tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-05-13T16:46:54Z 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://19.11416 2013-05-13T16:33:26Z 2013-05-13T16:46:54Z

At the age of 19, my mother fastened a red bindi in the middle of her forehead, wrapped herself in a silk sari, and walked seven times around a sacred fire in Karamsad, India with a 26-year-old man she hardly...

Monica Luhar ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 At the age of 19, my mother fastened a red bindi in the middle of her forehead, wrapped herself in a silk sari, and walked seven times around a sacred fire in Karamsad, India with a 26-year-old man she hardly knew.

At 19, I was a single Indian American college sophomore who certainly did not have any plans to have an arranged marriage like my parents. And a relationship was not really an option, because my parents did not allow me to date. For years, they had one strict rule: I was to focus on school until I graduated from college. Meanwhile, most of my friends were in committed relationships and some were even engaged to their high school sweethearts. I resented the rule, and felt that they were limiting me from dating because they did not have any experience themselves.

Arranged marriages have been a common practice in India — and many other cultures — for centuries, but my parents never pressured me into one. The summer after I received my college degree, my mother casually told me I was allowed to date. My parents understand that since I was raised and brought up in a different culture, it may be hard for me to not marry for love. They told me that race or religion did not matter, as long as the man I dated respected me.

But even with this freedom, I have found it challenging to navigate the scene. I am now 23 and feel years behind my friends who started in high school, and I lack a dating model from my parents that resembles my own.

Intergenerational disagreements and gaps about relationships between second-generation young adults and their immigrant parents are common, according to a recent study in Marriage & Family Review authored by Olena Nesteruk and Alexandra Gramescu, from the Family and Child Studies Department at Montclair State University.

“Because immigrant parents did not experience growing up in the U.S., participants believe that their parents are not familiar with issues relevant to American teenagers,” the authors conclude in a study of 35 young adults who were interviewed about their experiences with mate selection and the influence their immigrant parents had on their dating preferences.

Like me, many young adults from immigrant families felt as though their parents were strict when it came to curfews and enforcing restrictions on when the appropriate age to date would be.

A young Peruvian woman told Nesteruk and Gramescu that when she would ask her parents what age she would be able to date, they replied, “Never, till you finish college. It’s always education first, and boys last.” With time, though, her parents’ attitude relaxed: “But now they have become more Americanized and the rules have changed a lot! My younger sister is allowed to date.”

The study also highlighted the issue of immigrant parents who resisted interracial or religious relationships. “It’s not ok for me to marry outside of my religion—I have to marry a Muslim. My parents would prefer someone Arabic because the culture is the same,” a Yemeni female participant said.

In conversations and a survey with young San Gabriel Valley residents with immigrant parents, I also heard many youth say that they were up against stiff parental restrictions on dating, uncomfortable conversations, and resistance to marrying outside of their racial or ethnic group.

George Molina, 17, told me that he dated “a couple of times,” but said his parents felt he was too young and preferred that he focus on his education. A female respondent to the survey wrote that her parents had rejected her choice of partners because they were not of her ethnic group. She said that despite the fact that she is in a relationship with a Caucasian male, her parents have been trying to fix her up with other partners, particularly from the same race.

“My parents tried to fix me up with boys they like when I was at my 20s and wouldn’t give any of the boys I picked a chance. They automatically assumed they were all bad,” she wrote. “Growing up, this kind of mentality is what I saw in most of traditional Asian parents around me.”

As much as I wanted to talk with my parents about relationships, it did not not happen until recently. When I was young, my parents did not really have the “birds and bees” talk with me, nor did we even talk about “crushes”. For many years, I struggled to talk to my parents about issues I wanted to discuss, mainly because I wasn’t sure if it was the right time, or was too embarrassed to bring up the issues with them. I’d assume they felt the same way, too - because they never experienced what many young adults face when dating.

My parents, whose families arranged their match, only had two hours alone together before getting married, just a few weeks before their wedding ceremony. Rather than a date, it was more of an awkward two-hour chat about each others’ likes, dislikes, and career goals. “It felt like a nerve-wracking interview,” my mother recently told me. “But it was probably the most important interview of my entire life.” They have been happily married for 26 years, though they have had their share of difficulties.

Recently I decided to start introducing guys to my parents. I was tired of hiding relationships from my parents, and felt relieved that they were okay with me dating. Getting comfortable talking about it, however, has meant adjustments on both sides. I was very nervous introducing one guy I met to my parents, but they were receptive and even let us spend a little time alone together. I did overhear them talking about whether it was “serious,” and realized that dating for them meant getting ready for marriage. For me, it was more of a dating journey and getting to know someone else. Nothing serious.

Through this new experience of discussing relationships with them, I feel much more connected with my parents. In college, I just could not understand why anyone would marry someone without falling in love first. But as I’ve seen their love grow over the years, I have had a deeper appreciation for their arranged marriage. While I do not think it is for me, I no longer think it is necessarily inferior to a love marriage. And I now realize that my parents were trying to protect their first-born female daughter from getting her heart broken. I would not do it to my daughter, but for that, I appreciate and respect them.


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11409 2013-05-11T08:00:00Z 2013-05-11T06:03:55Z

Alejandra Alarcon ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Photo: The author, Alejandra Alarcon, as a baby with her older sister Gabriela (Gaby) and brother Robert (Rocky), in the family van. Their mother usually made the van comfortable for the long trips to Mexicali.

Editor's Note: The author of this commentary, Alejandra Alarcon, 18, writes for Coachella Unincorporated, a youth and community media organization founded by NAM to serve residents of the rural Eastern Coachella Valley in Riverside County, California.

COACHELLA -- Like a lot of other families living in the Eastern Coachella Valley, when one of our family members fell sick, it meant driving about a hundred miles across the border into Mexico, to the City of Mexicali, to get taken care of by a doctor. The only other option, it seemed, was not being taken care of at all.

Now, because of healthcare reform efforts in the United States, young people growing up today in the Eastern Coachella Valley – the unincorporated rural communities of southern Riverside County -- don’t need to go without health insurance the way I did. The scenario is finally beginning to change. At least, it can change – if people here are made aware of the health services now available to them through federal health care reform, right in their own community.

“We owe it to our country to inform the citizens to take advantage of all these resources that are available,” said Ronnie Cho, associate director of public engagement for the White House, during a speech about health care reform that I attended in Washington D.C. as a reporter last April.

Cho is right. For the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to make a difference, people need to first be aware that health care is an option for them. People need to know that they can afford to visit a doctor, without having to stray more than a few miles away from their home.

When my family would go to visit relatives across the border in Mexicali, we always took advantage of the opportunity to stop by the Mexican pharmacy to buy medicine for ourselves, as well as for our friends and neighbors who always requested some.

As a child, I thought those trips to Mexicali to visit the doctor were the only way – it was just what people did -- until later on in my youth, when my father got a job with a new trucking business that gave him medical benefits that included family coverage. Because my dad worked for a lot of different trucking companies during the years, and because there were lengths of time when he was unemployed, our health care situation was never stable. But at least for those few years, my family and I received the best health care we’d ever had.

“Young people are relatively healthy, so they think, ‘I don’t need health care,’ until something happens and they actually need it,” said Cho.

Again, Cho got it right. I can remember my worried mother, back in 2008, telling my little sister and me that we once again did not have health insurance and would have to resume our trips to Mexicali. In retrospect, I never minded the long trips to the doctor or dentist’s office. In fact, I never worried about my health. My parents always had medicine from Mexicali available in our cabinets for emergencies. For my siblings and me, it was not something that got in the way; it was something that we believed had to be done because there was no cheaper option.

The irony is that even though being uninsured felt normal to me and my siblings growing up, it is families like ours that need that insurance the most. Families like mine that live in the unincorporated communities of the Eastern Coachella Valley – most of us are Latino, many (like my parents) are immigrants, and many make a living as farmworkers or do some other type of physical labor – are especially in need of the protections provided by health insurance, because of occupational hazards and other health risks associated with living in an area where people lack money and resources.

Today, the Affordable Care Act, which will be fully implemented on January 1, 2014, is helping families like mine take control of our medical insurance, by providing options and a sense of security. It’s an idea – health care security -- that at one time, at least for my family and I, seemed impossible to imagine. The health insurance that for so long seemed like such a special privilege will now become available to more people than ever before.

The ACA was put into place in part to make sure insurance companies cannot end your coverage plan when you need it the most, cannot bill you into debt, cannot discriminate due to pre-existing medical conditions.

Among other provisions, the ACA will secure medical insurance for American citizens after getting laid off or changing jobs. It will require insurance companies to cover the cost of mammograms and cancer screenings. And for the first time, young adults will remain eligible to be covered under their parent's or guardian’s health insurance plan through the age of 26, even if they are married.

As a result, 3.1 million young adults are now covered along with their families, and over 107,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions who didn’t previously have insurance, are now receiving health coverage, according to federal data.

If you know where to look, it is free and simple to apply for affordable or no cost medical insurance programs such as Medicaid and the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which cover medical services that include doctor check-ups, emergency care, hospital care, vaccinations, prescription drugs, vision, hearing, and dental. 

There was a time, for a lot of us living here in the Eastern Coachella Valley, when driving across the border seemed like the easiest and most affordable way to access health care. Fortunately, for many of us, that no longer needs to be the case. Our communities can have the security of health insurance that for so long seemed just beyond our reach, if we just know where to find it.

To see if you qualify for Medicaid or CHIP, or to apply online, visit: http://insurekidsnow.gov

To find out what is your best insurance option for your specific demographics and needs go to: http://finder.healthcare.gov


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11365 2013-05-05T08:00:00Z 2013-05-09T16:47:10Z

Pictured above: Alexandra Minter at the Tufts University student center Photo by Nina Porzucki / PRI's The World Alexandra Minter, a sophomore at Tufts University was working on a video for her Arabic class last Monday when her classmate...

Nina Porzucki ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Pictured above: Alexandra Minter at the Tufts University student center
Photo by Nina Porzucki / PRI's The World



Alexandra Minter, a sophomore at Tufts University was working on a video for her Arabic class last Monday when her classmate checked Facebook and saw there was an attack on the Boston Marathon.

“And then once people started making accusations as to who it was, we were sitting there and I was telling the girl next me I really hope it wasn’t a Muslim,” says Minter.

Minter’s is not a typical story. She grew up in rural Wisconsin. Her mother converted to Islam after marrying her stepfather who was from Morocco. While Minter accepted her mother’s conversion, the teasing began at her school.

“I got called Arabian girl,” she says.

About a year ago Minter decided to convert too. When she first put on a hijab, things changed.

Minter’s only been a practicing Muslim for a little more than a year but already she’s experienced prejudice in Boston.

“I’ve had people ask me weird questions on buses before or just get uncomfortable and get up from seats on the train,” Minter says. “I wear a headscarf so for a lot of people that creates fear, but I’m worried that it’s going to happen more now.”

The second looks on the bus Minter gets, and her hope that the Boston bombers weren’t Muslim – none of these feelings surprises her classmate Chowdhury Shamsh who is the head of Tufts’ Muslim Student Association.

“It’s not going to stop unfortunately. That’s something that she’s going to have to live with,” says Shamsh.

Shamsh grew up in New York City. He was only 10-years-old when the Twin Towers were attacked. It was a turning point, not just in his life in the US but as an American Muslim.

“We were a model minority and nobody thought twice about having a Muslim sit next to them on the train,” says Shamsh.

All that changed post 9/11 says Shamsh. His mother warned him against becoming a Muslim leader on campus, practicing his faith so openly.

“She says why can’t you just practice and just keep it in your room and don’t be too open about it,” he says. That pressure to stay under the radar makes him feel like a part of a group that’s supposed to feel culpable somehow.

“I don’t know how much is in my head because of the media, and the portrayal, it may be internalized it may not be real but I do feel different because of the color of my skin or my religion,” he says.

When news broke about the bombings, the media went into overdrive hypothesizing about who could have done this including many reports about race and religion of the possible suspects.

“The way that even our justice system and media talk about incidences based on the identity, race and religion of the perpetrator is also something that feeds into why our community fears backlash,” says Linda Sarsour, head of the National Network for Arab American Communities in New York.

Minutes after the bombings, her 14-year-old son texted her asking, “Mom, who did it?”

“It’s hard to tell kids that it will be better because every time I say something really terrible happens and it gets kids back to the mindset but I didn’t do that,” says Sarsour. “It’s traumatizing as a adult to not be able to tell young people that everything is going to be okay.”

But Shereen Shafi, an undergraduate studying International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore sees a silver lining.

“I had to respond to peoples’ attacks and that led me to look more into the faith itself and also the history surrounding it,” Tshafi says.

Shafi’s parents, both doctors, came to the US from Pakistan 20 years ago. She was born here and has only been to Pakistan once, when she was six. Growing up, her family observed the Muslim faith. She went to Sunday school, celebrated Eid, but being Muslim wasn’t a huge part of her identity, she says, until her faith got more and more scrutinized.

“I think that’s the case with more and more believers having it made a big deal strengthened my connection to the faith and faith community,” she says.

Shafi feels angry at the brothers who attacked people, at the racial profiling of Muslims, at the fear she’s felt these past few days when heading outside alone but it’s more complicated than pure anger.”

“People get angry at Osama Bin Laden for making Muslims look bad and I think that’s generally how I felt when I was younger,” Shafi says. “At this point, because these kids were just your average teenagers … the older brother had some issues. I feel more sad that someone would be driven to do this. I do feel angry at the way they make Muslims look. I guess I’m upset that people are extrapolating from them to the broader community.”

There’s sadness but each student was also quick to point to a hopeful future. Shamsh, the Muslim student leader at Tufts, put it like this:

“America’s not perfect but the beautiful thing about America is that there’s room for improvement,” says Shamsh.


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11327 2013-04-26T08:30:00Z 2013-04-27T15:03:41Z

Ed. Note: The Boston Marathon bombings have raised questions over how young immigrants in this country are impacted by the experience of war and trauma in their homeland. This week the New York Times reported on research that showed young...

Suzan Al Shammari ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Ed. Note: The Boston Marathon bombings have raised questions over how young immigrants in this country are impacted by the experience of war and trauma in their homeland. This week the New York Times reported on research that showed young people from countries racked by violence often struggle to adapt to life in the United States. In 2010, 16-year-old Suzan Al Shammari arrived in California after years fleeing violence with her family in Iraq and later in Egypt. Below she recalls her experiences, and how they have shaped her integration into life in the United States.

LOS ANGELES – Like the suspects behind the Boston attacks, my family fled violence – first in Iraq, then later Egypt. The constant moving made me feel I was neither Iraqi nor Egyptian, and even now that I am in America I don’t feel like I have a country.

But being in America is something I’ve always wanted.

I was 7 years old when I lived through the war in Iraq. When I look back, what I remember most is the violence. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in terror, remembering the missile I heard passing my family’s home in Baghdad before hitting an electric company next door. Right then I thought I would never feel safe again.

One day my school was destroyed in a bomb attack. Fortunately we were on break. Later, my dad began to receive threats from local fighters because he was the vice president of a company that once helped identify the bodies of those killed by Saddam Hussein’s security forces.

What I remember of Iraq is the terror and violence. I still love my country, but I wished I had a normal life there.

But I also remember the American soldiers I met. I never cared what people would say about Americans. When they came by my house giving out food and candy, I would see the smiles on their faces and felt they were like superheroes. They came from a different country and were protecting strangers. I knew right then my dream was to go to America because only there could I feel safe.

We left Iraq in 2006, when I was 9-years-old, and moved to Egypt. I knew no Iraqis there, and even began to feel Egyptian. But I was torn between two countries, and two identities.

All we wanted was to escape the death in my country. Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived in Egypt I learned my cousin back in Iraq had been killed. He was Sunni, while his killer was Shia. His death and the constant violence – all in the name of Allah -- prompted my parents to begin questioning Islam. We converted to Christianity the next year.

For the first time, I felt something new. I felt reborn and at peace, even though we were at risk for what we’d done. Because of religious discrimination, we were in greater danger than we had been in Iraq. I know that people have been jailed or tortured in Egypt for converting from Islam.

So in my school I was known as Muslim, and outside I was Christian. If I told friends or classmates that I was Christian, my family and I might be put in danger.

Finally, in March 2010 we landed in LAX, arriving in the United States as refugees. It was like something you’ve always wanted and that you finally get, but you don’t believe it. Even on the plane my family couldn’t believe we were actually going to be in America. I’m thankful. Looking back to when I was in Baghdad, it seems like a really long and tough fight to have gotten here.

But even now it’s still hard to get used to the fact that I’m safe. For 8 years each day of my life I thought would be my last. So now, as good as it feels to be safe, it still seems different -- a feeling I’m not used to.

And while I’m active with social clubs and everything else in my school, I see people that are born here, people that have a normal life, and I reflect on my own past. They never moved anywhere else; they have family here, they have cousins. I feel like the only person without roots. My whole family is scattered across Europe and Iraq.

Still, I try not to look back too much because it just takes me into a deep hole. If people ask me about how I identify, I tell them I’m American. As much as I’m torn between 3 different identities, America is the country that took me in and allowed me to feel safe. My country offered me terror and violence, America offered me peace and a new beginning.

Suzan Al Shammari is a high school student in Los Angeles. She wrote this piece for Long Beach VoiceWaves, a project of New America Media. 
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11316 2013-04-24T13:55:20Z 2013-04-24T19:06:58Z

Andrew Lam ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=8 SAN FRANCISCO -- As the story of the Tsarnaev brothers unfolds – from asylum, to attempts at assimilation and finally to terrorism -- I hear echoes of another set of brothers from my own country, Vietnam.
 
On April 4, 1991 three Vietnamese brothers and a friend – all teenagers – took over an electronics store in Sacramento, California. The group held forty-one people hostage, garnering national attention as journalists flocked outside the store. Inside, the boys prowled about with their guns, the hostages tied up.
 
What did the Nguyen brothers want?
 
They wanted $4 million dollars, 1000-year-old ginseng roots (thought to make one invincible in battle), helicopters and bulletproof jackets. Their plan: To fly back to Vietnam and take on the Vietcong.
 
Negotiators on the scene were baffled, and when talks broke down the four began to wound hostages as a means of showing they were serious. The SWAT team ultimately stormed the grounds, killing three of the four hostage takers and critically wounding the oldest of the three brothers. Three hostages were killed before the siege ended.
 
Today, the eldest brother, Loi Nguyen, is serving three consecutive life sentences for the crime.
 
Tamarlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, are the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings of last week, which claimed three lives and injured hundreds more.
 
Tamarlan was killed in a manhunt after the attack. His brother is now in custody and faces a possible death sentence.
 
Like the Tsarnaev’s, the Nguyen brothers were described by those who knew them as decent, even obedient children. They attended church regularly. There was little hint at the barbarism they would later commit. Their parents, too, in the aftermath of the bloodshed were left to wonder: Why?
 
Alas, not everyone who comes to America really manages to enter America. The late UC Berkeley sociologist Franz Schurmann once noted that the two paths for children of immigrants to become American once lay either through education or the military. But there’s no longer a draft, and the other institution, the American education system, is failing our kids.
 
The Tsarnaev brothers, though reportedly well-adjusted and well-liked, too, failed school. One of their uncles, when asked for an explanation of their actions, described them as “losers” who harbored a hatred of those who were able to settle into life in America. “These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it's a fraud, it's a fake," he said.
 
Often the successful border crosser will use language to overcome shame by refusing silence. He will find ways to articulate and redefine himself; his revenge over his ignominious past is his successful transition in America, his newfound status. But when access to America’s grandeur is blocked or denied, especially for children from war-torn lands, old memories have a way of reaching out. Inherited trauma, ever-present in refugee homes, becomes seductive, something to latch one’s identity to.

Unable to move forward, they reach back to the wars of their homeland. Lacking imagination, violence by default becomes their game.
 
Though I have moved far from my own refugee past -- I’ve become an American writer and journalist -- I never underestimate the speed with which an immigrant boy can go off track, and how his vision of America as a land of milk and honey can quickly shift to that of a bona fide Waste Land with something as simple as a failing grade.
 
For children from strife-torn lands, the Old World, though distant and forsaken by the years, sometimes calls out for blood. The war, the humiliation, the subsequent exodus, life in exile, poverty, the continual subjugation of our people back home, our invisible refugee life in America – all are compounded into a kind of unshaped angst.  
 
The Tsarnaev brothers once again proved T.S. Eliot prophetic—in the bloody footsteps of the Nguyen brothers, the Virginia Tech Shooting, Oklahoma bombing, Columbine Massacre, and Waco – April seems indeed the cruelest month.  


Andrew Lam is the author of two books of essays, "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book, a collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants struggling to remake in America's west coast, "Birds of Paradise Lost," was published in march of 2013.  
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11311 2013-04-24T09:05:00Z 2013-04-23T19:16:57Z

Albert Lu ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
My interest in government started in third grade, when I would listen with my father to cassette tapes he used to prepare for the citizenship test. By 19, that first taste of government had developed into an interest in public service. Last fall I helped run a San Gabriel Valley water district campaign. Going door to door in my mostly Asian American community, I was surprised by how many registered voters were uninformed about important issues.

I later learned that nationwide, Asian Americans tend to have the lowest voter turnout rate of all ethnicities. In 2008, voter turnout for Asians was 47 percent, while for Latinos it was 50 percent, blacks 65 percent, and whites 66 percent, according to a study from Pew Research Center. The reasons experts provide — coming from countries where government is feared, not being a citizen, and not feeling like the issues directly impact you — are all reasons I hear in my community.

But I also feel that attitude seems to be changing with my generation. More Asian Americans are elected to office than ever before, including young people like myself. Asian Americans have taken important steps toward increasing political participation. In 2012, a record 30 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders campaigned for a seat in Congress. Congresswoman Judy Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, told NPR, “It is so important to have people at the seat of the table where the decisions are being made that look like America.”

Interested in learning more about what makes the difference to get more people “at the table,” I went to visit some local leaders. “[Civic engagement] is still low compared to our population figures, but we’re starting to gradually ramp up,” Asian Pacific American Legal Center Director Stewart Kwoh told me in an interview in his downtown office.

Kwoh believes there are many younger people who want to get involved but need a vehicle to do so. “We do live in a democracy,” he said, “but the only way a democracy works is to have active participation from its residents.”

For Kwoh, the turning point came when he was at UCLA. He was planning on going to medical school, but got swept up into protests against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Members of his Asian American Student Alliance were arrested and when he went to help bail them out, his interest changed from the medical field to law. Since then, he has worked with Asian Americans to have their voice heard in the legal and political system.

A shift has happened, he said, from the issues that mobilized people in his generation, particularly war and civil rights. More Asian Americans are accomplished in education, business, and other professions, but challenges remain. He said there are still a great deal who are poor and face a lot of discrimination. “We don’t want a community to become so bifurcated and polarized,” Kwoh told me. “We want to make sure that everyone has a chance to succeed.”

Asian Americans are learning from the Latino experience, according to Mike Eng, former mayor of Monterey Park and state assemblyman — who also happens to be Judy Chu’s husband. He noted that the first Asian voter registration drive in Monterey Park was funded by civil rights leader Willie Velasquez.
Eng said people in the Latino community asked him, “How could you spend money on the Asian community?”

At the time, Monterey Park was beginning to have a majority Asian population, and there was the feeling of competition for resources and political influence. Eng said he could never forget Velasquez’s answer: “There’s no such thing as competition because when we uplift an immigrant in one community we’re really telling immigrants everywhere that they could be successful.”

Despite the gains, I don’t think my parents will cast a ballot soon. My father appears interested — any time I catch him with the little free time he has, he’s sitting on his couch in the living room reading the Chinese newspaper. He is always up-to-date with local and national news, as well as world news, especially news in China. But I do not think he will vote because either he does not have time, or does not feel it is his place since he and my mother come from a country where they never had a chance to cast a ballot.

Other residents shared similar experiences in an Alhambra Source survey. “Immigrant parents are busy trying [to make] a living for their kids,” wrote one, whose parents are from China. “I believe they think civic engagement is a role for their children.”

Another with parents from China wrote “Immigrants to the U.S. who left countries with authoritarian regimes are conditioned to avoid government participation since they have had very little experience in the democratic process.”

But I see a different approach in my generation. In my group of close guy friends, all born in the U.S. to Asian parents, four out of the five of us registered to vote in 2012. I am the only one who is interested in actively participating in politics, but they still believe it is important to vote.

When I asked why, they shared the same sentiment as Stewart Kwoh. We are lucky to live in a democracy; we should not waste it or take it for granted. When people ask why I became so involved in local politics, I say it is because I am determined to be a voice for those like my parents who don’t speak up. We may not yet have a seat at the table, but at least we get to choose what’s for dinner.
]]> 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://19.11255 2013-04-15T08:05:00Z 2013-04-15T21:27:14Z

Photo: Youth4Justice SAN FRANCISCO--Despite some widely reported incidents of violent home invasions and gun homicides involving young Asians in recent years, gun violence among 10-to-24-year-old Asian youths in California has been declining.Only 24 Asians were among the 680 homicide victims...

Rene Ciria-Cruz ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=48 Photo: Youth4Justice

SAN FRANCISCO--Despite some widely reported incidents of violent home invasions and gun homicides involving young Asians in recent years, gun violence among 10-to-24-year-old Asian youths in California has been declining.

Only 24 Asians were among the 680 homicide victims in this age bracket in 2010, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Asian gun homicide rate was a distant third to Latino and African American rates, respectively. Most victims were killed with guns, mostly handguns.

“Historically, gun violence among young Asians is actually very low, often gang-related,” said Barry Krisberg. “There are fewer Asian gangs and they’re not as big as in Latino or black communities.”

Krisberg is a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Even youth incarceration has declined, according to Krisberg, who said the number of Asian youths in the California Youth Authority is down from “200 or so a few years back” to single digits.

Still, gun homicide was the second leading cause of death among Asian youths in the state, after unintentional injuries, most of those car accidents, according to the CDC data.

Social Factors

Most young Asian victims were killed by someone they knew, and most of the deaths were not related to any other felony, such as robbery. But a considerable number was gang-related.

Rates of gun violence also vary among Asian groups. Traditional Asian groups—Chinese, Japanese and Filipino--that are long-term immigrants who have settled, adjusted or assimilated tend to show very low gun homicides.

“More recent immigrants—Southeast Asians who went through horrible experiences as refugees--have higher rates than other Asians,” Krisberg observed."

The second-generation of Southeast Asian youth born in the United States — such as Hmong, Lao, Cambodian or Vietnamese — tend to get caught up in violent incidents as they face challenges and pressures in school and the streets, Krisberg said.

He explained further that the parents are struggling to get rooted and stabilized and are adjusting to a new language, economic difficulties and often confusing values.

Poverty runs high in these communities, and high rates of limited English proficiency also prevail. The high school dropout rates among Southeast Asians are disturbing: 40 percent among Hmong; 38 percent for Laotians; 35 percent for Cambodians.

Because of the social realities they face, violence tends to be higher among young immigrants. “And this is true for all immigrants, by the way,” Krisberg emphasized. “If you go back far enough, say in the 1940s, you’ll see newspaper reports of Japanese youth gangs, but today that community is very stable.”

Violence Down for All Groups

Despite the disadvantageous conditions facing young Asian immigrants, gun violence among them has actually gone down since 2006, the height of gang and drug-trafficking activities.

“In fact, it is down for all groups in the state, with some notable exceptions, like Oakland,” Krisberg said. (The rate was highest in Monterey County, with Alameda County coming in second.)

Gun homicides in the state decreased by an average of two percent across all young people of all ethnic groups from 2006, CDC data show.

“The statistics may be true,” said David Inocencio, “but the young people we work with would not agree that gun violence is down.” From their point of view, he noted, gun violence weighs heavily in their lives.

Inocencio, the director and co-founder of The Beat Within, a youth rehabilitation-through-writing program developed at New America Media, said “there’s still too much trauma” evident in the writings of the incarcerated youth his program works with. The Beat Within holds 120 workshops a week in 25 juvenile halls across the nation.

“In our experience, the pain has not gone down with the statistics,” Inocencio said.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11259 2013-04-12T23:29:47Z 2013-04-12T23:36:49Z

KoreAm Journal ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 An 18-year-old high school senior who wants to be a “missionary” for Korean culture was crowned Miss Korea Southern California last week.

Hannah Hwang, a Los Angeles native and student at Campbell Hall High School in North Hollywood, will compete in the 2013 Miss Korea pageant in Seoul in early June.

Standing at 5-foot-9, Hwang — who also had a small role in Memoirs of a Geisha — began learning Korean traditional dance when she was just 4 years old. She also plays several traditional Korean musical instruments, including the janggu drum.

“I go to Korea every summer and it is truly enjoyable to me,” Hwang told the Korea Times.
“As Miss Korea Southern California, I want to be a missionary to inform people of the cultures of both Korea and the United States. As a Korean American, I hope to become a link between Korea and United States.”

Read the rest and see pictures of Hwang at KoreAm Journal
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11256 2013-04-12T20:00:00Z 2013-04-12T20:41:56Z

The latest USCIS numbers from March show that the agency has received roughly 470,000 applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which means that just under half of those estimated to be eligible have applied. While the success reflected...

ImmigrationImpact.com ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 The latest USCIS numbers from March show that the agency has received roughly 470,000 applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which means that just under half of those estimated to be eligible have applied. While the success reflected by the 470,000 figure is not to be downplayed, the new numbers beg the question: What about the other half million? Why are they still unDACAmented?

Hard data isn’t available yet, but the organizations working tirelessly to help young people apply for DACA believe that a large percentage of eligible immigrants are living in rural America, which presents them with a range of challenges. Estimates show that roughly one quarter of all DREAMers live in rural communities and that upwards of half of them need to enroll in a qualifying adult education program to become DACA-eligible. If we hone in on the migrant farmworker population — which contains about 55,000 DREAMers – over 80% would need to take steps to meet the education requirement.

Apart from the educational hurdle, there is a substantial financial one. Migrant farmworkers generally earn a little over $11,000 a year, making the $465 DACA filing fee cost-prohibitive. As if these obstacles weren’t enough, itinerant farmworkers are particularly hard-pressed when it comes to producing evidence of continuous residence since June 15, 2007 (a requirement of the program) and gaining access to legal services.

Read more
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11250 2013-04-12T08:20:00Z 2013-04-11T22:25:48Z

OAKLAND, Calif.--We are at a pivotal moment for the future of juvenile justice in this country. Youth crime is at historic lows throughout the nation and juvenile incarceration rates are also down. Many states have begun implementing or are considering...

David Muhammad ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 OAKLAND, Calif.--We are at a pivotal moment for the future of juvenile justice in this country. Youth crime is at historic lows throughout the nation and juvenile incarceration rates are also down. Many states have begun implementing or are considering significant juvenile-justice reform initiatives that can further reduce juvenile incarceration and improve the level of support and services for youth in their neighborhoods.

Nowhere is this more critical than in California. Over the past 15 years, California has experienced an astronomical 92 percent reduction in incarceration of the state's juvenile facilities.

At the same time, juvenile crime rates have also plummeted. According to Department of Justice statistics, in the past 10 years there has been a 32 percent decline in juvenile crime in California.

Improved State Budget Creates Challenge

But youth justice in California is at a crossroads now that the state is shifting more responsibility for administering juvenile justice to counties. The state is also considering closing down its juvenile system.

In a series of interviews I conducted recently with juvenile-justice experts, I asked, “What are the greatest challenges facing youth in the state today?” One foremost leader in the field gave a surprising response: "The state's improving budget situation."

One would think that an improved state-government budget would be a good development. But this leader explained that by having more money, the state may just return to massive incarceration--because it may not need to cut corrections budgets further. Unfortunately he is right.

There has been a long-standing lack of creativity and a reliance on ineffective practices when it comes to juvenile justice. Thankfully, though, there is a huge opportunity to fundamentally transform the system, invest in communities, further reduce youth crime rates--all without expending any additional resources.

I’m among those who envision a new way (some may argue, a very old way) of administering juvenile justice. Traditionally, village councils or tribal commissions were responsible for overseeing justice. Not strangers in sterile downtown buildings handing out punishments that make the lives of youth and their families worse, not better.

Imagine a system that has established Neighborhood Opportunity and Accountability Boards in each city. These locally controlled and operated boards include neighborhood residents--youth and families, clergy, professionals—who represent the entire community.

Then resource these boards with the same amount of funds that the government currently spends on that community.

Smarter Use of Same Millions

Say there is such a board every 20-30 square blocks. What about public costs in the most impoverished areas? Say, conservatively, there are high-concentration neighborhoods with 50 youth in the system. Multiplying that number by the average current amount of $150,000 spent on each youth per year in the juvenile justice system comes to a $7.5 million bill for that neighborhood annually.

That $7.5 million a year per low-income neighborhood is money already being spent, but with what results? If we lived by the correct and effective principle that incarceration should only be used for young people who truly pose a legitimate risk to the public safety, then the vast majority of those millions could be used to develop the neighborhood, to provide vital services and supports to young people and their family.

With that approach we could create a system of justice that builds and supports community, not destabilizes it, as happens now.

There is much discussion and interest in “restorative justice” in many juvenile-justice circles. But instead of just having a restorative justice program, cities could actually implement a system that restores youth, victims, family and community.

The Neighborhood Opportunity and Accountability Board would be responsible for working with youth who have engaged in delinquency, having them engage with any victim of their acts and providing needed services and supports to the youth and their family. The board would determine and mandate that the young person perform some community service in their own neighborhood and engage in a restorative process with any victim.

We are a long way away from such a system. But with vision, leadership and courage -- and without any new money – American society can build a system that develops community, supports youth and family and reduces crime.

David Muhammad is the CEO of Solutions, Inc., which provides consultation to government agencies and philanthropic foundations. He was formally the Chief Probation Officer of Alameda County in California and before that served as Deputy Commission of Probation for New York City.




]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11248 2013-04-11T20:39:20Z 2013-04-11T20:54:03Z

Adrian Avila is a 28 year old designer and artist who recently recieved legal status. He serves as art director for Silicon Valley DeBug. This piece originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.I am a 28-year-old immigrant who now...

Adrian Avila ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Adrian Avila is a 28 year old designer and artist who recently recieved legal status. He serves as art director for Silicon Valley DeBug. This piece originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

I am a 28-year-old immigrant who now finally has the life opportunities of an 18-year-old American born. I have been undocumented for 22 years, and as such, traditional America milestones have eluded me.

In this country, the milestone of turning 18 is about becoming an adult, and gaining a whole new set privileges and responsibilities. When I was 18, my friends were driving, working summer jobs, applying to colleges and some even voting. I was dreaming of those things while I sat on at the bus stop, or working under the table at a hotdog stand.

Eighteen is the age when one sets out to create the life one is seeking. For me this all is coming to me now, at age 28, when I received my legalization.

Looking at how big a change I am experiencing my personal life has let me know how profound an opportunity America is about to receive if we do pass immigration reform for the 11 million undocumented stories like mine. Having received my visa this year, I feel like a racehorse waiting for the gate to open. I know now that getting documentation was not just about the security from deportation but is about finally being able to unleash my full potential. This is the power of the transformation of undocumented to documented.

I felt this the second I got a call from my immigration lawyer a few months ago congratulating me for being granted a U-visa. After surviving as an undocumented immigrant since the age of six, I am now a current visa holder, which grants me legal status in this country for four years. I also now have a path to permanent residency and one day citizenship.

I had been waiting for this moment since I could remember, but what I didn't know was what it would actually be like to all of a sudden be allowed opportunities that had been denied me for so long.

The visa has brought a tremendous number of possibilities. Opportunities like obtaining a driver's license. When I went to the DMV office it was like being allowed into a VIP club that I had wanted to get into since I was 16. It's funny to me how many people see the DMV as a place of horror and dread it. For me, going to the DMV to apply for my driver's license was metamorphic. That moment that solidified the realness of this life-changing event. I was on my way to becoming legal in the eyes of others.

Obtaining a valid Social Security card freed me in ways American born residents could barely imagine. Without one, I couldn't apply for jobs, but it impacted me more mentally that anything because of what I was being told: Due to a number, I was not qualified for the position. Now, holding my Social Security card feels like a whole new freedom — I am allowed to climb as high as I can. I finally can understand what my American born friends were feeling when they turned 18.

Being on this side of the documentation line has reaffirmed my belief that being undocumented is just a limitation, not a condition. We are limited on what we can do, but we are not limited on who we are.

And who we can become, once the millions of us are given legalization. We will bring a new wave of prosperity, not just to personal lives of immigrants but to this country as a whole.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11246 2013-04-11T07:30:00Z 2013-04-12T18:33:16Z

Viji Sundaram ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=68 Photo: Courtesy Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health

SAN FRANCISCO – For over a year, Pamela DiBattista had watched her autistic daughter, Catalena, make remarkable progress in her communication and interpersonal skills.

The nearly 4-year-old girl had also become more controllable, thanks to the two hours of occupational therapy and 19 hours of behavioral analysis sessions she had received each week through her Healthy Families insurance plan. If you added to those hours the time she spent receiving speech therapy, her care totaled 23 hours each week. 

But last week, DiBattista found out that Catalena’s therapy has been cut to four hours starting April 4.

“That’s a big chunk of therapy to take away from a child with special needs,” said the San Jose, Calif., mom. “She made so much progress; now she could regress.”

Catalena is one of about 1,000 autistic children in California facing this change because the state is transitioning all low-income kids (about 875,000) from Healthy Families into Medi-Cal (California’s name for Medicaid) in a process continuing through the next few months.

Asked why autistic children who have transitioned to Medi-Cal are being denied adequate therapy, state Department of Health Care Services spokesman Anthony Cava blamed it on a law.

"The Healthy Families Program  is required to provide behavioral health treatment, which includes applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy treatment for autism, under the California mental health parity law," he said. "The law exempts Medi-Cal from providing this coverage."  

But he added: "The department is still assessing the specific availability of ABA services for its Medi-Cal members."

Medi-Cal Managed Care

The experience of Catalena and the other autistic children runs counter to what the state said it hoped would happen when it decided last year to shift California’s low-income children from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal managed care.

In approving the transition, the California Legislature asserted that Medi-Cal would simplify eligibility and coverage for children and families, while providing additional benefits and lowering costs for children at certain income levels. The state also claimed it would gain administrative efficiencies, achieve General Fund savings and provide a more consistent health plan contracting process.

Both programs serve low-income families, but the popular Healthy Families (the state’s name for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP) was aimed at children up to age 19 in families that don’t qualify for Medi-Cal and have incomes up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or $46,000 for a family of three.

Some of the children in Medi-Cal have received their care through managed-care plans, and others see doctors or go to hospitals reimbursed from a fee schedule set by the state. These families have not been required to pay any premiums for their coverage.

The care delivered to children with special needs has received sharp criticism even before the transition began. According to the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, in Palo Alto, Calif., which runs the website, Kidsdata.org, California children with special health care needs have been receiving care that is less coordinated and less family-centered. 

Children’s health care advocates had warned the administration of California Gov. Jerry Brown when it was considering eliminating Healthy Families last June that as troubling as Medi-Cal's operation was, it has too few doctors to serve thousands of the new patients the transition would bring in. The program's low reimbursement rates has resulted in poor participation by doctors.

The transition, which began in January, was scheduled to be carried out in four phases over this year. The first phase included about 197,000 children in a largely healthy group.

During the implementation of that phase, Jane Ogle, deputy director for the state Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), observed that she did not anticipate any problems in the implementing of phase 2 either, which began this month with 273,000 children, among them Catalena.

The next two phases, beginning in August, could be more challenging, she had said. That’s because later phases would require children to choose new plans and/or providers.

'Potential Problems" and Smaller Savings

An issue brief released earlier this year by the Packard Foundation warned that the state should have in place alternate plans in the event that the transition presents “potential problems.”

“During the transition, particular attention should be paid to children with special health care needs,” to avoid disruption in their care, the brief said.

At a Sacramento hearing last week, the Legislative Analyst's Office revealed that the originally estimated savings of $13.1 million for the Healthy Families transition in 2012-13 shrank to $137,000. Savings for next fiscal year (2013-14) were estimated at $52 million and that estimate has been revised to $43 million.

At the hearing, Scott Ogus, of the state’s Department of Finance, cited several factors contributing to the revised figures. Delays in implementation by the DHCS led to caseload changes. Department officials justified the delay, saying they slowed down some of the early phases of the transition so children would have less disruption in continuity of care.

"The main reason for the erosions is because of caseload changes," Ogus said. "Those eye-popping numbers from $13 million to $137,000 are due to some of these delays."

But Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet, commented, "Last year I opposed eliminating Healthy Families and all information I've seen since then confirms that [was the proper stance]. The latest network assessment shows much more limited [provider] networks than the Healthy Families network did."

“The state,” Emmerson said in an interview, “was ill-advised to eliminate Healthy Families. We believe the children of the working poor should have access to health care.”

Children Now’s Health Policy Director Kelly Hardy, who was among 15 or so other children’s advocates at last week’s legislative hearing, said the state should suspend transitioning additional children to Medi-Cal until “all the kinks are worked out.”



]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11221 2013-04-04T18:05:00Z 2013-04-05T02:43:58Z

Viji Sundaram ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=68
Editor’s Note: Modern technology has brought us a new kind of rape whistle – an electrified bra that shocks anyone who touches it and sends out a GPS signal to police. But the invention is just as ludicrous as its predecessor -- and once again puts the impetus of preventing rape on women, instead of where it belongs: the education of men and boys.

A group of female engineering students in India has unveiled a new electrified bra to protect women from getting raped. The bra, according to reports, not only shocks the attacker the moment its pressure sensors get activated; its built-in GPS also alerts police and the victim’s parents to the location where the attack is taking place. The designers of the bra, which is called Society Harnessing Equipment, or SHE for short, eventually hope to connect it with smart phones via Bluetooth and infrared technology.

I am sure the female engineering students in Chennai who designed this piece of lingerie did it with the best of intentions, following the national uproar that was generated by the rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi last December, and several other well-publicized rapes that have occurred in the country since then. (Not to mention around the world -- just this week in Brazil, an American tourist was gang raped for six hours on a mini bus in Rio de Janeiro.)

The fact that the engineers felt it necessary to design such a bra shows that Indian women have little faith in the sweeping rape law the Indian government passed last month to protect women against sexual violence. India has never had trouble enacting laws, just enforcing them. And as every Indian knows, any law can be bypassed by greasing the right person’s palm. Why should the rape law be any different?

And how can you blame women for not expecting much from the law? The practice of dowry (money or property brought by a bride to her husband at marriage) is still almost endemic in India, despite the fact that an anti-dowry law was passed in 1961. In 2010, there were 8,391 reported cases of dowry deaths – young women who were murdered or driven to suicide by their husbands or their in-laws for not bringing in an adequate dowry -- according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Women’s rights activists say that for every dowry death reported, there are dozens that go unreported. Of the reported cases in 2010, only one-third of the perpetrators were convicted.

The majority of rapists, too, get off scot-free. And not just in India.

In most African countries, rape convictions are not common. Worse, affected women don't get immediate access to medical care, and DNA tests to provide evidence are unaffordable. Which is perhaps why two years ago in South Africa, Dr. Sonnet Ehlers designed a female condom with “teeth” to it. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line the inside of the latex condom and attach to a man’s penis during penetration. Once Rape-aXe, -- as the condom is called – lodges in the penis, only a doctor can surgically remove it. While doing it, the doctor can summon law officials to arrest the man.

But if the electrified bra and the condom with “teeth” are meant to empower women, these inventions only show the state of women’s powerlessness -- and their lack of faith in laws meant to protect them.

India’s new rape law, which, in addition to harsher sentences for rape and acid attacks, criminalizes “eve-teasing” which, as Lavanya Sankaran points out in a column in The Guardian, is a “coy and euphemistic name for the sexual harassment – the stalking, groping and lewd comments – that every Indian woman is forced to navigate every time she walks out of her home.”

The law also expands the definition of rape and clearly states that the absence of physical struggle doesn’t equal consent. And no longer will misogynist police officers be able to not register complaints and compromise survivors’ rights during investigations.

All of that sounds wonderful, but is the law really going to protect women? Not until there is a change in culture, beginning with the way mothers and fathers teach their sons to be men. After all, as Sankaran notes, social pressure in India is far more powerful than any law.

The solution is not to get women to buy a new high-tech kind of rape whistle. The mindset of men must change, and the change has to begin at home.

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11217 2013-04-04T00:00:00Z 2013-04-04T00:44:47Z

Editor's Note: The author of this commentary, Alejandra Alarcon, 18, writes for Coachella Unincorporated, a youth-led community media organization founded by NAM to serve residents of the rural Eastern Coachella Valley. I've never had any reason to think that I...

Alejandra Alarcon ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Editor's Note: The author of this commentary, Alejandra Alarcon, 18, writes for Coachella Unincorporated, a youth-led community media organization founded by NAM to serve residents of the rural Eastern Coachella Valley.

I've never had any reason to think that I wouldn’t be able to someday marry the person I truly love. That's something that isn't true of many of my closest friends who are gay. So why should I care about the issue of marriage equality? After all, I’m not gay, and discrimination against gay people doesn’t really interfere with my daily life.

The answer is that I don't have to be gay or even a victim of discrimination to understand what it feels like for someone else to be judged unfairly for something they have no control over, especially when that judgement is directed at the people I love the most.

My mother, an immigrant from Mexico, has been a U.S. citizen for 12 years. She’s worked for the local school district for seven of those years, yet doesn’t receive the same benefits as other district employees in higher positions. Instead, she has remained in the same low-paying position, and I can’t help but think that it has something to do with the way she speaks English, which influences the way others perceive her.

It’s not that she doesn’t make every effort to adapt -- at home, she asks my siblings and I to speak to her only in English so she can practice. As a result, I’ve seen her English improve. Yet she still hasn’t been able to get a promotion, and that’s been tough for me to see. And of course, it’s not just about her – it’s a situation that affects our whole family.

Because of who she is and the way she speaks, my mother is still the “other” -- unworthy of what most take for granted, despite her contributions.

Which is all to say that for me, the fight for marriage equality and gay rights is not just about gay people gaining the right to sign a legal document of matrimony. It’s about fighting for things that are much bigger -- the right to love, free expression and an end to discrimination in all its forms.

I’m not alone in my thinking. I come from a generation where being homosexual is a storm in a teacup – it is not a big deal at all.

During a recent psychology class at College of the Desert (the local community college) our instructor asked: “If you were told the sexual orientation of your unborn baby and had the power to change it, would you?” Some students in the room snickered, as if the question made them uncomfortable. During the course of the discussion that followed, however, a clear majority of students said they would not choose to change their child’s sexual orientation if they knew he or she would be gay. A few did admit to preferring that their baby be straight, but only so their child would not have to suffer the social discrimination that comes with being gay.

Despite the progressive attitudes among young people, it’s still hard to be bold and honest about who you are when the law of the land says that who you are is fundamentally less equal. Some of my gay friends here in the Coachella Valley are still uncomfortable with expressing their love to their partners in public spaces. It’s sad to see my friends put on a different mask – it’s a reminder to me of how far we have to go as a society in embracing civil rights for all.

But the attitudes I see coming from my generation give me hope. And when we do inevitably overcome this struggle, we will surely look back at this point in time just as we now look back on the 1960s, when interracial marriage was illegal.

Let’s hope that the Supreme Court agrees with my generation. It is time to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. It is time to do away with the concept of the “other.” It is time to allow my friends and loved ones to have the same dreams as me.

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