A collage of voices from International Women's Strike, Asia Pacific Forum talks with organizers from Poland, Thailand, and Pakistan- joined under the theme of "Solidarity is our Weapon."

GUESTS:

Klementyna Suchanow shares her thoughts on Poland's Black Monday- a successful strike waged in October of 2016 where thousands of women took to the streets and protested a proposed abortion ban. She discusses the lessons learned, Polish activism under an ultraconservative government, and the impact of western feminism on other parts of the world.

Angela, International Women's Strike organizer from Bangkok, Thailand discusses the March 8 family day of action for women.

Nusair Khan, International Women's Strike organizer in Islamabad, Pakistan discusses the challenge with progressive organizing in the country, supporting feminist struggle, and what it means to be part of the global community.

*NB: On February 4, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement suspending any and all actions implementing the Executive Order, "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States."

In the United States, the new administration has shown a reluctance to accept scientific fact and outright and blatant denial of climate change as an issue. In many ways, Papua New Guinea is ground zero in the Pacific- where the immediate impacts of climate change is evident and where the evidence for such environmental harm is linked to the fossil fuel industry.

GUESTS:

Dagia Mai Aka is a leader of 350 Papua New Guinea (PNG), a local chapter of 350 Pacific. 350 Pacific is a youth led grassroots network working with communities to fight climate change from the Pacific Islands.

Throughout the weekend, grassroots organizations, activists and attorneys mobilized around the one common rallying call, #NoBanNoWall, to protest the Muslim ban enacted by Donald Trump on January 27, 2017. We hear audio from the protests at JFK Terminal 4 and hear perspectives from Ana Liza Caballes, Kazi Fouzia, Nazli Parvizi, and Yolanda Rondon.

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

DRUM

Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change

GUESTS:

Ana Liza Caballes is the co-founder and overall organizer of Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change, and the deputy director of DRUM -- South Asian Organizing Center. Ana Liza identifies as a transnational, queer, feminist, Pinay community organizer. She was born in the Philippines and emigrated to Los Angeles at the age of eight. In 2002, Ana Liza became a volunteer organizer with Damayan, a North Star Fund Movement Leadership grantee dedicated to women-led grassroots organizing of Filipino migrant workers. Since then, Ana Liza became the full-time overall coordinator of Damayan. Instrumental in building the membership base from 15 to 750 members, Ana Liza was also a catalyst in launching Damayan's campaign that overturned the diplomatic immunity of a U.N. Ambassador in 2008 in favor of a trafficked domestic worker employed in their Upper East Side home. Currently, Ana Liza works with young people in Ugnayan to challenge Institutionalized Bullying in schools and integrates peer counseling to heal from systemic, interpersonal and internalized oppression.

Kazi Fouzia comes from a long history of struggles for justice. In Bangladesh, Kazi was a community organizer involved with a street vendors union, free community health clinics, and free education for slum children. She worked with several community and women's organizations such as Women Watch Bangladesh, a national union of the small and cottage industry.

DRUM -- South Asian Organizing Center (formerly Desis Rising Up and Moving) is a multigenerational, membership led organization of low-wage South Asian immigrant workers and youth in New York City.

Yolanda C. Rondon is a Staff Attorney at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). ADC is a civil rights organization committed to defending the rights of people of Arab descent and promoting their rich cultural heritage.

ADC was founded by former U.S. Senator James Abourezk in 1980. Today, ADC is the largest Arab American grassroots organization in the U.S.

ADC supports the human and civil rights of all people and opposes racism and bigotry in any form.

Asia Pacific Forum speaks to guest host and journalist, Justine Calma- Calma reported on Asian American voices that attended the Women's March on DC on January 21, 2017 and shares her own reflections on the march and the changing media landscape.

GUESTS:

For more than 30 years, the MinKwon Center has empowered the low-income, new arrived members of their community to find long-term solutions to critical issues that impact their daily lives. MinKwon bases much of their community organizing efforts in Flushing Queens--home of one of the largest Korean-American and Asian-American populations in New York City.

APIQWTC provides opportunities for Asian & Pacific Islander queer women and transgender people to socialize, network, build community, engage in inter-generational organizing, and increase community visibility.

REGC was established to support projects (individual and organizations) that use the tools of politics, art, culture and education to raise awareness and catalyze action around critical issues that serve the API LGBTQ communities.

Reports presently coming out of Aleppo, Syria paints the eastern part of the city as one stained with blood, non-stop bombings, women and children dying, and pro-Assad forces making evacuations of thousands (journalists, included), difficult if not impossible. An excerpt from novelist and writer, Masha Hamilton humanizes the Syrian Refugee experience through everyday stories of Syrian camp refugees. The excerpt comes from a public event hosted by YWTF at the Centre for Social Innovation in September 2016.

Asia Pacific Forum talks with Greg Robinson historical process of creating Japanese internment camps in the United States, the impact that this had on the Japanese diaspora in other locales, and contextualizing the lessons learned from history within the current political climate.

GUESTS:

Greg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À

Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada, and a researcher at that

university's Center for United States Studies and Chaire de Recherche sur Immigration,

Ethnicité et Citoyenneté. A specialist in North American Ethnic Studies and U.S. Political

History, Robinson teaches courses on African American history, Twentieth-Century U.S.

Foreign Policy, American Immigration History, and visible minorities/racial groups, among

others. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from New York University,

and a B.A. in History and French Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.

Greg Robinson is the author of the recent release, THE GREAT UNKNOWN: JAPANESE AMERICAN SKETCHES (University Press of Colorado, 2016).

http://www.gregjrobinson.com/

Last year marked the first general election since a civilian government was introduced in 2011 and 50 years post military rule in Myanmar where Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory. Still, one year after the first general election, religious repression and oppression of ethnic minorities in Myanmar are high, particularly against Rohingya muslims in the Buddhist majority state. Recently, Amnesty International released a report condemning Myanmar security forces unlawful killings, rapes, and burning down entire Rohingya villages as "crimes against humanity."

GUESTS:

Wai Wai Nu is the founder of the Women Peace Network Arakan for the rights of marginalized women, Justice for Women, she is a former political prisoner; and, with her law degree has dedicated herself to working for human and women's rights.