Asia Pacific Forum

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.

On November 8, 2016, the United States elected Donald Trump; a man who has been referenced as a "demagogue," "fascist," "con-man," "business man," "white supremacist," "misogynist;" a man has brought political power to dangerous rhetoric he spewed during throughout the Presidential campaign-- condoning his own words and actions about "grabbing pussy" and allegations of sexual assault, disparaging persons with disabilities, encouraging the building of a wall to keep Mexicans out, and expressing blatant xenophobic and Islamophobic remarks to enforce the mythological narrative of "Making America Great." In a surprise and unexpected win, Trump's hateful speech throughout the campaign trail now raises dangerous policy and survival implications to immigrants, to women, to those living with disability, the list goes on.

From personal experiences as Asian Pacific Islander (API) women walking outside in New York City post-election to the re-awakened white supremacist, patriarchal, and genocidal roots of the United States, I speak to the API women of AF3IRM NYC, a grassroots transnational feminist organization in Post-Elections, Unscripted.

GUESTS:

Ninotchka Rosca is a multi-awarded writer and activist, a survivor of human rights violations under a dictatorship, and a pioneer of major advocacy concerns for women. She brought the slogan "women's rights are human rights" to the US in 1987 and has constantly engaged in creating space for the voices and presence of women of color in the global women's movement.

Joan Ariete is a writer, poet-translator and is a current co-coordinator at AF3IRM NY, a grassroots transnational feminist organization.

She graduated with a BA in Journalism from the University of the Philippines. Before moving to New York, she worked in Manila as a researcher for an investigative journalism TV program, then as a staff writer for an entertainment magazine, while contributing to other publications like Cosmopolitan Philippines and Kidzone, a children's magazine. Two of her poems have been published in the UK-based journal, Modern Poetry in Translation. She lives in Queens with her son and husband.

Aree Worawongwasu is a sophomore at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, developing a concentration in "Development, Empire, and Epistemology." Bangkok born and raised, Aree considers herself a social justice educator and an aspiring postcolonial feminist writer, interested in ways in which we can decolonize our thinking.

Web-only special, due to fundraiser schedule change:

On what would ordinarily be called Columbus Day, a collective of renegade artists and activists known as Decolonize This Place celebrated Indigenous People's Day at the American Museum of Natural History with an alternative tour of the time-honored science exhibits. The subversive tour guides gave alternative perspectives on the exoticized displays. They showed the Hall of Asian Mammal for show animals that had been "Shot down, stuffed and hauled to the museum for display," in a violent process that was enabled through the circuits of empire." As the group gazed upon the blatantly Orientalist displays of the Hall of Islam, they asked questions like "where is the Hall of Christendom?"

The action was part of a broader effort to Decolonize communities around the world, fighting gentrification, labor exploitation, the violation of indigenous rights, and the occupation of Palestine. I talked to organizer Amin Husain about what it means to decolonize a city like NYC.

GUESTS:

Amin Husain, Decolonize This Place

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has garnered widespread grassroots support across indigenous tribes and nations to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline as it poses a significant risk to the drinking water of the tribe and threatens to destroy their burial grounds and sacred sites. Water protectors have been met with violent resistance from North Dakota state entities -- from unleashing dogs on the protectors to the purposeful blockage of key organizers from entering the camp, a media blackout, and obtaining arrest warrants for and arresting water protectors.

Pualani Case discusses the stand she has taken to protect water and land from Mauna Kea to Standing Rock.

GUESTS:

Pualani Case, born and raised on the Island of Hawai'i surrounded by the high mountains of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai and Kohala, the fresh waters of Kohakohau and Waikoloa and the plains of Waimea. Pua and her 'ohana, her family are active as spiritual and cultural leaders in and beyond their community. They are an integral part of the protocol and ceremonies for Na Kalaiwa'a, Moku o Keawe Makali'i Voyaging Canoe, as well as for Hokule'a and other Pacific Island Voyages. Pua sits on various educational and cultural boards including the Waimea Hawaiian Civic Club, Waimea Schools' and Community Education Hui, and the Mauna Kea Education and Awareness Hui. Pua and her family are petitioners in the Contested Case hearing filed on behalf of Mauna Kea Mountain, a representative of the Mauna Kea 'Ohana Na Kia'I Mauna and has created Idle No More Hawai'i, Warriors Rising and Idle No More Mauna Kea to address the issues and challenges facing the sacred places and sacred ways of the people of Hawai'i from the heavens to the earth, the mountains to the sea.

There is a nuanced reproductive justice conversation and movement that is happening on the ground within communities of color, midwives, and doulas who seek to reclaim and unearth long-standing, ancestral traditions linked to choices around birth-- when to have birth, how to have birth, in what ways to have birth, applying cultural specificity and healing practices that have long been silenced by western medical practices. I spoke to Chanel Porchia-Albert about the organization she founded, Ancient Song Doula Services, and the movement that reproductive justice advocates are spawning, nationally, to decolonize and address the unique and systemic reproductive and health injustices that many communities of color face.

GUESTS:

Chanel Porchia-Albert is the mother of 4 beautiful children, an Activist, Certified Labor & Postpartum Doula, Certified Holistic Health Counselor specializing in High Risk Mothers, Multiples, Survivors of Sexual Trauma.

On tonight's show, Asia Pacific Forum speaks to Pua Case, Hawaiian Mauna Kea protector whom recently went to Standing Rock to offer solidarity to the movement to protect water and to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline; I talk with Chanel L. Porchia-Albert, the founder of Ancient Song Doula Services and lead organizer of the Decolonizing Birth Conference that was held in Brooklyn New York; and Jeff Chang discusses his most recent piece, "We 'Gon Be Alright" with Pacific Underground.