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  LATEST NEWS FOR NOV 2001

As we enter November, we have entered historic times. Our country and the Asian Pacific American communities are entering a season to directly address issues of race, hate crime, evil, good, war, goals of peace, conflicts and a great number of other issues. Our wish is that these unfortunate and historic days will lead us down a path of greater understanding and togetherness that will be greatly needed in our future.

We invite you to discover some of the prominent APA leaders listed below.


FEATURED ARTISTS & LEADERS

KIP FULBECK

Since 1991, videomaker, novelist, slam poet, and spoken word performer Kip Fulbeck has been recognized as one of the world's premier artists exploring Hapa* identity. Fulbeck combines improvisation, stand-up comedy, political activism, and inspiring personal stories to explore his Cantonese, English, Irish, and Welsh background, media imagery of Asian men, interracial dating patterns, and icons of race and sex in popular culture.

His videos and performance work have shown in over 20 countries, aired on PBS, and received numerous awards, while his first novel, Paper Bullets, has just been published by the University of Washington Press. Paper Bullets is a fictional autobiography exploring the hapa identity of a young man, who like the author is shaped by the conflicting desires, stigmas, and codes of male conduct in this country. Part coming-of-age, part racial/sexual adventure, and part love letter...Paper Bullets chronicles a contemporary man's search for love and meaning.

Fulbeck is also an ocean lifeguard, Lakers fanatic,guitar junkie, dubbed kung fu grandmaster, professional dreamer, and Associate Professor of Art and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

ROSE OCHI

Announced on July 10, 2001, Rose Ochi was appointed by Mayor Jim Hahn of Los Angeles to the LA Board of Police Commissioners. As of August 21, 2001, she was elected to be Vice President of the Commission. In light of the LAPD's current troubles, Rose has been brought in to solve their current problems.

Rose was the Director of the Community Relations Service, a branch of the Department of Justice which provides a Federal conciliation service to help resolve and prevent racial and ethnic conflict, violence and civil disorders at the local and State levels.

Rose's deep commitment to equal justice and civil rights stems from her own family's experience with racial discrimination. As one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans unjustly interned in prison camps during World War II, Rose has personally faced direct prejudice due to her racial and ethnic heritage.

In 1997, Rose was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first Asian American woman to serve at the Assistant Attorney General level. Her extensive experience in building collaborative partnerships between multi-racial civil rights leadership, law enforcement groups and elected officials makes her ideal to head the federal agency whose mission is to help communities resolve racial and ethnic conflicts.

Attorney General Reno had called upon Rose to coordinate race relations matters for the Department and asked her to serve on President Clinton's Initiative on Race Task Force. Rose has worked to develop anti-hate crime educational materials and programs and contributed her wisdom on issues such as police misconduct and racial profiling.

Prior to her appointment, she was Associate Director at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. She worked with state and local governments and private associations to implement the President's National Drug Control Strategy where she spearheaded the development of the innovative Breaking the Cycle Program drug treatment model.

Rose Ochi has served in a range of civic, community and professional associations, including the DOJ Attorney General's National Minority Advisory Council, the NOBLE Hate Violence Advisory Committee, the President's Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, and the Japanese American Citizens League among others.

GRACE PARK
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The 20 year LPGA Tour rookie old out of Arizona State spent the last few years building a remarkable launching pad -- winning 55 national tournaments. Some of her victories include the 1998 U.S. Women's Amateur Championship and the 1999 NCAA individual title. Last summer she won five of the 10 she entered on the LPGA's Futures Tour.

Grace Park, who was brought up in Arizona since she was 12, has been actively courted by equipment and clothing manufacturers because of her dazzling smile. Currently she is being managed by Michael Ovitz's management team.

Grace has joined the roster of Golf Digest Playing Editors where she will provide instructional articles to help players improve their golf games.

STATISTICS: This 5'6" beauty was born March 6, 1979, in Seoul, South Korea. Her residence is in Phoenix, Arizona where she attended Arizona State. She was tied for eighth at this year's U.S. Women's Open at Old Waverly Golf Club in Mississippi, shattering the previous scoring record for an amateur with a 5-under-par 283. As an amateur, led the field in driving distance at both 2001's Nabisco Dinah Shore and U.S. Women's Open. Her father (Soo-Nam) owns a steak restaurant in Korea and mother Jinae sports a single-digit handicap.


EVENTS IN HISTORY

IN 1830's
- Chinese workers arrives in Hawaii

IN 1869
- Memphis TN conference of plantation owners proposed substituting Chinese labor for black slaves.

IN 1871
- Nineteen Chinese were massacred in Los Angeles. October 24 marked the worst incident of Anti-Chinese violence in America up to that time.

IN 1879
- the Arizona Weekly Star ran an editorial in 1879 portraying Chinese Americans as "an ignorant, filthy, leprous horde" and "the most pernicious and degraded race on the globe." Chinese workers were attacked in railroad camps and mining towns and driven out of Arizona's mines and railroads.

IN 1908
- Filipinos were greatly recruited by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association as cheap contract labor when the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 cut off the Japanese supply.

IN 1909
- Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii go on strike

IN 1912
- Duke Kahanamoku won his first Olympic gold medal and set a world record in the 100-meter free-style and won a silver medal as a participant in the 200-meter relay in Stockholm. He represented the United States in the Olympics for the next 20 years.

IN 1923
- Justice Sutherland, speaking for the Supreme Court in 1923, said that Bhagat Singh Thind and other Asian Indians were aliens ineligible to citizenship because they were not white, as only whites and blacks could become citizens.

IN 1924
- In the Hanapepe Massacre, police attack union headquarters in Hanapepe, HI where 16 sugar plantation workers and 4 policemen are killed.

IN 1947
- Truman grants full pardon to the Japanese Americans who had been convicted for resisting the draft while they and their families were held in concentration camps.

IN 1944
- These 85 interned Japanese Americans were prosecuted and incarcerated because they refused to be drafted into the U.S. military unless their rights as citizens were restored.

IN 1949
- FBI arrests the Hawaii Seven for communist activity. Their fines and jail terms are overturned in January 1958.

IN 1980
- First Philippine Festival of the Arts begins in New York City.

IN 1991
- National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization was formed to advance the legal and civil rights of Asian Pacific Americans.

IN 2001
- Maya Lin is honored by the NAACP as someone who has excelled in the face of overwhelming odds.

IN 2001
- Patrick Oliphant's racist cartoon was an offshoot of the recent stand off between the U.S. and China over the U.S. spy plane incident.

      OUR GOALS

The purpose of this section is the following:
OPPORTUNITY
to discover more about our dreams
UNDERSTANDING
our fears and our hopes and
UNCOVERING
invaluable and missing information


APA & MEDIA NEWS

FUND-RAISING EVENT
On November 10, 2001 at L.A.'s Club Metro (1024 Grand Avenue/L.A., CA), a prominent fund-raising music event featuring groups from throughout the United States are raising funds for the Red Cross' "Relief Fund for the Sept 11, 2001 Victims." The groups include One Voice, Prach Ly, e:Trinity, Francis Kim, April, Khmer Angels and many other groups.

MTV HONORED
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) presented its American Courage Award to MTV's President Van Tomer on October 18, 2001. Lisa Ling (from "The View") will present to the award to MTV - in addition to Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford and Merill Lynch Executive George A. Schiersen. "MTV's vision and cutting edge leadership is an example to corporate America. NAPALC is proud to call MTV a partner in its campaign against hate" stated NAPALC Executive Director Karen Narasaki.

MTV (considered the most widely viewed cable network for young people) launched a year long anti-discrimination campaign, "Fight For Your Rights," focusing on combating intolerance and hate crimes. They have addressed, in straight-forward fashion, in dispelling myths about Arabs, South Asians, Muslim Americans and Islamic culture in the wake of September 11, 2001.

WEN HO LEE PROJECT SHELVED
John Ridley's ("Three Kings") miniseries at ABC about Wen Ho Lee is on hold. Little hope of its resurrection because of the described conspiracy of the FBI and government against Wen Ho Lee.

Read about how John Ridley, Dean Devlin and other writers enter a time of moral questioning. Devlin wonders what happened on the fourth plane on September 11, 2001. "Did they actually overthrow these guys? There's the catharsis of being there with them and of doing something when nothing else could be done."

ASIAN MOVIES ARE RED HOT
Miramax's Harvey Weinstein put $2 million of restoration costs into the movie "Iron Monkey" (an obscure Hong Kong martial arts movie directed by Yeun Wo Ping - whose credits include 28 films & action choreographer of Crouching Tiger and The Matrix), a new stereo soundtrack, a great new sound mix and sound effects that earned $6 million and a per-screen average behind only the weekend's leader - "Training Day."

Other signs of success are Crouching Tiger, emergence of Jackie Chan as a global film star, Jet Li's success, The Musketeer, Sony Classics' Happy Times, Miramix's upcoming "Zu Warriors" (special-effects-laden period action film directed by Hong Kong master Tsui Hark), 3 movies featuring Stephen Show (Hong Kong's Jim Carrey) such as Shoaline Soccer & Tears of the Black Tiger and Oscar Zhang's "Hero" - film features Zhang Ziyi, Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung that's directed by Hong Kong's Kar-Wai Wong),

Miramax hired Dee Dee Nickerson, a veteran film executive who speaks fluent Mandarin, to find production opportunities and ways to establish the Miramax brand in China.

EWP'S "RED" PRODUCTION
Chay Yew's play about the the Cultural Revolution's costs has obvious touches, but the East West Players' 2001 production is effective while receives critical acclaim - along with its actors (Emily Kukroda, Page Leong and Jeanne Sakata).

Previous performances at the Singapore Arts Festival, via the Singapore Repertory Theatre) has allowed Kuroda, Leong and Sakata know where they're going with Yew's complicated text, as seen by each highly charged pause, how every dynamic peak is filled with no "watch me-watch me-watch me" business.

ASIAN/ASIAN AMERICAN THEATER
Asian American playwrights and actors, voices and visions are emerging as vibrant presence on the American stage. Current examples include the following:

Disney's "The Lion King: The Musical" at the Pantages exhibits traditional Asian theater influences: director Julie Taymor's costuming, puppetry and masks are inspired by Japanese Bunraku puppetry and Indonesian shadow-play techniques are interwoven with African elements.

A successful Chinese American novelist, a Beijing opera star and his star pupil confront artistic truths and China's revolutionary past in East West Players' production of "Red." Jeanne Sakata, Page Leong and Emily Kuroda in a stunning interplay between loyalty and tradition, political upheaval and censorship. Play features subtle about-face regarding gender roles, politics and a haunting glimpse into the choreographed poetics of Chinese opera.

Rogers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song is updates by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang at the Mark Taper Forum. Presentation reprises the American immigrant tale of generational divide and filial piety based on the novel about San Francisco's Chinatown by C.Y. Lee. Lea Salonga stars as the sensible Chinese girl, Mei-Li, and Sandra Allen plays the tawdry Linda Low character.

Lanford Wilson's "Redwoord Curtain" shares the story of a young Vietnamese American girl search in Northern California's rugged redwood forests for the father she lost after the Vietnam War. ). Anne Tran plays Geri in this San Diego Asian American Repertory Theatre production directed by Robert Dahey.

"Lighten Up" explores Buddhist themes, poetry and dance. Director Mark Valdez describes "Lighten Up" as a modern dance/play and is "grounded in ritual, bringing people of all different beliefs from all over Los Angeles." The production is a performance about "enlightenment, and the sacred and sublime."

TED FANG FIRED FROM S.F. EXAMINER
Florence Fang, matriarch of San Francisco's politically powerful Fang family and chairman of its newspaper chain, yesterday fired her son, Ted, as editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, which has been buffeted by financial problems and family infighting.

The move comes as seven construction companies have filed more than $1.4 million in liens against ExIn LLC, the Examiner's corporate parent, citing the failure to pay them for remodeling work on the newspaper's offices in the old Warfield Theater on Market Street.

The Fangs acquired the Examiner from the Hearst Corp. last year in a controversial deal that shook the city's political establishment and barely survived an anti-trust challenge in federal court.

Hearst announced in August 1999 that it would purchase The Chronicle and either sell the Examiner or close it if no buyer could be found. But in January 2000, real estate investor Clint Reilly sued to stop the sale, arguing that Hearst planned to shut down the Examiner and create a San Francisco newspaper monopoly.

Hearst then agreed to transfer the Examiner to the Fang family, publisher of the San Francisco Independent, the weekly Asian Week and other small papers in the Bay Area. The deal included a subsidy from Hearst to the Fangs of up to $67 million over three years.

But Reilly pressed his suit through a monthlong trial that finally ended in favor of Hearst and the Fangs in July 2000. When the Fangs took over the Examiner, both Ted Fang and the media made much of the fact that it was the nation's first major metropolitan newspaper owned by an Asian American family.

MING NA ON LATE NIGHT
Ming Na appeared on "The Late Show with Craig Kilborne." She was charming and articulate while plugging her Asian American boy band called "At Last."

Ming Na only got 1 out of 5 in the 5 questions game. That's the Kathy Ireland level of futility.

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