Suit Claims Prop. 21 in Violation of Law
April 27, 2000
By Bob Egelko/APThe League of Women Voters and youth advocacy groups asked the state Supreme Court on April 20 to strike down Proposition 21, claiming that the wide-ranging juvenile crime initiative violates the state Constitution’s ban on ballot measures that cover more than one subject.
The measure, approved March 7 by 62 percent of California voters and implemented immediately, extensively rewrites state laws on three separate subjects: gangs, the juvenile justice system, and adult sentencing, said American Civil Liberties Union lawyers in court papers.
The initiative, 13 pages of fine print on the ballot and 43 pages in normal type, contains a “dizzying array of changes in both the juvenile and criminal justice systems,” despite a ballot title referring only to juvenile crime, ACLU attorney Robert Kim said at a news conference.
“Increasingly we see extremely long, complicated measures covering a number of marginally related issues placed on the ballot,” accompanied by campaigns of “sound bites and brief summaries” that leave the public ill-informed, said Anne Henderson of the League of Women Voters.
In reply, Matt Ross, spokesman for the Yes-on-21 campaign organization, Californians to End Gang Violence, said the suit merely showed opponents “upset about how the election went and trying to overturn the will of the people.’
But Kim said enforcing the single-subject rule actually ensures that the will of the public was accurately reflected, by barring multifaceted initiatives that offer voters an all-or-nothing choice.
The single-subject limit was approved by state voters in 1948. It has been used to strike down three initiatives, most recently last December, when the state Supreme Court removed from the ballot a Republican-sponsored measure that would have cut legislators’ pay and turned legislative reapportionment over to the court.
A single-subject challenge was unsuccessful against another prosecution-sponsored measure, in 1982, that contained provisions on evidence, insanity, sentencing and school safety, among others. Ross said Proposition 21 is narrower than that initiative and should survive court review.
Proposition 21, which was qualified for the ballot in a campaign led by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, allows prosecutors rather than juvenile court judge to decide whether youths aged 14 to 17 are tried as adults for serious crimes.
It also limits judges’ authority to refer convicted youths to treatment or probation; requires adult prison sentences in most cases for 16-year-olds convicted in adult court; eliminates loosely supervised probation; restricts pretrial releases, and reduces confidentiality of juvenile hearings and records.
Gang-related provisions include broader definitions of the people, crimes and organizations subject to increased punishment for gang activities; mandatory six-month prison terms for gang-related misdemeanors; death sentences for adults convicted of gang-related murders, and police registration of people convicted of committing crimes for a gang.
The measure also adds numerous crimes, most of them unrelated to juveniles or gangs, to the list of “strike” offenses requiring longer sentences for repeat offenders. Other crimes that already were strikes, including unarmed robbery, are reclassified as violent crimes, further increasing their sentences.
The lawsuit said the three-strikes provisions were an especially glaring violation of the single-subject rule because they were inconspicuous in the text, were not clearly described and were not mentioned in any of the ballot materials.
The suit said voter confusion was made worse by state ballot labels that described few of the measure’s provisions and varied between counties. The ballot measure failed to reflect recent changes in juvenile law and, in some sections, differed from the initiative that was circulated for signatures, the suit said.
Screaming Plants
April 27, 2000
MUSICAL CHAIRS: On April 26, the 31-member S.F. Democratic County Central Committee will vote to elect Chair Natalie Berg’s successor, who’s running for re-election to the College Board—and not precluding a run for supervisor.
A top contender is Jane Morrison, who has close fundraising ties with the Chinese Newcomer Service Center and recruited a number of Asian American interns for a local radio station. Making her second bid (she lost in 1996 by one vote), Morrison is supported by the “reform” wing of the party in 1996.
Alex Wong is another favorite, expected to win by a slim margin and become the first APA chair of the party. Wong himself is the former president of the dormant Asian Pacific Democratic Club and current chair of the Richmond District Democratic Club. Wong, who works for City Attorney Louise Renne, is a former student regent of the University of California and currently is the party vice chair. He is likely to receive the support of the S.F. Democratic Party’s political establishment.
Unlike the Democrats, the S.F. Republican Party battle for chair is not divided between “reformers” and “establishment” factions. When the 32-member committee convenes on May 8, they will vote in what Stephen Fong, a former county committee member and political consultant, calls a “friendly fight” between current chair Donald Casper and county committee member Howard Epstein.
With the initial blessing of Casper, Epstein started rounding up votes to succeed Casper, who at the time wasn’t considering a run for re-election.
He changed his mind, however, when the Republican Party decided to endorse Willie Brown in his December mayoral run-off with Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano. Since then, Casper and the party have been with prospects of reaping the benefits of their support. (The mayor was re-elected with 80 percent of the Republican vote.) Already, the party has gotten commission appointments. Casper, himself, was appointed to the Civil Service Commission and the Mayor’s 2000 Committee.
Republicans are facing new political horizons in San Francisco. While their party registration has increased in numbers in recent years, their relative strength has declined to less than 14 percent. There is a potential to pick up more mayoral appointments and at least one seat on the Board of Supervisors this year.
PASS THE BUCK: Some political activists have occasionally questioned whether Supervisor Leland Yee is playing it too safe. For example, Yee stayed neutral in last year’s mayoral race. And after he left the school board, he only questioned the wisdom of the school district’s desegregation consent decree, which I think discriminated against Chinese American kids. A class action lawsuit finally forced the school district to change its admissions policy.
How about passing the buck? The architect of a neighborhood notification initiative for two years, Yee most recently seemed more interested in passing responsibility to his colleague. Mabel Teng’s Housing and Social Policy Committee will have to wrestle with the relocation of a state parole center. The plans have angered 500-600 feisty Chinese Americans in the Portola neighborhood, including Portola homeowner and former Yee aide, Robert Chan, who also happens to be a supervisor candidate in the same District 10.
In Yee’s brief remarks to an angry crowd last Saturday, he said, “This issue is right now on the desk of Supervisor Teng. She has got to hold a hearing on this particular matter so that the Board of Supervisors will then be able to say, ‘no, we don’t want that parole office out there.’”
A PLANT, BUT NOT A POTTED PLANT: A very belligerent guest at the April 20 Chinese American Democratic Club meeting in the Parkside Police Station took Supervisor Yee to task over the demolition of the Sava Pool and the Parkside Elementary School.
“I’m sure you have a lot of people with money lining your pockets,” she sarcastically said to Yee.
Through most of the meeting, she persisted, seething and venting at guests who tried to ignore her. I whispered to the bemused supervisor that she was obviously a plant from another campaign.
“I don’t want the whole county being Chinese,” she said, interrupting Chris Bowman’s presentation on district elections, while the predominantly Chinese audience laughed uncomfortably at her offbeat statements.
“I’m sick of it,” she said, as she swore, arguing with some audience members. “You f-cking a–hole. I’m sick of this. My father was born in North Beach.” she ranted.
Believe it or not, the next day I did find out the woman was a “volunteer” from another campaign. A campaign representative confirmed that the screaming woman was the same person who had signed up to help out. The campaign, however, soon found out she was as Robin Williams might say, “two tacos short of a combination plate.”
Saving The World From Armageddon–Again
April 27, 2000
Anime feature trades plot for visual prowess
By Jeremiah JeffriesIn America it is nice to see Japanese animation, or anime, movies make it to the big screen. So it was especially nice this past year to have seen two excellent films from different genres in theaters: the beautifully intelligent Princess Mononoke and the powerful psycho-thriller Perfect Blue.
Unfortunately, X breaks from that trend.
X is based on the Japanese comic published by the very talented Clamp group (Satsuki Igarashi, Mokona Apapa, Nanase Okawa and Mick Nekoi), and directed by Rintaro. Technically, the film is strong; the animation is balanced and well conceived as it blends the dark supernatural horror tones of another Japanese animation film, Wicked City, with the more fluid and crisp tones of Street Fighter. However, the script falls disappointingly short.
The story is the good-vs.-evil-recruiting-warriors- for-Armageddon-and-only-the-chose-one-can-save-everyone plot that already proliferates far too much in anime. The main character, Kamui, finds himself drawn into a battle between two sorcerers, the Dragon of Heaven and the Dragon of the Earth, who want to cleanse the planet of humans—starting, of course, with Tokyo. Their battle is the prelude to the coming Armageddon between both sides, though they also fight for personal reasons that are never made clear.
The rest of this movie progresses in a predictable way for anime fans, with the usual gathering of forces, the chosen one (Kamui) actually becoming a chosen two and a half, and mystic one-on-one fights of dragons. But even these battles take place almost simultaneously building up to the very anticlimactic ending.
Throughout X, a coherent plot is apparently sacrificed in favor of visual displays of artistic prowess, with gaps in the plot constantly nagging at the viewer.
For example, why Kamui is the chosen one is unknown. There is a large cast of characters who are introduced in this sort of casting-call scene at the beginning of the film. Their background and relationship to each other is unknown. Why anyone has taken the sides they have is unknown. Flashbacks, dream sequences, and trips to the astral plane provide some sketchy details to the relationship of the three main characters, one of whom serves the role of damsel in distress throughout the entire movie. Not the most enlightened of film aspects.
The English-language dialogue is poor and most of the time unnatural. Sometimes the dialogue and tone are even contrary to the little character development they did provide. The dialogue also does too much explaining of things that were obvious or could be made clear through better storytelling. This contributes to problems of plot and characterization.
The world created in this story is two-dimensional at best, as very little was shown of Tokyo’s non-dragon and non-chosen one population. There are only one or two scenes when the viewer sees that the city had people being affected by the damage from all the battles—even though major sections of the city are destroyed during the film.
In addition, the emotional content of the movie lack’s validity. There is little character motivation in anything that happens, so the end of the movie leaves the viewer wondering why anyone cares about any of the characters or even the fate of their world.
Finally, one is never really sure what the title “X” means either, unless one postulates that the film’s producers saw everything important to good story telling as an “unknown” algebraic sum.
Jeremiah Jefferies is founder of CAINE (C.omicbook, A.nimation IN. tellectual E.xploration) and the KalamId-Din Library of Comicbooks and Animation at the University of Virginia.
The Romantics
April 27, 2000
Pankaj Mishra explores the seduction of the expat scene in Benares
By Kimberly ChunWe live in one of the least romantic of times. We attend singles clubs’ mixers and deconstruct personal ads in our search for romance. Yet most people probably spend more time with their computer than their partner, and the most renowned union of late has been the romance-free hookup of Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. So Pankaj Mishra’s debut novel, The Romantics, seems to be moving against the tide, taking a romantic view of the changing landscape of the Indian holy city of Benares in the late ‘80s and ‘90s.
Then again, The Romantics is all about people charting their own course amid modern and ancient cultural currents. The novel revolves around Samar, a 20-year-old Brahmin intellectual who moves to Benares to read “big books” by Schopenhauer, Turgenev, Proust and other Penguin and Picador stalwarts. In an age in which children rebel against their parents and those in the Brahmin caste no longer have a guarantee of influence and property, he tries to hold on to the romance of his undergraduate days, while deciding what to do with his life. He spends his days in the library, trying to find refuge in the world of literature and ideas, although violent student protests are erupting around him on campus.
Another distraction is a collection of Western bohemians and expatriates, following the path that vaguely resembles that of the Hindu pilgrims who have traditionally sought release from the cycle of rebirth in the city of Benares. Early on, Samar befriends his neighbor Diane West, an Englishwoman with a mysterious past. She opens his mind, lending him CDs of Schubert and Brahms, and he says, “I was glamoured by this contact with names that I had encountered only in print.” She gets him to explore the city, the banks of the Ganges and other parts of India, and look at the world with new ideas.
Still, Samar is struck by their differences. “One of the first things she said to me was: ‘Where did you learn to speak such charming English?’ I hadn’t known what to make of this remark. Was she being complimentary or condescending?” he wonders.
Miss West, as Samar calls her, introduces him to Mark, an American who talks about wanting to “find a way of sharing my experience of Benares and find some way of integrating it into daily life” when he returns to the United States, as if he were trying to work a tourist souvenir into his home decor. Other spiritual drifters, such as the American Debbie and German Sarah, seem to be trying on Buddhism to see if it would fit—like a sari or salwar-kurta—an act, which Miss West scorns. Debbie “gets her parents to send her videos of David Letterman, she misses her dog, all she wants to do in Benares is sunbathe and get a great tan,” she says with derision.
But among all the expats, Samar is most attracted to the beautiful Catherine, a young Frenchwoman rebelling against her wealthy parents. Her Indian boyfriend Anand, who comes from a struggling family, is trophy of sorts. She thinks he is the next Ravi Shankar, and the couple pins their hopes on the concerts he will give and the CDs he will record in France. Samar drifts into their orbit, dropping by their humble quarters to listen to their daily dramas and explore the skewed dynamics of their relationship.
In contrast, Samar also befriends Rajesh, a fading campus radical who owns guns, recites Urdu poetry, has some kind of connection to the student unrest, and has never traveled or “met a white person.” Samar lends this would-be student leader Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and in return, Rajesh offers support, as he does for other Brahmin students from rural districts. “If anyone bothers you, let me know and I’ll fix the bastard,” the budding enforcer says.
The two cultures that divide Samar finally collide when Catherine and he take a trip to the Himalayas, the traditional spiritual retreat for his family’s men. They find themselves drawn inexorably together as the inhabitants of their circle begin to pack up and move apart.
Throughout the novel, Mishra plays on both definitions of “romance.” Samar’s view of the backpackers and spiritual seekers that travel to India—which is criticized in books such as Alex Garland’s The Beach—is here infused with romanticism and fondness. But the author also sees them as 20th-century descendents of 18th-century Romantic artistic icons such as Byron, Wordsworth and Shelley.
The spirit of the original Romantics also permeates this novel and that may be both its curse and crowning glory. The pace of Mishra’s elegiac, spare prose is as gentle and leisurely as a boat ride, propelled by human hands along the Ganges. And it feels like a rarity in these times, when fiction and nonfiction alike are edited for speed and efficiency. In the process, Mishra succeeds in painting a beautifully detailed landscape of a place and a portrait of people that others, such as Garland, might view with less subtlety. In spite of these scenes, Mishra also gives the reader the impression that he tells more than he shows.
The book is light on dialog and heavy on Samar’s thought processes and flickers of emotion. Nonetheless this sentimental education will eventually win over an equally romantic-minded reader with its dreamy yet carefully wrought tale of West-obsessed Indian characters who see European literature and culture as a locus of desire and of the Westerners who arrive, ready to pack spiritual enlightenment into their luggage along with their other tourist trinkets.
EL Greco: The Greek, The Bad and The Ugly
April 27, 2000
By Anh Lan HoangImagine a lonely setting in a landscape where a cowboy looks for some sort of exoticism in order to rescue himself from the universal feeling of melancholy. With that mood, El Greco charmed the intimate audience with a delightful performance on April 20 at the dusky Café Renegade in San Francisco. “You feel as if you are watching a flick with an East meets West scene,” an amused spectator, Debbie Jue, whispered.
The ensemble of guitar, violins, vocals, keyboard and trumpet combined with Asian and American influences, as well as droll introductions in between each song, created a sense of ease within the candle-lit café.
Forming only a year ago, El Greco band members enthusiastically describe themselves as “one part spaghetti western drama, one part Ziggy Stardust, one part Japanese pop, and all parts dancing queen.” The man behind El Greco’s inception is John Papageorge, the songwriter who crafted the eclectic chemistry of sounds. Papageorge’s fascination with Asian and Western culture prompted him to produce a group from his San Francisco network of musicians who share his vision.
Unlike many up-and-coming bands, whose members yearn to be discovered so they can quit their day jobs, the El Greco musicians already have impressive music-related professions that contribute to the band’s unique sound. Papageorge recruited Liz Runnicles, a principal violinist with the San Francisco Opera; San Francisco Opera performer Kristen Clayton; San Francisco Symphony violinist Katy Johnk; vocalist and karaoke-over Yumi Takayama; and keyboardist Kikue Yamasaki.
El Greco’s collection of songs can be found on The Greek, The Bad and the Ugly. Songs like “Siamese Sex Show” and “Moonwalker,” which aim to transport listeners into the Korean strip bars of Los Angeles and massage parlors of Thailand, are an example of the band’s prevalent imagery. Rumor has it, a video depicting Moonwalker’s heroic cowboy rescuing an Asian goddess in a massage parlor happens to be in the works.
Though the music business is competitive, El Greco’s CD has managed to capture the attention of producer Eric Drew Feldman, who has committed to producing El Greco. Feldman is recognized for talents like the Pixies and P.J. Harvey. The group has been the subject of serious interest from labels including Michael Simpson, who produced Beck, Grand Royal records, Marilyn Manson’s manager John Ciulla, and Morphine’s manager Nancy Cline.
El Greco’s music crosses all genres. Kevin Silveira, Café Renegade and Cocodrie Club bartender, and a member of the hard rock band Stars from Mars, compared the band to the Cure’s Disintegration album and summed up El Greco as provoking “emotion and mood, which is something I look for in music.”
Elián Gonzalez and the Context of History
April 27, 2000
By Phil Tajitsu Nash
The saga of 6-year-old Elián Gonzalez dominated an otherwise quiet Earth Day and religious holiday in the nation’s capital last week and weekend.
Around-the-clock negotiations gave way to a pre-dawn raid by federal agents on Saturday morning that resulted in Elián being taken from Miami relatives and returned to his father in the Washington suburbs.
For Asian Americans, the week’s events raise a host of issues:
One, did the racial, ethnic, and national origin of the people involved get them better, worse or comparable treatment to what a white advantaged male would have received from the government and law enforcement authorities?
Two, was the public’s reaction colored by the racial, ethnic, and national origin of the people involved, and if so, how?
Three, how will the incidents of last week shape the racial, ethnic, and national dynamic of this country’s politics, culture, and government?
To answer the first question, the Cuban Americans in Miami definitely got better treatment than the average family in a custody dispute—because they are a powerful political force in south Florida.
Hispanics are an important voting bloc in the upcoming elections, and Attorney General Janet Reno was cognizant of this, being a compassionate and skilled administrator and lawyer from Miami who served as a prosecutor there for many years.
South Florida is also politically sensitive internationally. The Miami relatives, the Cuban relatives, the Cuban American community, Fidel Castro and many Cubans saw Elián and his situation as a microcosm of the difficult choices and tensions that have marked Cuban-American politics since Castro threw out the corrupt Batista regime in 1959.
But politics aside, the Miami relatives legally had a weak case to argue, making their treatment look that much more preferential.
Although there is no consensus on whether Elián’s seizure was a good solution, many law enforcement and child custody experts have said publicly that it was the best solution in an already bad situation.
In particular, Elián’s mother, who was divorced from his father, took the boy from school in Cuba without telling the father (he was the custodial parent), and exposed the child to a life-threatening boat journey that resulted in her own death and his near-death.
Moreover, while everyone has been asserting that their actions were in the “best interests of the child” (a legal standard used in custody cases), Elián’s Miami relatives broke the law by holding onto the child for over a week after their temporary custody was revoked.
But international politics got involved, and the relatives were not seriously reprimanded or hit with legal sanctions. Even their playing out the legal dispute in the media—which would have resulted in severe admonishment and possibly a gag order from the judge in most cases—was condoned by Democrats trying to cool things off and local Cuban American officials who chose to be popular instead of uphold the law.
As for the second question of how people’s background colored their reactions, I have determined that most Americans at this time are seeing this as a boy and family issue, not a race issue. This comes after spending many hours reading bulletin boards at online newspapers around the country.
How they view the raid and the current custody situation breaks down by party lines (Republican leaders want to use this as another excuse to try the Clinton administration, but the majority of Americans thinks that justice was served).
And some African Americans from the Miami area complained in the press about the insensitivity of local Republican elected officials of Cuban origin, but the fact that all players in this drama are of Hispanic origin makes it less of a racially-polarized O.J. Simpson-type case.
Moving to the third question, the incidents of last week will definitely have a major impact on the racial, ethnic, and national dynamic of this country’s politics, culture, and government. There is, to use the phrase of John Hayakawa Torok and other race theorists, too much of a “convergence of interests” between Miami’s Cuban Americans and Republican Clinton-bashers to let this story go quietly into the night.
Hearings will be held, accusations will be made, and—most worrisome of all—Cold War, anti-Castro rhetoric will once more adorn the halls of Congress.
Given the strong anti-capitalist positions of the World Bank demonstrators last week and the corner that Republican gun-supporters will find themselves in when the anti-gun Million Mom March comes to town on Mother’s Day, don’t be surprised if Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., or some other Republican legislator does a reprise of the 1950’s red-baiting of Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy.
Asian Americans, and especially those of Chinese origin, are already under suspicion from those who cannot distinguish Asians from Asian Americans.
Scientist Wen Ho Lee and his fellow researchers in Los Alamos are bearing the brunt of it now. A little anti-communism mixed with a little anti-Chinese sentiment, however, could exacerbate tensions and take us back to the “bad old days” of half a century ago.
Student Arrested in Racist E-mail Threats
April 27, 2000
By Greg Smith/AP
A three-week span of racist threats, terror and intimidation at the University of Iowa’s College of Dentistry ended on April 20 with the arrest of a second-year dental student.
Tarsha Michelle Claiborne, 23, of Baton Rouge, La., was charged with sending racist and threatening e-mails to minority classmates in the dental school as well as sending a bomb threat via e-mail that closed the program on April 19.
Authorities at Duke University, Guilford College and three other campuses have investigated hate-crime reports in the past 22 months only to discover they were hoaxes.
Claiborne, who is black, is charged with a felony count of threats in violation of individual rights related to the bomb threat made April 18.
She also faces lesser charges for allegedly sending a string of e-mails and making other threats that warned of violence if minority students did not withdraw from the dental college.
The dental college has an enrollment of 381 students, of which 49 are minorities, or 12.8 percent. They include 18 Hispanic students, 15 Asians, 13 blacks and three American Indian-Alaskan natives.
The dental building was closed on Wednesday, April 19, after the bomb threat. After an extensive search turned up nothing, it reopened the following day as faculty, staff, students and patients were searched as they filtered through a single entrance.
“I’ve been having nightmares since this all started,” said Dana Vetter, a white third-year dental student from Mount Pleasant. “It’s been pretty scary, but I feel totally safe now.’’
Ann Rhodes, vice president of university relations, said at a news conference that the suspect’s motives were still unknown.
“We don’t have a clue,” she said.
Rhodes said she could not discuss Claiborne’s academic status. She also said she was not aware of any ill feelings Claiborne had toward the college.
“I don’t have any reason to believe there were major problems there,” she said.
Rhodes said authorities, including the FBI, located the computer that was used early in the investigation.
Claiborne was arrested at 12:30 a.m. on April 20 at her home. She was being held at the Johnson County Jail on $52,000 bond.
Although the police complaints say the learning center is at the dental building, it is located a few blocks away at the College of Medicine complex.
Authorities set up a surveillance videotape in the computer area of the Pathology Learning Center after the second e-mail was sent on March 30, Rhodes said. The suspect was identified on April 19 afternoon by an administrative staff member in the dental college, she said.
Court records said Claiborne “was seen on videotape leaving the Pathology Learning Center” and that she confessed when she was arrested.
“At this time, they are confident that she is the person who sent the e-mails,” Rhodes said.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, authorities on at least five other campuses—Duke, Guilford, St. Cloud State University, Eastern New Mexico University and the University of Georgia—have investigated hate-crime reports before learning they were hoaxes.
Claiborne also is charged with one count of criminal trespass-hate crime for an April 4 incident in which red noodles were left on another black dental student’s doorstep with a note referring to a dead black man’s brains.
Under the Iowa Code, a hate crime is one committed against a person because of that person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
Claiborne also faces six simple misdemeanor charges for three previous threatening e-mails on March 28, March 30 and April 6.
“She was in one of my classes and she seemed really normal,” said Julie Farrell of Ottawa, Ill., who is in her second year in the program and is white. “So it was a pretty big shock when we found out. I’m relieved, but I’m also sad that, obviously, something is so wrong mentally.”
Will the Next Star Trek Series See an API Captain?
April 27, 2000
Fans lobby Paramount urging George Takei as next series lead
By Thomas Lee
After the success of numerous reincarnations, the Star Trek franchise may once again get a new captain and boldly go where no man has gone before. The uncharted territory this time could revolve around an Asian American commander, Captain Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) of the original Star Trek TV series.
Paramount Pictures has yet to produce the series but is being put under extreme pressure by fans to bring Takei and other original series cast members back to television. Thousands of fans have rallied together to launch a crusade entitled the “Excelsior Campaign” to ensure that Takei would be the captain of the next Star Trek spin-off, when and if Paramount decides to produce one. The campaign is named after the starship of Captain Sulu, the U.S.S. Excelsior.
Star Trek fans are not the only ones eager to see Takei back in uniform. The Asian American community has joined in on this attempt to bring a lead Asian American actor to series television. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) endorsed the 5,000-member campaign on April 17 in its continuing effort to deliver more diversity to television. MANAA was a major contributor to the “End the White Washing of Television” campaign which resulted in networks promising to incorporate more minority characters into their shows as well as CBS, FOX, and NBC hiring Vice Presidents of Diversity.
“Asian Americans have rare opportunities to see people like themselves in the media,” said MANAA co-founder Guy Aoki, explaining the reasons why his organization has endorsed the campaign.
“People need to see themselves acknowledged in television shows,” he said. “When people feel they don’t belong, they look for signs to give them acknowledgement. Even some small sign like a TV character gives them hope.”
“One of the difficulties [the Asian American community has had] is putting Asians in lead roles. It’s pretty rare,” said John Tateishi, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League. Tateishi said that Takei has tremendous appeal, not only to Asian Americans but to other segments of the population as well. “George has a lot of respect in the L.A. community and has done a lot to benefit the Asian American community,” he said. “He shows respect for Asian Americans and cares about their needs. He has never taken any roles that depict Asians in a negative way. If anyone can make [this series] work, George can.”
Media watchers have often criticized the lack of an Asian American hero, saying Asian actors onscreen in the past have primarily been martial arts imports from Hong Kong like Jackie Chan and Jet Li.
Aoki said Takei would provide a positive role model for Asian Americans as well as others. “We will finally get an Asian American hero and role model not related to martial arts. Minorities don’t really get a chance to be the hero onscreen,” he said.
Excelsior Campaign manager Russ Haslage is confident about the chances of success. His organization has already sent out thousands of letters to Paramount executives urging them to make this project a reality. The letter-writing drive was accompanied by rallies in front of Paramount studios and television affiliates across the U.S. and Canada on April 22.
Haslage said he hopes Paramount realizes the significance of having an Asian American lead and the Asian fan base it could bring. “We hope Paramount considers very seriously the desires of those in the Asian American community who have expressed their support,” he added.
Besides providing a role model for Asian Americans, Aoki also said he believes the success of a series with Takei at the helm could open doors for other projects involving Asian American lead roles. “The success of this series would encourage other networks to cast Asian Americans in leads of other series. It wouldn’t hurt. It puts more exposure out there,” Aoki said.
The desire to see Takei return to Star Trek seems to be growing. It has already spawned a novel about the adventures of Captain Sulu, and author John Ordover of Pocket Books has offered to pen another Sulu story if the demand is high enough. Ordover will write the novel if he receives 1,000 letters of request by May 1.
Aoki says he is confident that Asian Americans would embrace Takei’s character based on past fan reactions to Takei’s role. He said Takei’s role is one in which Asian Americans would be proud to be associated with and will respect. “Asians are too often portrayed as villains, sidekicks, and the ones people are supposed to hate or the ones people are supposed to laugh at,” he explained. “Star Trek VI presented one of the most positive images of an Asian American ever in the media.”
Poll Gauges Vietnamese Americans’ View of Media
April 27, 2000
Too much emphasis on food, festivals and crime
By Jason Ma
A majority of Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon say stories in the English-language media in Southern California focus too much on food, festivals and crime, according to a poll released April 19.
Of the 418 respondents to the poll, 60 percent said there was too much emphasis on crime and festivals, like Tet, in English-language media coverage of the Vietnamese American community. Another 59 percent responded that the media focus too much on “the uniqueness of our food.”
Researchers at California State University Fullerton conducted the poll among Vietnamese American adults living in Orange County, mostly in Westminster, Calif. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percent.
Funded by the Ford Foundation, the poll’s purpose was to help journalists better understand the communities they cover, particularly minority communities, according to Prof. Edgar Trotter.
Professors Jeffery Brody, Tony Rimmer and Trotter analyzed stories that ran in the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register between 1985 and 1998 and determined that, indeed, there was evidence of skewed coverage of the Vietnamese American community.
Of the 890 stories they found that mentioned “Little Saigon” at least twice, 585 also mentioned the words “food,” “festival,” or “crime” or other terms related to criminal justice. And 407 out of 667 stories that mentioned “Vietnamese community” at least twice also carried one of the same string of words.
“Generally, I would agree with that,” attorney Van Thai Tran said. “But the local newspapers are trying their best at branching out and diversifying. I would give them some credit, at least in the last two years.”
Widely regarded as a leader in the Vietnamese American community, Tran sits on the Garden Grove planning commission and is considering a November run for a seat on the city council there.
“The media, when covering minority communities has a tendency to stereotype,” said Brody, who covered the Vietnamese American community at the Register from 1984 to 1993. “It becomes convenient to write about festivals…food. And crime has been a staple of coverage, especially Vietnamese gangs.”
Like Tran, Brody said he has noticed an effort by both papers to hire more Vietnamese American reporters. Nevertheless, Brody expressed concern over a story in the April 24 issue of the Register about that paper’s food writer reporting on local cuisine from Vietnam.
Tran said the poll’s results do not necessarily reflect the attitudes of the rest of the community, since the population is changing so fast and those polled live mainly in Little Saigon—the first stop for most recent immigrants.
“You’re shooting at a moving target going 100 miles per hour,” he said.
These factors are reflected in the somewhat contradictory results. For example, while 70 percent of respondents said the English-language media too often show Vietnamese Americans wearing traditional clothes, 57 percent also said that, overall, the portrayal of the community is accurate.
The average number of years that respondents have been in the United States was 11.8 years and 51 percent of them immigrated in the 1980s or 1990s though United Nations-sponsored programs or bilateral humanitarian agreements between the United States and Vietnam. The median age of the sample was 41.5.
Because Vietnamese Americans in other, more affluent parts of Orange County were not surveyed, Tran thinks that the median household income reported in the poll (between $20,000 and $25,000) and the share of those identifying themselves as more Vietnamese than American (93 percent) could be significantly different for the overall community.
The poll also asked participants for their views on free speech. According to the poll, 56 percent said Communists should not be allowed to speak in public, and a third said Vietnamese-language media should not do negative stories about the community.
Moreover, while 96 percent said they enjoy their civil liberties in the United States, 87 percent also said there is too much freedom here.
Brody said the apparent paradox over free speech is largely attributable to many Vietnamese Americans’ strong anti-communist views, as demonstrated by the protests last year over the displaying of Communist leader Ho Chi Min’s picture in a Little Saigon video store.
“That’s understandable considering that they’re refugees,” Brody said. “They still have strong family attachments to their homeland. They have strong visceral attachments.”
Remembering the Other 25th Anniversary
April 27, 2000
Cambodian ‘killing fields’ survivor writes family valediction in new book
By Janet Dang
When they killed my father I knew that it was real,” Luong Ung remembers. “I knew that it was never going to be back to normal.”
Ung was only six when her father was taken away by members of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. They said he would return the next day. Three days later, he was killed.
“In my mind, I always thought that my father was going to come back and resume a normal life.
“With both your parents around you,” she says, “you can always, always still have a little bit of childhood. When my father was killed, there was no longer a childhood. I was no longer a child.”
Twenty-five years after the one event that undoubtedly shaped most of her childhood, Ung, who is among those that survived the “killing fields” in Cambodia, has since written a book titled, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
Anywhere between half a million to 2 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 when the Khmer Rouge overtook the country under Pol Pot’s leadership. The Khmer Rouge’s reign could arguably be one of the most notable genocides since World War II.
The guerrilla movement, using the destablization of Cambodia after the U.S. extension of the Vietnam War into that country, took the capital city of Phnom Penh in April 17, 1975. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the brutal killings.
Under the new regime, people were removed from their homes and put into the countryside for a massive re-education program. At the same time systematic killing of those associated with earlier governments began. Any man, woman or child who was seen as a threat, or who refused to obey orders was killed. Ung’s father was among those who lost their lives.
Ung, now 30, never sought to write a book about her experiences of losing her family and childhood to a civil war. She wrote it because she had to. After coming to the United States in 1980 at the age of 10, she struggled for several years to blend into a white community in Vermont, where she, her brother and sister-in-law re-settled and tried to occupy a “normal life.” Years of trying to obliterate memories of her war-ravaged homeland left Ung realizing that even while she had survived the war, she could not move forward unless she claimed her past.
“I can make sure I talk about it, write about it, or cry about it at my own place or [if] I just put it inside me and stuff it and stuff it, then it comes out at an inopportune time,” like if someone reminded her of her sister, or if the weather was particularly nice and it made her think of home, she says.
In a revealing and candid talk about her survival, Ung, who is of Cambodian and Chinese descent, shared private stories that shaped most of what remained of her childhood since the war. Half of her family—both her parents and two sisters—had been killed or died of starvation or disease. Ung wound up at an orphanage labor camp and was later moved to a military camp and trained to kill as a child soldier.
When she did make it to the United States, everything from the weather, to the food she ate, to the way other children viewed her as an exotic foreigner, made the transition almost unbearable.
“There was nobody like me. No other Asian kids,” Ung remembers, “they not only didn’t know Cambodia, they think Cambodia is all of Asia. They think Asia is somewhere in China.”
The summer she arrived in Vermont, her sponsors took her to a Fourth of July fireworks display with its thunderous explosions. “This, when I just came out of a war,” she says.
“This is Vermont. It is still the whitest state in America.” Ung says, and pauses to find the words to describe how she felt. Finally she adds, “It was very, very traumatic.” She lets out a chuckle at the understatement.
There was a point in her life when Ung became self-destructive, banging her head on hard objects just to “have amnesia,” though she won’t say that she did it because she wanted to hurt herself.
“It wasn’t to hurt myself as much as to forget myself,” she says.
Nightmares of being chased and killed continue to mar what’s left of the memories of her adolescence. And even when she tried to talk to a school counselor about her trauma, she would vomit.
“That’s not a good thing,” she says, and laughs again.
Her English teacher had told her that if she can’t talk about it, then write about it. So she did. She wrote about it every day in her journal since she was 16. These journal entries later became the first draft of her book.
Today Ung looks fresh, vibrant and determined. Whatever emotional scars she may have had remain hidden under a brimming smile and bright eyes. The book she has written is only a small part of her commitment to draw attention to the “forgotten war.”
Ung has been traveling, partly for her book tour, but more importantly for conferences in which she advocates for the abolition of landmines—which continue to kill and maim Cambodians—child labor and for a trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.
Writing, Ung admits, is not her profession, nor is it her passion.
“Writing is a tool,” she says matter-of-factly. By profession, she is the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. The speaking tours are ways for her to continue her advocacy work.
“The book tour, the lecture tours allow me to heal. In the end it’s very difficult to do. If I have the choice, I don’t know if I would choose to speak out,” she says.
But Ung says she has no choice.
“You either speak out about it or you do what you can to heal your own soul, or else it’s going to break.”
Though one of Ung’s sisters was the first to die, it was the death of her father, and then later her mother that left her with a permanent sense of loss.
“Losing a sibling is not like losing a parent,” she says. With her father around, “there was magic in the world.” When her sister died, she still had hope that things would return to normal. The death of her father, she later realized, “ended my childhood more than the war did.” Her book, she says, is less about war than it is about loss, “the loss of love, the loss of innocence, the loss of family.” It had been about a year after the Khmer Rouge invaded the country that her father was killed. But since the regime outlawed clocks, watches, calendars and other devices to tell time, Ung is not sure of the exact date.
Ung is the youngest of eight children. Her father was a prominent political figure in Cambodia—he was a former member of the Cambodian Royal Secret Service under Prince Sihanouk.
For the first five years of her life, she knew only of a protected and privileged lifestyle in Phnom Penh. But by 1978, both her parents had died, as well as two of her sisters. Ung and what’s left of her family had been living as peasants, subsisting on roots, leaves, small animals and insects.
When she was 8 years old, she separated from her family and found her way to an orphanage labor camp. She was removed shortly after to a military camp where children like herself were brainwashed and trained to shoot and kill as soldiers. For years, she says, she thrived on the hate and anger the Khmer leaders had instilled in her.
“Until I wrote the book, life consisted of two emotions: either you are numbed or you are enraged. You just hate. I hated the government, the soldiers who came to take my father with their guns,” she says.
“I never realized that there were many other emotions.” Even though the book had its events amid the tragedy of war, Ung says it was more than that.
“It’s mostly a book about love in that I wrote often about my parents, my family, my brothers and my sisters and that I was always thinking about them. And that their love for me and my love for them came through in the book.
“In the end it was my family’s love and sacrifices that kept me alive and not the hate that I thought made me so strong.”
It was for her family that she eventually completed her book. Ung says that she wanted the book to be read by her nieces who grew up in the United States not knowing anything about her family’s or her homeland’s past.
“I wanted to introduce them to their grandparents and aunts and relatives [who] they don’t know and [whom] they will never meet. To let them know that before we were in a war, before we were war victims, before we were survivors, before we were refugees, we had houses, we had food, we had music, we had beauty. I wanted them to know we had a very full culture. That we were not only defined by the war, that we had a life before the war.”
Lee Defense Challenges Search Warrant
April 27, 2000
All evidence seized
By Richard Benke/AP
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—When FBI agents seized the short stories of Guy de Maupassant and the plays of Tennessee Williams from Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee’s home, they acted without the restraint that the search warrant should have imposed, Lee’s lawyers say.
The attorneys argued April 17 that the search warrant was illegally broad, and they asked U.S. District Judge John Conway “to suppress all items obtained as a result of the search …, all fruits of that evidence and all other evidence, tangible or intangible, obtained directly or indirectly as a result of that search.”
Lee, 60, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, is charged with downloading materials from secured computers onto unsecured computers and onto several computer tapes. Agents say seven of the tapes remain missing; Lee insists those tapes were destroyed.
Lee, fired by the lab last year, could face life in prison if convicted of all 59 counts. Trial is tentatively set for Nov. 6.
A hearing on the motion was set for 9:30 a.m. June 7.
The warrant that was used to search Lee’s White Rock home April 10, 1999, failed to include specific descriptions of the place to be searched or items to be seized and “failed to include the required statement regarding how the property to be seized related to any alleged criminal activity,” the defense motion said.
The search warrant here blatantly violated this well-established prohibition against general warrants,’’ the defense said in an accompanying memorandum to Conway.
“Basically, the warrant gave unfettered discretion to the executing officers to seize anything,’’ said Lee’s attorneys, Mark Holscher, John Cline and Nancy Hollander.
Besides the De Maupassant and Williams works, items seized included the address book of Lee’s daughter, Alberta, telephone numbers of a church group, the membership list of the Los Alamos Chinese American Society, Lee’s school notebooks and diaries, children’s photo albums, personal correspondence, Lee’s Ph.D. thesis published in 1966, letters between Lee and his professors in the early 1970s and computer printouts from 1977, among other things, the lawyers said.
“All I can say is that we oppose the motion, and that opposition will be reflected in the response we ultimately file,’’ Gorence said.
Lee’s attorneys said the FBI warrant failed to specify that the place to be searched was Lee’s home. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has long required that a warrant “state particularly that it authorizes the search of someone’s home,” they said.
That’s a Fourth Amendment requirement, they added.
“As to what is to be taken, nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant,’’ the lawyers said, quoting a 1965 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
The Lee warrant said items to be seized “include but are not limited to records, documents and materials including those used to facilitate communications, electronic data and computer equipment and peripherals.” The warrant thus disqualified itself, the lawyers said.
“By its very terms, the warrant was ‘not limited,’” they said.
JLA War Reparations Plan
April 27, 2000
By Brendan Riley/AP
Art Shibayama was just 13 when he and other family members were forced from their home in Peru in 1944 and put on a ship for a three-week voyage to the United States—and an internment camp in Texas. The Shibayamas and tens of thousands like them who lost their freedom and property were guilty only of being of Japanese ancestry and living in the Americas at a time when the United States was at war with Japan.
They were rounded up and placed in camps either out of fear they might assist Japan in the war effort or, in other cases, to be used as part of prisoner exchanges. Many, including the Shibayamas, were held long after World War II had ended.
The U.S. government compensated most of the victims and their families for their losses. But many others, including Shibayama, a retired service station operator in San Jose, Calif., were left out.
Now there’s a new congressional effort to help Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans who didn’t benefit from earlier reparations: Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, plans soon to introduce a measure to pick up where the original restitution plan left off when it expired in 1998 after providing $1.65 billion in benefits.
A 1998 court settlement plus supplemental appropriations from Congress provided $50 million more for the Japanese-ancestry victims of wartime excesses. Becerra says his proposal is a final, necessary step.
Becerra isn’t sure of the amount he will propose, but says it won’t come close to the earlier restitution plan. Money’s not the issue anyway, he adds. “These are people who deserve to have some justice. When you tell people what happened to them, they say ‘you’ve got to be kidding.’ That’s what we’re fighting against.”
Leaders in the push for the legislation include Grace Shimizu, whose father was taken from Peru—where he had lived for 20 years—and confined in the same camp near San Antonio, Texas, where the Shibayamas were held for 21/2 years. The families were kept in one of several federal camps that, along with 10 relocation camps, held people of Japanese ancestry during the war years. Most were in the West.
Hundreds of Japanese who had spent years in Latin America, including Shibayama’s grandparents, were involved in the little-known exchanges.
The 1988 Civil Liberties Act provided for reparations, and some 80,000 survivors applied for payments for lost property and freedom. Most were paid $20,000 each under the restitution law.
Because they weren’t citizens or legal residents of the United States during the war, Japanese from 13 Latin American countries—mainly Peru—weren’t eligible for the $20,000 payments. But some received $5,000 as a result of the 1998 court settlement.
Shibayama says he feels some bitterness, but still thinks “the United States is the best country to live in.”
“But people made mistakes, big mistakes. I was discriminated against so many times,” he says. “I was offered the $5,000 settlement but I opted out because it was another discrimination, a slap in the face,” he adds. “The offer said nothing about how we were brought here—not even an apology.”
“I tell people what happened and they don’t believe it. They say, ‘We did that to you? No.’ I say, ‘Yes, you did.’”
