Director Stephane Gauger on "Saigon Electric"

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.

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

Link to audio of program: .
Update 21 February 2014:  Erik Harms has won the Association for Asian Studies' 2014 Harry J. Benda Prize for Saigon's Edge



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:

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.

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

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.

VIFF Filmmakers' Panel Discussion: Expanding the Audience Base

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.

Egyptian Women; Avoiding Another Korean War

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.

Subversity Host Reflects on Activism Off and On the Air

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

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.

A Look Back: "Subversity" Goes Viral

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).

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:
.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

UCI Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez on the First Amendment

Manuel Gomez in his plush office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010. UPDATED: To listen to audio, click here: .

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.

Sexual Minorities to March in Tet Parade in Little Saigon

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.

UCI Chancellor Drake Grilled by Students

Chancellor Drake listens as the spouse of an outsourced worker asks in Spanish to be treated with dignity, captivating the audience. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

UPDATED with audio link: To listen to the show, click here: .

Irvine -- UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, for the first time since a critical UCI Faculty Senate blasted him for (initially) firing founding Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in 2007, faced Wednesday 13 January 2010 another hostile audience at a public forum organized by student protesters who gave what OC Register's Gary Robbins called a "verbal drubbing" -- with all but one student criticizing his leadership of the campus. It was a P.R. disaster for Drake.

Unlike previous "town hall" meetings where Drake managed to be in control, students criticized him for deferring to aides and not answering the questions "man to man". Asked pointedly if he would still continue to stay at UCI should his pay be further cut, he never answered the question, nor did he made a commitment to remaining at UCI.

While Drake and UCI police chief Paul Henisey declined to comment on the police abuse at UCLA protests (saying they were not there to see what happened) -- after the public forum, Subversity managed to ask the police chief if he would drop charges against sociology graduate student John Bruning, who had been arrested at a protest late last fall. Chief Henisey said it was up to the Orange County District Attorney.

At the forum, students laughed when Drake declared that UCI's commitment to free speech was nationally known. The chief then denied his cops were ripping down protesters' posters on campus. Both Drake and Henisey said they knew nothing about that. See photos of a UCI police officer ripping down posters on the Occupy UCI! blog.

Subversity has also learned that in another sign of intimidation by campus police, protesters who have been chalking on campus recently -- writing statements such as "UCI is Racist" on walls and the ground -- have been confronted by campus police who take down their name and threaten to charge them with "defacing" university property should the chalk not be able to be removed. This week's rains are likely, however, to wipe away the chalk.

The only time Drake seemed moved and did not act like a CEO of a corporation was after the wife of an outsourced worker who has worked at UCI for 20 years pleaded with him to provide benefits to the workers. Drake responded that he was committed to "quality experience" for everyone at UCI and said he had been working to help the disadvantaged and dispossessed in his career.

A day after the forum, dozens of outsourced workers demonstrated on campus and a smaller group of workers and student supporters gave Ramona Agrela, an associate to Drake, posters of workers who had been laid off.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airs today (18 January 2010) at 9-10 a.m. audio from the public forum as a public service. The program airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Privileging (Gay or Straight) Marriage is "Misplaced"

For the first show of our new Winter 2010 season, Subversity re-airs our November 24, 2008 edition, when we talked with law professor Nancy D. Polikoff, author of a new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law (Beacon Press, 2008), on the limits of fighting for gay marriage. The show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

She argues that by privileging marriage under the law over other relationships, many people suffer, including those in domestic partnerships. She breaks with fellow queer activists who have moved into the streets to defend gay marriage after California voters approved Prop. 8 that banned gay marriage in California. She challenges those activists to see beyond gay "equality" arguments that restrict marriage benefits only to those willing to get married.

Today, a federal court hearing on Prop. 8 is slated to be made available via YouTube.

Nancy D. Polikoff is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the areas of family law, civil procedure, and sexuality and the law. Previously, she supervised family law programs at the Women's Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), and before that she practiced law as part of a feminist law collective. For 30 years, she has been writing about and litigating cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in John D'Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (St, Martin's Press, 2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father's visitation rights.

For more on the book, go to web site.

Her blog is at: here.

See also John D'Emilio's "The Marriage Fight is Setting Us Back".