Escape From Plan A

On September 19, 2020, Judge Laurel Beeler in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump Administration's executive order that would remove WeChat and its software support from U.S. app stores, effectively banning the Chinese "superapp."

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In this special unlocked bonus, Jess, Diana, Chris, and Teen dive into the details of the executive orders against WeChat and TikTok, and contextualize the upcoming trial to keep WeChat in American cyberspace. Like US vs Wong Kim Ark and Yick Wo vs Hopkins, US WeChat Users Alliance vs Donald Trump recalls the underreported and under-appreciated heritage of Chinese American legal battles that defined American concepts of citizenship and civil rights. It will potentially be a Supreme Court case that will define the civil liberties of all Americans in the digital age.

Please consider donating at: https://uswua.org/donations

TWITTER:

Teen (@mont_jiang)

Chris (@JesuInToast)

Diana (@discoveryduck)

Jess (@cogitatotomato)

REFERENCED RESOURCES:

-NYTimes: "WeChat Ban Makes U.S.-China Standoff Personal" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/technology/wechat-ban-united-states-china.html

-US WeChat Users Alliance Vs Donald Trump: https://chinaipr2.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/dkt.-01-complaint-for-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief-08-21-2020.pdf

-US WeChat Users Alliance Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17470217/59/us-wechat-users-alliance/

-US vs Korematsu: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-supreme-courts-worst-decision-lives-on-in-2016-campaign

-US vs Wong Kim Ark: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/10/30/birthright-citizenship-trump-inspired-history-lesson-th-amendment/

-Yick Wo vs Hopkins: https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=mjrl

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This episode of Escape From Plan A is sponsored by NCRC. Content creation, research, and podcast guest scheduling was done in partnership with the Adoptee Rights Campaign.

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Adam is joined by three guests, Leah, Sara and Mike. All three are international adoptees without citizenship in America. In their own voices, each of them share the legal, practical, and emotional implications and impact that their status has had, and continues to have on the lives of themselves and their families.

This is the first of a three part series exploring the issue of adoptees without citizenship. Part Two will explore the legal and policy perspective and Part Three will explore how the political climate effects solving citizenship for adoptees.

TWITTER:

Adam (@snbatman)

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"Space" by Soon Jo

Adam and Diana discuss three readings:

"Ghost Dance Prophecy," Chapter 10 of "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States," by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz;

"Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy," by Andrea Smith; and

"The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing: Demilitarization Will Require Decolonization," by Julian Go.

The core of the United States' identity is white supremacy. Its growth as a nation has always depended on genocide, enslavement, and colonization, beginning in indigenous American land, and now globally. To fight them, we need to understand how our oppressions differ, interact, and enable the others. White Supremacy is not a ladder we can climb to the top of. It is a 3-legged stool.

REFERENCED RESOURCES:

"An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" (Chapter 10 attached) https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-us/

"Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy" https://cpt.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/Undoing%20Oppressions%20-%20Three%20Pillars%20-%20Smith.pdf

"The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing: Demilitarization Will Require Decolonization" https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-07-16/racist-origins-us-policing

TWITTER: Adam (@snbatman), Diana (@discoveryduck)

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Emily Dong returns to continue the discourse with Diana and Teen. What is Sinophobia and how does it differ from and interact with anti-Asian racism? How do we process such antagonism as Chinese Americans? How do we relate to Black Radicalism and police violence? There are no easy answers, only another sprawling conversation.

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Mike and Q discuss Inventing Reality: The Politics of New Media, by Michael Parenti. The book pulls no punches in explaining exactly how the people who own the news media creates what is (and isn't) news. What is news invariably serves elites, their investments, and right-wing corporate interests. What gets twisted or isn't shown at all is usually the information necessary for the people to collectivize and organize in our own interests. This is the story of how social and political justice is undermined in "The Free World." It also explains a lot of why and how Asians in diaspora are trained to hate their home countries.

REFERENCED RESOURCES:

"Inventing Reality: The Politics of New Media"

https://b-ok.cc/book/3525906/3999bb

TWITTER: Mike (@ChuNghiaCafein), Q (@allyouneedis_q)

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Psychiatrist Joshua Blum joins CS and Teen for an expansive discussion that begins and ends with Asian American mental health and covers pretty much everything that Plan A has been pondering for the last three years.

TWITTER:

CS Taniguchi (@c_taniguchi)

Teen (@Mont_Jiang)

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This is a free extended preview. The full conversation (runtime ~2h51m) is available to Patreon supporters. Support us at https://www.patreon.com/planamag and get access to a private discord chat and all of the bonus episodes of Escape From Plan A.

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It's estimated that porn constitutes ~30% of all internet traffic. One company dominates much of that traffic -- MindGeek -- but is not a household name. There are very few discussions about porn, yet porn is being consumed in huge amounts. It's as if porn does not exist in our regular everyday dimension, yet its influence can be felt everywhere. It has a particular effect on Asian American men, where discussions about masculinity, race, and social status are seemingly inflected by porn, yet porn itself is conspicuously absent from view. Jong, Diana, and Teen break this silence and step into the Porn Dimension to try and figure out what this tsunami of porn is doing to us as Asian Americans and the way we relate (or don't relate) to one another.

REFERENCED RESOURCES:

The Joy Fuck Club, Darrell Hamamoto

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07393149808429832

Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Andrea Dworkin

https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Andrea-DWORKIN-Pornography-Men-Possessing-Women-1981.pdf

The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf

https://shamelesslyunladylike.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/the-beauty-myth-naomi-wolf.pdf

Pornography, Margaret Atwood

https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/92.html

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*TECHNICAL NOTE* if you've had problem accessing episodes in the past couple of weeks, it's because we messed up a setting on our end and the URL's stopped working. We have it fixed now -- if you're still having trouble in your podcast app, (1) refresh the feed, and (2) clear out any 'downloading' Plan A episodes that are still trying to download, and try again.

Friend of the pod Kang joins Teen all the way from Sydney to dissect the way right wing people talk "frankly" or "realistically" about race and gender. From the way "obvious" differences in race are supposedly ignored, to the way gender "clearly" is a binary matter, the right wing accuses 'social justice warriors' of adopting 'cultural marxism' to erode foundational pillars of the 'Western society.'

It's all too common, but what to make of race realism, and how to see through it?

Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/planamag

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Author JS Lee joins Diana and Adam to premiere her soon-to-be-released novel, Everyone Was Falling. The book is a suspenseful thriller and jumping-off point for discussions of transracial adoption, trauma and recovery, and staying true to your artistic vision by any means necessary.

TWITTER:

JS Lee (@jessicasunlee)

Diana (@discoveryduck)

Adam (@snbatman)

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Sen, Filip, Diana, and Jess discuss "Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work" by Kimberly Kay Hoang. Asians in the diaspora are often highly critical of the exploitation of white "sexpats" in Asia. While the criticism is completely justified, it is also an incomplete and western-centric perspective. Dr. Hoang's exploration illuminates Vietnam's sex work industry as dynamic, multifaceted, and directly tied to capital flow and nation-building. What can diaspora men and women learn from this research to better support ourselves, each other, and the workers in our homelands?

TWITTER:

Sen (@sen_goji)

Filip (@filipgwriting)

Diana (@discoveryduck)

Jess (@cogitatotomato)

REFERENCED RESOURCES:

-"Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work" https://b-ok.cc/book/2489099/848263

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