Rarely do we get the chance or the idea to do some straight-up reporting, but the start of Asian Pacific Islander Awareness Month here at Columbia merits this type of spotlight. In Lerner C555 earlier tonight, Helen Zia and Ishle Park regaled us with songs and insight for the opening ceremony of APAAM.

Park sang songs of unity and ancestry, telling at one time a story of her meeting a North Korean man who captured this essence of human soul and spirit that she conveyed through her performance. Zia spoke of issues of contemporary political atmosphere, emphasizing the ways the age we are in now connects with the civil rights struggles taking place during her college years. With the events of this year and the issues and struggles that persist, there were few ways her speech could have been more relevant to the mission and objectives of this month.

So check out more of the events on the calendar, and celebrate this month while it's around. If you missed this ceremony, don't let it happen again, lest you totally want to miss out.

(If it was weird to read this post, we don't do a lot of plain event summaries.)

... about NYCAASC on Fallout Central. Mar and I (with Agnes Chung, a NYU co-director of NYCAASC) stepped into the studio today to do a podcast about the conference we're planning, its theme, and how it's the nicest conference on the block.

Catch it here. We start talking about 58 minutes into the podcast.

APAAM is here! Come join some cool folks at the APAAM opening ceremony. Details below.

Asian Pacific American Awareness Month 2008 Presents:

APAAM 2008 Unscripted: Opening Ceremony

Featuring:
Keynote by Helen Zia
Performance by Ishle Park

Wednesday, March 26th at 8pm
C555 Lerner Hall

Facebook event
Registration is required for non-CU guests.

*Helen Zia is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. President Bill Clinton quoted from Asian American Dreams at two separate speeches in the Rose Garden. She is also coauthor, with Wen Ho Lee, of My Country Versus Me, which reveals what happened to the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for China in the "worst case since the Rosenbergs."

Ms. Zia is an award-winning journalist, a Fulbright Scholar, and former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, books and anthologies. She was named one of the most influential Asian Americans of the decade by A. Magazine. She has received numerous journalism awards for her ground-breaking stories; her investigation of date rape at the University of Michigan led to campus demonstrations and an overhaul of its policies, while her research on women who join neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations provoked new thinking on the relationship between race, gender and sexual orientation violence in hate crimes.

A second generation Chinese American, Helen Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. In 1997 she coauthored a complaint to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and testified at commission hearings on the impact of bias in the campaign finance investigations. Ms. Zia traveled to Beijing in 1995 to the UN Fourth World Congress on Women as part of a journalists of color delegation. She has appeared in numerous news programs and films; her work on the 1980s Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award nominated film, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" and she was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary, "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience." An out-lesbian, Helen and her spouse were married during the gay marriages that took place in San Francisco during President's Day Weekend of 2004; Helen's elderly immigrant mother gave a sworn affidavit on behalf of marriage equality, which was presented as part of the argument on appeal to the California Supreme Court.

Helen received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Law School of the City University of New York for bringing important matters of law and civil rights into public view. She is a graduate of Princeton University's first graduating class of women. She quit medical school after completing two years, then went to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker, and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life's work as a writer.


*Ishle Park is a Korean American woman who is a world-traveling poet, singer, and the first woman to be named the Poet Laureate of Queens - the largest and most diverse borough in New York. Dubbed "the Queen of Queens" by her fans, the Borough President declared Park's birthday as "Ishle Yi Park" day in her hometown.
Asian Pacific American Awareness Month is an annual celebration at Columbia University dedicated to promoting awareness of APA issues and history among the Columbia student body.

Postsecret is for anonymous viewers and senders.

So how can one not expect a little bigotry?

What I'd like to know is: Frank Warren (creator of Postsecret), what are you trying to prove by posting this?

Not as you usually see him (like this):

But like this:

Fallout Central has finally caught NYCAASC fever. Through a chain of e-mails, they requested that David go down and talk on the air about the conference. Through another chain of e-mails, "just David" became three two Co-Directors and one Workshop Coordinator. Fortunately, that group includes includes David, Nhu-Y (she isn't feeling well) and myself -- the Blaaagers whom you know and love (or hate, whichever). Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Fallout Central guys will handle three two female Co-Directors on their show, given their noted pattern of ignorance towards issues concerning female Asian Americans. Stay tuned for the podcast link. (Update: See Listening to ourselves talk)

We'll be down at the FC headquarters in Union Square 1-4 PM, and then at NYU Tisch 4-6 PM for our weekly conference planning meeting.