struggles during the past decade. He was born of working-class parents in Burbank in 1967 who relocated to Anaheim for economic reasons in the early 1970s where he has been ever since. As a child, Roberts was mostly home-schooled but later attended a mix of public and private schools, earning a diploma from Fullerton Union High School.

He worked as a typesetter for several years before going back to school, taking classes at Fullerton College before enrolling at the University of California, Irvine. While at UCI, Roberts studied drug policy, white collar and government crime, police behavior and elite deviance and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology, Law and Society in 1997.

In November 2000, he ran for one of two seats on the Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees, winning approximately 7,129 votes. He was the first Green Party candidate running in a non-partisan race to ever receive the endorsement of the Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

As a community activist, Roberts has been a defender of immigrant rights, a critic of police misconduct and abuse, and has even exposed political corruption. In 2003, he helped organize what then was one of the biggest anti-war demonstrations in Orange County since the Vietnam War at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. Roberts has been involved in many demonstrations and marches and has used his extensive knowledge of police behavior to protect the civil rights and liberties of protesters.

Between 2006 and 2008, Roberts was publisher of the Orange Coast Voice, a monthly community newspaper that circulated 15,000 copies in Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and surrounding areas. The paper is edited and now published by one-time KUCI Public Affairs host, John Earl.

Roberts is a longtime member of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Anaheim and has been elected to serve on its Board of Trustees three times.

Roberts is single and has no children.

He still resides in the same working-class neighborhood he grew up in.

dan

Orange County Register's Series on Immigration and California

2010-09-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Updated: 6:06 PM September 21, 2010: To listen to the September 20, 2010 show, click here:
.

Updated: 10:44 PM September 19, 2010: with info. on KDMC's workshop on using data to report stories.

On the next edition of Subversity, broadcasting at 5 p.m. Monday, 20 September, 2010, on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and simulcast via kuci.org, we talk with Orange County Register reporter Ronald Campbell, the author of a heavily sourced and data-based four-part series on Immigration and California currently being published in his paper.

We discuss with him the origin of the idea for the series, the response from readers, and what he has learned from all this. The series began September 12 in the paper (September 10 online) and runs every Sunday since (and previous Friday online) until October 3, 2010.

Focusing on immigrant labor, undocumented immigration, how immigrants make life easier for the rich, and policy reform, one unique feature has been its footnoting like an academic paper, as well as the many data charts and graphics (mostly online), allowing readers to visually view the impact of immigration on this county and state.
The article also seeks to explain the numbers, using Public-Use Micro Sample data from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as, for historical data, I-PUMS, from the University of Minnesota's Population Studies Center. It also provides a short reading list. Explains OC Register editor Ken Brusic in a Note to readers: "We have also taken the unusual step of footnoting our stories so you can follow the chain of documents and numbers that led to our conclusions. Online you can view, download and analyze for yourself three dozen spreadsheets that help tell the economic story of immigration in California."

Ronald Campbell is an investigative reporter for The Orange County Register. He has published investigations on the buying and selling of human body parts as well as about penny stocks and hard-money lending. Two subjects of his investigations currently are in jail. In addition he has years of experience mining government data to shed light on social and economic issues as diverse as student achievement and home lending. Campbell took Knight Digital Media Center's April 2008 Technology Tools for Journalists Workshop, where reporters learn how to "report stories out of large data sets, use visualization and mapping tools to create different forms of narratives." 20 fellowships for reporters are available for the next workshop, on US census data, at UC Berkeley.

Ronald Campbell is interviewed by Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang, who curated the exhibit, "Immigrant Lives in 'The O.C.' & Beyond" at UC Irvine Libraries.

From UCI Film & Media Studies Student to Film Star in Vietnam

2010-09-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Update: To listen to the September 13, 2010 Subversity show with our interview with Kathy Uyen, click here:
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While working at UCI Libraries' multimedia resources center earlier this past decade, then student-assistant Kathy Nguyen, a double Film & Media Studies and Economics major, was fascinated with independent films and Asian American media. Just six years later, the San Jose-born California native would be catapulted to popular media fame as a movie star in her parents' native land, Vietnam, where she now lives.

We caught up with her the evening the film that has become Vietnam's biggest box office hit of the year opened in Orange County. She plays a starring role in Để Mai tính (Fool for Love) where class and wealth interfere with the quest for true love in authentic roles played by Kathy Uyen (her stage name) and Dustin Nguyen (of 21 Jump Street fame).

Set in the beach resort of Nha Trang, the comedy is directed by noted filmmaker Charlie Nguyen, who also stars as the hotel magnate who seeks the affection of an up and coming lounge singer, played by Kathy Uyen. Vietnamese actor Thai Hoa convincingly plays a flaming queen who falls for the love-struck worker played by Dustin Nguyen, despite the latter's confirmed heterosexuality. (The film shows the two men in a sauna together, dancing at a gay party, and kissing!)

In our conversation taped at Au Lac, the classy vegetarian restaurant on Brookhurst near the 405 Freeway, Kathy Nguyen reflects on her college days at UCI and how it prepared her for the film industry, and talks about the attraction and challenge of working in Vietnam's re-emerging film industry -- including starring in a Vietnamese-language role.

We air our conversation with Kathy Nguyen on the second half of the next Subversity show, airing on KUCI, 88.9 FM at 5:30 p.m. on 13 September 2010. The segment is also simulcast via kuci.org.

Fool for Love, which opened last Friday, continues at Edwards Westminster 10,6721 Westminster Blvd., Westminster, CA 92683 and at Regal Garden Grove 16,
9741 Chapman Ave., Garden Grove, CA 92841. The film is in Vietnamese with English subtitles. The film is being released at selected Vietnamese American enclaves nation-wide by Wave Releasing.

Kathy Uyen Nguyen [above] during our interview at Au Lac. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang

What the UC Pension Plan Proposed Changes Mean

2010-09-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Update: To listen to the September 13, 2010 Subversity show with our interview with Bob Samuels, click here:
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The University of California is currently proposing to offer a reduced pension plan for new hires joining UC after July 2013, while making current employees contribute more towards the plan.

One critic of the new proposals is UC-AFT president Bob Samuels, who has been blogging about it. His latest two blog entries state his position bluntly:
UC Offers New Pension Plan to Re-Distribute Wealth to the Top and Let the Great Pension Scare Begin.

We talk with Samuels about what he means during the first half of the next Subversity show on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, broadcasting Monday, 13 September 2010 at 5 p.m., with a simulcast on kuci.org. Show host is Daniel C. Tsang.

Quentin Lee on "The People I've Slept With"

2010-08-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the August 23, 2010 show with our interview with Director Quentin Lee, click here:
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On this evening's Subversity show, we interview independent director Quentin Lee, about his new film, "The People I've Slept With." A perrenial guest on our show, we'll ask him how he came up with his story line of a sex comedy starring Karin Anna Cheung as a woman who loves sex -- and then needs to figure out who the daddy is of her about-to-be-born baby.

Also making a grand appearance as her gay best friend is noted gay actor Wilson Cruz.

The show opens in Los Angeles' Laemmle Sunset 5 August 27.

The show airs from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is webcast simultaneously via http://kuci.org.
It will also be podcast.

Thanks for listening.

Searing Documentaries

2010-08-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

Update: To listen to the August 9, 2010 show with our interview with director Chico Colvard and with director Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, click here:
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For our next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airing this evening at 5-6 p.m. Pacific Time on KUCI, 88.9 FM and via the web at kuci.org, we talk with the directors of two new documentaries that tackle taboo topics.

In the first half hour we talk with Chico Colvard, director of "Family Affair," a daring and uncomfortable yet revealing look at incest within his biracial (white/African American) family. In a quest to explain to himself why it happened and why his three sisters (whom the father sexually violated) still hung out with their father, Colvard's 82-minute documentary makes some surprising revelations. The documentary seems to ask that we not divide those caught in this incestuous web as merely perpetrator and victims but something more complex.

Trailer: Trailer.

In the second hour, we talk with Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, whose "Quest for Honor" documentary takes a searing look at the historical phenomenon of "honor killings" - where females are routinely ostracized and even killed for violating traditional codes of conduct. The setting is Sulemaniyah, in Kurdistan, Iraq, where a local group, the Women's Media Center has joined forces with Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government to try to end this heinous practice. The 64-minute film is in Kurdish with English-language subtitles.

Trailer: Trailer

Both films are playing this week in New York City and Los Angeles:

QUEST FOR HONOR
NEW YORK - AUGUST 6 - 12 IFC CENTER
LOS ANGELES - AUGUST 13 - 19 ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD

FAMILY AFFAIR
LOS ANGELES - JULY 30 - AUGUST 6 ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD
LOS ANGELES - AUGUST 13 - 19 - IFC CENTER

Teamsters at UC Irvine

2010-07-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

To listen to the 26 July 2010 show, click here:
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After five weeks of audio from our archives, Subversity returned Monday 26 July 2010 with a show focusing on labor at UC Irvine. With the recent affiliation of the
clericals' union with the Teamsters, CUE has become CUE-IBT Local 2010, Division #9. CUE-IBT stands for Coalition of University Employees-International Brotherhood of the Teamsters.

We talked with its local president, Dianna Sahhar as well as its organizer, Ann Theurer, about why the union chose to affiliate with the Teamsters, and its implications. We also discussed what are ongoing issues as the union seeks a new contract.

The show aired on 26 July 2010 at 5 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM.

Adam Bereki on His Lawsuit vs. Huntington Beach Police Department

2010-06-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 14 June 2010 edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- On the next edition of KUCI's Subversity program, airing Monday 14 June 2010, we talk with Adam Bereki, author of Friendly Fire: The Illusion of Justice, his memoir about his fight against homophobic discrimination within the Huntington Beach Police Department.

We ask him why as a gay teenager in Orange County he wanted to be a cop in the first place and how he found peace after being consumed with his case, which ended up in an out-of-court 2.5 million-dollar settlement. In his book, he critiques the way police interact with residents and calls for law enforcement as well as a foreign policy, that is not based on violence.

A review of Bereki's book by Subversity's host in the Surf City Voice calls it a "stunning indictment of what the author perceived as the deep machismo, laced with homophobia, of the Surf City's police department."

The show airs from 5-6 p.m. on 14 June 2010 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Russell Curry on Visiting Gaza on a Peace and Aid Mission

2010-06-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 7 June 2010 edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- On the next edition of KUCI's Subversity program, we continue our focus on the Gaza in the wake of the Israeli military raid last week on the peace flotilla that resulted in nine deaths of peace activists. We talk with a UCI graduate and activist, Russell Curry (left, speaking at UCI's March 4, 2010 rally), who visited the Gaza last year on a separate peace mission.

Russell Curry is a musician, writer and peace activist born and raised in Rancho Cucamonga, California. A recent graduate of the University of California, Irvine, Russell holds a BS in Biological Sciences with a minor in African American Studies.

UCI students protest Israeli peace flotilla massacre.

Last summer he and over 200 other activists from the U.S. had the opportunity to go to the Gaza Strip as part of a humanitarian aid convoy that brought direly needed medical supplies to the people of Gaza in response to the 22-day massacre Israel wrought on Gaza from December 2008-January 2009.

Curry was last interviewed on Subversity on 28 February 2010 to discuss student protests at UCI with other Black Student Union activists. His March 4 speech was also aired on Subversity on 8 March, 2010. See his photo at the rally. He also spoke out on behalf of the Irvine 11; we aired those speeches on 29 March 2010.

KUCI's Subversity show, hosted by Daniel C. Tsang, airs from 5-6 p.m. 7 June 2010 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

S. Leo Chiang's Documentary on the Mobilization of Vietnamese Community in Versailles

2010-05-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 24 May 2010 edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- Hurricane Katrina, instead of just devastating the Vietnamese American community at the edge of New Orleans, galvanized the residents there into mobilizing against a potentially toxic dump site that the mayor imposed on them without consultation.

That mobilization - among young and old - members of the Vietnamese community, is well captured in a documentary by filmmaker S. Leo Chiang, "A Village Called Versailles" -- to air tomorrow on PBS stations nation-wide, as part of its Independent Lens series.

Earlier this month, the film screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, where it won the audience award.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, will feature an interview with Director Chiang this afternoon, from 5-6 p.m., on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, simulcast via kuci.org.

See: film web site.

Laura Poitras' The Oath; Gilbert G. Gonzalez & Vivian Price's Harvest of Loneliness

2010-05-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to the 17 May 2010 edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

The Oath

On today's edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we interview the directors of two important documentaries. In the first half-hour, we talk with Laura Poitras, about her latest documentary, The Oath, which features Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden's former bodguard; in the background in the film hovers Salim Hamdan, incarcerated at Guantanamo, the first man to face the controversial military tribunals, and who won at the U.S. Supreme Court only to see the rules changed in the middle of the "game".

Poitras' revealing documentary shows what attracted Abu Jandal, rehabilitated in Yemen's post-incarceration program -- it paid for his taxicab -- with Hamdan -- to join the jihad and Al-Queda. Hamdan, drawn to the charismatic Abu Jandal, went with him to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden invited the men to visit. The rest is history. The film also covers Hamdan's military trial, and Abu Jandal's cooperation with the FBI six days after 9/11 -- he was in prison in Yemen during 9/11.

Poitras' earlier film, My Country, My Country, about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, has been nominated for an OScar, Independent Spirit Award, and an Emmy. Her final film in this trilogy will focus on the 9/11 trials. She is currently working on the Guantanamo Project to collect documents and artifacts from Guantanamo Bay Prison.

The Oath opens in Los Angeles May 21, 2010.

Well of Loneliness: The Bracero Program

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Mexican nationals in tomato harvest, Muri Ranch on Roberts Island, San Joaquin Valley.
Photograph published in: California Annual Farm Labor Report, 1951. Sacramento: State of California, Farm Placement Service. Part of Immigrant Lives in 'the O.C.' & Beyond exhibit at UCI Libraries in 2008-2009.

In our second half-hour, we talk with film directors Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Vivian Price. The former is Professor Emeritus at UCI's Chicano/Latino Studies Department, and the latter, who obtained her Ph.D at UCI, is a professor at CSU Dominguez-Hills in interdisciplinary studies who has also made other documentaries on women and labor.

The two academics co-directed Harvest of Loneliness, a searing indictment of the bracero program that brought Mexicans as contract labor to work on farms in the the U.S., creating havoc in their homeland, where they had left their wives and children to fend for themselves. Despite contracts that promised much more, the men were paid peanuts and never got the promised health benefits nor death benefits for those who died under contract. The documentary ends with an analysis of the negatives impact current globalization initiatives have had on the lives of Mexicans.

Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program, makes its World Premiere Thusrday, May 20, 2010 at Humanities Instructional Building Romm 100, UC Irvine, as part of the Cosecha Laina series in the Latin American Film Festival, in association with the UCI Film and Video Center. A reception is at 6:15 p.m.; with screening at 7 p.m., with Q&A with the co-directors to follow. A film trailer is accessible via the film web site: Harvest of Loneliness.

We dedicate this show to the legacy of Tam Tran and Cinthya Felix, DREAM Act activists who tragically lost their lives in a car accident last Saturday.

Subversity airs from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. The film directors are interviewed by show host Daniel C. Tsang.

RIP: Tam Tran and Cinthya Felix, DREAM Act Activists

2010-05-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hear both activists speak out on this video.

UPDATED May 16: Statement from Brown University's Daily Herald. Also, OC Weekly blog.

A sense of sadness fills me this evening finding out the tragic deaths of Tam Ngoc Tran, 27, and Cinthya Nathalie Felix Perez, 26, two activists and UCLA alum who were killed when their car was hit by a pick-up truck in Trenton, Maine early this morning.

Tam Tran was pursuing her Ph.D at Brown University and had graduated from UCLA in 2006. An activist, she testified in Congress about the DREAM Act, and days later, her home was raided and her family was arrested by immigration authorities. CORRECTED: Her family had immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam via Germany, where she was born.

A budding filmmaker, she was an Armed with a Camera Fellow from Visual Communications, making the short documentary, "Lost and Found".

The 5-minute short was shown at last year's Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles. A VC profile of her by Lori Kido Lopez notes: "Tran first discovered her passion for filmmaking and activism as an undergraduate at UCLA, where she learned to make grassroots, guerrilla-style videos. Since she hadn't had the opportunity to learn any of the technical aspects of filmmaking, she jumped at the opportunity for mentorship and guidance under VC's Armed with a Camera program. As a Fellow in 2007, she was able to participate in workshops that taught her skills like cinematography and lighting, as well as share her treatment, rough cuts, and finished film with a cohort of like-minded young filmmakers."

Cinthya Felix had graduated from UCLA in 2007 with a degree in English and Spanish Literature and was attending Columbia University's School of Public Health. In a creative move, she set up a web site to help her raise the money to attend Columbia. Both were active in fighting to get undocumented students the right to graduate from university and remain in the United States.

Thanks to Fight On for background information.

The two activists' life and spirit will be celebrated at a UCLA memorial slated for Monday, 17 May from 3-5 p.m. at Charles E. Young Grand Salon in Kerckhoff Hall, UCLA. See Facebook event page.

Documentary "AOKI" on Asian American Black Panther Party co-founder

2010-05-03T10:16:00.001-07:00

Richard Aoki (left). Updated: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: . Technical difficulties precluded recording the entire show, however.

Not many people know that an Asian American radical helped start the Black Panther Party. That may now change with directors Ben Wang and Mike Cheng's documentary, AOKI, profiling the life of Richard Aoki, a militant Japanese American, interned as a kid in Topaz during WWII, who hung out with Black militants Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and was part and parcel of the Black Panther Party that formed out of the neighborhoods of Oakland, California, advocating self-determination for oppressed Blacks.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, talks with directors Wang and Cheng about their documentary on Richard Aoki, who was a radical student at Merritt College and UC Berkeley. He served as Field Marshall in the Black Panther Party, training its members to stand up against police abuse and police occupation of their community. Aoki also founded the Asian American Political Alliance at Berkeley and was active in the Third World Strike there. Aoki is the subject of an ongoing biographical project, Sumurai among Panthers, by UC Santa Barbara Prof. Diane Fujino, who appears in the documentary.

The Subversity interview airs 3 May 2010 from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast via kuci.org.

The documentary AOKI will show Tuesday, 4 May 2010 at 7 p.m. at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, screening at the Downtown Independent Theater, 251 South Main St (Between 2nd and 3rd Streets), Little Tokyo, Downtown Los Angeles.

DVD copies of AOKI are available from Eastwind Books. See link for more information including where to request institutional orders.

The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival closes Thursday 6 May 2010 with a screening of the Hong Kong film, "Bodyguards and Assassins" (Teddy Chan, director), at the ARATANI/JAPAN AMERICA THEATRE, JAPANESE AMERICAN CULTURAL COMMUNITY CENTER(A/JAT, JACCC PLAZA), 244 South San Pedro St., (Between 2nd and 3rd Streets), Little Tokyo, Downtown Los Angeles. The film depicts a plot to kill later Chinese Republic founder Sun Yat-sen in 1906 in Hong Kong. The real-life Sun actually attended my secondary school in Hong Kong before he overthrew the Ching dynasty.

Two Film Festivals: Interviews

2010-04-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

We're covering two film festivals this week -- the Newport Beach Film Festival, which began last Thursday highlighted by an after screening bash with Cirque du Soleil plus a Fashion Island fashion show -- and this Thursday's opening of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

On KUCI's Subversity radio program, we talk with two film directors 26 April 2010 (today): Miao Wang of Beijing Taxi, Quentin Lee of The People I've Slept With and with UCI graduate Ben Jarvis, active in Affirmation, which is profiled in 8: The Mormon Proposition.

Miao Wang directs Beijing Taxi, which profiles several cab drivers in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. She brings you the realities behind the glitz, glamor and hype for the Olympics as we visit with her cab drivers in their daily lives, on and off their jobs. Her film screens at the Asian Pacific Film Festival at the Directors Guild of America (DGA), 7920 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood this Sunday May 2 at 6:30 p.m.

Quentin Lee, a regular guest on this show, is a quirky and subversive independent filmmaker (such as his 0506HK, Ethan Mao, Drift, Shopping for Fangs [co-director]). In The People I've Slept With, Quentin Lee manages to poke fun at hetero and homosexual ONS (one night stands) while exploring the quest for LTR (long-term relationships), as well as marriage (gay and str8). The film features Karin Anna Cheung (Better Luck Tomorrow) as the polyamorous Angela (who wonders who is the father after she becomes pregnant) as well as Gabriel (the talented Wilson Cruz) as her gay best friend who is also sexually active. Screen legend James Shigeta (Flower Drum Song) also plays a role, as does model, director and actor Edward Gunawan, as Cruz's onscreen lover. Gunawan was interviewed on Subversity back on 31 March 2008. The film screens at the Asian Pacific Film Festival at DGA, 7920 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood this Saturday May 1 at 7 p.m.

Ben Jarvis, a 1994 graduate of UCI, has left the Latter Day Saints Church, and unlike those portrayed in the documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition, has had wonderful, supportive parents who welcomed him as their gay son and his partner as their son in law. His parents were NOT [corrected] among those Mormon families who contributed to California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages. 8: The Mormon Proposition screens at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Wednesday April 28, at 8:30 p.m. at Edwards Islands 3, Fashion Island.

Subversity airs 26 April 2010 at 5-6 p.m.on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is webcast simultaneously via kuci.org.

Among other upcoming films at the Newport Beach Film Festival is Woman Rebel, about a Maoist rebel's journey from revolution to the halls of Parliament in Nepal. That film screens at Edwards Island 2 in Fashion Island this Wednesday, April 28 at 3:30 p.m.

The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival opens Thursday April 29 at the DGA in West Hollywood, screening Au Revoir Taipei. There are two screenings: Opening night April 29 at 7 p.m. at the DGA; and Sunday May 2 at 10 a.m. at DGA.

Other films screening at Asian Pacific Film Festival this week include Lt. Watada by Freida Lee Mock, covering Lt. Ehren Watada's principled refusal to be sent to Iraq. That film screens with another Freida Lee Mock film at DGA on Saturday May 1 at 2 p.m.

My Lai: The Tragedy, The Coverup, The Aftermath

2010-04-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Updated: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

The My Lai massacre was the iconic event that brought world attention to the moral failure of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. PBS's American Experience will air Monday, April 26, 2010 a new documentary, "My Lai" that documents the horrific reality of the U.S. military massacre of 507 unarmed Vietnamese women, men and children in the village located in Quang Ngai Province in central Vietnam in 1968. The documentary features the first in-depth interview with Aubrey Daniel, the prosecutor in the case against the convicted perpetrator, Lt. William Calley, as well as searing recollections by Vietnamese survivors of the massacre.

On its edition airing today (19 April 2010), Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, show host Daniel C. Tsang interviews Barak Goodman, a seasoned director (The Boy in the Bubble, The Lobotomist, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, etc) who wrote, produced and directed "My Lai".

Subversity airs 19 April 2010 from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

To see a trailer clip of My Lai, click here: http://video.pbs.org/video/1451980822/.

Today's broadcast kicks off two weeks of on-air KUCI fund drive for garner support for the UCI independent public radio station. For online donations, please click on the Fund Drive banner on the top of the kuci.org web site. We urge your support for shows like Subversity that for decades have brought you interviews and talks not likely to air on commercial radio.

Remembering People's Historian Him Mark Lai

2010-04-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Fresh from the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Austin, Texas that ended Saturday 10 April, 2010, we bring Subversity listeners portions of the tribute to Him Mark Lai, the "Dean" of Chinese American History, who died in May 2009. Bilingual in English and Chinese, Him Mark Lai forged a pathway to today's Chinese American -- and Asian American -- studies by researching and documenting life in Chinese America over the decades. The panel discussion at AAAS included colleagues and friends of Him Mark Lai as well as those mentored by him. Chairing the April 8, 2010 session was Prof. Madeline Hsu (University of Texas, Austin), who has edited a collection of Him Mark Lai's publications, many never widely distributed before. The new work, out later this month, is Chinese American Transnational Politics from University of Illinois Press.

Speakers at the session whom we aired included Emeritus Prof. L. Ling-chi Wang (UC Berkeley), Poet and Amerasia Journal editor Prof. Russell Leong (UCLA) and Prof. Jack Tchen (New York University).

The show airs from 5-6 p.m. 12 April 2010 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcast will be posted later on.

We dedicate this show to radical actor Corin Redgrave, who died a week ago, and whom we interviewed back in 1999 at the Toronto Film Festival, where he was appearing in a movie that screened there. Redgrave played a white gay communist who helped smuggle Nelson Mandela back into South Africa at the start of the underground struggle against the then-Apartheid regime, in "The Man Who Drove with Mandala." In our 1 June 1999 interview then, he discussed his father's bisexuality, the ruling class, socialism, and his own (and sister Vanessa's) involvement in the Marxist Party in Britain. The segment introducing his interview begins at 10:10 minutes of the audio: .

Police Misconduct and Community Strategies for Justice

2010-04-05T11:27:00.001-07:00

UCI law students Denisha McKensie, David Rodwin and Vivian Lee interviewed on KUCI. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Why is it that police misconduct cases keep showing up in the news? And what can we do about it? On the edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airing 5 April 2010 at 5 p.m., we talk with several UCI law students as well as a community activist about this important issue.

Joining us in the discussion are three UCI first-year law students, Vivian Lee, Denisha McKensie, and David Rodwin. Denisha and David cofounded the Orange County Human Rights Association, and Vivian is a member of its Advisory Board. Community activist Keith Muhammad from the Bay Area also joins the discussion.

The UCI students are part of Orange County Human Rights Association, which is presenting a forum on the same topic this Thursday at UC Irvine. The Association "strives to engage with the community – Orange County and beyond – to learn about and take action on local human rights issues, focusing on the interaction between people and institutions and the interaction between different institutions and between institutions themselves."

Subversity airs today from 5-6 p.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcasts available after the broadcast and will be posted here.

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“Police Misconduct and Community Strategies for Justice”
Panel Discussion and Q & A

Thursday, April 8, 2010
5:00 to 6:30 p.m.
UC Irvine Cross-Cultural Center
Dr. Joseph L. White Conference Room

Panelists will address the issue of police misconduct and community response, highlighting the case of Oscar Grant III, the young black man who was shot and killed, while handcuffed, by a Bay Area Rapid Transit Officer on January 1, 2009. Video footage of the shooting was captured by onlookers and posted on YouTube, drawing international attention to an issue that impacts the lives of families and communities across the United States.

Representatives of the Grant Family will speak about the grassroots movement for justice that is growing in the Bay Area and gaining momentum in Los Angeles. Joining us will be Oscar Grant's uncle Cephus Johnson, Bay Area activist Keith Muhammad, and police misconduct attorney Jamon Hicks.

Informal reception with light refreshments to follow.

For more information: ochra.uci@gmail.com.

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This April 8 event is co-sponsored by: UCI Black Law Society, Black Student Union, Flying Sams, Public Health Law Brigades, Radical Student Union, and SAGE Scholars for Scholars.

Subversity's new show time; Irvine 11 speakout; Angela Davis

2010-03-29T11:55:00.001-07:00

Angela Davis after March 8, 2010 talk at UCI. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Kicking off a new spring quarter, Subversity now airs from 5-6 p.m. on Mondays instead of 9-10 a.m. The edition for 29 March 2010 features speakers from a 2 March 2010 Irvine 11 speak-out at UC Irvine's student center as well as the talk given by UC Santa Cruz Emeritus Prof. Angela Davis the day before on the prison industrial complex and privatization of the University of California, where she mentioned the Irvine 11. She also spoke the following week at UCI, when she noted that in 1970, when she was a graduate student activist at UC San Diego, the University did not arrest protesters for actions similar to those at UCI.

At the speak-out, organized by the Black Student Union, speakers include: Ryan Davis (MC), Abraham Medina (a rousing poetic rant on the rights of undocumented students), Russell Curry, Dennis Lopez, and KPFK show host and National Lawyers Guild-Los Angeles' Jim Lafferty, who argued that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was able to finish his speech: "Nobody pulled the plug on his microphone." Hence there was no "heckler's veto". The NLG is representing the Irvine 11.

The speak-out, two days before the March 4, 2010 rallies around the state and in the country against privatization, occurred in the wake of racist and homophjavascript:void(0)obic incidents at various UCs.

This edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airs from 5-6 p.m. today on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Some background: Hyde Amendment and Healthcare; Immigration Reform

2010-03-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Last night the U.S. House of Representatives passed historic legislation to provide health-care coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. What's behind Obama's executive order enforcing the Hyde Amendment that barred federal funding of abortion?

And over the weekend, thousands rallied for immigration reform. What's the view on the ground about immigration reform and the legacy of Bush-era immigration raids?

For the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we bring you two dispatches from Making Contact, the National Radio Project's program on topical issues.

1. ‘Hyde-ing’ the Right to Choose: While lawmakers in Washington mull over the nuts and bolts of health care reform, advocates are concerned that a woman’s fundamental right to reproductive health services is endangered. On this edition, Stupak, the Hyde Amendment, and religion. We take a look at some of the threats to abortion access, more than thirty-five years after Roe V. Wade legalized a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Featuring:

Stephanie Poggi, National Network of Abortion Funds Executive Director; Jenny, shares her story about having an abortion; Jon O’Brien, Catholics for Choice President; Guadalupe Rodriguez, ACCESS/Women’s Health Rights Coalition Program & Public Policy Director. This Making Contact program was funded in part by the Mary Wohlford Foundation.

URL: http://www.radioproject.org/2010/01/hyde-ing-the-right-to-choose/.

2. Immigration Reforms, How a Broken System Breaks Communities:
If there’s one thing to be said about the U.S. immigration system, it’s that there’s universal support for change. But when it comes to answers, the viewpoints are all over the map. Congress is planning to make some changes in 2010, but in the meantime, state and federal immigration laws remain confusing and are sporadically enforced. On this edition, we go to two communities sorting through the aftermath of Bush-era federal immigration raids, and to Los Angeles, where American Apparel became the first test case of the Obama administration’s new approach to workplace hiring violations. This Making Contact program was funded in part by spot.us, a community supported journalism project.

Featuring:

Andrea, Las Americas store manager; Angelica Olmedo & Eber Eleria, Howard Industries workers arrested in Laurel Raid; Bill Deutch, Catholic Charities & Hispanic ministries bi-lingual counselor; Meyer, kosher grocery store owner; Mark Grey, University of Iowa Anthropology professor and co-author of ‘Postville: Surviving Diversity in Small-town America’; Scott, Agriprocessors employee; Former Agriprocessors workers; Michelle Devlin, University of Iowa Public Health professor and co-author of ‘Postville: Surviving Diversity in Small-town America’; Maryn Olsen, Postville Response Coalition coordinator; Bill Chandler, Mississippi Immigrant’s Rights Alliance Executive Director; Noami Perez, Maricela Perez & Sergio, laid-off American Apparel workers; Roberto Suro, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Professor; Peter Schey, American Apparel attorney and Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Foundation Executive Director; Natalia Garcia, UCLA Downtown Labor Center Administrative Assistant; Anonymous, unidentified Fake ID salesman in MacArthur Park.

URL: http://www.radioproject.org/2010/01/immigration-reforms/.

Subversity airs today (22 March 2010) from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Suspicious Activity Reporting to Go National

2010-03-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

PRA's Tom Cincotta speaks at CAIR forum on Suspicious Activity Reporting. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010. UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Ratting on your neighbors or anyone looking "out of place" -- such as Middle Easterners taking photographs at Orange County Airport -- will be how John Q. Public will be able to help authorities spot "terrorists".

That is the chilling message given at a packed, evening forum in Anaheim last Wednesday at the offices of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Los Angeles, the activist group, which heard from several Muslim young men reported for "suspicious" behavior -- including a then-UCI student who was dropping of British leftwing Member of Parliament George Galloway at SNA, after the MP spoke at UCI. The student was later contacted by authorities about why he was taking photographs at the Orange County Airport. Galloway had posed for the student's camera at SNA.

On KUCI's Subversity program this Monday morning, we air talks at the forum given by Tom Cincotta, who heads a project at the Political Research Associates (PRA), researching threats to privacy in the war on terrorism, and Peter Bibring, the expert on police practices at the ACLU of Southern California. Bibring has been researching the LAPD's protoype for citizen reporting -- iReport -- on the LAPD's I-Watch web site. PRA is issuing a research report, Platform for Prejudice(s), later this week tracing Suspicious Activities Reporting and its use in the various anti-terrorism centers set up across the United States.

Chairing the CAIR forum was Ameena Mirza Qazi, CAIR deputy executive director and its staff attorney.

The show airs from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Highlights from March 4 Protests at UC Irvine

2010-03-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

Russell Curry ("Sonny Boy") rallies crowd to "Put your fist in the sky" at March 4 rally at UC Irvine. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang. UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

On March 4, 2010, UC Irvine erupted in a day of lively protest actions as students, faculty and unionized staff joined their comrades across the state and the nation in protesting the privatization of education. At UCI a spirited group of speakers rallied hundreds at a rally at the flagpole, followed by crowds of protesters marching across campus, into Langson Library, and the Gateway Commons by mid afternoon, ending in a smaller crowd gathered on the lawn outside Aldrich Hall, the scene of a sit-in the previous week.

On today's edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we air speeches from the March 4 rally at UC Irvine, as a document of UCI activism reaching a new scale.
The show airs 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

See also: Democratize Education: Taking Control of Our Education blog.

At UCs, Tumultous Week in Review; Iranian Women Agitate

2010-02-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

After sit-in, UCI protesters outside Aldrich Hall with pink citations for "failure to disperse." Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. UPDATED: To listen to audio of our interview with Irvine activists Ryan Davis (in photo with citations), Russell Curry and Samiyyah Tillman, click here: . To listen to audio of our interview with Iranian activist Sussan, click here: .

Irvine -- On the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we look back at a tumultous week, not just at UC Irvine but also across the UCs. At UC Irvine, the arrest of 17 protesters sitting in at the administration building, seeking "in-sourcing" of service workers accompanied by a large action outside raised the stakes in advance of a state-wide March 4, 2010 movement against the privatization of education in California. A protest blog argues: "Yesterday the dumpsters, Tomorrow the World!".

We'll talk with UC Irvine protesters who give their take on what's happening and their long list of demands. Some protesters believe that with UC Regents and UC Student Association endorsing the March 4 actions, the struggle has been co-opted. We'll discuss that.

In part 2 of the show, we'll talk with an activist who has been trying to organize Iranian women in advance of International Women's Day in Iran. We talk with:

Sussan, who is is part of the March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), living in exile in Europe: In the late 1970s Sussan lived in the US and was part of the Iranian student movement against the brutal US-backed Shah of Iran. She returned to Iran after the Shah’s overthrow and took part in the struggle against the Khomeini regime. She and her family were imprisoned and tortured for their political activity and her husband was executed by the Islamic regime. See a recent statement by the March 8 Women's Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), March in Support of Women Warriors in Streets of Tehran. She was last on Subversity last year.

The International Women's Day Coalition is organizing a march and rally in Westwood on Saturday, March 6th, aiming to break open a spirit of resistance to the horrors committed against women throughout the world, and led by the slogan: Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution.

The shows airs Monday 1 March 2010 at 9 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast via kuci.org. Show host is Daniel C. Tsang.

UCI Protests Escalate: 17 Activists Arrested Wednesday Morning

2010-02-24T12:26:00.000-08:00

Irvine -- In a sign that civil disobedience at University of California, Irvine has reached a new level of direct action, 17 activists, many associated with the Worker-Student Alliance at the Irvine campus, were arrested shortly before noon today (Wednesday, 24, 2010) after several hours of sustained chanting in a hallway outside UCI Chancellor Michael Drake's 5th floor offices in Aldrich Hall, after being warned by UCI Police that they were participating in an illegal assembly.

The protesters, including AFSCME local 3299 union lead organizer Juan Castillo (previous Subversity interview) and WSA leader Dennis Lopez (earlier Subversity interview), were one by one asked if they wanted to leave or would be arrested and then lifted up from the hallway floor (where they had been seated together) and handcuffed before being escorted by UCI police down the stairs. The arrests were observed by local media and UCI faculty members.

Before the arrests, protesters, in disciplined chants, that continued for several hours, called on UCI and Chancellor Drake to "in-source" service workers currently working for ABM. Drake had appeared moved at a recent forum with students when the spouse of a laid-off service worker asked him to settle the labor dispute.

In literature distributed at the event and at a rally outside Aldrich Hall, the protesters described their sit-in as not an "occupation, nor is it unlawful assembly or trespassing." Instead, "we have expropriated Aldrich Hall" the protesters declare. They continue: "As part of the University of California, this building belongs to the students and workers." They attribute their action to the "increasing privatization of our system": "This action is the result of frustration with conventional avenues of participation. The crisis is too extreme for gradualism and the ideals of public education are slipping away; direct confrontation is needed."

The action comes five days after a few dozen other students took over Langson Library the past Friday evening and held teach-ins in the lobby with faculty until they were evicted after 11 pm by UCI Police who occupied the loan desk. (The library had extended opening hours past the normal 5 p.m. to accommodate the protesters.)

The protesters also made 12 demands on the UCI Administration, and three on the UC Regents, including an end to military and private security contracts. The demands appear online at the blog, Democratize Education: Taking Control of Our Education. We list them here as well:

To UCI Admnistration:

1) We demand that UCI administration implement a comprehensive financial aid system by fall 2010 that apportions grant aid (excluding loans from the equation) and on-campus housing based on family wealth rather than income. Financial aid must be designed to counteract the economic effects of structural and systemic racism in our society.

2) We demand the immediate direct hiring of all outsourced ABM workers and fair pay for all campus workers. Students and workers do not support discriminatory hiring practices that victimize immigrant, Latina/o working families.

3) We demand that Chancellor Drake publicly commit to seeking out private donations that will specifically fund financial aid to AB540 students or begin providing financial aid for AB540 students directly from his office’s discretionary funding. We want administration to publicly recognize that AB540 students do not share the same economic freedoms and securities as other populations.

4) We demand that UCI administration immediately disarm all police officers of Tasers. This action is supported by the December 2009 ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Taser has replaced the lash of the whip as a device in the service of state sanctioned anti-blackness, evidenced so blatantly at UCLA this past November, and UCI’s administration should lead in the banning of this device.

5) We demand that UCI immediately equip the campus with gender neutral bathrooms. Students and workers who do not fit the illusion of gender normativity suffer routine violence and intimidation. UC should not privilege heteronormativity over the interests of its LGBT community.

6) We demand the recall of the three groundskeepers that were laidoff in October 2009 and the reinstatement of the 5% time reduction of the entire campus of AFSCME 3299 service unit.

7) We demand that no disciplinary action (academic or legal) be taken against the 11 students arrested at Ambassador Oren’s event. UCI and the surrounding community’s repeated attacks against, and hyper-surveillance of, Muslim and Arab students aids in branding legitimate political criticisms against the apartheid state of Israel as ‘uncivil’ and fosters a segregated cultural, social, and intellectual climate for the university. Deploying rhetoric that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism serves to annihilate rather than engage in dialogue.

8) We demand 100% funding from administration for a recruitment and retention center for underrepresented students. Recruiting and retaining students of color and low-income students should be a campus priority, but UCI has neglected to support these important efforts.

9) We demand that until state-funding has been restored to the UC system in full, that all budget cuts imposed in the fall be redistributed by imposing an equal percentage cut to each of UCI’s schools.

10) We demand that UCI administration immediately reinvest in the ethnic, queer, and women’s studies departments/programs. UCI should foster an environment that is supportive of students who are considered outside of the “mythical norms” of our society. As evidenced so blatantly at UCSD this past week, Black subjects are in an antagonistic position against the institution, this sentiment is reinforced by administration and creates a safe space for anti-blackness. UCI administration should lead in creating a campus that engages in academic, political, and social reeducation which challenges structural and individual racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia.

11) We demand that Chancellor Drake publicly disclose all of UCI’s military and private security contracts. Furthermore, we demand that Chancellor Drake shut down the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs and discontinue all military and Homeland Security contracts that aid in both the mass murder of people around the world by U.S. imperialism (particularly in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Pakistan) or the violent police repression of students and workers within the U.S. In solidarity with workers and students around the world, we demand an end to genocidal imperialist wars for profit and empire: U.S. imperialism out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

12) We demand that UCI not feed the prison-industrial complex. We demand that UCI end its contract with Motorola by fall 2010. Furthermore, we demand the removal of all Dell, IBM, and Texas Instrument products by fall 2010 as well.

Demands to the UC Regents:

1. We demand amnesty for all previous and current participants in protest on UC campuses. The Regents must restore all penalized students to good academic standing, recall all fired workers, and issue a public statement demanding that any and all criminal charges be dropped.

2. We demand the UC Regents and the Office of the President terminate ALL military and private security contracts currently in place at UC campuses and research facilities. In solidarity with workers and students around the world, we demand an end to genocidal imperialist wars for profit and empire: U.S. imperialism out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

3. We demand that the Regents revisit the November 2009 decision to increase student fees by 32% and address student and faculty objections to this decision. We demand that this public discussion of the 32% fee increase include three agenda items:

(a) A period for public comment;

(b) A vote, in full view of the public, reconsidering the 32% fee increase;

(c) A vote, in full view of the public, to ban all outsourcing of workers.

UPDATED 1:40PM: University Communications (Cathy Lawhon) has just sent out a statement; of course no one was at risk, it was a totally peaceful and disciplined sit-in as a faculty member noted. And the whole sit-in was over by noon. Anyway, here's what the PR folks sent out at 1:30 pm:

A group of students and labor organizers occupied the fifth floor of
Aldrich Hall at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, disrupting business and
presenting a wide-ranging list of demands.

Offices on the fifth floor were locked down and protestors were
informed that they should leave or they would be arrested. By noon,
police arrested 17 protestors inside Aldrich Hall who refused to leave
and cited them with unlawful assembly and refusal to disperse.
Students arrested will also be cited with violations of university
conduct policy.

Demonstrators outside the building blocked several exits impeding the
ability of those inside to leave. Police surrounded the perimeter of
the building and exits were cleared.

By afternoon, staff inside Aldrich Hall were evacuated to ensure their
safety.

UPDATED 3:43 PM: Here is the OC Register coverage.

UCI Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez on the First Amendment

2010-02-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

Irvine -- In a broad look back at his student activism days (when he hung the Black Flag of anarchism in his apartment), UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, in the wake of growing controversy over the student disruption of the talk earlier this month of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and the arrests of 12 students, discusses the First Amendment on campus, and states that UCI's Muslim Student Union will not be kicked off campus. He also states that images on student protest blogs of UCI Police taking down leaflets announcing protest events is "disturbing," but he is waiting for students to file formal complaints with his office.

Gomez says he grew up in a poverty-stricken "barrio" in Santa Ana and was active in various struggles in his student days, including fighting police abuse. He says he understands the passion and quest among young people for opposing oppression: "I understand it in my bone." His verdict on his protesting past: It was wrong to distrust people over 30. We also discuss cooptation.

In "Imagining the Future: Cultivating Civility in a Field of Discontent," Gomez focuses on the situation at UCI as tensions were addressed in the wake of the Zionist Organization of America's initial complaint to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights over the alleged mistreatment of Jewish students. ZOA has since also claimed UCI students solicited donations for Hamas during a talk at UCI of British Member of Parliament George Galloway.

In the article, written for Change Magazine, as well as on Subversity, Gomez argues that hate speech has been upheld by the courts as allowed under the First Amendment. The ZOA more recently has called for a boycott of UCI in terms of donations and enrollment.

UCI has also sent disciplinary letters to the 8 UCI students arrested, including MSU President Mohamed Abdelgany, a first step in campus administrative proceedings.

In response, the various Muslim activist groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have called on UCI allow "free speech" for protesters.

Gomez's interview is being aired this morning on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, at 9 am (simulcast via kuci.org). He is interviewed by Subversity host Daniel C. Tsang.

UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinksy on the First Amendment

2010-02-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

Erwin Chemerinsky, left, with students after his talk. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. UPDATED with audio link: To listen to audio, click here: .

Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean of the new UCI School of Law, February 11, 2010 talked at UC Irvine about the First Amendment in the wake of the shouting down of the recent lecture at UCI by the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren and the arrests of the students involved.

Chemerinksy's talk, previously scheduled, happened several days after the Oren lecture, in a larger lecture hall to accommodate the crowd of mostly students who packed the room.

As a public service, KUCI's Subversity program airs Chemerinsky's entire talk and the subsequent Q and A session. The show airs today (15 February 2010), airing 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and simulcast via kuci.org.

Meanwhile, student activists have rallied to urge support for the 11 students (3 from UC Riverside, 8 from UCI) arrested by UCI Police, asking why they had to be arrested. One statement circulating among activists suggests making these points to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and to the UCI Dean of Students, who would be imposing any administrative sanctions on the UCI students, including potential expulsion:

· It was unjust to arrest students for simply having the courage to
stand up and speak out against a man responsible for propagating the
deaths of thousands of innocent people.
· Civil disobedience has historically played an instrumental role in
the civil rights movement in America the eventually ensured equality
and human rights for all minorities.
· Michael Oren is a representative of a state that is condemned by
more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in
the world, and he should not be honored at UC Irvine.

The statement said "we will not support an educational
institution that threatens to punish its’ students with suspension and
expulsion for standing up for their principles."

Supporters of the arrested students have started a Facebook page, "Drop All Charges Against the Eleven", which as of this morning has 4,657 members.

Meanwhile the controversy has again enraged the Jewish community, with Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, who heads the Rabbinical Council of Orange Council, even suggesting that Chancellor Drake consider expelling the students. [An earlier version incorrectly attributed a call for ending donations to UCI to Rabbi Elierzrie; but another group has formally called for that.] At the same time, the Muslim Public Affairs Council weighed in, calling for an investigation into the arrests.

Trannie Andy Quach Afraid to Meet Real Trans?

2010-02-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Westminster Councilman Andy Quách grins after DUI last year in mugshot.

"Trannie" Andy Quách may yet get to meet a real transgendered Vietnamese American -- or more -- this Saturday, the eve of Lunar New Year or Tet. The up and down (DUI) politician carefully mentored by state legislator Van Tran (hence a "Trannie") is all agitated about the prospect of lesbian, gay, bisexual -- and transgendered -- members of his Vietnamese American community marching in the annual Tet festival he's helping organize this year! But as a city official (the march is organized by Westminster where he sits on its city council), he can't very well say no to a group that duly paid the city's $100 fee to be able to march.

So earlier this week he sends out a press release, in Vietnamese, to say, sorry folks, while he is personally against these folks marching, he can't do anything about it (he cannot discriminate!) and please celebrate the advent of the Year of the Tiger with him.

But not everyone is pleased he is taking the legalistic way out and not expressing his homophobia more strongly. Stirred by news that sexual minorities plan to march, religious opposition to the gay participation has manifested itself, with Pastor Trần Thanh Vân of Hội Ðồng Liên Tôn (Interfaith Council) calling for a religious boycott of the Tet parade, according to Nguoi Viet. Its editor, Hao-Nhien Vu, echoes the Vietnamese reportage in his sardonic English-language Bolsavik blog.

Following KUCI's Subversity radio program this past Monday on the upcoming march, the Orange County Register has also jumped on the story, but states incorrectly that it is the first time gay Vietnamese would have marched in Orange County. In fact, they marched along Campus Drive in Irvine a few years back, when OC Pride Festival was held at UC Irvine.

Andy Quách's move to stand on legalities is laudable but may not win him kudos from the more conservative religious right elements of his community. The first Vietnamese American elected to public office (also to city council in Westminster), Tony Lam suffered a huge backlash from anti-communist elements in Little Saigon when he, on the advice of the city attorney, did not attend rallies protesting the display of Uncle Ho's photo and the flag of Vietnam during the HiTek protests a decade or more earlier, even though OC District Attorney Anthony Rackauckas himself showed up in a clearly partisan (Republican) move to rally the anti-commie crowd, as I wrote about in the OC Weekly in 1999. Andy Quách's religiously fundamentalist supporters may be just as unforgiving.

Sexual Minorities to March in Tet Parade in Little Saigon

2010-02-08T05:26:00.001-08:00

Gina Masequesmay. Photo from CSUN web-site. UPDATED with audio link: To listen to audio, click here: .

In a historic first, Vietnamese American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered [LGBT] plan to march as part of Little Saigon's Tet parade this coming Saturday, Lunar New Year Eve. While they have marched in Orange County before (at the OC Pride march in Irvine) and in San Jose and San Francisco, this is the first time they plan a march in the heartland of the overseas Vietnamese community in the U.S.

On KUCI's Subversity show Monday 8 February 2010, at 9 a.m., we talk with CSU Northridge scholar Gina Masequesmay
about queer life within the Vietnamese American communities. The CSU sociologist did her Ph.D dissertation at UCLA in 2001 on one of the groups marching, Ô-Môi, which came out with a zine in 2005. She is the lead co-editor of a new collection of essays, Embodying Asian/American Sexualities (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009).

Four groups plan to join together in this march, according to march organizers, embracing "marriage equality" in the context of the Prop. 8 controversy.

Song That Radio is a grass-root organization which has the dual task of operating a radio program to focus on enhancing community awareness of LGBT issues, with the aim to create social change in attitude towards LGBT people and to organize social and political events that advocate, support and empower the Vietnamese-American LGBT community by increasing LGBT visibility and inclusiveness. Its goal is to improve the quality of life of Vietnamese LGBT people by reducing and eliminating the disparities within the Vietnamese-American community in dealing with LGBT issues.

Ô-Môi is a support group for lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender of Vietnamese descent. Its goal is to provide a support and resource space for queer, female Vietnamese to come out and network.

Gay Vietnamese Alliance provides a safe and supportive environment for gay, bisexual, and transgendered men of Vietnamese descent from all over the world to network, voice issues, promote wellness and foster leadership.

The Vietnamese Lesbian and Bisexual women Network and Friends is a support network of women, young and old alike, who provide support to Vietnamese women who are questioning their identities or simply proud to be lesbians or bisexual women.

The Subversity show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via http://kuci.org. Podcasts are available later.

The march is slated to begin after 9:30 a.m. Saturday 13 February 2010 at Bolsa and Magnolia in Westminster, California.

Dang Nhat Minh Brings to Life Liberation Struggle Doctor's Diary

2010-01-31T18:09:00.001-08:00

The diarist, Dang Thuy Tram (left).

UPDATED with audio links: To listen to the entire Subversity show on Dang Nhat Minh, including the USC panel discussion, click here: .

To listen to just the USC panel discussion: click here: .

Vietnam's top filmmaker, People's Artist Đặng Nhật Minh, has made a moving anti-war film based on captured diaries of a National Liberation Front doctor, whose intimate and revealing thoughts about war and the Party are put on paper in between treating soldiers during the "American War." The diarist is a young surgeon, Đặng Thùy Trâm, known as "Thuy." Tragically, at age 27, she was killed by an American bullet through her forehead, in 1970. The film, Don't Burn (Đừng Đốt) is Vietnam's entry to this year's Academy Awards.

In her diary, only two volumes of which survived the war, Thuy rails against the American invaders (whom she calls "devils") while wondering why the Party took so long to admit her. Was she too bourgeois? In a telling entry, she admits "Bourgeois sentiments are always suspect. It's strange that I still prefer to be like that than to be clear and simple like a farmer." The Party later did admit her and she is now considered a martyr in Vietnam. The diary has been published in the U.S. as Last Night I Dreamed of Peace.

"Don't Burn" not only brings to life events described in the diary, but also brings the story up to date, showing how an American soldier, and his military family, came around to read the diary of an enemy doctor, in the process struck by the futility of warfare. The film describes how the diaries ended up at Texas Tech, whose library contain the largest non-governmental collection on the war, and shows how Thuy's family came to read their daughter's writings almost four decades later.

Thuy's father was also a noted surgeon and his mother a pharmacology lecturer specializing in medicinal plants. Thuy gave up her dream to be a ophthalmologist and instead, like many of her compatriots, went south to serve the state.

The parallels with the film director's own family upbringing are stark. Dang Nhat Minh's father, Dang Van Ngu, was also a noted doctor, leading efforts to fight malaria with penicillin. Indeed, he also was killed by the Americans, in 1967, a year before the entries in Thuy's recovered diary begin.

Dang Nhat Minh himself has stated: "I have no regrets at all about being a film director as it is destiny. But if I could choose again, I would rather be a doctor and follow in my father's steps." Both father and son have won the Ho Chi Minh Award.

This is the first film to portray the views of America's "enemy" so starkly.
It seeks to reconcile the two nations who fought so bitter and deadly a war.

And perhaps as a sign of possible reconciliation between Vietnamese in the homeland and here, director Minh was embraced warmly by Little Saigon's most famous film personality, Kieu Chinh (left), after a recent showing at the University of Southern California(USC).

Indeed, in California the past few weeks, the film has been shown to audiences young and old in northern and southern California.

On KUCI Subversity's 1 February 2010, from 9-10 a.m. we discuss this film and diary and present the panel discussion after the film showing at USC, with Director Dang Nhat Minh. Also on the panel are Oh, Saigon director Doan Hoang (whose film was also shown that day), interpreter Gianni Le Nguyen and USC Prof David James, who kicked off the session. Thanks to Prof. Viet Nguyen, who co-organized the "Dreaming of Peace: Vietnamese Filmmakers Move from War to Reconciliation" event, for permission to record that session and air it. Prof. Nguyen prefaced the showing of Don't Burn with a moving tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. by quoting from the civil rights leader's writings against the Vietnam War.

The Subversity program airs on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcasts will be made available later and posted here. See trailer of Don't Burn.

Subversities

In Memoriam: Judith Ladinsky, True Friend of Vietnam

Prof. Ladinsky, left, receives health award from Vietnam in 2004.

Looking Back at 2011 and 9/11

Tom Hayden, at UCI, Looks Back and Ahead

Hayden as professor. To listen to the audio of Hayden's talk, click here. Presented with the kind permission of Tom Hayden as another Subversity Online podcast. All photos © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

A pensive Hayden

Hayden answers questions from the audience

Historian Art Hansen on Orange County Nikkei Experience in WWII

Art Hansen right before his talk. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2011. KUCI Subversity Online Audio link: 19 October 2011 Talk. Permission kindly granted by Prof. Hansen to post the audio online.

Free Speech At UCI: Shut Down Access Roads!

Let's not cross the police! Police lines block access to free speech area

Chalk asks if tuition is paying for this police action

News photographers wait for missing pastor

All photographs © 1 December 2011 Daniel C. Tsang

UCI Police Interpret When to Use Force

UCIPD officers begin arresting Irvine 17 protesters outside UCI Chancellor's Office in February 2010. Photograph copyright 2010 Daniel C. Tsang

Occupy Orange County - Day 3: Petition Seeks Right to Encamp

Alessandro Levine sings on the piano; author in silhouette on Day 1 of Occupy OC. Photo copyright Daniel C. Tsang 2011

Occupy Orange County - Day 1

Mother of two solders holds flag upside down ("distress call") with sign "Bank Owned" at today's rally of Occupy Orange County. All photos © Daniel C. Tsang 2011

Subversity Online bring's you audio from today's rally: click on: .

Director Stephane Gauger on "Saigon Electric"

Visions of Resistance and Survival: Looking Back at the Hong Kong Vietnamese Detention Camps

Figure 8.3 Hope of Freedom. Original by Trinh Quoc Lan, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries. Project Ngoc Records on Southeast Asian Refugees (MS-SEA016).

Figure 8.4. Camp protesters. Original by Pham Tien Dung, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine. Paul Tran Files (MS-SEA002).

Figure 8.6 Forced repatriation. Original by Tran Ngoc Dong, artist. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries. Paul Tran Files (MS-SEA002).

Remembering Bob Jones

Saving Chinatown, Riverside

Edgy City: Urban/Rural Space and Ho Chi Minh City

Greg Louganis Speaks at UCI

Louganis in video feed

Catholic Priests and Sex: The Research

Larry Agran on Irvine: Town and Gown

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Award Winners Announced

Shooting scene from Bang Bang

Actor Will Yun Lee as Takashi in Where the Road Meets the Sun.

KUCI's Subversity Fights Subpoena [A Look Back]

KUCI's Subversity show host Daniel C. Tsang back in the early years of the show which started in 1993.

Byron Q's Bang Bang; Billie Rain's Heart Breaks Open

Tony Nguyen's Enforcing the Silence Dares to Address Anti-Communist Violence in the Vietnamese Diaspora in San Francisco Bay Area

Youth advocate Lam Duong as he appeared on the only videotaped interview before he was slain

A youthful Lam Duong

Singapore Woman Director Mun Chee Yong's Take on Surviving in Los Angeles

Takashi (Will Yun Lee) reflects on his memory loss in Where the Road Meets the Sun.

VIFF Filmmakers' Panel Discussion: Expanding the Audience Base

Filmmaker with Conscience Khoa Do; Hazards of Nail Salons

Director Khoa Do embraced by a fan after his film screened at VIFF 2011. Photography &c Daniel C. Tsang 2011

Yemeni Regime Collapsing? Who are the Protesters? And What Comes After?

February 3, 2011 protest poster.

Egyptian Women; Avoiding Another Korean War

Perils of Natural Gas Drilling. Also: WikiLeaks, Free Speech & Future of the Internet

Treat Protests as "Teachable Moments"! Sixty-two UCI Faculty Urge Chancellor Drake to Tell DA to Drop Criminal Charges

Non-violent and loud sit-in outside UCI Chancellor's Office 24 February 2010. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

UCI Police begin the arrests of the protesters outside the Chancellor's Office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 24 February 2010.

Subversity Host Reflects on Activism Off and On the Air

Self-portrait in the UCI office, taken right after taping of the interview 4 March 2011 for East 306. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2011.

UCI Interim University Librarian Gerald R. Lowell Reflects on Career in Librarianship

Gerald R. Lowell in a relaxed mood. Photography © Daniel C. Tsang 2011

New University Comes Under Scrutiny

Front page of New University scoop.

A Look Back: "Subversity" Goes Viral

Rightwing video seeks to tie Obama to Ayers with audio from KUCI's Subversity show.

Jesse Cheng Proclaims His Innocence

Jesse Cheng in his Student Regent office Friday, 18 February 2011. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

Jesse Cheng at a happier time in 1999. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 1999.

Egypt's Revolution in Historical Context

Beyond Egypt: Yemen Erupts in Protest

February 3, 2011 protests poster.

Grand Jury Investigation of UCI Protesters Gives Lie To UCI's Commitment to Free Speech

Sexual Minorities To March Again at Tet Parade on Bolsa

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and More

Remembering KUCI DJ Jessica Hoke

Musical Interlude with Award-winning UCI Student Wan Yeung on the Pipa

Ryan Davis Remembers Jessica Hoke

Ryan Davis (center) passes out UCI PD citations for "failure to disperse" after 24 February 2010 sit-in. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

Labor protesters outside UCI Chancellor's office. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010

Louis Wolf on Investigative Reporting Before WikiLeaks

Cal State LA Asian American & Asian Studies Program Faces Threat

Cal State LA Asian American & Asian Studies Program Threatened

Art Hansen right before his talk. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2011.

KUCI Subversity Online Audio link: 19 October 2011 Talk. Permission kindly granted by Prof. Hansen to post the audio online.

UCIPD officers begin arresting Irvine 17 protesters outside UCI Chancellor's Office in February 2010.
Photograph copyright 2010 Daniel C. Tsang

Updated 10/25/10 9:44 AM: To listen to the 25 October 2010 show, click here:
. Updated: 10/24/10 11:27 PM adding this photo. Jesse Cheng (right) comes out. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

Mexican nationals in tomato harvest, Muri Ranch on Roberts Island, San Joaquin Valley.
Photograph published in: California Annual Farm Labor Report, 1951. Sacramento: State of California, Farm Placement Service. Part of Immigrant Lives in 'the O.C.' & Beyond exhibit at UCI Libraries in 2008-2009.