Yuri, with her walker, was a regular at Bay Area anti-war events and APIA activist gatherings. She made us all larger, reminding us always to think globally and organize locally. She was a fan of poetry, and never failed to shout-out artists from the mic, She emphasized that all struggles for justice are connected - and she lived that truth. I think of Yuri and the Young Lords occupying the Statue of Liberty in 1977 to demand independence for Puerto Rico. I think of Yuri explaining that we can’t talk about 9/11 without talking of US troops in Saudi Arabia. I think of her connecting her own internment as a Japanese American to the PATRIOT Act. She showed us what a fully realized political life looks like.
June 2: The Indian army carried out operations throughout Punjab. Hundreds of thousands (some estimates put the number at nearly 300,000) of troops flooded the state, cutting off transit into and out of Punjab. Troops sealed every border and imposed a media blackout by arresting or expelling foreign journalists. The lone foreign correspondent remaining in Amritsar was Brahma Chellaney of the Associated Press, who eluded authorities, and whose reports alerted the world to the abusive excesses that the Indian Army took during the assault. The Indian Government even ordered electrical outages in key cities, including Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Patiala, and other important locales to reduce chances for any communication.
One of the museum’s board members, Debra Burlingame, has made explicitly anti-Islam statements in public, as well as claimed she can’t be Islamophobic because her fear of Isn’t “irrational.”
“I think they should have talked about Islam more, just so people understand that there is a difference between Islam and people who do terrorist attacks but who also happen to be Islamic,” said Adrian Cabreros, 22, visiting with his mother from San Francisco. “They just sort of said that the people from Al Qaeda wanted to have a more Islamic state, but it was hard to distinguish, to separate Islam itself. It kind of gives Islam a bad vibe.”
Ron Speedbey & Ben Schwecke.
Ron Speedbey, 68, a retired New York City police officer from Queens, and his friend Ben Schwecke, 67, a disabled veteran, had also missed the part of the museum devoted to Al Qaeda. The exhibits they did see “did not really make clear that this is a fringe organization that really has corrupted much of the Quran,” Mr. Schwecke said.
Mr. Schwecke suggested that the museum should find a local imam and let him do a brief film for the museum “about this is who Muslims really are.”
“What’s the purpose of the museum if not to teach?” Mr. Speedbey said.
This morning, we’re listening to Dr. Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama in conversation about their lives and organizing in “Mountains That Take Wing.” - CM
Tonight we are sad to hear the news that one of our great movement elders has passed on. Rest in power, Yuri Kochiyama. May we continue to honor how you have touched our lives, and continue our work in your spirit.
Is there anything to say about this really?
I hosted a totally nerdy Google Hangout yesterday about Census data, maps for data visualization, and language access. Here’s the archived video!
Congrats 2015 National Spelling Winners, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe! Once again, racist haters attack these cool kids. Can anyone spell D-E-S-P-I-C-A-B-L-E? - Alice
The global implications of the Filipino teacher trafficking case are startling: as U.S. firms exploit teachers brought the states as guestworkers whose passports are taken away and whose wages are skimmed, students in the Philippines are deprived of their country’s best-trained teacher workforce.
In These Tmes explores the far-reaching causes–and the subsequent consequences–of trafficking hundreds of teachers. - CM
Hey American Girl, we need more diversity, not less! “I am disappointed to know that Asian American Girls will no longer have a doll. #AmericanGirlDiversityMatters,” commenter Alison De La Cruz wrote on Facebook. -Alice
