Asia Pacific Forum

More Asia Pacific Forum interviews and sounds from a broad political and ideological spectrum of organizers and activists participating in the International Women's Day March and International Women's Strike.

Sounds and speeches from the thousands strong International Women's Day March 2017 in Los Angeles, organized and led by AF3IRM LA. Special thanks to Hazel Koons for the audio used in this segment.

International Women's Strike organizers from Chiangmai, Thailand and last but not least, strike reflections from the National Planning Committee Members of the International Women's U.S. Strike, Suzanne Adely and Ivy Quicho.

GUESTS:

International Women's Day March in Los Angeles was thousands strong this past Sunday and it was organized and led by AF3IRM LA. As with previous years, one stop was a detention center where organizers, speakers, and marchers sang and chanted outside and were met by the clanging and knocks by those held inside the detention center. This is a collage of intersectional feminist, women of color voices- including former AF3IRM chair, Jollene Levid.

Liz Hilton and a roundtable of voices from International Women's Strike organizers in Chiangmai, Thailand. We discuss the specific struggles of women in Thailand and what it means to be a feminist in Thailand. First, we hear them share their names.

Suzanne Adely is a global labor organizer, human rights attorney & Arab community organizer, engaged in supporting anti-imperialist movements, a member of the US Palestine Community network & National Lawyers Guild International.

Ivy Quicho is a Filipina American social worker and works as a labor organizer in Los Angeles. She is the National Chairperson of AF3IRM, a transnational feminist, anti-imperialist organization dedicated to grassroots organizing against oppression in all its forms.

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.

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.

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.

*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."

Thus far, 2016 has been rife with political tension and a diminished faith in the democratic process. From the United States election upset, the resurgent historical relevance of Japanese internment camps in the United States, the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and Burma to the Syrian refugee crisis, Asia Pacific Forum talks with historian, journalist and author of "The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches," Greg Robinson, former political prisoner and woman from the persecuted Rohingya community, Wai Wai Nu, and airs an excerpt of novelist and writer, Masha Hamilton, sharing stories from the Syrian refugee camps.

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.

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/