#243 Florida Rally Today; AAJC Updates; History in California; Corky Lee; Mexico Brief; +

In This Issue #243

·       Rally Today: Florida Professors and Advocates Demand Board of Governors Address SB 846

·       Advancing Justice | AAJC Updates from March APA Justice Monthly Meeting

·       Humanity in Confronting History in California

·       Fifty Years of Photographic Justice: Corky Lee’s Asian America

·       Mexico Files Amicus Brief; Chinese Crossing Southern Border

·       News and Activities for the Communities

Rally Today: Florida Professors and Advocates Demand Board of Governors Address SB 846

On March 26, 2024, professors, students, and advocates will host a rally before the Florida Board of Governors meeting at the University of Florida. Asian American scholars and local and national community members will gather to demand that the Florida Board of Governors address their concerns with SB 846, which restricts Florida’s public colleges and universities from hiring graduate students and researchers from certain “countries of concern,” including China and Iran. The legislation, which took effect on July 1, 2023, further restricts Florida’s public colleges and universities from participating in partnerships or agreements with individuals or entities from these countries. It has raised concerns on academic freedom and impacts on the Asian American community not just in Florida but nationwide.The law has created confusion and a chilling effect on researchers, and could lead to broader harms on scientific innovation and the pipeline of scientific leadership in Florida and the U.S. At this rally, students and professors will share personal stories about the negative impact of the legislation on themselves, peers, and their local community, as well as the fearful environment that it has fostered especially at a time of increased anti-Asian hate and violence. National representatives are flying in from across the country to support local community members and to voice that what is happening in Florida could have a rippling effect across the country. Vincent Wang, Co-Organizer of APA Justice, will speak at the rally, which will be held at Reitz Union, North Lawn, University of Florida Gainesville Campus, on March 26, 2024, starting at 12 noon ET.  The "We Belong" Yellow Whistles will be distributed during the rally.  Please join.Read the media advisory: https://bit.ly/3PEyOq9

Breaking News:  Academics challenge Florida law restricting research exchanges from prohibited countries like China

According to AP on March 26, 2024, two graduate students from China whose studies were put on hold, and a professor who says he is unable to recruit research assistants, sued Florida education officials, trying to stop enforcement of a new state law which limits research exchanges between state universities and academics from seven prohibited countries.The law is discriminatory, unconstitutional and reminiscent of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which instituted a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami.  The new law also usurps the power of the federal government, which has exclusive authority over immigration, national security and foreign affairs, the lawsuit said.Read the AP report: https://bit.ly/3PEfkCd

Advancing Justice | AAJC Updates from March APA Justice Monthly Meeting

During the APA Justice monthly meeting on March 4, 2024, Joanna YangQing Derman, Director, Anti-Profiling, Civil Rights & National Security Program, Advancing Justice | AAJC, reported that the House cancelled a much anticipated vote on Section 702, the circumstances around which are highly problematic. The key takeaways include:

1.     The House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Mike Turner, reneged on a pre-negotiated deal to move FISA reauthorization and reform to the House floor;

2.     The House Judiciary Committee, which has primary jurisdiction over Section 702, submitted amendments to the base bill and testified in favor of their amendments while the House Intelligence Committee failed to even appear.  

Chair Turner and other House Intelligence Committee members also cryptically hinted at a so-called destabilizing foreign military capability that they heavily implied was related to Section 702, but it was later identified to be completely unrelated.  Chair Turner undermined national security and wrongfully created national panic.  It was clearly designed to scare members ahead of the plan to vote on Section 702, which was ultimately taken down.  The White House and members of Congress and Civil Society have all been appalled at this behavior and issued statements to that effect. But in terms of next steps, Advancing Justice | AAJC will, in coalition with other AAPI organizations, prepare to defend against any efforts to jam Section 702 reauthorization into any imminent must-pass legislation.  To that end, Joanna learned that 702 reauthorization is not in the first minibus and will continue to stay vigilant and monitor.

Joanna deferred to Thông Phan to report on the state alien land laws.  Advancing Justice | AAJC is tracking land-law-related language in the national security supplemental.  It appears that a narrowly tailored version of the Rounds amendment was ultimately dropped, and the national security supplemental at the time of reporting looks to be less harmful.A summary for the meeting is being prepared at this time. The virtual monthly meeting is by invitation only. It is closed to the press. 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.

Humanity in Confronting History in California

According to AP, in May 2021, Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe had issued a formal apology for Antioch’s mistreatment of early Chinese immigrants, including the torching of Chinatown and driving out its residents, which has been documented by local newspapers and historians. Thorpe’s actions led to major cities like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco passing similar resolutions.The 2021 apology has also led to local residents and historians delving deeper into the past and working to establish a Chinatown Historic District, complete with murals and museum exhibits highlighting the history and accomplishments of the community in Antioch.Before getting involved with the Antioch Historical Society and becoming committee chair for its Chinese History Project, Hans Ho said he had no idea a Chinatown once existed there. Chinese people were undoubtedly treated as second-class citizens, said Ho, who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1960s.  He was also one of the representatives from the Chinese American community to receive Thorpe’s apology, an act that moved him to tears.Chinese laborers were among the early population in Antioch, which was named in 1851. They likely numbered just under 100, said Lucy Meinhardt, an Antioch Historical Society Museum board member. They worked in farms, canneries and mines. They helped build river levees and established a Chinatown where the city’s downtown now stands.  Today, the city of more than 111,000 is 25% white while Asians make up 12%. Hispanic and Black residents are 35% and 20% of the population, respectively. 

Even creating a space for some materials related to Chinese residents at the Antioch Historical Society Museum has gotten pushback.  “(One board member) said that they wanted this to be an ‘American’ museum,” said Dwayne Eubanks, a past president of the historical society, who is African American. “I took umbrage to that.”  He held up a picture of his father in his Army uniform and told the man: “This is an American.”On March 16, 2024, Eubanks, Meinhardt and Ho all attended the May We Gather event in Antioch, which organizers described as the first national memorial service and pilgrimage in response to anti-Asian violence. Attendees, including the three local residents, walked meditatively with Buddhist monks, nuns and lay leaders, around the city block where Antioch’s Chinatown stood 150 years ago.Read the AP report: https://bit.ly/49elUGmAccording to NBC News on March 6, 2024, In 1939, the Dongs, a Chinese American family in Coronado, California, found themselves unable to rent a house amid racially restrictive housing laws that favored white buyers and renters.Emma and Gus Thompson, a Black entrepreneurial couple in town, allowed the family to rent and eventually buy their Coronado property when nobody else would. Now, to thank the Thompsons for helping them get a toehold in American society, the Dongs are donating $5 million to Black college students using proceeds from the sale of the house. 

“It may enable some kids to go and flourish in college that might not have been able to otherwise,” Janice Dong, 86, said about the plan to sell the family home they later purchased, as well as an adjacent property.  The Dong family will also work to have San Diego State University’s Black Resource Center named after Emma and Gus, who was born into slavery in Kentucky. Lloyd Dong Jr., 81, said the Thompsons gave their family a start with the land, and it is time for them to do the same for others.  “Without them, we would not have the education and everything else,” Lloyd Dong Jr. said. The Dong family’s roots in California date back to the late 19th century. Lloyd Dong Sr. was a farmer in the Central Valley before he moved to Coronado to become a gardener. In 1939, Gus and Emma Thompson gave the Dong family a place to stay, a promise to sell them the land and a chance to build a better life. It was a time in Coronado, a resort city known for its opulent hotel and white sand beaches on the San Diego Bay peninsula, when people living on the margins of society found it difficult to live within city limits. Racially restrictive housing covenants prohibited immigrants and people of color from renting and buying in Coronado.The Dong and Thompson families were on the same side of history. They were people trying to make it in a land that didn’t see them as full citizens. It wasn’t abnormal then to have marginalized individuals living together and supporting one another.Read the NBC News report: https://nbcnews.to/3vAdCL7

Fifty Years of Photographic Justice: Corky Lee’s Asian America

Corky Lee 李扬国 (1947-2021), known also as "Asian American Photographer Laureate," was a Chinese American activist, community organizer, and photojournalist.  He called himself an "ABC from NYC ... wielding a camera to slay injustices against APAs."  Corky documented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for fifty years, breaking the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile, passive, and, above all, foreign to this country.  A selection of the best photographs from his vast collection will be officially released on April 9, 2024.  It covers his start in New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s to his coverage of diverse Asian American communities across the country until his untimely passing in 2021. Read about the book: https://www.corkylee.org/about-1.  The link also provides information about a national book tour starting at the Chinese American Museum in Washington DC on April 11, and including New York events at the Asia Society on April 18 and Chinatown on May 4, as well as stops at Boston, Los Angeles, Oakland, Pasadena, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle.  For more information, contact Tina Wang, National Book Tour Coordinator, at wangxintian0928@gmail.com. 

Mexico Files Amicus Brief; Chinese Crossing Southern Border

According to CNN on March 21, 2024, Mexico is warning a federal US court in a friend-of-the-court brief that if its judges permit a controversial Texas immigration law known as SB 4 to take effect, the two nations would experience “substantial tension” that would have far-reaching consequences for US-Mexico relations.“Enforcement of SB 4 would inappropriately burden the uniform and predictable sovereign-to-sovereign relations between Mexico and the United States, by criminalizing the unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the county and creating diverging removal requirements between and among individual states and the national government,” they wrote in the brief.  “Enforcement of SB 4 would also interfere with Mexico’s right to determine its own policies regarding entry into its territory, undermine U.S.-Mexico collaboration on a legal migration framework and border management, and hinder U.S.-Mexico trade,” the attorneys told the court.Mexico said it was backing the law’s challengers, which include the Biden administration. Its attorneys argued in the brief that the law – if allowed to take effect – “will be applied in a discriminatory manner.”Mexico’s 11 consulates in Texas have been ordered to provide protection and guidance and have made legal support available for any Mexican nationals across the state who “starts to have a problem,” under the new law, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said.Read the CNN report: https://cnn.it/497YaDR.

According to a 60 Minutes report on February 4, 2024, about 37,000 Chinese nationals trying to escape repressive politics and a bleak economy, headed to the U.S. via the southern border in 2023.  This is about 1.5% of the total of 2.5 million.  It is an increase from 323 in 2021.According to the South China Morning Post on February 15, 2024, from a high of 2.2 million temporary visas granted to Chinese nationals in 2016, only about 160,000 were granted in 2022, a fall of more than 90%.  This has led some Chinese citizens to take desperate measures to enter the US for a better life.

News and Activities for the Communities

1.  APA Justice Community Calendar

Upcoming Events:2024/03/26 Rally: Florida Professors and Advocates Demand Board of Governors Address SB 8462024/03/28 CSIS: U,S,-China Scholarly Recoupling: The Path Forward2024/04/02 AA and NHPI Higher Education Leadership Summit2024/04/07 Rep. Gene Wu's Town Hall Meeting2024/04/08 APA Justice Monthly Meeting2024/04/17 Racially Profiled for Being A Scientist: A Discussion of the US DOJ's China Initiative2024/04/18 Corky Lee's Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic JusticeVisit https://bit.ly/45KGyga for event details.

2.  AA & NHPI Higher Education Leadership Summit

WHAT:  AA & NHPI Higher Education Leadership Development Summit WHEN: APRIL 2, 2024, 8:30 - 5:15 pm Pacific Time WHERE: UC Berkeley - Martin Luther King, Jr. Building, 2495 Bancroft Way Berkeley, CA 94704HOSTS:  White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders; U.S. Office of Personnel ManagementDESCRIPTION:  The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) is dedicated to advancing educational equity and opportunity for all Americans. In 2024, we are continuing to bring together students, faculty, and administrators from across the country to highlight the critical role that Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions (ANNHSIs) play in increasing access to higher education and promoting workforce development.  REGISTRATION: https://bit.ly/3Vncrco