4/12/12 API American Films: Giap and the Last Ironing Board Factory, Exiled Americans, and more

On this edition of Apex Express:

MARIE CHOI brings us samples from GIAP AND THE LAST IRONING BOARD FACTORY a new film about the mother-son relationship between Giap Nguyen and Tony Nguyen. Giap is a refugee who fled Vietnam in 1975 while two months pregnant. A single mother who has worked on the grueling assembly line for nearly 35 years, she is finally retiring. Set in Seymour, Indiana, this short documentary provides an intimate look at life inside the last standing ironing-board factory in the United States. Filmmaker Tony Nguyen captures his mother’s last day at the factory and attempts to reconcile an unknown past. This quirky and deeply personal film explores parental love and the refugee experience in small town America.

MARIE also gives us sounds from EXILED AMERICANS ~ Studio Revolt’s new video featuring a group of Exiled Khmer Americans. Their previous video, MY ASIAN AMERICANA by Anida Yoeu Ali, was a finalist for the White House AAPI’s “What’s Your Story” video contest. My Asian Americana features Asian Americans, both those who can return to the US and those living in exile, sharing their memories of home. Although My Asian Americana won the popular vote by a landslide, they refused to invite representatives to the White House. Studio Revolt is calling for supporters to write to Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President, and ask her to investigate how the Office of Public Engagement silenced the voices of exiled Americans despite the fact that they won the popular vote. You can email her at vjarrett@who.eop.gov. For more information about people living in exile in Cambodia, visit spokenkosal.com.

SISTA XTINA & EL FALCON bring us a teaser of an upcoming interview about ANTI~TRAFFICKING MOVEMENT WORK with JEAN ENRIQUEZ, a founding member of BUKLOD WOMEN’S CENTER in the Philippines, who was selected as one of Yahoo Southeast Asia’s Heroes of 2011. Full length ANTI~TRAFFICKING interview will be presented Sunday, May 27th, 7-11pm on the API HERITAGE MONTH SPECIAL, “THE INDO~PACIFIC EDGE 2012″ on KPFA~FM 94.1 (((BAY*AREA))).

KAPATID TISAYE shares impressions of the new documentary, THE ISLAND PRESIDENT, about President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives and the effects of Climate Change on the island nation. TICKETS to Bay Area showings will accompany the review.

SELEKTA LAPULAPU briefly reviews the new music/dance/martial arts drama, BUFFALO’ED, about AFRICAN AMERICAN SOLDIERS during the PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN WAR, and we’ll give away TICKETS to see BUFFALO’ED this weekend at the SAN JOSE STAGE COMPANY.

We will also be giving away tickets to new Pacific Islander and Asian films, screening in the SF Bay Area, including the new film about AUNG SAN SUU KYI (played by MICHELLE YEOH) called “THE LADY”!

Hosted by Selekta LapuLapu aka Bruddah K.

6/9/11 Toxic Nail Salons, Deportations, and Healing

For this week:

Thanks to Making Contact, Guest Producer Pauline Bartolone and Correspondent Momo Chang take us into the toxic truth about nail salons, they talk to nail salon workers, medical experts, and policymakers on the move to safeguard workers’ health, and help salons go green.

APEX Producer Robynn Takayama explores the details and issues regarding the unique, yet universal, deportation case of Cambodian American Andrew Thi.

APEX host, R.J. Lozada brings in Hip-Hop artist, RJ Sin (pictured above), who’ll be sharing his music and information about the benefit party for Cambodian Community Development, Inc.

Community Calendar:

Youth Music Benefit for the Japan Multicultural Relief Fund
Sunday at the Starry Plough Pub in Berkeley.The Japan Multicultural Relief Fund assists underrepresented groups effected by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The project was conceived and organized by the Bay Area youth music duo, Bayonettes and other youth musicians! From the ages of 13-25, these young musicians are a diverse lot. Indie Rock, Jazz/Psychedelic Rock, and Folk, their cover tunes and originals will inspire you. Come support the efforts of these giving young, budding musicians while helping those in need! For more information visit their facebook event page

Laced with Tradition with Tattoo Artist Melissa Manuel
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 2011
(Exhibit runs June 17-August 20)
6:30-10:30pm
Join Manliatown for an evening of music, food, and body art! San Jose/Bay Area native Melissa Manuel will be present to dialogue about and share the body art which she has masterfully created. This event features live music from Dj Krucial.
Show up and show off your tattoo(s)! Find out more about Melissa Manuel at melchon.blogspot.com, and Manilatown.org

Rizal150: Bay Area Artists and Institutions Commemorate
150th Birthday of Philippine National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal
The American Center of Philippine Arts (ACPA) and a collective of Bay Area Filipino American artists today announced a collaboration and exhibit to celebrate the life and legacy of Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal who was born 150 years ago this June 19, 2011. The exhibit will be held at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center from June 20 to August 31 kicking off with a dinner celebration and fundraiser for the ACPA and the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES) on Saturday, June 18. For more information to buy tickets to the dinner or to make a contribution, please go to philippinearts.org/rizal150.htm or http://rizal150.eventbrite.com/

The “spirit of Wisconsin” – working people standing up for their unions, their rights and their fair share of society’s benefits – is coming to the Bay Area on Saturday, June 18th at the 3rd Bay Area Troublemakers School at Laney College in Oakland. This School, sponsored by Labor Notes, brings together a collection of vibrant, engaged, curious and activist members of unions, worker centers, and community-based pro-labor organizations to share struggles, learn together about economic forces shaping our world, and kindle inspiration and solidarity. Workers from the Chinese Progressive Association and Filipino Community Center will be presenting workshops on the Campaign to End Wage Theft. Don’t miss it! For more information on workshops, schedules, and registration for the Troublemakers School, please go to www.labornotes.org/bayarea, call (510) 542-9436  or email schools@labornotes.org.

The Streets Still Chase Bill Lee: Born To Lose

By Gina Hotta

The streets still live in Bill Lee, giving him the skills to survive gang life while growing up as well as a workplace shooting in Silicon Valley. But the streets constantly draw him towards high-stakes risks, feeding a gambling addiction that has dogged Lee since he was nine years old.

Forthright and driven, Lee is principal of his senior-management search firm – a long ways from once being the driver for a street gang leader. At East Wind Books, Lee grips his latest autobiography Born to Lose: Memoirs of a Compulsive Gambler and reads with clipped words at a brisk tempo reflecting his working-class, immigrant background. “My lack of self-esteem originates in Chinatown where I was born and raised”, he states in a voice barely masking memories both harsh and loving, “and I wanted to share with people from different backgrounds about how it is to have a traumatic up-bringing where it is physically and emotionally unsafe.”

In Bill Lee’s San Francisco Chinatown, the soft thumping sounds of sewing machines drift from sweatshops. Here, Bill Lee’s mother worked, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, barely hanging onto her sanity. The sharp clacking sounds of mah-jongg parlors come from above where Lee’s father went to escape life – one that included abuse of the five Lee children. Bill Lee also escaped, “…out on the streets and at the playground, where gang members and bullies there were more predictable than my crazy family.” Chinese Playground is the name of Lee’s first book that documents the beginnings of his gambling addiction and his rough life in Chinatown

Bill Lee’s parents didn’t want another child. When an abortion failed, they tried to sell him off to a childless couple. The scars left on Lee come out in slow, measured words as he emphatically states, “I am slowly, through therapy, understanding how to take care of myself and deal with my basic belief that I am a burden and un-worthy”. Gambling can numb Lee to all of this.

But at one point in Lee’s life, gambling problems weren’t the worst of it. The old demons came out when Lee had to search for his runaway son.

“That’s exactly what he did”, Lee says, a mixture of shock and surprise still in his voice when asked if his son, Eric, got involved with gangs. “I had to go back to Chinese Playground, my old stomping ground, to find him. I had to contact my old acquaintances in Chinatown…They spread the word that Eric was not to be touched and that the gangs were not to recruit him.”

Lee has mixed feelings reviving old contacts, but states that, “I was desperate and scared. I didn’t know if Eric was dead or alive.” Lee says contacting Chinese members of the San Francisco Police Department helped him the most.

But even in the high-tech industry, old habits and haunts followed Lee.

In 1988 an armed man, dismissed by ESL for harassment, went into the defense contractor’s building. “You would think, with all the homicides I lived through from the Chinatown gang wars, that I would be desensitized to what was occurring, but we were in Silicon Valley, the last place I expected to contend with individuals being blown to bits.” Relying on his street instincts, Lee helped fellow staff stuck inside the building and assisted grieving families. In the aftermath, Lee gambled with a vengeance.

Lee recalls the cycle of addiction. After a seven-year gambling abstinence, he had a house and money for Eric’s college education. Seven months later, “it was all gone – every last cent. I blew all the money away day-trading in the stock market.”

Over the years, participation in the Gambler’s Anonymous program has helped Lee. The daily struggle over gambling is heard in Lee’s voice. “Everyone wants to be normal and not have a blemish. But, every time I think I am “normal” and that it is OK to gamble, then I know that I have to work the program more.”

He now shares his story with youths and their families. Addressing Chinese families in particular, Lee says that disciplining your kids in very negative ways is not an entitlement. “I basically tell the parents that there are real forces out there that will exploit your kids…give them a sense of control, of self-esteem, money. And that once they step across the line, that there’s no turning back.” After all, the streets are still chasing Bill Lee. And, the reasons Lee risks opening doors to all the old demons out there? “Giving guidance and hope.”