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.

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

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

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

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

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 viewedtwittered at least 1300 times

UC Student Regent Jesse Cheng Comes Out

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:
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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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.

All photographs © Daniel C. Tsang

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

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

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

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

Richard Aoki (left).

2012 Update: Shocking revelation: Aoki an FBI informant? See CIR Online report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.