Filmmaker, lecturer, and writer Valarie Kaur
The Space Between - Detroit, MI
In the last week of January, my co-producer Sharat Raju and I traveled with our film Divided We Fall around the state of Michigan -- from a screening at Wayne State University in Detroit, to a workshop at the South Asian American Network conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, to a day at an all-girls Catholic high school, the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Bloomfield. Our audiences were diverse, but a central theme seemed to rise throughout our visit: young people learning to own the space between.Interview: Ching-In Chen, Chinese American poet
Ching-In Chen is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and a Kundiman Asian American Poet Fellow. A community organizer, she helped to plan the 3rd national Asian Pacific American Spoken Word and Poetry Summit in Boston.Asian American Activism' brings voice, empowerment
Some Cal State Fullerton students are seeking a surge of Asian American and Pacific Islander activism. They are dedicating a forum to address the lack of representation within the U.S. government. Issues about immigration, welfare, paranoia and racism were also discussed. Once a month a forum is created within the Multicultural Leadership Center and is designed to breed ideas geared toward ridding the strife of a community. Headlined as "Asian American Activism," the forum initiated Asian American studies major Hideki Fukusumi's monthly discussions for the spring semester.Texas’ Asian American Vote
Texas contains one of the largest populations of Asian American voters in the country. And as the Democratic primary comes down to Ohio and the Lone Star state, Texas’ Asian American population may be a deciding factor in who will be the next president. A local Austin news station reported (video) on the Asian American vote’s significance in Texas, and suggested that while Asian Americans in California went to Clinton, her attention to the Latino population could jeopardize Asian Americans’ loyalties to the New York senator.
