tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-06-05T17:17:23Z New America Media is a nationwide association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service, New America Media promotes ethnic media by strengthening the editorial and economic viability of this increasingly influential segment of America's communications industry. tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11537 2013-06-05T08:00:00Z 2013-06-05T17:17:23Z

Laura Waxmann ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Traducción al español

Editor's Note: One of the amendments to the Senate's immigration reform bill (Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.) would allow DREAMers who enroll in the military to become U.S. citizens. But for veterans who already have been charged with a crime and deported, it may be too late. Now a group of deported vets is building a community and creating their own mural on the U.S.-Mexico border.

When Alex Murillo was released at the U.S.-Mexico border right outside of Tijuana in 2011, he was given a little money, a cup of soup and was allowed to make a single phone call.

“They released me like a baboon into the wild,” said Murillo, 35.

His deportation was scheduled for noon, yet it was nearly midnight when he crossed into his country of birth and realized that he had nowhere to go.

The U.S. Navy veteran felt abandoned by the government for which he had risked his life for nearly four years, and that was now forcing him to leave behind his five children.

Murillo is one of thousands of veterans who have been charged with a crime and deported. There are no solid figures on how many veterans currently share Murillo’s predicament, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not provide numbers.

It is estimated that about 70,000 U.S. residents served in the U.S. military between 1999 and 2008. Deported veterans are not eligible for VA Benefits.

“The faces that are being deported aren’t just brown or Latino—they are deporting them all over the world,” said Amos Gregory, a San Francisco-based artist, activist and U.S. Navy veteran. “They are broke, in a foreign land, traumatized—and of course they have criminal records.”

Growing up in a war zone

Along with a group of about 12 deported veterans currently living near the border, Gregory designed a mural to draw attention to the cause.

Painted on the border fence, it depicts an upside down image of the American flag—a universal sign of distress. The names of deported veterans are being added to the mural.



“Most of these deported veterans grew up in America’s war zones: the streets. Many of them saw the military as a way out, only to be sent into a real war,” said Gregory, explaining that the veterans’ criminal histories are often affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are substance abuse issues.

“When they come back, they are suffering from their experiences.”

Murillo joined the Navy in 1996 after high school, hoping to be exposed to things greater than the gang violence that he grew up with in his neighborhood in Phoenix, AZ. With his first son, Alex Jr., on the way, Murillo was also facing the responsibility of providing for his new family.

“I had a thing for getting out and seeing the world a little bit,” said Murillo. “I wanted to do something good. I wanted to get some school out of it.”

After having served most of his time, the airframes and hydraulics mechanic returned home from a six-month deployment on an aircraft carrier to a dissolving marriage.

“The military is a drinking community, everybody around me drank. When I found out my marriage was ending, I got into trouble,” said Murillo, who was kicked out of the Navy in 2000 for bad conduct, shortly before his enlistment was up. “I was already out the door, and after being so good for so long—that really hurt. What I really needed at the time was some help.”

Murillo faced difficulties integrating into life after the military. Unable to pay child support, he said desperation forced him to take a job that he should not have taken. He said he was busted with a substantial amount of marijuana and sentenced to three years in federal prison. It was at this point that he realized that he did not have U.S. citizenship.

“When I joined the navy, I thought getting your citizenship was automatic. Putting on that uniform meant something to me—it should mean something,” said Murillo. “All of those guys, I hear that they were told that if they take that oath they will be Americans. There was no other country to think about.”

Broken promises

Fabian Rebolledo dropped out of college and signed up for the Army after a recruiter promised him citizenship following his enlistment.

“I was doing everything I could to get in,” said Rebolledo, who immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 13 from Mexico. “They never mentioned to me that there are certain processes to follow while in the military to obtain citizenship.”

After serving in Kosovo in 1999, the paratrooper completed his enlistment in 2000, believing that he was already a U.S. citizen. Four years later, Rebolledo received a letter in the mail requiring renewal of his resident card.

Rebolledo had a run-in with the law after being charged with fraud for cashing a $750 check, but fought the case and was given probation. He was later detained and deported for driving with a suspended license.

“I’m originally from Mexico, but I don’t know my country,” said Rebolledo, who was forced to sleep on the streets of Tijuana for three days following his deportation. “I felt humiliated by the United States for throwing me out and letting me be on the streets like a real criminal—I’m not a criminal.”

Veterans Support House offers refuge

Rebolledo and Murillo have not given up on the hope of one day returning to the United States. In the meantime, they organized in a support group called Banished Veterans Support Group, founded by deported Army veteran Hector Barajas.

The group operates out of a two-bedroom apartment, called the U.S. Deported Veterans Support House, located in Rosarito, Mexico. They support deported veterans by communicating with their families, picking them up at the border, and providing them with shelter, food, and clothing.

“We recently found a veteran living in the streets—he was sleeping in an empty parking lot,” said Rebolledo. “We brought him to the house. We don’t want a single one of us to be living on the streets anymore.”


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11516 2013-05-31T08:00:00Z 2013-05-31T16:12:03Z

Jay Rooney ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=28159 MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- For one weekend out of the year, Miami Beach plays host to what is ostensibly the country’s largest music and culture event for young African Americans, Urban Beach Week. Yet while the loosely organized gathering has been a boon for local business, an increased police presence in recent years has had a dampening effect on partygoers.

Long-simmering ethnic tensions, some say, has made the city less and less welcoming of the annual influx of mostly black youth.

Miami Beach, population 87,000, has been the site of the unofficial gathering since 2001. Every year, starting on Friday and ending on Memorial Day, close to 300,000 people descend on the city for the informal “festival” and indulge in the city’s world-famous beaches and nightlife.

Considered the spiritual successor to Freaknik, a similar gathering for African-American spring breakers in Atlanta that grinded to a halt in the late-90s amid complaints of rowdiness and disorder, Urban Beach Week is a big draw for black youth across the United States and worldwide. Hotels, bars, nightclubs and other local businesses typically thrive during the event.

Still, not everyone is happy with the arrangement.

One resident who goes by the name HotLatte wrote in an online discussion that efforts to curtail Urban Beach Week have “nothing to do with race.” The people that attend, the post continues, “completely disrespect the city, leave TRASH everywhere, disrespect the PEOPLE, walk around NAKED in front of children and the city doesn't have to put up with that foolishness.”

Crime has also been another complaint. Fights, smashed windows and general disorder and chaos have been associated with the revelry since its earliest days. Shootouts have broken out – including a high-profile shooting allegedly involving rap artist Fat Joe in 2007. That incident helped cement the popular image of Urban Beach Week as too rowdy, too debaucherous and too dangerous.

In response, Miami Beach, which has sought for years to get the City Commission to ban the event outright, decided to step up its police presence in anticipation of the Memorial Day weekend crowds.

This year it spent upwards of $1 million on everything from high-tech security equipment to staffing some 400 officers per shift from multiple agencies. A police presence was visible on every corner of the city, and police cars equipped with license plate scanners were posted on the two main causeways that feed into Miami Beach, looking for stolen vehicles and outstanding warrants.

While the moves have led to fewer arrests – 176 this year, compared to well over 300 in years past – there are those who say the motivation isn’t entirely linked to security concerns.

Miami’s diversity is contrasted by a high-degree of segregation. Billy Corben, a documentary filmmaker behind several award-winning documentaries chronicling South Florida’s often bizarre history and colorful characters, once brilliantly described the city and its outlying districts, including Miami Beach, as "not at all a melting pot, but more like a TV dinner, neatly compartmentalized, where the peas occasionally spill over to the mashed potatoes.”

When the peas spill over, trouble usually happens. That trouble all came to a head in 2011.

That year, Miami Beach cops unloaded over 100 rounds into an unarmed driver, killing him and injuring four bystanders. The officers involved have not been charged, and a civil lawsuit filed by the bystanders continues to drag on. The shooting capped a weekend that saw some 431 arrests, mostly for violations such as disorderly conduct and drug possession.

The following year saw Rudy Eugene gnaw Ronald Poppo’s face off in the infamous “Miami Zombie Attack.” Eugene, who was black, was linked to Urban Beach Week, despite the fact that the attack occurred outside the city. So the increased police presence persisted into 2013, to the delight of residents and local politicians, and the chagrin of partygoers and business owners.

Roberto Sanso is manager of Quattro Gastronomia Italiana Restaurant. He told the Miami Herald that crowds this year were noticeably thinner. “Normally I can’t see [Lincoln Road],” he said, describing a typical holiday weekend scene. This past Saturday, he added, “I could see the whole street.” 

Reports also note hotel occupancy rates were down 10-15 percent for the weekend compared to two years ago, and several businesses reported a loss of revenue this year – one local business owner was quoted by Miami Fox Affiliate WSVN as being down $40,000 for this year’s Memorial Day Weekend compared to last.

“It has been a very successful Memorial Day on the public safety side,” declared Miami Beach police Sgt. Bobby Hernandez on Monday. “Our goal was to provide a safe and secure destination to our visitors and the least amount of disruption to our residents. We accomplished that this weekend."

A quick stroll down South Beach on a Saturday afternoon demonstrated the cost of that success. On a day normally reserved for the peak of festivities, from one end to the other the sands were empty.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11507 2013-05-30T07:45:00Z 2013-05-29T19:47:35Z

Shondiin Silversmith ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Terry Teller, of Lukachukai, Ariz. will be the voice of Luke Skywalker.

"It is pretty pretty awesome," Teller said happily, adding that he enjoyed the audition because it required him to really act. "Since it was going to be the first movie in Navajo I wanted it to be the best," he said. "I challenged myself to play the role, as it needs to be. It was hard because I have never done anything like that before."

Anderson Kee of Cottonwood, Ariz. will be the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kee said the way the Obi-Wan Kenobi talks about the Force in the movie reminds him of a Navajo medicine man, especially when he says the words in Navajo.

"It was a new experience for me," he said.

Clarissa Yazzie of Rock Point, Ariz. will be the voice of Princess Leia.

Yazzie said she enjoys Princess Leia's sarcastic and dominating personality because she feels that her personality closely resembles Leia's.

"I was excited to just be a part of the whole experience," she said.

James Junes of Farmington, N.M. is the voice of Han Solo - and one of the very few experienced actors to win a part. Junes is part of the comedy team James and Ernie, and has had roles in low-budget films on the Navajo Nation.

Marvin Yellowhair of N.M. is the voice of Darth Vader.

Yellowhair said he wanted to be Darth Vader because he is the main character he remembers from Star Wars, mostly due to the fact that the villain is always in control and he is a leader. He said it related to him as a coach at Rock Point High.

"It felt so good being involved with this project," he said.

James Bilagody of Ariz., another experienced performer, is the voice of General Tarkin.

The Navajo voice of C-3PO is a "surprise," said director Ellyn Stern Epcar. "It will be unveiled on July third."

"All the people that were cast fit the voice perfectly and they gave awesome performances," said Manuelito Wheeler, Navajo Nation Museum director. "The directors, they chose the right people."

Epcar is from Epcar Entertainment, a company based out of Los Angeles, Calif. She was hired under Deluxe Entertainment to direct the dubbed film. She said she has been doing this type of work for over 30 years.

"This isn't a film this is about saving a language, this is about preserving a language," said Epcar of the Navajo-dubbed Star Wars. "This takes on more importance of anything I've ever done. I feel profoundly humbled to be a part of this."]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11473 2013-05-23T12:40:00Z 2013-05-23T19:21:31Z

KoreAm Journal ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The exhibition, “I Want the Wide American Earth,” opened in Washington, D.C., on May 4 and will run until June 28, before heading to Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum in September, the first leg of its three-year, multi-city tour.

The exhibit looks back on the contributions of early immigrant communities from Asian laborers who helped to construct the Transcontinental Railroad to farmworkers who helped build the nation’s agricultural industry. It also explores the community’s struggle for civil rights, as APAs fought exclusionary laws that severely limited or denied new immigrants entrance to the U.S., and against such racist policies as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Read more
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11428 2013-05-14T20:00:39Z 2013-05-14T20:04:04Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 report, titled “Diversity on Evening Cable News in 13 Charts,” women and other people of color are underrepresented as guests on evening cable news programs at MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Media Matters examined the guests of thirteen evening cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during the month of April 2013. During that time period, only 33% of MSNBC guests, 29% Fox News guests and 24% CNN guests were female. Latinos fared much worse. Only 3% of Fox News guests and 2% of CNN and MSNBC guests were Latino.

An excerpt of some of the findings are below:

White Guests Were Hosted Most Often On Cable News. Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. African-Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and 5 percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively.


Read more here.

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11424 2013-05-14T17:53:30Z 2013-05-14T17:56:54Z

Korea Bang ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Ilbe which mounted a high-profile hate-campaign this week. Given the track-record of Ilbe’s kulturkampf and their unabashed xenophobic stance, this fray with the 9-year old is likely to continue until some form of legal intervention takes place.

From Nocut News:

- Min-woo finds difficult to cope with insults against parents
- Cries often when called Vietnamese boy
- Plans to file libel suits against the Akpeulers


Read more here.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11420 2013-05-14T09:30:00Z 2013-05-13T21:48:05Z

When Andy Park attends the Hollywood premiere of Iron Man 3 on May 3, along with Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, he will see the products of his creativity up on that silver screen. Having the opportunity to bring...

Jimmy Lee ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Reaching this point took not only talent, but a whole lot of initiative, traveling a road—which included dropping out of UCLA—that his parents certainly didn’t want him taking. But when Image Comics offered him a job as a penciller back in 1995, college would have to wait.

“My first love was comic books. That’s what I dreamed of doing as a kid,” said Park, 37, who would go on to draw for the likes of Marvel and DC.

However, as an adult excelling at his profession, Park realized he wanted to expand his artistic horizons.

“As a comic book artist, you’re a penciller; that’s your specific title. You draw the comic book with a pencil, from the script, page by page. Someone else inks it, someone else colors it, another person letters it,” said Park, describing the process of completing a comic book. “It’s all about sound drawing ability. And you need to tell a story, [and] to be able to tell it excitingly. Your drawings just have to be solid.”

His abilities to do just that resulted in a level of success craved by countless comic book artists. It was Park whom publisher Top Cow turned to when the video game Tomb Raider and its singular Lara Croft character were un-digitized into a comic book (Park had developed quite the reputation with buxom women, drawing them, that is.). So Park, who had by then returned to school to attend the Art Center College of Design, dropped out once again when that opportunity came along.

What Park would end up wanting to do more of was creating complete illustrations and painting, skills he learned from his formal training at Art Center. That would lead him to the field of concept art, and eventually to Sony Computer Entertainment, creating the designs for many of the main characters in its highly successful God of War video game series.

“But I would not have been able to get a job [as a concept artist] by just showing [employers] my comic book work. I knew I had to start from scratch and build a new portfolio and show them I know how to paint, how to design,” said Park.

“For concept artists—and there’s always exceptions to everything I’m saying—you have to able to paint, not necessarily traditionally, but digitally. And you have to be very versatile, in style, in genre.

“For many concept art gigs in film, television and video games, a strong art style is not always welcomed. You have to be adaptable to the style of the project you are working on. For God of War it was a stylized realism. For live-action films like The Avengers, painting in a more photo-real manner is required,” said Park.

That opportunity to craft the concept art for the heroes that make up the Avengers and other Marvel characters came after five years at Sony, where he had become one of their leading concept artists. And Park had just become a father in 2008, so the thought of leaving the stability of Sony was daunting. But Marvel Studios, with the success of its Iron Man and Captain America films, had launched a new department to handle the concept art for all of its upcoming movies, and the first person the heads of the Visual Development branch recruited was Park.

That got Park, a self-avowed “Marvel guy,” very excited. “The fanboy inside of me was just like jumping up and down,” he said. When he joined Marvel in 2010, his first task was preparing 2012’s biggest blockbuster, The Avengers. “And if you’re a Marvel fan, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Avengers,” said Park.

In 2012 he traveled to England where Thor: The Dark World is in production (and will come out in November). And with Marvel planning to release two movies a year, he bounces between the different projects in the pipeline: in 2014 are the Captain America sequel and a new franchise, the Guardians of the Galaxy; and in 2015, expect Ant-Man and the next Avengers film. (For the comic book geeks: Park is so tight-lipped about these future releases that he will not even confirm if Thanos will indeed be the villain of The Avengers sequel, as was hinted at the end of the first movie.)

“[As a concept artist,] you get hired to work on a film, and you work a couple of months and that’s it; you have to find another gig,” said Park. “But this is unprecedented because a group of guys are hired full-time. We get to work on every single Marvel film. We are the ones responsible to keep a consistent and believable look to the entire Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe. It’s definitely a dream gig whether you’re a self-professed fanboy or not. To work on one Marvel film is amazing, but we get to play in this massive play pen.”


This article was published in the May 2013 issue of KoreAm. Subscribe today! 



]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11394 2013-05-08T22:43:56Z 2013-05-08T22:47:11Z

Univision News ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 From comedian Margaret Cho to writer Junot Díaz, more than 100 artists signed a letter on Tuesday in support of reform:

“As members of the creative community, we are committed to seeing and showing the humanity of the immigrant story. Through music, theater, visual art, literature, film, television, dance, and other genres, immigrant and refugee artists have defined and redefined our American culture and history. They help renew our national story.”

The statement appears on MigrationIsBeautiful.com, a collaboration between several social justice and art groups. The site features images of butterflies, and urges people to share them on social networking sites and to create their own images.

Read more

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11372 2013-05-05T14:13:22Z 2013-05-06T23:25:30Z

Mea Ashley ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Editor’s Note: “The Central Park Five” a new film by Ken Burns, tells the true story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park in 1989. Korey Wise, who at age 16 was the only member of the group to be tried as an adult, later met the real rapist on Rikers Island. Matias Reyes finally confessed to the crime and his DNA testing led to the Five's exoneration in 2002. 

Korey Wise sits smirking through a one-man play, saying “hmph!” and “ummm” now and then. Youth groups, activists, and college students have packed the auditorium at the National Black Theatre in Harlem, where Wise will join a panel after the play on wrongful imprisonment -- a subject he knows all too well.

In 1989, Wise and four other young black and Latino teenagers were convicted of raping and beating a white investment banker in Central Park, leaving her for dead. The media called her the Central Park Jogger and the accused the Central Park Five. No evidence linked them to the crime except for their confessions, which came after relentless hours of police interrogation. They recanted shortly afterwards, but those statements were still enough to send them all to jail. Wise was 16 but sentenced as an adult to five to 15 years.

Last year, a decade after an inmate named Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, resulting in all five of the boys’ exoneration, Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, and David McMahon released a documentary about their story, “The Central Park Five.” Wise, who went free after 13 years, is now suing the city for wrongful imprisonment.

During the panel, a young man in the audience talks about being imprisoned at Rikers Island at 16. Wise can relate. He sits straightforward, hands clasped, no emotion on his face, almost dazed.

“Wow,” is Wise’s unspoken reaction.

Later, in his Bronx apartment, he compared Rikers Island to another local landmark.

“The Bronx Zoo is dealing with all types of elements,” he said.

Yet he sees Rikers Island as a place where rebirth happens, because inmates’ natural instinct and appetite for survival kick in. “There’s no mommy, no daddy,” he said. “Just you.”

Wise’s instincts did kick in one day on Riker’s Island after an altercation with a fellow inmate, Matias Reyes. “Destiny made it his business to come see me,” Wise tells the audience, explaining how the true rapist of the Central Park Jogger confronted him over control of a television.

Thirteen years later, almost five hours away at Auburn Correctional Facility, Wise and Reyes met again on the yard where about 10,000 inmates congregated. Reyes approached Wise and established that he too had transferred from Rikers Island. When inmates travel from prison to prison, it’s hard to meet new people, so they tend to stick with familiar faces. Reyes broke the ice by apologizing for the fight; Wise accepted.

“I see you’re still maintaining your innocence,” Reyes said.

“I guess so, yeah,” Wise said.

“Are you religious?”

“Nah, I’m not religious. Why, what’s up?”

“Well, you know, I just became religious.”

“Well, all praises be to the most high for you then.”

The next day in the chapel, Wise got a call from his mom. Inmates summoned to the chapel usually expect to hear about a death in the family, but not Wise.

“I don’t know who you talked to, but whoever you talked to, he freed you,” his mother said.

Living with scars

The white walls and concrete floors in Wise’s Bronx apartment living room are as bare as a prison cell’s. The wind from the open window competes with an accordion heater right beneath the sill. He stands up from the wood framed chair, takes off his green long-sleeved shirt, and points to the scar on his wrist.

“I’m not a five.”

He lifts his undershirt to show a cut on his abdomen.

“I’m not a five.”

He pulls his pants down halfway exposing a permanent purple bruise on his upper thigh.

“I’m not a five,” Wise said, referring to the Central Park 5.

Wise insists that he’s an individual – more than a part of the group. Out of the five convicted, he was the only one tried and sentenced as an adult because he was 16.

“He spent twice as much time in prison and was in an adult maximum-security facility,” said his lawyer, Jane Byrialsen, with whom he has developed a familial relationship.

“The damage that he sustained from that experience is incomparable,” said Byrialsen, who added that Wise can be a loner sometimes.

Documentarian Sarah Burns echoed Byrialsen’s sentiments. “The juvenile facilities were no walk in the park but they were not the same thing as where Korey served all of that time,” she said.

Wise has been struggling with maintaining his individuality since this nightmare began years ago. Burns said the media contributed.

“I think part of the problem with that initial coverage in 1989 was that it lumped it all together like they were this ‘wolf pack,’ as the newspaper said,” Burns said.

By the time Reyes confessed to the crime in 2002, Wise was 30 and the other four young men had returned home; they only served seven years. “If I had [gone] to Spofford [Juvenile Center] with them it would be none of this. Reyes would still be playing stickball,” he said, meaning Reyes never would have confessed had they not run into each other.

Wise still sees his social worker almost once a week but he doesn’t feel the need for a therapist, Byrialsen said. Wise doesn’t work now; he receives a disability check for being partially deaf in his right ear and having post-traumatic stress. He also gets Supplemental Security Income, a program that pays disabled adults who have limited income and resources.

Wise spends most of his time hanging around his old neighborhood and speaking on behalf of the Innocence Project at events.

He hardly goes anywhere without his iPod and headphones. Sometimes when Wise is riding on the train he’ll see a poster for the documentary. “I just feel a pain, it hits me,” he said. “That’s why I try to keep my hip-hop in my ears.”

Over the years his lawyer noticed that music helped Wise escape his pain. “He still listens to ‘80s music from when he went in,” said Byrialsen. “It’s like he’s still stuck. It’s like he’s still sort of that 16-year-old kid in a way.”

She hopes that he will soon be able to move on with his life and not be continuously reminded of the past, but her hopes and reality seem farther away than she and Wise would both like.

Looking for justice

Wise is suing the city for $50 million in damages for being wrongfully convicted, a case he filed 10 years ago; it could be a year before he sees any closure. Being unemployed has given him time to sit in the courtroom for about 40 depositions. His lawyers and the defense will have to go through 50 more before this summer. During these depositions Wise witnesses the city’s law department present evidence against his case as if they doubt Reyes’s confession should have exonerated him. Watching all of these legal arguments doesn’t do much for Wise’s healing, Byrialsen said.

“I think that it’s very hurtful. I think he suffers every day,” she said.

The city’s law department responded to this reporter’s request for an interview with an emailed statement from Celeste Koeleveld, executive assistant corporate counsel for public safety, that said in part:

"As we've said before, the City stands by the decisions made by the detectives and prosecutors. The confessions, hearings, and trials all presented ‘abundant probable cause’ for the plaintiff’s conviction… Nothing unearthed since the trials, including Matias Reyes’s connection to the attack on the jogger -- changes that fact.

Under the circumstances, the City is proceeding with a vigorous defense of the detectives and prosecutors," Koeleveld wrote.

Byrialsen said the longer this case remains unsettled, the more Wise’s closure is delayed.

“The thought that you’ve been exonerated, and you’ve been out all these years and people still think you did it, I don’t think you can ever escape that,” she said.

But Wise said sharing his story is very therapeutic. Almost weekly, he appears through The Innocence Project in panel discussions, rallies, and screenings of the documentary.

In 2002, after being released, Wise changed his first name from Kharey to Korey.

Byrialsen said he no longer wants to be associated with all the negative documents that carry his old name.

Wise thinks highly of Burns for creating the documentary and giving him the opportunity to share his story. “The doc is beautiful. It hurts to the core,” he said.

Just as he left his old name behind, he speaks about his past self as if he is two different people.

“I love to see little Korey do his thing, ‘cause he done died,” he said, meaning prison almost killed his youthful spirit, “and came alive, like, 13 times in 13 years. Little Korey was just looking to have his life. Not have his life torn away from him,” Wise said.

“So when I look at him -- as his new representative, his lawyer -- I have to give the audience his life, because he’s no longer here to tell it.”


Mea Ashley is a contributing writer for the Washington Informer.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11348 2013-04-30T19:59:22Z 2013-04-30T20:02:21Z

The New York State Writers Hall of Fame will honor Walter Mosley and Countee Cullen as part of the organization's 2013 induction of eight living or deceased writers, Rocco Staino, director of the Empire State Center for the Book, which...

The NorthStar News ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 The New York State Writers Hall of Fame will honor Walter Mosley and Countee Cullen as part of the organization's 2013 induction of eight living or deceased writers, Rocco Staino, director of the Empire State Center for the Book, which sponsors the event, tells The NorthStar News & Analysis.

Mosley will be inducted into the hall fame with three living writers, including Marilyn Hacker, Alice McDermott and Calvin Trillin.

Cullen, who died in 1946, will be inducted with three deceased writers, including James Fenimore Cooper, Miguel Piñero and Maurice Sendak.

Sam Roberts, a New York Times reporter and author, will host the ceremony, which will be held on Tuesday, June 4, 2013, at The Princeton Club of New York in Manhattan.

A committee that includes librarians and publishers select writers for induction into the hall of fame based on their body of work, Staino said. The hall of fame, which held its first induction ceremony in 2010, is called the writers hall of fame instead of the authors hall of fame because journalists, as well as poets, are included among its inductees, he added.

Read the full story at The NorthStar News
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11340 2013-04-30T09:50:00Z 2013-04-29T21:49:14Z

Asian Week ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The chef collaboration is the brainchild of Phan, who grew up in the Mission and is a longtime supporter of Mission Dolores Academy and its predecessor, Megan Furth Academy.

“I feel it is my duty to help our inner-city youth become successful, contributing members of their community,” Phan said. “Mission Dolores Academy is a part of this effort, and I am excited to be involved.”

Phan will be joined by Laurence Jossel of NOPA, Mourad Lahlou of Aziza, Anne Walker and Kris Hoogerhyde of Bi-Rite Creamery, Craig Stoll of Delfina, and Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole. Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11307 2013-04-23T08:00:00Z 2013-04-23T16:21:46Z

Bill Donovan ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Coming as a surprise to everyone, especially members of the Navajo Tribe, Obi-Wan Kenobi will soon say, "May the Force be with you" in the Diné language.

Navajo members will soon be able to hear the beloved character from the Star Wars Saga say this and more as the Navajo Nation Museum, Navajo Parks and Recreation, and Lucasfilm, Ltd. have joined forces to dub Episode IV of the classic space fantasy film, Star Wars into the Diné language. This marks the first time that a mainstream movie will be dubbed into the Navajo language.

Manuelito Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum, said he's been working on the idea of getting a popular film dubbed into Navajo for more than three years as a way to preserve the Navajo language.

"By preserving the Navajo language and encouraging Navajo youth to learn their language, we will also be preserving Navajo culture," Wheeler said.

He said when he approached Lucasfilm officials with the idea, he found that they were excited about the project.

"Since its inception, the Star Wars Saga has been experienced and shared all over the world. Its timeless themes of good versus evil have resonated with cultures far and wide. The movies have been translated across multiple languages and Lucasfilm Ltd. is proud to have Navajo as its most recent addition."

The first hurdle, Wheeler said, was to come up with the funding it would take to do the dubbing but with the generous help of the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department that has finally been done.

"Navajo Parks and Recreation Department is proud and honored to be a part of this innovative and entertaining approach to helping preserve our Navajo language," said Martin Begaye, department director.

The Navajo Nation Museum is now working with Deluxe Studio and plans are underway to dub the movie into the Navajo language using a group of Navajo-speaking members, who will be going over each spoken word in the movie and translating it into the Diné language.

Shana Priesz, senior director of Localization at Deluxe said, "While we have dubbed many films in the past into a variety of languages, this project ranks among the most significant. Every time we dub a film, we recognize the fact that we are helping to bridge cultural and communications gaps among societies. In this case, however, we have the unique privilege of contributing to the preservation of a storied and noble culture, the Navajo.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11276 2013-04-17T07:35:00Z 2013-04-16T19:55:12Z

Bee Vang ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The orientalism described by Edward Said reaches well beyond its genesis and debilitates the present. Particular to the racedness of male-bodied Asians are tropes of culturally-bounded, perversely or nonnormatively sexual, and manipulative and calculating; this has transmogrified into the pathological desire to accumulate wealth with the rise of the Pacific. Because of economic threat in the “Century of the Pacific,” America’s anxieties render Asian men as alien (perpetual foreigners), feminine (as docile Orientals with inhuman efficiency) and therefore homosexual – as derived from their putatively perverse nonnormative gender. This denial of both a viable subjecthood as American and of a penis (through feminization and homosexualization) enframes Asian males in what Kara Keeling has called the cliché.

Enter Jeremy Lin; perhaps, I mused, such a cliché could be exploded. Lin inspired me to ruminate on my body and the experiences that have conditioned it so, to find in the multitude of my social existences what future I may envisage in the wake of Linsanity. I gaze upon Lin, the space he traverses on the basketball court, his butch body presence, and yet as I look on, through his jock veneer, the Asian male cliché taunts me. That enthralled gaze through which I, too, consume him renders even my pleasure in spectatorship moot, unresolved, so much so that I cannot and will never see Lin without seeing my overdetermined self; it is as if his body becomes my own. Why am I inexplicably able to feel some sensation in me when I slip into a Jeremy Lin Knicks jersey? From where does this excitement come? A feeling of ambivalence seeps through my psychic life, and I begin to doubt that I should embrace this coming moment as a promising eruption. For in this moment, perhaps all I can share with him is being reduced to my (yellow) body.

I am wary of any optimism that unreflexively affirms that which is perceivable in the sight of Jeremy Lin. The image of Lin as tall, muscular and macho occults what else is relentlessly being seen; his athleticism cannot eschew being refracted through an Asian male cliché. When Lin lost the game, he became “the chink in the armor” (emphasis mine). “Chink”…. “Gook”…. Somehow, despite the sting of that vestigial racism imposed upon us, many of us still wanted Lin’s athletic achievement to be perceivable as Asian. For us, a shot at shattering the stultifying cliché was more important than evading racialization. Problematically, this shattering could only be conceived in the form of heterosexualization.

In the shadow of a guardedly hopeful Jeremy Lin hetero-masculine explosion, lurks a countervailing image that, unlike Lin, conjures a more enigmatic male-bodied Asian cliché in the form of a pop music video. What Korean singer PSY embodies in Gangnam Style, his indeterminate sexuality and gender performance, his inscrutably unmacho dance and costume styles, some would say, lie on the cusp of a recurrent male-bodied Asian that signifies lack. Arguably, PSY’s lack was expressed as his ineligibility for American inclusion when, despite his topping the song charts, protesters denounced his American Music Award. Even before PSY, though, all-American Lin had been made to stand for racialized sexual lack even when he was victorious: black Fox sportswriter Jason Whitlock could not resist reinscribing indignity, tweeting after Lin’s big win for the Knicks, “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight”….

I don’t want to insinuate a Black-Asian dichotomy; indeed, our histories of racialization complement one another (one embodying bestialization and excess, the other invoking defectiveness and impotence). At the same time I feel a pounding against my flesh. While I can only venture into Fanonian terrain, I am torn because I dread the possibility that oft-forgotten Asians will be forever punished for dereliction of their “of-color” being in aspiring to whiteness. And yet, “honorary” whiteness notwithstanding, we remain incontrovertibly yellow; hence, enshrouded in a double silence, we occupy the space of an inchoate social existence that derives from exclusion from person-of-color solidarity and complex subjectivity. If all the exclusion indelibly a part of my “dangerous” Asian male “privilege” suffuses my desire to speak with only a modicum of fevered indignation, then it is, at last, my Hmong-bodied self who must be heard.

I am doubly afflicted with two contradictory images that, regardless of my intended identifications, bind me to my flesh. For what is utterly deathly about this silence is that because of my yellow body, I and my Hmongness perennially fade out in favor of what is visible on the skin. How Hmong have come to be racialized by way of becoming Vietnam war refugees (though actually from Laos where a Secret War was waged) and consigned to the invisibility of the Fourth World (subpopulations without a spatially-bounded nation or a sovereign state) is even more particular, but egregiously unknown. Indeed, Hmong in Asia – without written language until the twentieth century, subsisting on a slash-and-burn agriculture, made to emblematize, like minstrels, the antithesis to progress and civilization – remain among the people without history. Could our exit from the proverbial “stone age” and into history, in a blink of the Western imperial eye, be through a kind of CIA-conferred soldierhood that morphs into American gangsterhood, in a bedeviled upending of the effeminate Asian male cliché?

Being counterpart, as both Fourth Worlders and therefore “noble savages,” to orientalism’s beloved male-bodied elite butterfly (as so aptly captured by David Henry Hwang), Hmong would be butch to Asian femme, just as proletariat is butch to bourgeois femme. In this case, the immiserated Fourth World is strangely both butch and constitutive outside, in a twisted way registering as lack in an Asian American context that has normalized the perversely sexualized and femme gendered as the space of model minority Asianness. In America, the deal we are offered is inevitably classed: we get to be tough men through demonized street gangs and guns. It is because it is possible for me to dodge this Hmong cliché by passing as non-Hmong Asian that I see through to unravel the antinomies of a Hmong/Asian masculine body that is and is not mine. Is it that this passing allows me to alleviate the weight of a history that haunts me and denies me ascendancy to subjecthood that makes it so seductive?

This piece is a prolegomena to a longer co-authored essay tentatively titled “The Wretched of the East.”


Bee Vang attends Brown University where he is pursuing an independently designed major in “Geopolitical Epistemologies” which synergizes philosophy, cultural studies, and political economy with critical race, gender/sexuality, and media studies. Vang spent the last two summers in China investigating rural development, popular and performance cultures, and global economics. Beyond his intellectual pursuits, he also works on projects to advance social justice through media, performance, organizing, and writing, especially on issues related but not limited to Asian America. In particular, Vang is committed to dovetailing the arts with political analysis through film, stage and television acting and production and through media activism. He is currently on hiatus from his studies and is working at two non-profit organizations in New York City: Asian Cinevision/Asian American International Film Festival and WhyHunger.


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11275 2013-04-16T06:04:21Z 2013-04-16T06:10:16Z

Koream Journal ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The song, which is reminiscent of the instantly recognizable “Gangnam Style,” is an electro-pop dance tune, but this time Psy isn’t mocking the posh, materialistic nouveau riche of Seoul. Instead his satirical jabs are directed at a “false gentleman,” as he dances around in the music video behaving in rude, tactless ways all the while dressed in his over-the-top outfits.

According to reports from Yonhap News, the song reached 20 million views on YouTube after only 24 hours, “obliterating the record for the most views in a single day on the video-sharing site.” As of today it is now been watched over 70 million times. The song was first unveiled during a memorable Seoul concert the day before the video launch.

Read more here.

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11253 2013-04-13T08:00:00Z 2013-04-12T23:12:08Z

Sandip Roy ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=54 In 1896, almost a century before Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala caused a stir by daring to show a romance between a black man and an Indian woman in the American South, a Muslim Bengali peddler from Hooghly married a black Catholic woman from New Orleans and settled down in that city. There’s no record of how they met or what the neighbours made of them. Shaik Mohammad Musa died in 1919, a few months before his son was born. His widow Tinnie raised their three children as black and Catholic. Their Indian heritage was lost in history.

“We had a hookah, and we had a picture, and then we had family stories – that was all we had,” says Fatima Shaik, his granddaughter. And their names. They were the only Shaiks in the phone book. Her classmates teased her, singing Shake, Baby, Shake in the school yard. Sometimes lonely Indians landing up in New Orleans would find them in the phonebook and call them on the off chance they were from the subcontinent. Her father, she says, was always wistful after those conversations. “Perhaps he would think maybe he had family too somewhere in India and some day they would call up.”

This year, Fatima Shaik came to India for the first time to try and solve the mystery in her family tree. Jeffrey Reneau, the director of the American Center in Kolkata which hosted her says “her story brings home this international issue of belonging and who am I. When you start deconstructing identity you find pieces and threads of who you are. The only thing bringing all the pieces together is you.”

Who is Fatima Shaik?

It’s like a detective story, says Kolkata-born filmmaker and Fulbright-Nehru fellow Kavery Kaul who is filming Fatima’s journey – but one with “no footprints, no contemporary clues.” Even the name of the ancestral village was lost in transliteration. “We had to unscramble the English,” laughs Kaul. An academic reminded her there were many villages in Bengal with similar names. But an old letter from Shaik Musa with the name of the post office helped them finally track it down to Khori village in Hooghly.

“What will surprise many people in America and Kolkata, is that there were many villagers whose grandfathers had left about the time Fatima’s grandfather did. Some went to America, some to Panama. Some came back, some didn’t,” says Kaul.

Vivek Bald has just written a book about these forgotten migrants – Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America. Bald writes that at the turn of the 20th century there was a flourishing network of peddlers from places like Hooghly in America. They sold chikan embroidery – shawls, handkerchiefs, bedspreads. Women in their villages hand-embroidered them. Once they used to take them to cities like Calcutta but when the British flooded the market with cheap factory-made goods, they needed to find other markets.

Eat Pray Love – Circa 1900

America was going through an “Oriental” fascination at that time. The Indian nautch dancer was part of American burlesque. There were tobacco brands with names like Hindoo and Mogul. In New Orleans the Mardi Gras parade had floats with themes like Hindoo Heaven and Light of Asia. These peddlers worked the boardwalks of resort towns like Atlantic City and carnival cities like New Orleans selling a bit of that exotic Oriental fantasy to Americans even as the country’s borders started to close on Asian immigrants.

“These men came to the United States on a thin edge between Indophilia and xenophobia,” writes Bald.

The 1900 federal census found twelve men from “Hindoostan” living in New Orleans. There were stories in newspapers about men as “wise as Solomon”, with “black skull caps” and “long tailed frock coats.” One newspaper wrote a long account about being transfixed by amazement watching a “Hindoo” wobbling on a bicycle – “humped over like a camel trying to keep his balance”. By 1910, the number of peddlers had increased five fold. Bald estimates between the 1880s and 1920s, approximately 300 to 500 men from Hoogly/Calcutta moved through the peddler network in America — a small number but crucial in establishing the continuity of the South Asian migration story.

Fitting Between Black and White

Many of these peddlers returned to their villages. But some, like Fatima’s grandfather, did not. Some even became American citizens throwing courts into a quandary because only whites and persons of African ancestry could become US citizens. “Abba Dolla”, an Afghan silk peddler from Calcutta, for example, applied as a “white person”. The district court judge made him roll up his sleeve and was satisfied that though his face and hands were tanned by the sun, his unexposed skin “was sufficiently transparent for the blue colour of the veins to show very clearly.”

But even if these men slipped through the cracks of immigration law, the colour codes in society were stricter. That determined where they slept at night and the women they married. Indian immigrants today do not realise they owe a historical debt of gratitude to the black community. At a time when lawmakers viewed them as part of the “Asiatic horde” says Bald, “African American neighborhoods and communities provided them with shelter and the possibility to build lives.”

“In New Orleans the African American community was welcoming and I’d like to think Shaik Mohammad fell in love with Fatima’s grandmother, Tinnie,” says Kaul.

The Men in the Middle

But this was not just a story of the odd romance of Bengali Muslim men and their Catholic wives and whether it made the gumbo spicier. Men like Shaik Musa were really the men in the middle of a story that was being stitched by women at both ends. Bald writes “(A)s much as the Hoogly peddler network relied upon the work of Indian women in home villages, it functioned in North America because of the labour of US women of color.” These women made New Orleans a home, not just a boarding house.

“I don’t know if the men wrote at length about their wives, the race and religion of their wives,” says Kaul. “The men did what they had to do, I am sure the women embroidering chikan missed them. I have no doubt about that.”

Unlike the Punjabi farmers of the west coast and their Mexican wives who left behind gurdwaras, the chikan peddlers of New Orleans left few physical traces of their American lives. There are no records of mosques or ethnic enclaves. Within a generation, their children had been absorbed into the black community although Bald says we should remember in New Orleans “‘blackness’ was incredibly expansive and mixed — it had room to incorporate the Bengalis and their descendants.”

He says he has heard there is an African American family in New Orleans descended from the Bengali peddlers who still get together every Sunday to make a big pot of biryani.

And There Were Mosquitos

Fatima Shaik says before her trip she wanted specific answers about the grandfather she had never known – “What were the similarities to me physically, what did he like to eat?” But as she traveled through Kolkata and up the Hooghly to the village he was from she just started imagining him walking to the main road, taking a cart to the city, and then boarding a ship for the New World. Kaul says as much as her film is about Shaik Musa and his journey from India, it’s also about Fatima Shaik, the African American writer’s journey to Kolkata.

“When I got off the plane I was struck that Calcutta was very much like New Orleans,” laughs Fatima. “So hot, so humid at night. And there were mosquitos. In that sense I felt I was home.”

Then she says with a smile that she likes to think her grandfather felt the same as well when he got off his ship in New Orleans.

“When he encountered the same heat and the same humidity and the same mosquitoes – he must have felt like he was home too.”
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