Think of a person who faces the world without knowing his capabilities and limitations – someone with misguided notions about himself, who dreams of being powerful, rich, and admired for a host of talents he does not have. Such a person is incapable of self-judgment.
Equipped with mistaken ideas, he enters the great arena of the world ready to compete and excel. You can only shudder at the thought of his fate. He is like a child who thinks he can walk miles, but who tires after only two hundred feet. To know your own weaknesses and to accept them, even if it is painful. To be honest. To chase illusions away and realize how much you do not know. To treasure life’s lessons. That is humility. And humility is a great strength.
Piero Ferrucci, “The Power of Kindness,” 2006.
I have sat down to interview thousands of folks: first, as an eligibility worker interviewing welfare recipients, mostly single mothers with children for two years; second, as a public health professional at a state agency for 27 years; and third, as an appointed LA City Commissioner for Civil Service for two years.
This role entailed listening to grievances and employer anomalies with employees testifying to abuse of power through its public agenda process of five minutes per commission’s meeting. Few employees succeeded to present their issue and only if they persisted for months.
My fourth, as a contributing writer for the Asian Journal for 11 years. I have interviewed individuals at work, in factories, restaurants, churches and sometimes, their homes.
It has been 42 years of listening to people sharing their stories and listening for life’s lessons.
I have interviewed welfare moms, multimillionaires, CEOs, professionals, artists, photographers, jewelers, musicians, writers, professors, students, activists, entrepreneurs, workers, chefs, realtors, authors, writers, playwrights, actors, actresses, directors, mayor, composers, assemblymembers, members of Congress, composers, attorneys, lyricists, conductors, beauty queens, 50 priests, two monsignors and a bishop.
There are more who I need to connect to – computer technicians, gardeners, parking attendants, cleaning ladies, busboys, waiters, electricians, plumbers, bus drivers, garbage men, repairmen, and homeless families from whom I can learn from.
Four types of people
I recently shared with a good friend, that reflecting on the thousands whom I have interviewed, I believe there are three kinds of people.
First, the radical givers who share themselves; second, the content receptors of grace or open vessels; and third, a hybrid of both open receivers and sensitive givers of grace.
I added a fourth category: those who are mean, unkind, cruel, and feeling victimized and harassed, much like the 45th U.S. president in the Oval Office, who extracts patience and tolerance from others, with the unusual grace of understanding and justice for their wrongdoings.
I added this fourth category as it is quite obvious, in public view for all to see how the current president creates division, while he considers diverse folks as his enemies: Muslims, women, Mexicans, immigrants, gays disabled, journalists, the intelligence community, refugees, even his personal attorney and Special Counsel, while he has admiration for authoritarian leaders from Russia and North Korea. He could not even let go of the rebuke he got from the late Sen. John McCain, who voted no to the repeal of Obamacare.
I was in Europe in 2003. It had been two years after the suicide bombers from the Middle East attacked the Twin Towers and thereafter the U.S. and its coalition partners went to war against Iraq. Travel felt ominous then and even more so as American citizens as we were met with hostility and suspicion. To folks whom I met and struck conversations, they openly complained of the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush.
They recalled what they had to endure during World War II and were afraid of another World War III. They pointed to a nearby building, whose inaccessible basement and tunnels remain and reminiscent of how folks hid there during the war. They prayed for peace and they had all their prayers written down and kept in a wooden box. Quietly, a prayer movement reached 20,000+ for peace and no world war. They kept the box as a symbol of their unity, hoping someday, they would be alive to read them aloud and thank God for protecting Europe during the invasion of Iraq.
Fast forward to Donald Trump who recently pulled out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, signed by Pres. Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987.
“The treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate and ratified by both Gorbachev and Reagan on June 1, 1988. With this treaty, 2,692 missiles were eliminated, in May 1991, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.” (Source:Wikipedia and Euro News).
The “U.S. formally suspended the treaty on Feb. 1, 2019, and Russia followed the following day. Putin wants to have ‘supersonic’ missile after the treaty suspension and declared that “Russia must develop new nuclear warhead-carrying missiles by 2021,” according to CNBC and CNN.
Is the 45th U.S. president taking us back to the Dark Ages?
“The term Dark Ages was coined by an Italian scholar, Francesco Petrarch, who lived from 1304 to 1374,” according to Nate Sullivan, a history professor and writer.
Petrarch lamented the scarcity of quality in Latin literature and dark ages became a term for lack of culture and advancement in Europe. Black Death bubonic plague killed an estimated 100 to 200 million, devastating Europe from the late 1340s to early 1350s, Sullivan continued. Are we now having our Dark Ages in America?
Do we have a choice between this culture of death and a culture of life? Do we sense the opioid epidemic of deaths in the thousands, the suicides of teenagers, shootings of black teenagers by police officers, and 30,000 deaths of Americans from random gun violence?
Yet, the president insists on cultivating fear coming from caravans of migrants, refugees, immigrant crimes and women choosing to abort their fetuses. His fearmongering has backfired and resulted in bringing in more diverse congressmembers to the 116th Congress: hundreds of women representatives, the first two Muslim-Americans, the first two Native Americans, the first Filipino American from the Central Valley TJ Cox, and the youngest 29-year-old Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Smatterings of light
I wondered if we became radical givers and contribute to a movement of being Saints, could that change America from being in the Dark Ages of massive deaths, lies, lack of culture and advancement? Would that be enough to stop the violence from hatred? I pray and I hope so.
Allow me to switch back to describing the first three categories. It is really my intent to choose smatterings of light towards a lighted path and to leave behind the dark shadows of hatred and bigotry.
The first type is radical givers, who give without expectations of anything in return.
I know of Korkie, a high school classmate, who is a radical giver. She organizes her friends, to the point of arranging carpools for those who don’t drive so all can meet for bible studies or reunions. Our classmates are from diverse income categories, and some are without cars. But, that does not deter them from sharing rides and to be together. She also arranges visits to the nuns who are now in their retirement home, about three hours away from her residence, while staying up at times till dawn to connect to U.S. and Canadian classmates and share what these nuns need for daily living.
She even supervised the carpenters and laborers, whom our 1967 batch contracted, to renew the kneelers in the school’s chapel and buy snacks for these laborers using her own resources. I consider her as part of the first category. At one time, she coordinated the receipt of books donated to the school’s library from U.S.-based classmates, through the efforts of Ambassador Mary Jo Aragon, then, Philippine Consul General in Los Angeles.
Another classmate, Beatriz, uses her financial resources to build chapels and to provide scholarships to boys for their complete education. She and her husband pay to the colleges directly and their treasures come in the form of scholars who finish their degrees. They monitor them to make sure these college graduates finance their siblings so they catalyze lifting one family at a time, out of poverty.
Can you imagine her ‘without fanfare’ giving and philanthropy without calling to what she does publicly? She also does not subscribe to the glitter and bling culture of the rich, even though she is well-endowed. What is her pay-off? A much closer relationship to God.
When she visits me in LA, I invariably witness spiritual gifts of grace. To those who may not believe in invisible miracles, it might be difficult to comprehend, but to those with faith, they appreciate the shared stories.
I also became a volunteer in 2018 to the Philippine Medical Society of Northern California, an organization which has been fielding volunteer medical professionals for 30+ years now. Doctors, dentists, nurses give up a week’s worth of income to go to a province in the Philippines, spending their own dime, to provide comprehensive medical, surgical, optical and dental services to thousands. It was so moving to witness 150 folks help thousands they do not even know nor have met in a matter of five days. Volunteers include retired professionals who simply want to help folks to have a better quality of living and not to keep suffering from their aches and pains due to the lack of money to pay for health care.
Doctors end up operating to remove goiter, hernia, reverse club foot, cleft palate, tumors, and dentists removing decaying teeth by the hundreds. The look of sweat and fatigue are matched by big smiles and content residents who get much-needed care.
Second, folks who are content receptors of grace or open channels of grace.
They discern well and speak with so much wisdom, like Pope Francis and certain holy priests. Sure, there are issues within the Catholic Church that have yet to be fully addressed like sexual abuse of parishioners and now, nuns.
I once told a Catholic priest/mentor that the brotherhood of priests includes holy priests only, and when the priest preys on his flock, he now belongs to the category of criminals, and no longer deserve to be treated as priest nor bishop nor cardinal.
Pope Francis recently made a historic trip to the Middle East, where he held a historic mass joined by thousands in an Islamic state and signed an agreement for peace.
“The document, signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, was prepared “with much reflection and prayer”, the Pope said. The one great danger at this moment, he continued, is “destruction, war, hatred between us.”
“If we believers are not able to shake hands, embrace one another, kiss one another, and even pray, our faith will be defeated,” he said.
The Pope explained that the document “is born of faith in God who is the Father of all and the Father of peace; it condemns all destruction, all terrorism, from the first terrorism in history, that of Cain.” The Holy Father said that from the Catholic point of view, the Document on Human Fraternity “does not go one millimetre beyond the Second Vatican Council… the document was made in the spirit of Vatican II.”
Among Muslims, he said, there are various opinions, but them, too, it is a process.” Vatican News reported.
I consider Pope Francis a holy vessel where each move that he makes seems inspired by the joy of the Holy Spirit and as he intended.
As Rev. Jude Winkler reminds us, “The Spirit of God is not like a dull knife that refuses to cut. The Spirit is like a sharp blade that can cut right to the heart of the matter. The Spirit can help us to explore what is hidden and confused and to sort out our motivations so that we may be and do what is Spirit-filled.” Third, a hybrid of sensitive givers of grace and receivers of that divine blessing.
I have a friend who is a wonderful giver of services in wellness. Antonio hands use acupuncture needles, cupping and massage, which result in pain intervention. You sense his healing energies pass through as his clients receive them. He meditates to a Higher Source just before seeing each one.
As one of those receiving his healing energies, we also have in-depth dialogues about life, faiths, travels and family love.
From him, we get on track to a better quality of living, not a cure, but issues of sprained muscles, and aching back or painful joints are interrupted and resolved.
The fourth, a dangerous one, as the Lies of Two Minds come from them.
They believe they are the greatest gifts to mankind and they claim to have faith in God and even religious. But they inflict the highest levels of cruelty to thousands of human beings.
Recall the current president’s ban on Muslims? Recall how he separated toddlers and children from their families to the thousands?
Recall how he engineered the shutdown, insisting on the building of the southern border wall, causing 800,000 federal workers to have no salaries to pay their bills for 35 days? Recall how faith-believing slave owners prevented slaves from having their freedoms until the U.S. Civil War?
Recall the evils of Adolf Hitler gassing up six million Jews, and how he believed he was the savior of the German race tasked to purify the nation? He was a solid believer in the Catholic faith but he got disillusioned.
Might the pedophiles now in the Catholic Church, who act like priests, be criminals who live with the ‘lies of two minds?’
Might these be the corrupt politicians who pretend to be public servants, but receive emoluments or money benefits to their private checkbooks and waste time in public office without doing any work for the public good?
Are their hearts stone-cold, much like ice crystals on the ground?
What good is this knowledge of knowing these four types?
To me, the first three are sources of inspiration and the fourth, a source of lessons and what not to follow.
We are reflections of the Divine Creator. When we remember that, we self-identify with these first three categories and we practice the power of kindness and adhere to the light.
When we are unaware of ‘the light,’ we are misaligned with our shadows and darkness conquering our divine spirits, creating the ‘lies of two minds,’ with no awareness of sense of weaknesses or impact of our wrongdoings.
When we become conscious of this light at all times, the power of kindness become us.
It is what Enzo Capua described as: “These cultural shifts become unstoppable thanks to their communicative force, and are therefore physical transformations in the broadest sense, moving from one place to another…but today it is generally accepted, even held up as an example of the brotherhood between different countries, where borders are nothing more than lines drawn on a map. They don’t exist in nature. Often they’re the outcome of wars and deals struck under (clearly non-peaceful) pressure.”
We all have choices of being in the dark or the smatterings of lights and risk being kind and generous, to change the proliferation of negative energies.
We just might reverse the proliferation of threats of nuclear wars, but also fill up this world with new energies from those of us who are and who become radical givers, receptors of grace and even hybrids of both.
In connecting with a human being, we validate who we are, another humane person! Much like what my 4-year-old granddaughter Princess says to me, she looks at the rock where it is written, “BELIEVE,” then reads each letter and altogether she says: “Believe LOVE!”
“‘I’ convinced ‘myself.’ The I that did the convincing was the one who needed desperately to justify the entire experience, to make it sane and right and okay and approved. Myself was convinced as the moral self, the part of me I would want to be a judge in a legal system. This moral part of us, however, in these extreme situations, is vulnerable to the overwhelming force of that part of us that needs to justify our actions. I am ashamed of this lie because it was done for nothing more than self-aggrandizement. There was no greater cause, such as saving lives. Also in the previous examples of lying, I wasn’t of two minds. I didn’t believe what I was saying for a moment. I was in control. With this lie I’d lost myself. Perhaps this too adds to the shame. It is the lie of two minds that is most dangerous.” – Karl Marlantes, 2011
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”– Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo
I was struck by Fr. Raymond Decipeda’s video post on Facebook, touching the hands and face of a weary, old man living in Alameda, an industrial corridor in downtown Los Angeles. He took his right hand first and showed him how to clean using baby wipes, while speaking to him in his native tongue, Spanish. He took another wipe to wash off the grime from this man’s face, gave him the container of wipes and then, a hug. This Catholic priest’s action showed me how we might be that speck of goodness to strangers, even randomly, by our policies and actions.
The unsheltered homeless population in LA City was 39,168 in 2008. Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority now claims that in 2018, the unsheltered population has gone down to 22,887.
Recall Steve Lopez’s friendship with a mentally ill homeless violinist, Nathan Ayers, who lived in the streets? A film was made describing their friendship: “Lopez met Ayers four years ago [2005], when Ayers was a homeless musician on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Lopez learned Ayers had been a promising violinist, and that he had left the prestigious music program at the Juilliard School because of his struggle with mental illness. Lopez chronicled Ayers’ struggle in several columns at the Los Angeles Times. These columns inspired readers to send instruments to Ayers through Lopez. The friendship that Lopez formed with Ayers eventually helped the musician get off the street, settle into an apartment and find treatment for his schizophrenia,” NPR wrote in 2009.
Recently on Jan 17, 2019, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti held the fourth annual homeless job fair wherein 50+ employers were invited. Garcetti recently attended the Washington, DC’s Conference of City Mayors wherein he was expected to make an announcement for his presidential run, crowding out the Democratic primary for 2020 to an estimated 20 candidates. Instead, a few days later, it was announced that he would not run, giving city residents a sense of relief that now, their mayor can focus his attention on solving LA’s social issues.
was listening to KPCC describe how the homeless folks can get a haircut, a shave, a cosmetic makeover, and new clothes, with employers waiting to hire them. At the same job fair, they asked folks to bring resumes and to dress to impress for these positions: “Direct Service / Entry Level: case managers, outreach workers, housing navigators, employment specialists, administration, finance. Management / Supervisory Level: supervisors, coordinators, program managers and directors, and similar positions; Professional Level and Executive Level: with advanced degrees such as MSW, MPP, MPH, LCSW, certifications; senior management.”
These are the jobs that folks can avail of and yet, we humbly ask – are these jobs that might qualify the homeless on the streets? Or is the LA mayor’s conflating a job fair with the homeless problem, so something can be showcased as addressing this intractable, complex problem, now 50,000 folks on the streets and climbing?
Would the homeless have access to computers to RSVP using Eventbrite? That was such a glaring red flag to anyone looking at this fourth homeless job fair, that it was not meant for the homeless, but meant for the employers looking for employees for their vacant positions. Intentions to solve a problem or a big social issue matter.
To the LA mayor’s credit, one can observe a marked decline in visible encampments, with lesser tents during the day. But, as soon as the sun goes down, and it starts getting dark, tents go up randomly in public sidewalks, giving the city a feel that it is one huge campground, spread out in different neighborhoods, without zero camping fees and of course, its consequence, trash.
By Thursday to Sunday, much of the human trash from camping on the streets, unofficially accumulate underneath freeway underpasses and near on-ramps, and on public sidewalks, where mattresses, garbage bags, strollers, grocery carts, paper bags, styrofoam containers, buckets, milk containers and even dirty diapers are found.
Channel 5 on Feb. 6, 2019 reported on City Hall harboring rodent fleas and the television station showed rotting oranges near this city of concentrated local power, with rodents feasting on trash and rotten produce. They featured an LA City Attorney alleging typhus infection from rodent fleas.
I wonder what happened to the Bureau of Sanitation in charge of collecting city trash – do they have roving trucks to collect trash from these randomly created garbage zones so they do not become permanent trash dumps? Or not cause illness as this LA City Attorney alleged?
What if these city agencies’ decision makers stopped for a moment, and actually lived outdoors inside a tent? Would they discover that folks who live on the streets need the basics of cooking areas, toilet and trashcans? Would they readily find the resources to address their housing needs and train them for entry-level jobs as now their hearts have been cracked open to care for these homeless folks?
From ‘drive by’ to ‘trash city’
LA used to be derogatorily referred to as ‘drive by Los Angeles’ but we no longer have that designation when the local police created partnerships with communities to reduce gang violence. Now, we are known as the ‘trash city.’
What will it be for Summer Olympics 2028? Would we have changed the culture and designation to be regarded as a clean, green city?
If Kyoto, Tokyo and Hiroshima can do it, we can too. In these cities, residents start sweeping the streets in front of their homes and even hose them down. By sunrise, the streets are clean. It is quite inviting to walk to the nearest subway station.
In Dumaguete, residents get up early too, sweeping the front spaces of their homes, collecting the fallen leaves, trash and litter.
Recently, a Facebook post reported that 700 showed up to pick up trash and litter in front of their Dumaguete baywalk, a major pathway for runners, athletes and tourists. They also have been educating the locals to discontinue the use of plastic straws as fishes die and are swept to the shores.
In Sacramento, the city has started hiring folks who inhabit the banks of the American River to keep this river clean and free of trash.
LA City’s Build, Build, Build
In a public event I attended, about three years ago, I heard Garcetti share his policy of making city government more accessible.
He said that if the city staff were approached with projects and proposals, for them to ask the question, “Why not?”
Did those two words amount to permissiveness and no oversight to developers?
In using that phrase to direct his mayoral staff, did he pretty much give the keys to the city government where perhaps his intentions may have been to cut bureaucratic red tape and promote urban development?
What about balancing that with urban planning and city residents’ local needs?
We are now finding out that LA’s urban development is now synonymous to the displacement of the limited income residents and the lower middle class, known as gentrification and skyrocketing rents.
“Real estate economists are now forecasting that CA will be a majority renter state by 2025,” according to Mia McLeod.
Could these be the outcome of decisions by detached and unfeeling investment groups who maximize their profits by flipping real estate properties and selling them at the highest market value?
Check out rents downtown and you will find that they are priced from $3,000 to $12,000 – prices that are out of reach for most working families. Well, unless you are the son or daughter of someone like Eli Broad or Rick Caruso in Los Angeles.
As soon as the mayor’s two words of ‘why not policy’ became known, Los Angeles’ skylines were dotted with cranes and more cranes. I visibly counted at least eight cranes were simultaneously within a 10-mile radius in and out of downtown and almost choked the life out of city residents, signaling for us massive gentrification.
Right smack in the downtown area, close to the federal courthouse, is an unofficial tent encampment. It is next to a construction zone for another skyscraper and near newly built apartments.
Do you suppose the folks who live in these tents are calling attention to their plight since we cannot miss seeing them as one drives the freeway and takes the on-ramp from Broadway?
Is this not a city of unequal contrasts – folks who are on the streets with meager resources and nearby upscale apartments advertised in the thousands per month?
There is hope since the voters just passed, “With the state facing a massive housing shortage that has driven up prices, California voters passed Proposition 1, a $4 billion affordable housing bond. Voters also approved Proposition 2, a separate measure that will allow the state to use a past tax on millionaires to fund housing for the mentally ill,” KQED reported on Nov. 7, 2018.
Does this mean these housing developers would get low-interest city bond monies?
It begs the question – is Garcetti part of the problem or is he part of the solution?
I know he has the smarts and political will to do it as he endeavored to transform what was once debris-filled, stinky Echo Park Lake to a bustling, clean water space, where millennials want to spend time at the lakeside restaurants or pedal boats, some of which are shaped like giant swans. Clearly, this is one of this city mayor’s crowning achievements, while then a councilman. He took an almost blighted area and renewed it to reach its full potential.
The question now is will he transform blighted, decaying areas of Los Angeles, Silverlake, Temple St., Alvarado, Alameda, Virgil, downtown LA, Koreatown, and other parts of the city, where the homeless folks set up tents?
Perhaps, we have enabled this urban complex problem by not doing our share as informed voters, who by our voting, have installed public officials who are much cozier with hotel and condo developers? Instead, should we vote for those who are zealously addressing the public’s need for low income and affordable housing and have a desire of strategic public service, longer than their terms in office? Will we have the vigilance as caring voters to become community guardians and not depend on savior-like politicians in LA City Hall who still need to grow as diligent and conscientious public servants?
We need to stop the ‘lies of two minds’ and LA City Hall needs to be in alignment with publicly serving the needs of all city residents, such that no one is deprived of their rights to live a quality life and stand up to corruption, the public officials who need to be weeded out from causing any more trouble to others. They need not look to the temporary tenant in the Oval Office, but to the prior one who served with honor, the 44th U.S. president.
Let the sight of blood frozen on the icy streets of Chicago from the death of 18 homeless folks be not the case in Los Angeles. After all, we are called the city of angels and we all need to live like saints to merit that designation. Yes, saints, as we are surrounded by so much local and federal wrongdoings, anomalies and the ‘lies of two minds.’
“Strive for peace with everyone,
and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God,
that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble,
through which many may become defiled.” – 1 Heb 12: 4-7
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 10 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the US, in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.
PROSY ABARQUEZ-DELACRUZ, J.D. WRITES A WEEKLY COLUMN FOR ASIAN JOURNAL, CALLED “RHIZOMES.” SHE HAS BEEN WRITING FOR AJ PRESS FOR 13 YEARS. SHE ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO BALIKBAYAN MAGAZINE. HER TRAINING AND EXPERIENCES ARE IN SCIENCE, FOOD TECHNOLOGY, LAW AND COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERISM FOR 4 DECADES. SHE HOLDS A B.S. DEGREE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES, A LAW DEGREE FROM WHITTIER COLLEGE SCHOOL OF LAW IN CALIFORNIA AND A CERTIFICATE ON 21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP FROM HARVARD’S KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT. SHE HAS BEEN A PARTICIPANT IN NVM WRITING WORKSHOPS TAUGHT BY PROF. PETER BACHO FOR 4 YEARS AND PROF. RUSSELL LEONG. SHE HAS TRAVELLED TO FRANCE, HOLLAND, BELGIUM, JAPAN, COSTA RICA, MEXICO AND OVER 22 NATIONAL PARKS IN THE US, IN HER PURSUIT OF LOVE FOR NATURE AND THE ARTS.
We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.
Grace Lee Boggs
Four decades after Dr. King’s death, we are a very different nation. We are a nation where the White population will become the minority in the nation’s schools in just a few years. We are a nation where nearly a fifth of public school students come from linguistic minority families. Even though there is no significant effort to desegregate our schools now, thousands of American schools, mostly in the suburbs, are going through racial and ethnic change as Black and Latino families move away from central urban areas and many city schools experience displacement of one minority by another. Since teaching is the one profession that must interact effectively and in great depth with nine-tenths of the nation’s young people, lack of training and support means, at best, lost opportunities for deeper and more effective relationships. At worst, it means being helpless in the face of serious divisions coming into our schools from the outside community. American parents, by very large majorities, want their children to grow up understanding how to relate successfully with all groups in a diverse society. For this to happen, and for our society to avoid projecting into ever larger sectors of suburbia the kinds of poor race relations and resegregation that damaged so many urban neighborhoods, teachers must have the tools to understand and relate to students and parents from all backgrounds and to help children understand the very diverse and changing society they will live in.
Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA
Group photo from Saturday, January 26 shows nearly 70 attendees during the first summit for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) educators. (Photo courtesy of Bianca Nepales)
A group of about 20 Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) educators and advocates voluntarily organized a summit for Southern California AANHPI educators during the last weekend in January.
The intent was to build community across schools, districts, and identities, deepen its collective understanding of AANHPI experiences with education, and create space to affirm and respond to the needs and challenges.
Nearly 70 attendees, some traveling from as far as Sacramento and San Diego, convened at Bright Star Rise Kohyang Middle School in Koreatown on Saturday, January 26 to engage in the summit’s theme of “Inward, Outward, Onward” as a way to build community, learn from each other, and set the stage for future action.
A highlight of the summit was a focus on deepening the collective understanding of AANHPI experiences with education, and the ways in which AANHPI experiences might be represented in education equity conversations.
“Now, more than ever, our voices are heard, our leadership is seen and convening other folks who have long not seen themselves in famous leadership is an important part of healing. It is an imperative to fully represent the stories and hope the future holds,” said Ruth Le, one of the summit organizers and current special education high school educator.
Nationally, only 2.5 percent of all public school teachers identify as Asian American Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, while 6 percent of all students in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second-largest school district, identify as AANHPI.
The summit organizers believe that Southern California can and should be prime space for its kids and families to receive an affirming and responsive education, which starts with teachers understanding the unique role they play given their own identity in relationship to their students. By creating a space to affirm and respond to needs and challenges experienced by participants, the summit organizers hope to set the stage for a future of community-building and collective action.
“Growing up, I didn’t have many role models to look up to who looked like me. Spaces like these guided me in finding my leadership voice and political identity — a space of transformation and community,” shared Jacqulyn Whang, a current educator with Compton Unified School District who is also leading a yoga workshop at the summit.
In America, analyses of racial inequities in education typically focus on disparities between the experiences of African-American or Latin@/x kids (colloquially, “black and brown” kids) and their white peers. Framing the fight against educational inequities in this way renders invisible the needs and contributions of AANHPI communities in any of that work, according to research conducted by Benjamin Chang on Asian Americans and education.
For a moment, it took me back to 1980s with organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice (formerly Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center) and Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) who were focused on addressing social inequalities through civil rights work and training leaders in higher learning.
I remember attending education conferences of APAHE and leaving inspired. It was empowering to listen to conference speakers: black, brown and white professors who had stellar academic achievements in the field of education, know how to teach from the ground up, and are able to speak from a wealth of experience, from praxis or actual practice, what it takes to teach with equity-centered leadership and fairness and to develop curriculums. They invited community leaders as well to speak on best practices.
They were not just buzzwords, but APAHE’s conference workshops reflected teaching and leadership development content, borne out of actual leadership and educational experiences for decades and more.
Ricco Siasoco and Sarah Ha (Photo by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz)
It paralleled what I saw in SoCal AANHPI Educators Summit presenters, Sarah Ha and Ricco Siasoco, each having 15 years plus experiences of teaching and advocacies. It was a unique combination of seeing a Ricco, a former professor at Boston College presenting with his former student Sarah. They had a positive mindset, ability to influence others with their presentations, who work with respect and humility for those who attended the summit workshop.
In a short period of time, they got folks to reflect on their past, position themselves in a collective timeline prepared by LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), an organization we had supported in the past. LEAP timelines for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders first dated back to June 9, 1880 when 148 Japanese were in the continental United States.
However, this session also illuminated how the AANHPI community is missing a complex and comprehensive AANHPI history. I noticed that the timeline glaringly lacked the history of Filipinos Americans in Louisiana since the 1700s, who originated the dried shrimp industry. They were Filipino sailors under the rule of the Spanish who escaped the Spanish galleons to establish the fishing village of Saint Malo in Louisiana, “Filipinos pioneered the dried shrimp industry, the predecessor of the modern shrimp industry,” says Robert Romero, the President of the Filipino Louisiana Historical Society. “There [was] no refrigeration then, and after you have been catching all these shrimp, so you have to just dry them.” Manila Village, Bassa Bassa and other Gulf Coast Filipino settlements would later be credited. (Source: Ricco Siasoco’s slide presentation at the Summit, Jan. 2019).
This caught my attention that one of the tenets of this summit’s session on ‘Sharing our Stories: Solidarity Across AANHPI Lines of Difference’ is – “We cannot understand U.S. history without understanding Asian American history,” Dr. Erica Lee, author of the Making of Asian Americans. My challenge to the summit organizers is to contact LEAP and correct this significant milestone omission.
A multicultural summit of educators
Equally valuable in the exercise is an impression that we are all coming from diverse backgrounds, previously census-profiled at 25 Asian American groups in the 1980s, to now 48 diverse groups, speaking 300+ languages, according to Ha, who is also the Senior Managing Director of National Asian American and Pacific Islander Alliance at Teach for America.
What was heartening was that the SoCal AANHPI Educators Summit gathered 90 teachers from different parts of California, and were from these cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indian, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.
The use of technology assisted in the profile assessments of these attendees. The diversity of experiences and backgrounds represented reflected the need for AANHPI teachers to have stronger self-awareness of their identities and impact. Workshop leaders Ha and Siasoco emphasized that those represented also must be cognizant of many other groups are not represented and their narratives still need to be included, as their voices.
The erasure of AANHPI folks from education conversations also means that AANHPI educators can often be ill-prepared to think critically about the impact of their identities in the relationship to their students and schools. According to an article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, AANHPI educators often have a less robust foundation of research from which to interrogate the impact of their identities on students of all races and ethnicities.
The summit provided spaces for these young teachers to articulate their voices, to share their past histories and to have the agency to do so – meaning they are empowered and presumed to have the “critical literacy.” That would mean having the facility to critically process the information they have absorbed, and apply logically to present situations and find solutions and address the problems. Schools can better serve all students if teachers more deeply understood AANHPI needs, and ways to address these challenges using tools such as “critical literacy.”
The erasure of AANHPI communities reinforces the “model minority myth,” a (false) belief that allegations of systematic racism (voiced initially by African-Americans) must be unfounded because Asians have been able to leverage hard work toward their American success.
In this case, when inequities facing AANHPI folks are not given space in education conversations, we perpetuate the incorrect notion that AANHPI communities do not face challenges in education. This assumption of AANHPI earned immunity against inequity both disservices AANHPI youth and fuels excuses that allow the needs of non-AANHPI youth of color to be ignored.
Here’s hoping that the summit organizers and participants continue to fuel their momentum to address these inequities in this generation.
In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students’ parents and community leaders.
Wendy Koff, Founder of Teach For America
Four decades after Dr. King’s death, we are a very different nation. We are a nation where the White population will become the minority in the nation’s schools in just a few years. We are a nation where nearly a fifth of public school students come from linguistic minority families. Even though there is no significant effort to desegregate our schools now, thousands of American schools, mostly in the suburbs, are going through racial and ethnic change as Black and Latino families move away from central urban areas and many city schools experience displacement of one minority by another. Since teaching is the one profession that must interact effectively and in great depth with nine-tenths of the nation’s young people, lack of training and support means, at best, lost opportunities for deeper and more effective relationships. At worst, it means being helpless in the face of serious divisions coming into our schools from the outside community. American parents, by very large majorities, want their children to grow up understanding how to relate successfully with all groups in a diverse society. For this to happen, and for our society to avoid projecting into ever larger sectors of suburbia the kinds of poor race relations and resegregation that damaged so many urban neighborhoods, teachers must have the tools to understand and relate to students and parents from all backgrounds and to help children understand the very diverse and changing society they will live in.
Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA
In America, $22 trillion economy in 2019 is projected by Focus Economics, followed by China, Japan, Germany, UK and India. In this same rich America, 15 million children are born in poverty, with three grade levels behind in learning as others in rich zip code districts. While others have graduated in high school, these low income students remain at 8th grade levels, although endowed with lots of skills and talents, unharnessed by the public schools.
Where you live determines what your future will be. Live in a poor neighborhood, and your chances of graduating in college is 3%, while if you are in a rich zip code district, access to good education is higher and 71% graduate from college, according to a 2014 Teach for America video on Los Angeles.
Picture this – young teachers of multicultural backgrounds, well-spoken, articulate in framing current America’s inequalities and a concept like positionality – “is the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality and ability status; also describes your identity influences and potentially biases, your understanding of the and outlook of the world.” I wondered how an intense self-consciousness about one’s positionality brings about social change in the classroom, addressing the present learning gaps?
For a moment, it took me back to 1980’s with organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice (formerly Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center) and Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) who were focused on addressing social inequalities through civil rights work and training leaders in higher learning.
I remember attending education conferences of APAHE and leaving inspired. It was empowering to listen to conference speakers: black, brown and white professors who had stellar academic achievements in the field of education, know how to teach from the ground up, and are able to speak from a wealth of experience, from praxis or actual practice, what it takes to teach with equity-centered leadership and fairness and to develop curriculums. They invited community leaders as well to speak on best practices.
They were not just buzz words, but APAHE’s conference workshops reflected teaching and leadership development content, borne out of actual leadership and educational experiences for decades and more.
It paralleled what I saw in Teach for America’s summit presentors, Sarah Ha and Ricco Siasoco, each having 15+ experiences of teaching and advocacies. It was a unique combination of seeing a former teacher of Boston College, Rico, presenting with his former student at Boston College, Sarah. They had the Teach for America’s traits of teacher corps – a positive mindset, ability to influence others with their presentations, who work with respect and humility for those who attended the summit workshop.
In a short period of time, they got folks to reflect on their past, position themselves in a collective timeline prepared by LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), an organization we had supported in the past.
LEAP timelines for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders first dated back to June 9, 1880 when 148 Japanese were in the continental United States.
It glaringly lacked the history of Filipinos Americans in Louisiana since the 1700s, who originated the dried shrimp industry. They were Filipino sailors under the rule of the Spanish who escaped the Spanish galleons to establish the fishing village of Saint Malo in Louisiana, “Filipinos pioneered the dried shrimp industry, the predecessor of the modern shrimp industry,” says Robert Romero, the President of the Filipino Louisiana Historical Society, “there were no refrigeration then, and after you have been catching all these shrimp, so you have to just dry them.” Manila Village, Bassa Bassa and other Gulf Coast Filipino settlements would later be credited. (Source: Rico Siasoco’s slide presentation at Summit, Jan. 2019).
This caught my attention as one of the tenets of this summit’s session on ‘Sharing our Stories: Solidarity Across AANHPI Lines of Difference’ is – “We cannot understand U.S. history without understanding Asian American history.” Dr. Erica Lee, author of the Making of Asian Americans. My challenge to Teach for America in Los Angeles is to contact LEAP and correct this significant milestone omission.
Equally valuable in the exercise is an impression that we are all coming from diverse backgrounds, previously census-profiled at 25 Asian American groups in the 1980s, to now 48 diverse groups, speaking 300+ languages, according to Sarah Ha, Senior Managing Director of National Asian American and Pacific Islander Alliances, Teach for America.
A multicultural summit of educators
What was heartening was Teach for America-Los Angeles’ summit has gathered teachers from different parts of California, some had come from Sacramento, all 136 of them, from these cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indian, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.
The summit provided spaces for these young teachers to articulate their voices, to share their past histories and to have the agency to do so – meaning they are empowered and presumed to have the “critical literacy.”
That would mean having the facility to critically process the information they have absorbed, and apply logically to present situations and find solutions and address the problems. They go to summer-long training institute, 13 weeks and are then assigned at high – need schools by the districts that employ them, with a minimum commitment of two years.
In Manual Arts High School, a school described by a teacher as plagued by gangs, drugs and teenage pregnancy – all indicators of poverty, a Teach for America teacher said that teaching there coming from a similarly poor background like hers, enables the students to see from her life example, that they can have a different future by getting their education.
Learning Matters.TV tracked seven teachers from Teach for America for two years. One featured Lindsay Ordower – who was dedicated to her students at Douglas High School in Louisiana and came back for another year to teach. She cared that her students passed their tests, though only 40% show up daily. By dropping her expectations, she learned to connect and found out that one student was uncaring and slept in her classroom because she did not have a home. “Whatever I did to motivate that student, it still did not fill the gap, as she still was homeless.”
Dr. Robert Winmann, 2014 principal at Manual Arts High School, attested to test scores going up by 10% when he hired 12 Teach for America’ s trained teachers. He said they were pedagogically trained and had content knowledge.
Fast forward to 2018, where census officials report 250,000 undocumented children coming from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, South Korea, China, India, Philippines – how would Teach for America teach these students?
What is critical literacy?
For example, positionality is to recognize our biases, but perhaps even apply them as they teach the students in high – need communities, a term now used so as not to diminish perceiving the high potentials of students coming from low income communities, the recipients of deficient public funding, as opposed to higher income zip codes, receiving their higher share of public funding.
One teacher I know of reached her students with special educational needs by having them write their personal story and reading those stories aloud. By reading these narratives aloud, they realized their commonalities and developed higher levels of respect and empathy for one another. She also recognized there were different ways of learning, and she had to creatively find ways of connecting and reaching them so they can learn.
At high school graduation, she had a small book printed with all their stories, published through community support, and all had graduated with a sense of renewed pride for their future and their potentials. Who is that – Bianca Nicole Nepales, once at Teach for America teacher, now has been promoted to coach/supervisor to various incoming teachers, and who invited me to attend and write about this summit. Other sessions that summit were on Immigration Rights, Representation in Ethnic Studies in K-12 Curriculum, Restorative Practices and Empathy Building, De-Centering Whiteness in Upper Schools Curriculum, Recognizing and Addressing Anti-Blackness and Colorism.
Teach for America is a brainchild of Wendy Kopp, a Caucasian, native born to Texas who went to Princeton University and actualized her senior thesis. It took a seed grant of $500,000 from Ross Perot to support the initial years of Teach for America, from an initial funding of $2.5 million. It claims to have trained now 33,000 teachers, and reached 3 million kids in 34 states. These are impressive statistics and in 21 years and we humbly asked – have they made a difference? Have they produced future leaders who are culturally competent, equity-centered and fair or have they developed more self-centered, narcissist, ‘what is in it for me’ leaders who replicate problems with stubborn attitudes and sense of entitlement? Wendy Kopp claims they take on big challenges and still have at that young age the vigor to make a difference.
In 2010, Teach for America claims to have trained 46,000 recent college graduates. Its statistics vary from 40% still teaching in Teach for America to where only 20% remain in education. Its roster of alumni reveal many have used Teach for America as stepping stones for policy careers, set up their own non-profits and even their own businesses.
Wendy Kopp has since branched out from Teach for America to Teach for all, establishing the program in different countries.
In an interview with Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith on October 28, 2016, Wendy Kopp cited their rigorous acceptance rates from 2008-2013 of 11 to 15% from 6,000 applicants. She enumerated Teach for India with 13,000 applicants vying for 500 slots; Teach for Pakistan had 1000 applicants vying for 40 spots and Teach for Colombia had 2,400 folks vying for 50 to 60 spots.
The Guardian on Nov. 27, 2018 reported that “The Australian Capital Territory government has cut its ties with the controversial multimillion dollar Teach for Australia program, citing concerns about the program’s value for money. Guardian Australia can reveal the territory formally split with Teach for Australia in July this year, unhappy with the cost of the program and unconvinced it was “delivering classroom ready graduates that remain in the teaching workforce.” It was funded at $77 million, according to The Guardian.
Teach for America has gone to frontiers where the highest need of learning in poor communities is partially addressed by teachers recruited in the prime of their idealism to take on the problem to hopefully, harness their passion and leadership skills to make a difference.
Some critics assert that the teachers are not equipped nor trained to go to teaching, as they pursued non-teaching degrees, and are not the most capable. Yet, their leadership skills are what Teach for America claim are needed to transform classrooms, for teachers to become social justice leaders, once the entire classroom is educated then, all are empowered to make a change in our life.
Teach for America’s teachers became transformative leaders, given their clustered traits of perseverance, ability to influence and motivate others, and approaching others with respect and humility. They are trained to use extraordinary patterns and that to do under an aura of status and awe that teaching this way is cool, teaching the students in these high-need schools, though poor are with high potentials and reaching them gives these teachers higher levels of satisfaction to know that from an environment of high weeds, choking wild plants, a beautiful flower can be clustered with others, to give out its fragrance and vibrant flowers.
Truth entices us there on the frontier between fact and interpretation, and we strive for honesty in representing what is entrusted to us. We combine that honesty with a humility that comes from knowing beyond all doubt that whatever we believe, whatever we claim, whatever we know, the next generation will surely say, “That’s not good enough! We need to know more and we need to know better!
Sander M. Goldberg, distinguished research professor of Classics at UCLA, 2018.
I was surrounded by death several times in my life, as most others are in my age bracket, the “theater of more pasts than tomorrows.” But life is not about acting, it is about living for oneself as well as for others if you identify as a caring human being.
I remember vividly when Eleazar, my dad, died in April 2000. None of us in the family anticipated his passing. Yes, he had high sugar levels, but he had it under control. He also had survived mini-heart attacks and he too had that under control with a better lifestyle: no smoking, exercise, sleep, and good nutrition.
But, why his sudden death when I was out on a road trip for work? I made it about myself.
Isn’t that what death does to us – it makes us inward, self-centered, and asks us how much more we can endure?
Even after his passing, I struggled to find meaning in his death. I wrote his eulogy to figure out answers to my whys. I then realized he was a gardener of souls who helped others by listening, by weeding out relatives’ and friends’ life’s issues, consequently, he gave them a renewed sense of hope and sometimes, his own money to assist with health expenses or housing expenses. It was seldom that he said NO, which my mom wished he did more often.
When my Asuncion, my mom passed 16 years later, I was again in a quandary, yet her death was anticipated. It occurred months after her 88th birthday when she discreetly shared it was so much more difficult to breathe and she was more than ready. It was not clear as to what her readiness was until a respiratory infection increased her sufferings.
Instead of sinking into depression and making my life smaller, I resolved to visit more. Our last Thanksgiving with her was 100 percent attendance from all members of the family and I counted 40 of us. Before I could even find the answers to my questions about her death, 60 days later, Rose, my eldest sister died.
I now have two lives to examine – why their deaths were in the first half of 2016?
I then recalled a community leader, Roy Morales. I too could not make sense of his death, we heard that he fell while fixing his house’s roof. That stayed with me and I imagined how painful and sudden it must have been. Could it be that he suffered a heart attack while up there and subsequently fell? As news trickled in, the Los Angeles Times confirmed that he died from a sudden heart attack.
Uncle Roy consciously educated folks to be “woke,” to know who we are, to address the issues around us, and to appreciate our community’s culture, heritage and blessings. He spent Saturdays leading the tour of Historic Filipinotown and I bet if he were alive today, he would celebrate the nomination of Filipino Christian Church to the National Register of Historic Places in October 2018. He was a social worker and served the community well and extended himself further by teaching Filipino American Studies at UCLA where his classes were maxed out in enrollment.
While he shared our common history in Historic Filipinotown (HIFI) by taking his UCLA students through a tour of HIFI, he recognized how gentrification displaced our early pioneers, our Manongs from their homes in Bunker Hill. He instilled in us how to have a higher appreciation for our culture, our heritage, and collective history. He made vigilant visits to appointing powers in local government and referred community persons with merit to staffers’ positions.
My mom, my dad and my sister were not self-proclaimed nor did they identify as community leaders. Yet, they too lived their lives for others. My mom was teaching science and math, while my sister propagated God’s words in the last four years of her life. She went to numerous cursillo retreats with her husband, Eduardo, to help in the spiritual formation of others, as herself. The three (dad, mom and sister) lived their lives caring for others and cared enough to pass on what they learned in life.
But more visible than my family members was Royal Morales, a social worker, a community cheerleader, a culture bearer who passed on his knowledge of our heritage and had a profound impact on many lives. These are examples of Filipino immigrants who came here many decades ago – who taught us we all belong to one human family.
My question today is – fast forward to the incidents we just had at the Lincoln Memorial, a face-off between an elderly Native American man and a young Covington High School student wearing a red MAGA hat from the Trump’s campaign. What would these Filipino elders say to these students? What would other folks of color say to them?
We must make acts of hatred unthinkable
Marlon James is a Jamaican writer. He is an acclaimed novelist who has published three novels: John Crow’s Devil, The Book of Night Women and A Brief History of Seven Killings.
He wrote the African “Game of Thrones” and teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He recently posted this on Facebook: “Here’s the thing about Covington Catholic School Boy. He [Nick Sandmann] didn’t shout, he didn’t rage, he didn’t threaten, and he did not even lift a finger. Because he’s not even twenty years old, and already knows he never has to. He just stood there with his smirk, the line sealing his white privilege. A smirk saying that nothing you speak matters, your existence doesn’t matter, your protest doesn’t matter, your dignity doesn’t matter, not even the fact that you were here first matters.
You’re a joke because I find you funny, you’re a target because I got my bull’s eye on you, and you are nothing because I won’t even remember you by the time I get home. This is racism boiled down to the core, bigotry in excelsis.”
Three distinct groups had converged in Lincoln Memorial.
Covington Catholic High School Students were in Washington, DC, to join the March for Life, a yearly activity of Catholics in Washington, DC to assert that all lives need to be protected, from conception to death. It is a march to declare they are against abortion. It is held each year in major cities in the U.S. The students wore red MAGA hats.
A group of Black Hebrews Israelites was also demonstrating. They asserted their beliefs that they are God’s chosen but shouted profanities at the high schoolers.
In the same location, Native Americans were holding their Indigenous People’s March.
Sensing the tension between the high school group and the Black Hebrew Israelites group, Nathan Phillips, an elderly Native American from Omaha got into the center of these two gatherings, drumming, intending to diffuse the spiraling tensions.
Instead, the high school students gathered around Phillips, the elderly man while Covington high school student Nick Sandmann stood still, with a red MAGA hat, stared at the Native American elder, wearing a smirk on his face, while his classmates were laughing and gesturing nearby, in a faceoff.
Sandmann claims he was grinning to keep the situation from escalating.
The video excerpt of that face-off went viral, and many comments surfaced: “Native American leaders have disputed student Nicholas Sandmann’s assertion that he was trying to keep the situation on the Mall from escalating when he stood, grinning, in front of Phillips. “His whole frame is that they were somehow attacked and behaving defensively,” said Daniel Paul Nelson of the Lakota People’s Law Project. “No, they were not, not towards Nathan. What they did to Nathan was completely offensive, not defensive,“ Washington Post Frances Stead Sellers and Kevin Williams wrote on Jan. 22.
Can we give credence to Nicholas Sandmann’s statement – that he was grinning to diffuse the situation?
Or was this a case of white privilege, as described by Marlon James, a high schooler who considers his actions were righteous and only he matters in this equation?
When a person is drumming, their focal attention and energies are channeled, connecting the pounding sticks for the arms to hit the drum skins. It would be physically impossible for this elderly man to keep drumming and for Sandmann to assert he had to protect himself from him, the Native American man.
As America Magazine’s Michael O’Loughlin on Jan. 24 reported, Lexington, Ky. Bishop John Stowe wrote an opinion-editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader about what he thought about these boys’ behaviors: “Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.”
The bishop further cautioned the pro-life movement to have a critical look as to who they form alliances with. “The pro-life movement claims that it wants more than the policy change of making abortion illegal [and] aims to make it unthinkable. That would require deep changes in society and policies that would support those who find it difficult to afford children,” Bishop Stowe wrote, as reported by the Washington Post. “The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable.”
What would our Filipino-American elders say to these teenagers?
First, it is inculcated since birth that elders are to be respected and that all folks are deserving of respect. “Honor him or her,” that is one of the important teachings of our Catholic faith. It is further supported by cultural norms, when we take the hand of an elder to our forehead and we say, “Mano Po.” In our culture, the use of the word “po” conveys respect, especially given to folks we have just met who are older or are in a position of authority.
It would be unthinkable for a teenager to assume an intimate distance towards an elder, unless his father, mother, uncle, grandfather, a relative to show intimacy or affection. To approach a person’s personal space with a smirk would be considered disrespectful and “in your face,” even. That was manifested in the video excerpt – a serious lack of respect for an elder, who is different from Nicholas Sandmann, a white teenager.
As to the Black Hebrew Israelites who claim they are God’s chosen, they can show by their actions who they descended from, by not throwing profanities at these teenagers.
The school is currently closed as death threats supposedly were hurled at these high school students. While the school is closed, a serious revamping of their curriculum might be considered to learn and make ethnicities’ histories and people of color contributions visible to the building of America, similar to what Uncle Roy was doing formally when he was teaching at UCLA.
It would seem that all those of God, who claim to be God’s descendants, and who are in a Catholic high school will need to examine critically their actions to match God’s example of inclusion, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
I submitted 52 pieces for my weekly Rhizomes column in the Asian Journal. These pieces, excerpted below, resonated with AJ’s readers and also on social media.
It is interesting to observe that months after I spotlight an author, a musician or an artist, many more good things happen to them. It is a testament that God rewards those who put effort into their craft, with the best intentions of sharing their talents.
May you all have a peaceful, truth-filled, just and prosperous 2019! God makes miracles daily – we must be still to claim them all! We are all His anointed beloveds!
The Philippine Chamber Singers-LA (PCS-LA) performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on August 17, 2018. Members include sopranos: Marivic Francisco, Charmaine Normandia, Kit Buhion, Annie Jeanette Dwight and Ana Hurn; altos: Ana Burog, Lisa Ulanday, Apple Nazareno, Jennifer Morelos, Judith Guerrero and Kim Bautista; tenors: Louie Ulanday, Noel Anzures, Hero Emolaga, Aris Canlapan, *Oscar Pantaleon Jr., and *Gerry Francisco; and bass: Dino Padallan, Dale Francisco, Medard Obida, Dennis Quiambao, and Novem Cabios. (*Indicates guest singers) Photo courtesy of The Philippine Chamber Singers-LA
Part II: Philippine Chamber Singers-LA give their all to OPM at the Walt Disney Hall
Nagbubungkal, nagtatanim, kumikinang (shoveling, planting, healthy vibrance) are features of hard work in growing crops.
But, what if those activities were applied in nurturing families and growing communities?
If one is born into music, what if someone aligned with that luck, applied himself in that path, keeping in mind the law of favorability, and that the Universe conspires to give us more favors to grow our luck?
Much like Andrea Morricone — an Italian composer-son of Ennio Morricone, who speaks with a sense of certainty, in sharing himself “as perhaps already swimming in music,” while in the womb of his mother, Maria and listening to his father, Ennio who played the trumpet — Anthony Angelo “Gelo” Francisco has similar roots of “swimming in the musically-gifted womb” of Herminia, a coloratura (soprano skilled in opera), his mother, and listening to Gerardo, his father, a singer.
They became part of an erstwhile Mandaluyong Polyphonic Society’s (MPS) and as the photo accompanying this article shows, Francisco’s dad (bass) and mom (soprano), encircled in white, who with their group, performed at exclusive Cardinal’s events in the Philippines. At MPS, Gerardo met Herminia and they became a couple, giving birth to the youngest Gelo Francisco with four elder siblings, all with gifts of musicality. A similar PCS-LA gathering with their families are in another photo.
Fast forward to this Music Center’s Disney Hall event and we find Gelo Francisco’s family integrated into PCS-LA as well, with wife Marivic (a soprano), in a featured solo, while their son, Joaquim Antonio Belo Francisco, (college-bound on his gap year) strummed the kalatong, a bamboo percussion instrument with Gelo. Both Joaquim and his father (Gelo) played the kalatong bamboo drums to a fast rhythm that provided the background to “TINIG NG LUPA,” which earned a chorus of audience’s bravos. We celebrated that we saw how the Francisco family rose as one, passing on the legacy inherited from Gelo’s father and mother, and now Gelo and Marivic passing on their gifts of musicality to their first born, Joaquim, another professional artist born that night.
The integrity of passion and conviction to good music shows
Equally outstanding was the rendition of “ANAK,” a popular song of Freddie Aguilar, with new arrangements from John Pamintuan. It was a solo featuring alto Lisa Ulanday, accompanied by Malaya Filipino-American Dance Arts and of course, PCS-LA.
Many Filipinos can sing “ANAK” as the tune is almost instinctive, having been born in the Philippines, a place where this song is heard in the plazas, musical halls, academic stages, television, and movies and like a prodigal son, one breaks off from family to grow independence and returns to home again.
To have a Filipina-American like Ulanday sing this in Tagalog, which is not her primary language, took a lot of preparations from her as to style, enunciating the words and vowels with the punctuated emotions, and of course, the sound dynamics.
She said, “I never thought simple words like ‘gatas’ (milk) could sound too aristocratic when I applied traditional choral singing vowels. I had to consciously add more ‘y’ in kamay (hand), so I didn’t sound hoitey toitey.”
“How did you prepare for this?” I asked her, one evening, after putting her own anak to sleep.
Abraham Ferrer: Using art to influence culture and building communities
The festival he managed for 32+ years will now be on its 35th year in 2019. The workshops continue to be well-attended as Asians are cast in center stages talking about diversity issues while providing forums to discover, to incubate and to showcase the community’s emerging artistic talents.
The festival is a “home,” a reliable cultural space for artists, a “major tastemaking event,” such that the Academy has qualified this festival as a pipeline for short films and a reunion of past to present Asian Pacifics involved in community building using the arts and social awareness.
“Festival No. 34 maintains our spirit of producing this annual showcase through the process of creating our ideal communities,” states VC Executive Director Francis Cullado on 2018’s LAAPFF, “Our programmers and staff imagine our ideal communities to be inclusive while striving towards equity and change. And with regards to the ongoing discourse about diversity, we aim to have a space that engages intra-diversity amongst AAPIs and inter-diversity with other communities and groups. We at Visual Communications (VC) and this Festival proudly present a slate of artists and creators who continue to shift narratives and challenge perspectives.”
2018 gave festival attendees an early chance to see John Cho and Debra Messing in “Searching” via Sony Green Gems, which was co-written and directed by Aneesh Chaganty, a first-time feature filmmaker.
Abe’s programming and cultural acumen have now switched to digital management of VC’s archives. His articulation of their dynamic programming committee’s criteria converged with what I read: “Has my involvement in the process, of which this particular art object [film] is part, raised my consciousness in any way?” Whatever the answer to that question, the fact that we can ask it gives art [film] a new life. With the full emancipation of art, we must also allow it the freedom to do anything and, more to the point, to say anything: to have free speech, if you like but also to have freedom of expression in the languages beyond speech,” Hugh Moss, one of London’s leading 20th century dealers in Asian art who represented the best Chinese artists in Hong Kong, and who wrote “The Art of Understanding Art: A New Perspective” (2015).
Immigrants are pieces of American history
Desirree Delacruz shared this: “I am a millennial American citizen who was born in Westminster, CA whose father, Cesar hailed from Bulacan province. He is the second of eleven siblings who migrated by first becoming a seaman and who now works at USPS. He is credited with helping seven of his siblings migrate. I can only imagine what my dad had to endure: depression, loneliness and in those tears, he had to be so strong to have a vision, larger than his situation then. He met my mother, Imelda who worked alongside my dad at a technology company until she was laid off. For six years, she cared for Juanita Lopez, my grandmother, who had a stroke. I believe if I had to face what they went through, to live lives for others, I would not have the emotional and psychological capacity to transcend their struggles and sufferings. Why? Because everything was given to me. I did not experience those difficulties and I would not know how to respond. Immigrants are a piece of history. They are pieces of American history that built our ancestry, that built our family, that built everything.”
First, Desirree’s smile was my red carpet welcome. Before the ritual of facials started, she held both of my hands, and we both got still, in meditation. As we held hands, I sobbed uncontrollably inside O Skin Care in Cerritos.
After meditating, she asked what happened. I cried and could not help but think about the pain and suffering of toddlers in diapers, imagining what they went through when U.S. border agents tear gassed them. This act was supposedly done according to Pres. Trump on behalf of our national security interests. As Americans, we were not consulted nor did we agree to these despicable acts of cruelty propagated by heartless, yet professionally trained federal agents.
I cried imagining the irritants that caused burning to these toddlers’ eyes, mucous membranes, throat, lungs and skin. Kim Kyung Hoon snapped a moving image that was published in the Washington Post. It catalyzed a discussion about who came to America’s shores and who were allowed in.
The “red” stories of martyrs’ sacrifice of one’s life so others might live (This book garnered the Best Book of Nonfiction in Prose in English award at the 37th National Book Awards on Nov. 25, 2018. I wrote this piece on September 8, 2018, following U.S.’ book launches of the author.)
“With such robust capacity of observation and memory recall, the blood pouring out of the carabao’s jugular vein in his neck, makes for a visual sensory metaphor for how the women and men were arrested, tortured in prison and how women were raped wantonly by a gang of military men, leaving red blood stains all over the place.
Lahoz describes these incidents of torture with precision and specificity, yet with such respect for the women and the reader as to spare us the gory details of the criminal acts, and leaving us to imagine the atrocity, while describing the details after the gory incident. We came to know the various methods of torture, including the use of flat iron to sear the soles of the prisoners, the grabbing of hair until they are torn off one’s scalp with brute force.
Many good deeds are equally described, including soldiers who give a hand to the tortured prisoners, or how Abra farmers were supported by construction of irrigation systems funded by the Catholic Lenten Fund of Germany, enabling the farmers to have two croppings a year.
You could sense the tedious verification that the book went through, as he writes about ordinary people in these chapters and then, through a series of circumstances and the decisions they made, we sense how noble they are, through the words that Manny used in writing this book, not flamboyantly, but precise enough for a person to appreciate how a pregnant woman was helped by movement allies to give birth to her child and even a lesson on how to make spaghetti by her host only to cook it using sardines with canned tomato sauce, and a separate red sauce for Manny.
It was a gift from her heart to Manny, appreciating how she and her child were sheltered from harm. What is the big deal, as the book asks? Spaghetti is not something you can simply buy at the country store in that period; imagine eating this at a remote village where one has to walk by foot for miles to reach the highway. So, one is left wondering? How did she make the spaghetti? The woman thought of keeping the spaghetti noodles she got from her host family and kept it with her for months, on the mere chance she would see Manny and thank him for what he did for her.
Olivia Quido-Co’s journey of humility
She was determined. She analyzed how the network of connections was formed and offered facials to key folks, building her clientele through trust.
Trust is an elusive intangible to acquire. It is not just given to anyone who is still new in the business. It is acquired through repeated quality service, and personal “kabaitan” — personal goodwill, where one will always treat the other in an honorable way.
“Relying on my own intelligence, relying on my own strength, [skills, reputation and experience], I distributed flyers in different supermarkets to build my client base,” Olivia recounted.
She offered facial service for $45, at times even giving $10-discounts to clients who request for it. Once she increased her clientele, she had the promise of return business.
After being a solo entrepreneur for two years at her first business location, she decided that it was not sustainable. She felt disheartened and thought of giving up.
But Jeremiah 29:11 made her realize that God is in charge of her business. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ “
“Si God naman ang magpapasweldo (It is God who will give me the salary),” she said.
Olivia changed direction from personal power and self-reliance, and asked a Higher Being to be her Universal Partner, whom she calls Father God.
“Once I claimed that promise, I realized that the Lord was giving me a lesson through the trials I was going through. You don’t learn everything [when you’re successful], you learn more when you are down, kakailanganin mo ‘yon, ang pagbangon (You need the trials so you know how to recover),” she continued.
She kept cultivating trust, an intangible that was not easy to build. It was difficult to find the clients that it took her five years to build a reliable base. In the meantime, she was restless.
“I wanted this, I wanted that, I kept chasing worldly things, using my own strength. Then, I learned 10 percent tithing to the Church where I receive God’s word, and that if I turn my back on worldly things, and turn towards the Lord, blessing after blessing [would come.] It was truly overwhelming. Sobrang galing talaga ni Lord (God is all omnipotent).”
“For two years, I kept up my tithing, but my take-home income was still at $500 a week. So I asked the Lord – did you not promise an overflowing abundance if I do tithing?”
It turns out, as she recounted, “I was not a consistent giver, I even had a poor attitude in tithing, sometimes I would give $50 a week, other times, I would change it to $30,” she said, then “I turned to the Bible and it gave me this response – The Lord loves a cheerful giver, from then on, my income of $500 became $1000 and then $1,500. Today, I tell my accountant that 10 percent tithing is an absolute expense for my business. Only then did the tremendous blessings pour out that we are so overwhelmed.”
Jose Antonio Vargas in conversation with Prof. Viet Thanh Nguyen, another Pulitzer Prize winning author, at USC Bovard Hall during the book launch of “Dear America” on Sept. 25, 2018. Photos taken by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz
Jose Antonio Vargas: From Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist to an American author and immigration reform advocate
How is it that a piece of paper has become a permanent symbol of labeling American citizens as less than, and even making them unworthy except as chattel or slave properties up until the era of Jim Crow?
How is it that a piece of paper is presently being denied to eleven million undocumented immigrants because they are labeled falsely as unworthy of becoming American citizens, even if they have led lives more patriotic than others, like serving in the U.S. military to defend American democracy abroad?
Who determines who is worthy or unworthy of being called Americans? The guy in the White House who is now un-indicted co-conspirator of two felonies of paying off two women to hide his affairs and defrauded American citizens as to alter the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections? No wonder the book is entitled Dear America: Notes of An Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas.
America, we have been a nation of absurdities. It is time to make our country more wholesome and correct what is wrong and make everyone who is already here — those who have proven themselves as productive citizens for several years apply to get their legal U.S. work permits and ultimately, after several more years, a permanent green card.
It might take them two decades to qualify until becoming U.S. citizens, but in the meantime, they can operate without being cut up into pieces daily, because of their fears. Just as American chattel owners of slaves terrorize these slaves to remain as properties, today, our American government continues to terrorize these undocumented immigrants and even the asylum seekers at the Southern border fleeing persecution from gangs in their countries.
These undocumented immigrants have been indefatigable, tireless defenders of the American dream and what is right about it; we now have to do what is right by them. America is after all an ideal, an amalgamation of many million immigrants’ dreams who dared cross the shores and oceans seeking better lives, from the Greeks, to the Italians, to the British, to the Irish, to the Spaniards, to the Chinese, to the Japanese, to the Filipinos and over 188 countries now in its borders.
Vargas asserts, “Home is not something I have to earn. Humanity is not some box I should have to check. It occurred to me that I’d been in an intimate, long-term relationship all along. I was in a toxic, abusive, codependent relationship with America, and there was no getting out.”
For these eleven million undocumented immigrants, America has become their cage, a huge jail they cannot seem to get out from, a jail they cannot leave to even visit their loved ones overseas and to some, a jail where they will die from, away from their birth nations.
Luchie San Luis Quemuel: Her reflections of God’s gilded miracles in her life
Luchie met the love of her life, Rod Quemuel and together, they have built several businesses, the last one was a caregiving facility with six beds, and their last client was Julia Roth, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s maternal grandmother, whom he visited regularly and was close to.
When Rod and Luchie got married on Dec. 23, 1971, they went on a 37-day honeymoon. Rod asked her to buy boots and coat and she questioned the added expense, thinking they were just going to San Francisco, but off they went to Europe.
In the Quemuel family, kids are born after 13 years of marriage. Luchie got married at 30 years old. To have a kid after 13 years meant being pregnant at 43 years old, so she prayed for a miracle and wanted to go to Our Lady of Fatima.
But, Rod got sick and was feverish the night before. Not knowing how both of them could proceed to visit Our Lady of Fatima the next day, she prayed fervently. That entire evening, it rained hard, with thunder and lightning. Could it be the coming of the Holy Spirit at this point?
The next day, Rod miraculously got well and even got up early. Luchie kept asking the tour driver if the tour to the Fatima should proceed, given the heavy rains. While inside the tour bus, the rains kept up. But, the moment they alighted the bus, the rains stopped. The sun was bright and the streets were dry. Then and there, she knew she would get the miracle that she prayed for.
When they got home, she felt queasy and indeed, the miracle happened, as she became pregnant with Rowell. One more son was to be born five years later, Reggie.
