8/31/17 Back to School

Tonight, we head back to school and look at some amazing programs preparing young people to engage in the fight for justice.

WALC hiking up Yosemite’s Mist Trail towards Nevada Falls

APIENC’s POP Camp, a training camp for LGBT, API high school youth

ACT4CUSD speaking at the Cupertino Union School Board

• First we hear from high school teachers Rachelle Urzua and Jody DeAraujo. They work with the Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative, a small learning community that teaches high school curriculum through a lens of environmental stewardship.
• Then we speak with Sammie Ablaza Wills from API Equality- Northern California, an API LGBTQ organization in San Francisco training and building a youth-led movement.
• And we’ll hear from Medha Asthana with ACT4CUSD who is working to make sure public schools in the South Bay have comprehensive sex education that covers important things like consent and uses inclusive language around gender expression and sexual orientations.

Community Calendar

• On Labor Day, there’s a strike and march in Oakland in support of organized labor. Fast food workers in 300 cities and in the UK will be on strike to demand a liveable wage. Meet at 1330 Jackson St, Oakland Monday morning.  
• On Tuesday, the Parkway Theater screens “And Then They Came for Us.” The documentary features actor and activist, George Takei and many other Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War 2. This screening includes a post-show discussion. 

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4/13/17 All About The Periods…..

 

Download the show here

Tonight we talk about a subject that over half of the world has to deal with monthly, but is still considered taboo. Tonight we are talking periods with Asian American women. Hosts Miko Lee and Tara Djorbji talk to Amrita Saigal the founder of Saanthi Pad, eco-friendly pads for women in India.  We hear from New York Congresswoman Grace Meng on her Menstrual Equity Bill which will eliminate the tax on period supplies and provide pads to homeless and incarcerated women, and Boston-based activist Nadya Okamoto who at 16 years of age founded Period, a Menstrual Movement an organization providing period supplies to homeless women.  Learn more about the Saanthi Pads and Period, a Menstrual Movement here:

 

Community Calendar:

April 15 1-4:30pm the Tax March San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco

April 15 & 16 50th annual Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in SF J town

April 18 at 07:00 PM Showing Up for Racial Justice presents Anti-Racism Educator Tim Wise at First Congregational Church of Oakland

April 29 The Hidden History of the Japanese-American Community in South Berkeley. Led by Jill Shiraki

 

 

 

 

 

6/9/2016 California History Textbook Campaign Update; Purvi Patel and the Criminilization of Abortion

Tune in tonight for our monthly South Asian edition of APEX Express. First we bring you a critical discussion with Dalit artivist Thenmozhi Soundararajan from the South Asian Histories for All coalition, on the ongoing California Textbook Campaign; on the struggle to keep ancient Indian history curricula in middle school history textbooks, as- it-happened, and not how a well-funded group of Hindu fundamentalists would like it to be. Then we discuss with Lisa Sangoi, a lawyer with National Advocates for Pregnant Women,  Purvi Patel’s case, where we find out the status quo of a young Indian American woman who was unjustly thrown in jail for 20 years, for having a late term abortion. Produced by: Preeti Mangala Shekar and Justine Lee

2/11/16 Brown Is the New White, Zika Virus and Reproductive Rights, Match4Lara

Tune into APEX Express on Thursday, February 11 at 7 p.m., when we talk with Steve Phillips, author of Brown is the New White, about how people of color in the United States are a progressive majority.

Download the audio by clicking here.

Then, we discuss the Zika Virus. The World Health Organization has issued warnings across Asia and the Americas. We look at how governments in Latin America are responding to the epidemic by issuing recommendations for women not to be pregnant. What could this mean for women globally? How do reproductive rights and access to birth control fit into the epidemic?

Finally, we are in conversation with Sujitpan Lamsam and Carol Gillespie, organizers from the Match4Lara campaign about the challenge of finding donors for multiracial people in need of bone marrow transplants.

Sujitpan Lamsam, Lara Casalotti’s aunt

Asian American Donor Program Executive Director Carol Gillespie

We also have tickets to give away to Dr. Israel performing tomorrow night at Dub Mission. Listen to APEX Express.

4/8/15 Purvi Patel, Mauna Kea, and Marshall Islands

Image by Dignidad Rebelde

Download the audio by clicking here
Tonight we’ll hear an eclectic line-up taking us all over the globe:

• First we’ll cover the stunning Indiana verdict that sentenced Purvi Patel to decades in prison after she sought medical help after suffering a miscarriage.
• Then, we’ll hear about action the Republic of the Marshall Island took today in United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, demanding that the U.S. adhere to its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This David and Goliath lawsuit calls on the U.S. to immediately take action to disarm.
• We’ll then go to the Big Island in Hawaii, where native Hawaiians have been protesting and blockading the mountain of Mauna Kea, stalling plans to build a mammoth telescope.
• We’ll round out the hour in conversation with the Rupert Estanislao and Josh Castro, founders of Filipino punk rock label Aklasan Records. Rupert will be playing with Bankrupt District at a KPFA fundraiser at 924 Gilman.

4/4/13 Hmong National Development Conference, Conversations about Gay Marriage and Marriage Equality with Lauren Quock, Yasmin Nair, and Stuart Gaffney

[audio http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20130404-Thu1900.mp3]

To download episode, click here.

On this weeks installment of APEX Express:

Contributor R.J. Lozada interviews Seng Alex Vang, Conference Co-Chair of the 16th Hmong National Development Conference. This years conference, themed The Journey Forward, is a three-day gathering of Hmong and their allies on three major threads: Education, Health & Wellness, and Economic Development. 

The United States Supreme Court is in the throes of two major proceedings in the Gay Marriage or Marriage Equality movement, Hollingsworth v Perry, and the legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. In an effort to bring the complexity of the different conversations happening within the LGBTIQ movements regarding marriage equality, contributor R.J. Lozada has invited three speakers to shed some light on the subject.

(photo courtesy of Lauren Quock)

Lauren Quock is a queer third generation Chinese American artist and community leader. 

 

Lauren has been working with the Network on Religion and Justice for Asian Pacific Islander LGBTIQ People (NRJ, www.netrj.org) since 2004 and is currently the NRJ Coordinator. NRJ creates community and leadership development for API LGBTIQ people of faith and works to change the culture of silence around sexuality and LGBTIQ experiences in API Christian churches through education. 

 

Lauren is also an artist (www.laurenquock.com). Lauren appropriates industrial processes and materials to create Modified Bathroom Signs that challenge the gender binary and transform the public restroom from a site of anxiety and trauma into one of affirmation for queer people. 

(photo courtesy of Yasmin Nair)

From the author’s website:

Dr. Yasmin Nair is a Chicago-based writer, activist, academic, and commentator.  The bastard child of queer theory and deconstruction, Nair has numerous critical essays, book reviews, investigative journalism, op-eds, and photography to her credit.  Her work has appeared in publications like GLQ, The Progressive, make/shift, Time Out Chicago, The Bilerico Project, Windy City Times, Bitch, Maximum Rock’n’Roll, and No More Potlucks.   Nair’s writing and organising address issues like neoliberalism and inequality, queer politics and theory, the politics of rescue and affect, sex trafficking, the art world, and the immigration crisis.  Her work also appears or will appear in various anthologies and journals, including Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It, Windy City Queer: Dispatches from the Third Coast and Arab Studies Quarterly. Most recently, her work has appeared in the Lambda-nominated anthology, Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America, edited by Tracy Baim.  Nair is a co-founder and member of the editorial collective  Against Equality; she contributed to their first book, Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage as well as the second, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, and the third, Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.  She is also a member of the Chicago grassroots organisation Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) and recently became its Policy Director (a volunteer position) and co-ordinator of the Chicago chapter of South Asians for Justice, a new group devoted to forging a radical South Asian-inflected political vision outside of electoral politics and Bobby Jindal. Nair was, from 1999-2003, a member of the now-defunct Queer to the Left.  Her activist work includes gentrification, immigration, public education, and youth at risk. 

John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney (photo courtesy of Stuart Gaffney)

Stuart Gaffney, Media Director and API Outreach Director with Marriage Equality USA  and also as a founder of API Equality Northern California.  From Huffington Post:

Stuart Gaffney and his husband John Lewis are leaders in the freedom to marry movement. Together as a couple for 26 years, they were two of the plaintiffs in the historic 2008 lawsuit that held that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. On June 17, 2008, they married at San Francisco City Hall, surrounded by friends and family. Stuart and John are leaders in Marriage Equality USA, a national grassroots organization, and API Equality, a coalition targeting outreach and education to the Asian-American community. They have appeared extensively in local, national and international media. The focus of their work has been to foster connection between the general public and the lives of LGBTIQ people. Stuart is a graduate of Yale University and currently a Policy Analyst at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies.

 COMMUNITY CALENDAR:

Saturday April 13, 3-6pm Poetry Reading: Brynn Saito, Pireeni Sundaralingam, and Debbie Yee Eastwind Books 2066 University Avenue, Berkeley

Friday, May 31 KSW Runway: Celebrate Your Body This alternative fashion show/underground concert/expo showcasing local APA talent in fashion, music, and art and celebrates bodies of all shapes, sizes, ages, abilities, genders, colors, and ethnicities. The event is a fundraiser for Kearny Street Workshop. SOMArts Cultural Center: 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco

12/15/11 Reproductive Rights and Sex Selection with Dr. Sujatha Jesudason, Leche author, R. Zamora Linmark, and Ukulenny!

Workers are seen taking down an anti-abortion billboard at the corner of Watts Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan, Thursday, February 24, 2011. (Photo by Robert Mecea)

This week, APEX contributor Preeti Shekar brings you a talk from Dr. Sujatha Jesudason from Generations Ahead, who discusses the changing terrain of reproductive rights by addressing the evolved anti-choice movement that targets minorities in the United States, and more states adopting anti-abortion legislation.

!!TICKET GIVEAWAY!! CALL IN WHILE WE’RE ON AIR to win a PAIR of tickets to the BEATROCK 2nd Anniversary Party happening SATURDAY, December 17th at the Workspace Limited Art Studio at 2150 Folsom Street in San Francisco. 

Here’s a track from Prometheus Brown and Bambu to entice you:

APEX contributor Nonogirl brings us an interview with author R. Zamora Linmark where they discuss Linmark’s latest work Leche.

In Leche, Linmark revisits Vince from Rolling the R’s, yet the book carries it’s own identity from Rolling the R’s. In this work, Leche is as much postcard, as it is theatre, as it is satire, as it is historical fiction.

To help host R.J. Lozada, is APEX regular, Ukulenny!!! So tune in, we’ll have a good time.

COMMUNITY CALENDAR

• Spirituality and Mental Health: Spirituality and Its Role in the Asian American Communities

  Friday, December 16, 2011

  Societies and cultures throughout the world have traditional practices and beliefs  surrounding health and wellness. Come join Cambodian Community Development Inc. explore the role of spirituality and complementary and alternative medicine.  Hear from local Cambodian community members, traditional healers, and experts on the health benefits of acupuncture, mindful yoga, qigong, and meditation, and its role in Cambodian American and wider Asian American communities. For more information on the event please contact members of the Conference Planning Steering Committee: Talaya Sin, 510.725.8545, tsin@ccdinc.org, Rona Yee, ryee@ccdinc.org

• The ReWrite presents: ‘Nam-Jai’ Spoken Word Showcase Friday, December 16, 2011 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM  The ReWrite presents: “Nam-Jai”, a showcase featuring API spoken word artists and poets. There will also be an open mic and an informal writing circle for us to write together and perform pieces at the open mic (if willing). Bring your notebook!
  This will take place at 518 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.
  $5-20 dollars donation, no one turned away for the lack of funds.
  The ReWrite will be donating a portion of the proceeds to Nam-jai for Thailand, whose efforts and gifts are directed to the people of Thailand who have suffered from the devastating flood waters for the past two months.
• A Very Special Holiday Go!Ohana
  Friday, December 16
  7:30pm
  La Pena Cultural Center
  3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley
  $15 at the door
  $10 students
  (Online Presale discount coming soon!) Celebrate the holidays with some of the most talented Pan-Asian Hip Hop artists in the community as we take a look back on another great year of music, art, culture, and family. Every year at the Holiday Go!Ohana show there are special giveaways, holiday songs, big surprises, and always lots and lots of Santa hats 🙂 So come gather around the fire with your OHANA…FEATURING:::::|||| TAIYO NA & DEREK KAN of MAGNETIC NORTH ||||::::::::|||| THE HOME:WORD HOUSE BAND ||||::::::::|||| KIWI & BANDÛNG ’55 ||||::::::::|||| CYNTHIA LIN & THE BLUE MOON ALL STARS ||||::::::::|||| SAM KANG ||||::::