KUCI: Subversity

Our 31 May 2010 Subversity show aired just as news was coming out about the details of the Israeli military massacre of peace activists

on the Peace Flotilla heading towards Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade. Show host Daniel C. Tsang brings listeners up to date on developments.

Hurricane Katrina, instead of just devastating the Vietnamese community at the edge of New Orleans, galvanized the residents there into mobilizing against a potentially toxic dump site that the mayor imposed on them without consultation.

That mobilization - among young and old - members of the Vietnamese American community, is well captured in a documentary by filmmaker S. Leo Chiang, "A Village Called Versailles" -- to air 25 May 2010 on PBS stations nation-wide, as part of its Independent Lens series.

On the 17 May 2010 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we interview the directors of two important documentaries. In the first half-hour, we talk with Laura Poitras, about her latest documentary, The Oath, which features Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden's former bodguard; in the background in the film hovers Salim Hamdan, incarcerated at Guantanamo, the first man to face the controversial military tribunals, and who won at the U.S. Supreme Court only to see the rules changed in the middle of the "game". Poitras' revealing documentary shows what attracted Abu Jandal, rehabilitated in Yemen's post-incarceration program -- it paid for his taxicab -- with Hamdan -- to join the jihad and Al-Queda. Hamdan, drawn to the charismatic Abu Jandal, went with him to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden invited the men to visit. The rest is history.

In our second half-hour, we talk with film directors Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Vivian Price. The former is Professor Emeritus at UCI's Chicano/Latino Studies Department, and the latter, who obtained her Ph.D at UCI, is a professor at CSU Dominguez-Hills in interdisciplinary studies who has also made other documentaries on women and labor.

The two academics co-directed Harvest of Loneliness, a searing indictment of the bracero program that brought Mexicans as contract labor to work on farms in the the U.S., creating havoc in their homeland, where they had left their wives and children to fend for themselves. Despite contracts that promised much more, the men were paid peanuts and never got the promised health benefits nor death benefits for those who died under contract. The documentary ends with an analysis of the negatives impact current globalization initiatives have had on the lives of Mexicans.

It is election season again with a June 8 Primary coming up next month. We delve into Orange County, California economics with David Lang, who is seeking to become the next Orange County Treasurer and Tax Collector. We talk with long-time accountant Lang, a long-time community college trustee, about what this position entails and why the two tasks are lumped together. What are the risky investments he would avoid? And what is the legacy of the Orange County bankruptcy of a decade or so ago.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, talks with directors Wang and Cheng about their documentary, AOKI, on Richard Aoki, who was an Asian American co-founder of the Black Panther Party.

Technical problems precluded recording the entire hour, however.

On KUCI's Subversity radio program, we talk with two film directors 26 April 2010: Miao Wang of Beijing Taxi, Quentin Lee of The People I've Slept With and with UCI graduate Ben Jarvis, active in Affirmation, the gay Mormon group profiled in 8: The Mormon Proposition. Interviewer: Daniel C. Tsang, show host.

The My Lai massacre was the iconic event that brought world attention to the moral failure of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. PBS's American Experience will air Monday, April 26, 2010 a new documentary, "My Lai" that documents the horrific reality of the U.S. military massacre of 507 unarmed Vietnamese women, men and children in the village located in Quang Ngai Province in central Vietnam in 1968. The documentary features the first in-depth interview with Aubrey Daniel, the prosecutor in the case against the convicted perpetrator, Lt. William Calley, as well as searing recollections by Vietnamese survivors of the massacre.

On its edition airing 19 April 201), Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, show host Daniel C. Tsang interviews Barak Goodman, a seasoned director (The Boy in the Bubble, The Lobotomist, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, etc) who wrote, produced and directed "My Lai".

Fresh from the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Austin, Texas that ended Saturday 10 April, 2010, we bring Subversity listeners portions of the tribute to Him Mark Lai, the "Dean" of Chinese American History, who died in May 2009. Bilingual in English and Chinese, Him Mark Lai forged a pathway to today's Chinese American -- and Asian American -- studies by researching and documenting life in Chinese America over the decades. The panel discussion at AAAS included colleagues and friends of Him Mark Lai as well as those mentored by him. Chairing the April 8, 2010 session was Prof. Madeline Hsu (University of Texas, Austin), who has edited a collection of Him Mark Lai's publications, many never widely distributed before. The new work, out later this month, is Chinese American Transnational Politics from University of Illinois Press.

Speakers at the session, whom we air on the program, included Emeritus Prof. L. Ling-chi Wang (UC Berkeley), Poet and Amerasia Journal editor Prof. Russell Leong (UCLA), Prof. Jack Tchen (New York University).

We dedicated this show to radical actor Corin Redgrave, who died a week ago, and whom we interviewed back in 1999 at the Toronto Film Festival, where he was appearing in a movie that screened there.

Why is it that police misconduct cases keep showing up in the news? And what can we do about it? On this edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, which aired 5 April 2010 at 5 p.m., we talk with several UCI law students as well as a community activist about this important issue.

Joining us in the discussion are three UCI first-year law students, Vivian Lee, Denisha McKensie, and David Rodwin. Denisha and David cofounded the Orange County Human Rights Association, and Vivian is a member of its Advisory Board. Community activist Keith Muhammad from the Bay Area also joins the discussion.

Audio of the March 2, 2010, Irvine 11 solidariy speak-out at UC Irvine, organized by the Black Student Union, speakers include: Ryan Davis (MC), Abraham Medina (a rousing poetic rant on the rights of undocumented students), Russell Curry, Dennis Lopez, and KPFK show host and National Lawyers Guild-Los Angeles' Jim Lafferty. Also: audio of Angela Davis speaking March 1, 2010 at UCI on prisons and higher education.