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SEPTEMBER 1, 2022
Hello, everyone!
Across the country, advocacy groups are calling for President Biden to rescind his nomination of Casey Arrowood for U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Tennessee due to a previous wrongful prosecution of Dr. Anming Hu as part of the “China Initiative.”
The “China Initiative” was a program pushed by the Trump administration in an effort to rid the nation of Chinese spies. However, false accusations of Dr. Hu’s status as a spy proved to not only cause chaos in Dr. Hu’s life and career, but also proved futile as the case was so weak that it caused a deadlock in the U.S. District Courts. Hu was the first among dozens of Chinese academics and researchers accused of espionage.
While the initiative was scrapped earlier this year by the Biden administration, Dr. Hu is collaborating with organizations like APA Justice, Asian American Scholar Forum, Tennessee Chinese American Alliance, and United Chinese Americans to defeat Arrowood’s nomination, writing in their campaign: “The nomination of Mr. Arrowood is an affront to the Asian American, immigrant and scientific communities. It opens a new wound when we still need to heal from the targeting and fallout before and during the ‘China Initiative.’”
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Spotlight 💡
Diana Kim, a student at the College of William and Mary who felt that her education on Asian American and Pacific Islander history during her K-12 career was lacking, created petitions, the Asian Virginia Alliance and a summer program to fill those gaps for educators and students.
Kim aims to encourage the high school students in her home state of Virginia to have pride in their identity through education, because to her, “It’s very hard to be proud of something that you know almost nothing about.”
Kim “hopes to kind of push them out of their comfort zones in what they knew about history, especially United States history, so that they could also share the wealth of knowledge with their friends,” as well as their teachers.
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Race in America 🌎
In 2020, only 2% of the nation’s police force was Asian American or Pacific Islander. In Central Florida’s Orange County Police Department, 28 of the 1,600 officers are Asian, and they’re trying to bridge the gap between the community and the authorities.
The fear of crime and the inaccessibility to proper resources to protect themselves plagues the AAPI community - so often, they cannot rely on the police. However, a new program started in the spring by Sheriff John Mina called the AAPI Liaison Program is becoming a new way for officers to help their communities. This group of police officers is tasked to attend events and respond to calls with their cultural and linguistic skills for the AAPI community.
Deputy James Chan, a Chinese American with immigrant parents, volunteered for the program when it launched and shared his motivations: "I think there's a generic fear of talking to the police. The community deals with it on its own... suffers in silence. It's like, 'How do we make sure that doesn't happen here?'"
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In Other Asian News 🗞
India’s Supreme Court just ruled to allow same-sex couples, as well as other households that the court recognizes as “atypical,” to receive the same household benefits under the law – which is a huge progressive win for the nation.
The case that set this ruling was filed by Deepika Singh, a nurse that was denied maternity leave. Her application was denied even after she gave birth because her government employer stated that she had already used it for her husband’s children from a previous marriage. In response, the two-judge bench ruled in her favor, stating that even though “the concept of a ‘family’ both in the law and in society is that it consists of a single, unchanging unit with a mother and a father (who remain constant over time) and their children,” that “assumption ignores the fact that many families do not conform to this expectation.”
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who wrote the order, further details that “family” can be defined by many variations of adults who occupy the roles of primary caretakers of biological and nonbiological children.
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The World Health Organization placed their Regional Director for the Pacific region, Dr. Takeshi Kasai, on leave due to an ongoing investigation into abuse and bullying allegations from previous and current staff.
According to their allegations, there have been multiple incidents of bullying, racism, and other unacceptable behavior including sharing confidential vaccine data with the Japan government. He is currently replaced by the U.N. health agency’s Zsuzsanna Jakab.
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Due to their low fertility rates, the South Korean government is planning to roll out a new allowance program for every family with a newborn child – starting with a monthly payment of 1 million won ($1,020).
The program aims to encourage young families to have children and plans to continue payments which will be halved by each passing year. Even though the nation is already dealing with financial issues from the pandemic, President Yoon Suk-yeol plans to keep his campaign promise to solve the fertility crisis.
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Film and Sports 📺
Randall Park is assembling an all-star cast for his directorial debut project “Shortcomings.”
Ally Maki, Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola and Sonoya Mizuno will all star in the comedic drama film. Min will play Ben, a movie theater manager working out a relationship with his girlfriend Miko, played by Maki. Ben will be joined by best friend Alice, played by Cola. It is described as a “hilariously irreverent examination of racial politics, sexual mores and pop culture.”
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Joseph Schooling, Singapore’s first Olympic gold medalist, has been suspended from swimming after using cannabis in Vietnam.
Singapore’s laws ban drug consumption within its territories and prosecutes those who use it abroad. Schooling apologized, saying, “I gave in to a moment of weakness after going through a very tough period of my life. I demonstrated bad judgment and I am sorry.” Schooling’s father died last November.
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What else is on our minds? 🧠
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