Asian American

Anida Yoeu Ali's "The 1700% Project" is a fierce, passionate response against violence directed at Muslim communities since 9/11. Using text found in hate crimes that were filed, she writes of acts of violence against the Muslim community, and folks *mistaken* for being Muslim, and uses her writing as a launch-point for a multi-disciplinary work. This retelling of real reports is as compelling as it is horrifying. She uses quotes taken directly from the mouths of perpetrators in her text: "terrorist," "kill all arabs", "go back to your own country", "you Islamic mosquitoes should be killed", "America is only for white people." It's hard for me to even feel comfortable restating those words, all shockingly similar to things I've personally heard in my life and stories that were shared in my community of things that have happened to people I love. I feel re-stimulated by her work, I feel hurt and saddened all over again. But I also feel challenged by Ali, to speak up louder than I have, to stand strongly in solidarity with other oppressed people, and to turn my anger into action, because as she puts it, "we refuse to end in violence."

Unfortunately, last week the installation of her work was defaced. Some of the responses to the news spreading of what happened have been really disheartening. People have been placing the blame on Ali for being "too political," accusing her of defacing her own work just for attention, and questioning whether the act of defacement is a hate crime at all. These questions and accusation are problematic on a number of levels.

First, let's try to frame what the circumstances around the defacement were. When one walks through a gallery space, it's not typical to touch the art or to physically interact with it unless there's something in the space specifying (a sign, security guard) what is allowed by the artist. We can have lots of discussion about artist and audience here, but generally, it's the artist who is given control of a space, and gets to decide what their intention is with their work, and what is safe and appropriate for the audience to do in their space. As a rule of thumb, this usually translates to "don't touch the artwork!" These norms should have been followed with Ali's installation, as there was no such invitation for the audience to interact with her piece.

With no such invitation, one or more people visiting the gallery, viewing her work, used the materials in the space (ink, rags, stick) to paint cartoonish figures on her work. The incident most likely occurred during gallery hours, as that is when most people would have had access to her work. Her work is displayed in a very large gallery with minimal traffic when there is not a special event happening. The perpetrators had a lot of time to act, as the defacement was detailed and deliberate. Her piece is in a space with dozens of (if not close to a hundred) other artists' work. No other work was vandalized besides Ali's, a piece that was made very clear was about hate crimes (through the title card on the wall, takeaway literature on a shelf, and of course the text on the wall). Whether the intent was malicious, ignorant, or intended to be somehow funny, this is just plain disrespectful.

But it's much more complicated than that. Whether it was their intention or not, defacing her installation actively took away her control over the direction of her work. Someone decided that what they had to say was more important than what Ali has to say. Someone decided that Ali's perspective is of lesser value than theirs, and acted to silence her. Because no other work was vandalized, it's clear Ali was targeted specifically--probably for who she is and what her work says. Whether it was their intention to or not, this was an aggressive, racist act of violence. This defacement was a hate crime, against Ali, everything her work is saying, and anyone who comes from a people that have endured similar oppression and violence that her work speaks of.

This is not okay. We cannot let our silence on the matter send the message that what happened is okay. We cannot allow this to be talked about only in terms of vandalism, we must insist we talk about this as an act of violence--and we must refuse to let this end in violence. This is about art, but it is also about much more. This is about oppression and racism. This is about the silencing of communities of color. This is about how we choose to respond as witnesses of violence.

Props to Kelly Tsai: I'm not black or white, but I'm not "whatever" either.

Sunday afternoon I played a benefit for Yawp!, an Asian youth writing program in Chicago. I played sitar with two writers, sarwat rumi and imi rashid. The event was awesome, it was to raise money for Yawp's fifth year program, and there was such a great collection of artists there, from kids currently involved in Yawp's program, people who had been through the Yawp program themselves, and other artists in the area. It was such a blessing to be part of such a great group of artists.

Our piece consisted of sarwat and imi reading a collection of pieces they had written before, during, and after a recent trip they took to Bangladesh, that they described as the "bizarre joys and surreal challenges of being muslim, deshi, queer, and deeply engaged in family during muslim holidays, blockades, violent protest, and postponed elections." this is the second time I've collaborated with sarwat, and the first with imi. sarwat is such a great writer, her poetry is deeply affecting, and beautifully written, and imi's writing is powerful, and flows through details and feelings like water. I played sitar along with their readings in Raag Khamaaj and Raag Kirwani.

Photos by Angela Steele

I went to a concert few weeks back, and I was talking to an uncle friend of mine who I made from seeing each other at concerts pretty often. I asked him about his son, who I saw at a concert about a year prior, he looked like he had grown so much since I last saw him I thought he was already in college. Turns out he's still in high school. Lol. Anyway, he was telling me his son is taking a music history class in his high school, and he was wondering if I wanted to go in and give a lecture about Hindustani music to his class. I was like "yes." He was saying that I could give a lecture similar to the ones I've given before concerts I organize, and I said "Yes." He was saying that way, people could have a better idea of what's going on with the music when they hear it, I said "Yes." he said "people need to understand this is not 'exotic' music, there's a lot of thought behind it!" and I said "Yes!" It was so crazy listening to an uncle saying a lot of the same things said in conversations I've had with other musicians about how people who've only heard "indian music" on Subway commercials respond to our music. At my own performances, I often get people coming up to me after a show asking about the music, or my instrument, and a lot of time we share cool experiences we've each had with Hindustani music. Sometimes though, more often than I would hope, I get someone (usually non-South Asian in my experience) telling me about their first exposure to 'sitar music' after hearing the Beatles, or going to a Raaavi Shaynkaaar concert, and how the music sounded so "foreign" and "alien." Seriously, those are real adjectives people have used to describe the music I was playing, right after they heard me play it. My point is, the feeling that Hindustani music sounds "exotic" is often frustrating when it's coming from someone who doesn't know much about the music other than it's not western music. It was cool sharing those feelings with someone of my parents generation.

So after the uncle was telling me about his son's class, I told him I'd love to do it. We exchanged numbers (which we should have done a long time ago, cause we've known each other for years!) and made plans. I just did the lecture demo today, and it was awesome, it went really well. It was a high school in an affluent suburb north of Chicago, I got lost a little looking for it cause it looked like it was an old mansion. They must have taken an old mansion and turned it into a high school or something, cause seriously, it looked like a mansion or a country club or something. The kids were all juniors and seniors I think, cause it was an advanced placement music theory class. Mostly white kids, one Asian girl, my uncle-buddy's son who played tabla with me, and maybe a few other kids of color I missed, but mostly white. I talked about history of music in South Asia, the different types of music in South Asia, about raags and taals, and had them count along to teen taal. Then played a little in Miyan Ki Todi. It was fun!

Afterwards, I was thinking about the fact that I was in an affluent burb in the north, that proly had a decent budget for their fine arts program—decent enough to afford two music theory classes. Hello. In my high school, band and orchestra were optional, and it was assumed you'd learn more in-depth music theory in college. But what about schools that don't have big fine arts programs? Do those kids have access to experiencing lectures like the one I gave today? I'd imagine not. I know there are programs out there to send artists and musicians in school to do just what I did today to schools that may not have the access to do it on their own. After today, I was thinking I should hook up with those programs and do this more often!

From a column that the man wrote himself:

"Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

Cho was one of them."

I don't even know how to start talking about this. I haven't mentioned the VT shooting on my site at all since it happened, cause I can't even come up with the words to describe how I feel about what happened. My heart and my prayers seriously go out to the families of the victims, and the family of the kid who did the shootings. I don't think I'm in any sort of position to offer any more than my condolences, and my heartfelt wishes for their health and safety.

So does it piss me off to hear people blaming the entire immigrant community for the VT murders? Yes. You have to be kidding me, not only is that extremely offensive, but it's completely ignorant. Pat Buchanan makes it sound like the immigration act of '65 was a sci-fi movie that brought flesh-eating Koreans to Virginia to destroy the lives of humbly white-folk. That act brought my parents to the US. It brought Sheena's parents to the US. It brought Tolgar's parents to the US. It brought Paras's parents to the US. It brought Dhubha's parents to the US. It brought Jay's parents to the US. Are our families here to commit hainus crimes? No.

Many of the Asian-Americans who came to the US as a result of the immigrantion act of '65 were educated professionals—doctors, engineers, nurses, scientists, etc. That's where the whole model minority problem was born, and this 'mass invasion' was what resulted in brain drain from many of the countries he speaks of—the loss of a countries educated classes to emigration to other countries, historically the US and Canada. Does that sounds like a class of mass-murderes to you? The anger I feel when I read his article is indescribable.

In the latter half of the article, he goes on listing all the people who've committed hainus crimes who were also of an Asian, Middle-Eastern, African, or some other non-European decent (i.e., flesh-eating aliens). Ignoring that one dude who kept heads in his fridge, that one other guys who brainwashed people to commit murders for him, that one other guy that dressed up like a clown and buried murdered children in his basement, the leader of that sect in Texas, and those kids from Columbine.

Needless to say, trying to link race with horrible murders is completely senseless. Just as many infantile suggestions can be made about trying to profile people with extreme mental illness into any other particular categories, be it race, class, gender, family upbringing, or what have you, among the majority classes of each category or minority. But there just isn't a certain type of murderer. trying to find as much breeds racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and all the fear-based separations we already live with in our society. Pat Buchanan seriously needs to get his head out of his a—.

I just saw Umrao Jaan last night, a Bollywood remake of an older Bollywood film about the life of a young girl who gets kidnapped and sold to a brothel. The music and lyrics were really pretty, but the dancing was 'eh.' With Aishwaria Rai, one would be hopeful that the dance scenes would knock you off your chair they're so good, but they seemed to focus more on the lyrical content of the music, and the emotional expressions of that, than hardcore dance scenes, which was still really nice. But damn, talk about a movie where a woman gets crapped on for three hours, yet forgives everyone who does. Give me a break!

Ashwariya's character, Umroa, lived in a brothel, but fell in love with the prince of a kingdom and throughout the movie stayed faithful to him. But there was another dude who lived at the brothel, (his relationship with the characters was never clear. ie, was he someone's son, or just a real perv?) he was a good friend to Umroa, but every now and then he tried to be affectionate towards her, and her reaction was always a short, sharp rejection. 'What are you doing?' or 'Why are you touching me like that? You better leave.' Towards the end of the movie, she wakes up and he's sitting in her room, pretty drunk, and he ends up raping her. What the eff? A few scenes later, the British are invading Lucknow, and that same dude comes to the brothel all bloodied up to tell everyone to leave, cause 'the British are coming.' as he leaves to go back and fight, Umroa stops him to tell him that she fogives him. Hold up, what? Without him ever even asking for forgiveness, or even trying to talk to her about what heppened. What?! does fighting the British suddenly redeem himself of that horribly dispicable act? You gotta be kidding me! What does that say to women who the same thing has happened to? That they should take the blame and forgive their perpetrators? Aunties have been pulling that card that since the dawn of time. Heeeeeell no.

That scene as an example, the movie was horribly over-dramatic. But the music was really pretty.

Check out this article in the New York Times. It talks about how the quality of college education in India is poor, and is churning out millions of students a year who can't get jobs.

"But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India’s upper castes — the few thousand students who graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India’s 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obedience and light on useful job skills.

Students, executives and educators say this two-tier education system is locking millions of people into the bottom berths of the economy, depriving the country of talent and students of the chance to improve their lot. For those who succeed, what counts is the right skills."

This is making light of a much more complicated problem in India. For the past several decades, jobs that India's economy has been able to offer its college educated have not been as lucrative as jobs in Australia, Europe, and the States. That's why my parents—an engineer and a nurse—left the country along with a whole slew of Indians just like them from the 60s and 70s on.

I saw Borat a few weeks ago with my cousin, and I've been idling on a response to it cause I wanted to give myself a chance to really think about the movie before I threw out a harsh critique on it. I've been talking to friends about the movie, many of whom have varying opinions on the movie, from hysterical to flat out racist. And some of my even progressive friends who I've mentioned disliking the movie have criticised me as being "too sensitive," so I wasn't sure if I really was being too sensitive, or if the movie was straight up offensive.

So here's what my beef is with the movie. Taking the arguments about the specific content of the movie aside, it seemed to me that Borat's character is a total caricature of how the majority in this country views immigrants. He was portrayed as a "funny looking guy", from a "backwards country" that no one's ever heard of, with "weird" habits—although highly exaggerated, "weird" nonetheless. Those are all the things that any immigrant to this country has faced throughout their lives, be they Italians in New York in the late 1800s, or my parents over the past 30 years. Theatres have been packed with suburban kids blatantly laughing at the other, the outsider, stuff people like me and my family have been dealing with most of our lives. Some have tried to make the arguments that the joke is really on the movie-watcher who's buying into the humor and laughing at it, cause they're being made a joke of by laughing at such blatant racism. Sorry, but that's a total cop-out. People don't need a movie to show them what ugly racism in this country looks like, just watch the news, or walk down your local street with open eyes and ears. Damn, just watch television for about 10 minutes.

It's on that basis that I thought the movie was offensive, and all the racist, homophobic remarks that white people make in the movie just adds to that. But Borat's character, how he's portrayed, and who he's being portrayed to is fundamentally racist.

Dotorganize just released a report they did after interviewing 400 social change groups on how they're currently using technology, what challenges they face, but more importantly, what they could be doing better. One part of the report I found especially exciting:

"Organizers do not request any sort of universal 'killer app' or mention one runaway toolset. And no two organizations express exactly the same need. We are witnessing a sector that is far too nimble and specialized for a 'one-size fits all' solution, or for a 'one-stop shop.' Social change organizers needs are too varied to render any single tool suite a viable sector-wide solution. As one organizer put it, 'We have no way of combining all of our needs into one package. [We need] customizable integration — at an affordable price!'"

How many organizations out there have their 'prospective funders database' in Microsoft Excel? Or have tried to implement an open-source solution that was either way more than you guys needed, or not enough, and either way, virtually impossible to customize? To me, it seems that both scenarios result in a lack of current development in technology for the non-profit sectors happening without the above stated in mind.

One thing that I've noticed about a lot of open-source technology is that they do try to be everything for everyone, the "next Microsoft Word." from the end-users' perspective, if you try to implement one solution with the intention of tweaking it for your own needs, it's a massive pain to do... so inevitably, we all end up building brand new, custom applications that have 75% already been done before. After more recently working with Hibernate at work and even TextPattern on my own sites, it's been refreshing to see "all-encompassing" software that actually does do most of what I want it to. But in the case of Hibernate, it's a more general framework to accomplish one part of a much bigger project at work. TextPattern is a piece of software that targets a more specific need (content management), and is built flexible enough to handle pretty much anything I'd need to do on a simple website. But it's not very ready to be coupled with other technologies that would manager other more complex types of content (e-commerce, workflow management). Developing with open hooks into critical pieces of the system is more of the next level this report is talking about.

I went to volunteer with SAPAC last night for voter registration up in the Devon neighborhood. Me and the main coordinator of the project went to an elementary school that was having a parent teacher conference to ask parents if they were registered to vote, and register them on the spot if they were up for it. It was pretty fun, it's hard to get people past the initial idea that's I'm about to impose a sales pitch on them, although much less-so than it would have been like if I rang the doorbell to their house. But once I got past that initial discomfort, it was interesting to see how people responded. Some people didn't speak English, and one woman's daughter told me outright that she was undocumented. Many others were still waiting on citizenship, and of those who were able to register, some who new they needed to were ready to just go ahead and sign up, and others seemed still confused on what the point of it all was. One South Asian or Middle Eastern woman asked me "why should I vote, what difference does it really make?" I told her if she didn't vote, then she definitely wouldn't make a difference. After thinking about it for a second, she did sign up. But there was definitely a good mix of attitudes towards the whole political process...