#179 05/01 Meeting; Florida Rallies; CALDA; Indiana Hate Crime; Economic Peace Terms; News

In This Issue #179

• 2023/05/01 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

• 2023/04/29 Florida Rallies; CALDA Issues Statement

• Indiana Woman Charged with Federal Hate Crime in Bus Attack

• America Has Dictated Its Economic Peace Terms to China

• Activities and News for the Communities

2023/05/01 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

The next APA Justice monthly meeting will be held on Monday, May 1, 2023, starting at 1:55 pm ET.Erika L. Moritsugu, Deputy Assistant to the President and Asian American and Pacific Islander Senior Liaison, will deliver a special message from the White House to start the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.Brenna Isman, Director of Academy Studies, National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), will provide a brief description of the history, mission, and purpose of NAPA, its "Grand Challenges" campaign for public administration, and its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) efforts and commissioned studies.Paula Williams Madison, Paula Williams Madison, Former Print and TV Journalist, Retired NBCUniversal executive and GE Company Officer, Former Vice President of the Los Angeles Police Commission and owner of The Africa Channel, will provide a recap of the April 17 Roundtable and share the possible next steps for this important work that may have long-lasting impact to the AAPI community and the American society overall.Updates will be provided in the meeting by: Nisha Ramachandran, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC);  John Yang 杨重远, President and Executive Director, Advancing Justice | AAJC; and Gisela Kusakawa, Executive Director, Asian American Scholar Forum.The virtual monthly meeting is by invitation only. If you wish to join, either one time or for future meetings, please contact one of the co-organizers of APA Justice - Steven Pei 白先慎, Vincent Wang 王文奎, and Jeremy Wu 胡善庆 - or send a message to contact@apajustice.org. 

2023/04/29 Florida Rallies; CALDA Issues Statement

1.  2023/04/29 Florida RalliesA 6-city rally is being organized by The Florida Asian American Justice Alliance to oppose the unfair and discriminatory Florida Senate Bill 264 and House Bill 1355 on Saturday, April 29, 2023, starting at 11:00 am ET. 

• Tallahassee.  400 South Monroe Street, Tallahassee, FL 32399

• Jacksonville.  Memorial Park, 1620 Riverside Ave, Jacksonville, FL 32204

• Miami.  Torch of Friendship, 301 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, FL 33126

Other cities are Gainesville, Orlando, and Tampa.  For more information about the rally and how to get involved, please contact Jin at faaja.org@gmail.com.

2. CALDA Issues StatementChinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against systematic racial discrimination for Chinese Americans.  According to statement released by CALDA on April 23, 2023,"Our specialty is filing legal actions to invalidate laws, policies, or practices that are racially biased against Chinese Americans. Two years ago our founders successfully obtained a preliminary injunction in court against President Trump for his WeChat ban, and forced the federal government to pay nearly one million dollars for our attorney fees in the lawsuit. Recently we have filed legal actions to expose the racial bias behind several federal agencies’ unfair investigation of Chinese American scientists. In the last several months, we have been monitoring the situation in Texas, Florida, South Carolina and other southern states for their bills banning Chinese Americans from acquiring or owning real estates.These bills are racist, no matter what 'legitimate' purposes that the state legislators claim to serve. They are no different from the so-called 'alien land laws' that many states passed more than a hundred years ago to ban Asian people from owning land. All of the alien land laws were struck down by courts or repealed by the states subsequently. CALDA has decided to take on the same legal challenge in court if the current bills are passed.These bills are a blatant violation of the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by singling out Chinese Americans for unequal treatment. They also violate the federal Fair Housing Act for discriminatory practices. CALDA has already started the preparation of the legal challenges, and is now working with ACLU and several major law firms to join forces. Our plan is to file lawsuits as soon as any of these bills are passed, and we will not stop fighting until all of these laws are overturned."Read the CALDA statement:  https://bit.ly/3oHzyAj

Sunday Strategy Town Hall Meetings Opposing Alien Land and Other Discriminatory Bills

For the past two months, a strategic town hall meeting has been held every Sunday under the organization and leadership of Professor Steven Pei, Inaugural Chair of United Chinese Americans and Co-Organizer of APA Justice.   Frequent participants include community organizers of protests in not only all four major cities in Texas, but also Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee as well as supporters from California and other states. Paula Madison, retired media executive, and Gene Wu, Texas state representative, led recent discussions in very productive meetings with Florida community leaders and organizers.  A media training by Gene Wu and Helen Shih of Texas followed just before the Florida hearing on April 19, 2023, despite the short notice and allowed speaking time (30 seconds per testifying person).  Organizations and individuals interested in participating in future town hall meetings should contact Steven Pei at peiuh8@gmail.com.

Indiana Woman Charged with Federal Hate Crime in Bus Attack

According to a report by AP on April 21, 2023, Billie R. Davis, 56, of Bloomington, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Evansville on a charge of willfully causing injuries to the victim due to her race and national origin.”  Davis, who is white, is accused of repeatedly stabbing the 18-year-old woman about seven times with a folding knife on January 11 as the victim, from Carmel, Indiana, waited to get off a bus in downtown Bloomington.  WRTV-TV has reported that Davis told police she stabbed the woman multiple times in the head because it “would be one less person to blow up our country.”  Asian Americans have increasingly been the target of racially motivated harassment and assaults in recent years, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic began, with many worrying that anti-Asian rhetoric linked to fraught relations between the U.S. and China could lead to more violence.  Read the AP report: https://bit.ly/3V8st7ZIn early January, local prosecutors told NPR that Davis was not charged with a hate crime because Indiana is one of four states that lack a comprehensive law.  David Goldenberg, the Midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the lack of comprehensive hate crime laws in the state has major consequences.  "Prosecutors need to prosecute these incidents as hate crimes when they are," Goldenberg told NPR in January. "The thing about hate crimes is it affects not only the individual victim but it affects the entire community."  Read the NPR report: https://bit.ly/3Lrtsx2

America Has Dictated Its Economic Peace Terms to China

According to an opinion in Foreign Policy by Adam Tooze, the Director of the European Institute at Columbia University, on April 24, 2023, after a rash of sanctions and overtly discriminatory legislation, with action on U.S. investment in China pending, and with talk of war increasingly commonplace in the United States, the Biden administration knows that it needs to clarify its economic relations with the country that is the largest U.S. trading partner outside North America.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has made her first major statement on economic relations with China since 2021. Judged by the tone, her message is intended to clarify and calm the waters of speculation and debate about motives and intentions. In the current situation, however, it is far from clear whether clarity actually contributes to calm.“The United States remains the most dynamic and prosperous economy in the world.” So, Yellen insists, America has no reason to seek to “stifle China’s economic and technological modernization” or to pursue a deep decoupling. Even when the Biden administration professes to be confident about America’s economic prospects, Yellen insists: “As in all of our foreign relations, national security is of paramount importance in our relationship with China.”At one level, this is obvious. No public official will ever say anything else. Security is the basic function of states. But everything depends on the scope of your vision of national security and the level of trust. And if you have to state the priority of national security in foreign relations out loud, you know you have a problem.So a strong and self-confident America has no reason to stand in the way of China’s economic and technological modernization except in every area that America’s national security establishment, the most gigantic in the world, defines as being of essential national interest. For this to be anything other than hypocrisy, you have to imagine that we live in a goldilocks world in which the technology, industrial capacity, and trade that are relevant to national security are incidental to economic and technological modernization more broadly speaking.Yellen pays lip service to that goldilocks vision, by insisting that U.S. measures against China will be tightly targeted. But, as everyone knows, those targeted measures have so far included massive efforts to hobble the world leader in 5G technology, Huawei, sanctions against the entire chip supply chain, and the inclusion of most major research universities in China on America’s entities list that strictly limits trade.

The upshot is that America welcomes China’s economic modernization and will refuse the lure of the Thucydides trap so long as China’s development proceeds along lines that do not infringe on American leadership and national security. And America’s attitude will be all the more benign the more successful it is in pursuing its own national prosperity and preeminence precisely in those areas.Read the Foreign Policy opinion: https://bit.ly/41CwSlW

Activities and News for the Communities

1. Xenophobia in America

WHAT: Xenophobia in America with historian and author, Erika LeeWHEN: April 26, 2023, starting at 7:30 pmWHERE: In Person at Temple Emanu-El at 756 East Broad Street, Westfield, NJ 07090 and livestreamingWHO: Kol Tzedek Speaker: Erika Lee, Regents Professor, the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History, the Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and the President of the Organization of American Historians. Beginning July 1, 2023, Lee will join the History Department at Harvard University as the the inaugural Bae Family Professor of History.REGISTRATION: https://bit.ly/3AqMyNhDESCRIPTION:  The Kol Tzedek Speakers Series is an annual program addressing various topics of critical importance to the betterment of our world and how we can move forward with hope and action. This year, we are thrilled to present this program in person for the very first time. The lecturers we consider will be acclaimed authorities from their respective fields of specialization. The Hebrew term Kol Tzedek means righteous voice.

2. Bill to Teach Hmong and Asian American History in WisconsinAccording to AsAmNews on April 22, 2023, a new bill in Wisconsin would require schools to teach Asian American, and specifically Hmong American history.  Senate Bill 240 was introduced by Republican Senator Jesse James of Altoona and other lawmakers in early April. The bill was referred to the Committee on Education on April 14. It has received bi-partisan support so far.  A total of 19 states now require Asian American studies to be taught in public schools. Wisconsin could be the next state to mandate an AAPI studies curriculum.  Read the AsAmNews report: https://bit.ly/41MD3Um

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