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The Healthy Living Pavilion at the 8th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration taking place at San Francisco’s Civic Center on May 19th, will provide free and low-cost health services, professional medical advice, interactive activities with prizes and health-related education materials.  Located on Larkin Street between Fulton and McAllister, services at the pavilion will be provided by community health groups and sponsors for the third consecutive year.

Here is a look at what is in store this year:

Prize-Giveaways and Health Wall

Take part in activities at the Healthy Living Pavilion Information Booth and you may walk away with a prize!  The Info Booth will feature a Health Wall where fair-goers can leave their messages and fortune cookies that spell out special fortunes.  Stop by to find out how you can win!

Hepatitis B Screenings and Education

As part of National Viral Hepatitis Testing Day, the Asian Heritage Street Celebration will offer free screenings for both hepatitis B and C.

To spread awareness on hepatitis B, a virus that affects one in 10 Asian Pacific Islanders, the fair will offer free educational brochures, hepatitis B screenings and doctor consultations. This is a collective effort by California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), Subaru, Brown & Toland Physicians, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Other Health Screenings & Tests
Blood Pressure Screenings, hosted by Kaiser Permanente and CVS
Lupus Education, hosted by the Lupus Foundation of Northern California

Rapid HIV Tests, hosted by the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center
Glucose Tests, hosted by North East Medical Services

NEW – Alternative Medicine

Dr. Effie Chow leading a group practicing Qigong.

Qigong energy healer Dr. Effie Chow will be providing information about:  1. the Asian and Chinese Healing Arts and Sciences (ACHAS),   2. Integrative Body/Mind Medicine (IBMM), and 3. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).  Her mission is to help educate people on how to achieve the optimum state of health (mind/ body/spirit in harmony with the environment) by moving beyond the limitations of Western medicine: a “must do” to thrive in today’s challenged world. Be sure to join in for fun, health, and wealth!

Check out also these alternative health medicines:

Tui-na

Meditation

Feng Shui

Soul-healing

Spice Elixirs

Family Support Services
The Red Cross will provide educational material on disaster preparedness.  In addition, a variety of other family support services will be available to the public at the fair, including:

Coping with tragedies, hosted by San Francisco Crisis Care

Substance abuse, hosted by the Asian American Recovery Services (AARS)

Health plans by the Chinese Community Health Plan (CCHP)

Health Education
Besides hepatitis B education, the community will have access to free educational material and advice on various health concerns from these organizations:

• Alzheimer’s Association on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia
• American Liver Foundation on liver health and disease protection
• California Transplant Donor Network on how to save and improve lives through organ and tissue donation for transplantation
• North East Medical Services on diabetes and preventive measures
• Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center (APIWC) on HBV, HCV, and HIV
• Asian American Donor Program on marrow donors

Jeremy Lin

What, another year? Another heritage month? Why not let your friendly longtime amok columnist slice and dice things up for you nicely?

This year we replaced poor Asian American YouTube hater, Alexandra Wallace, the blonde buxom bully of Asian Americans in the library, with basketball star Jeremy Lin.

The unwanted baller came off the bench to turn the New York Knicks into a real team and in doing so, inspired a worldwide phenomenon called Linsanity.

My personal choice was “Lin-phomania,” the irrational fanatic love for Lin’s irrational basketball success. But alas, Linsanity won out and is on bumper stickers.

Simply defined, the term is that quintessential state of being so totally in the zone. For a moment in time, Lin was in some rarefied space. He was the model minority’s model minority.

But you knew it couldn’t last. As it happened, Lin’s knees gave out first.

Still, it was quite a run-up to being “Most Famous Asian American on the Planet.” And it’s not over. When the knee heals, we’ll all be ready for Linsanity II.

It doesn’t take much for us to get inspired. Lin was the anti-stereotype of anti-stereotype. Tall for an Asian American, but undersized by NBA standards, he defied the stigma of being undrafted. Using the extreme work ethic we all know and love, Lin kept working and never gave up — through the stint with the Warriors, through his being cut and sent to New York, Lin never failed to keep working.

And then, as is usually the case in sports, someone gets hurt and the time comes to shine. Opportunity, will you be ready?

Most of us, if we follow Lin’s method, will be ready. Maybe some of us won’t. The winners will keep working, not give up, and wait for their time to come. You need a model? There’s Jeremy Lin. He’s the APA feel-good-story of the year.

BY THE NUMBERS

All around, it has been a good year for Asian Americans. There are more than 17 million Asian Americans living in the U.S., making up 6 percent of the nation, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. We’re the fastest growing minority with the vast majority of us in three states, with 15 percent in California, 8 percent in New York and 57.4 percent in Hawaii.

But Asians are popping up like weeds everywhere. Arizona, where that aggressive immigration law was passed, has seen 95 percent growth in the last 10 years. Nevada grew by 116 percent Georgia’s growth rate is at 83 percent. Alabama is at 70 percent.

On the mainland, being Asian American doesn’t necessarily mean California.

Add to that the ethnic diversity of nearly 20 different ethnicities, the emerging mixed race population (Japanese, Indonesians, Thais and Filipinos are the most prolific mixers), and the emerging 21st century picture of Asian America is hardly some monolith.

Indeed, we are 60 percent foreign-born, representing a rainbow of every kind of Asian American experience. There’s what I call “The Gold Mountain, been-there-done-that, sixth or seventh generation” Asian American. Then there’s the “mid-generation immigrants” from the ‘60s. Then comes what I call the “ 2 ½ Worlders” who immigrated in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And then there are the present day newcomer immigrants who still keep coming.

Asian Americans are a multigenerational, multiethnic, multilingual hodgepodge trying to fit into one big egg roll wrapper.

No wonder we have to spill out on the streets every year at Street Celebration time.

The challenge to the community going forward is to teach and learn without forgetting our history. Presently, at any given moment in the community, we should instinctively know what every other Asian American has experienced. The success stories of second-, third- and fourth-generation Asian Americans and beyond are well-chronicled. But the immigrant of today is undergoing a version of what our fathers and our fathers’ fathers experienced. Only a real understanding of our history will give us the sensitivity and compassion to relate to what has become this complex thing we know as Asian America.

Of course, we are all individuals in this disparate free market world. But in the end, we can only gain by knowing about ourselves through a rich history and heritage that both unites us and makes us a community worth celebrating.

Award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist Emil Guillermo has written about the Asian American community continuously in his Amok column for more than 15 years.
His latest “Amok” columns are at www.amok.com, and at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog, www.aaldef.org/blog
Read Emil’s greatest hits at http://www.asianweek.com/category/bloggers/emil-amok/

In the border between Burma and Thailand, the Rising Voices grantee project Karen Border News has launched their audio podcast workshop. In this short film, the students of the radio journalism course speak about their experience.

From their Blog post:

During this first round of training, we focused on four topics: news writing, audio recording & editing, and broadcast. It’s been really exciting watching these students improve their skills, and learn entirely new ways to tell their stories. While KSNG’s media staff runs most of the trainings, we also invited two specialist, Aung Nai, who works for Internews and Jack Chance, an experienced radio producer and media trainer. In addition to the workshops, we are also distributing some media equipment to students, including notebooks, media guidebooks, and audio recorders.

On a past blog entry, the Karen Border News blog explains the importance of their efforts in the context of the Ceasefire talks between the Myanmar government and the Karen National Union:

Most Karen cautiously welcome the ceasefire agreement, but there is much concern for how reconciliation will affect the Karen population, especially with so many of our people now living outside of our traditional homeland in Karen State

Rising Voices is an outreach initiative of Global Voices, aimed to helping to bring new voices from new communities and speaking new languages to the global conversations on the web by providing resources and funding to local groups working with underrepresented communities. The Karen Border News is one of the 2012 Rising Voices Grantees.

Written by Juliana Rincón Parra · comments (0)
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SAN FRANCISCO – The City is hosting the largest pan Asian street fair nationwide to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage month on Saturday, May 19th at San Francisco’s Civic Center.

The 8th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration, produced by the AsianWeek Foundation, will feature a scrumptious collection of pan Asian delights and sweets, along with the Bay Area’s favorite food trucks. The public will also have a chance to learn how to cook delicious Asian dishes at the festival’s cooking demonstration stage located at Ellis and Larkin Streets! Appearing throughout the day will be celebrity chef Martin Yan, The Slanted Door’s owner and executive chef Charles Phan, co-owner of Nombe Restaurant Mari Takahashi, cookbook author Andrew Nguyen, chef Steve Cortez, and BBC America’s Chef Kayne Raymond.

As part of the nation’s first National Hepatitis Testing Day (Saturday, May 19, 2012), San Francisco Hep B Free and the San Francisco Hepatitis C Task Force are collaborating to provide free hepatitis B and C testing and education at the festival. The CDC’s Director of Viral Hepatitis, Dr. John Ward, Mayor Ed Lee, elected officials, and community leaders will discuss the viral hepatitis epidemic on the Celebration’s Fulton St. Stage at 2:30 p.m. and tour the testing and education services.

The free one day festival is co-presented by CPMC-Sutter Health and Subaru. In conjunction with the festival, admission to the Asian Art Museum will be free all day, courtesy of Target.

2012 AHSC Map

What:
Eighth Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration

When:
Saturday, May 19, 2012
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Where:
Civic Center/Little Saigon District
Larkin and McAllister Streets
San Francisco, CA

Why:
To promote and foster Asian Pacific American identity by bringing together community and encouraging the sharing of differences and appreciation of diversity.

Information:
www.asianfairsf.com

An interesting read on the Bahamas “Corruption Narrative”, here.

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Globewriter applauds the contribution of Senator Corinne Baptiste-McKnight “in response to a Clause in the Children Bill that criminalized same sex intimacy among youth”, saying: “Give that woman an award!”

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“Raul is clearly going to be a thorn in the flesh of any government in power unless passage can be found for him somewhere”: Barbados Free Press expresses concern for Cuban-born prisoner Raul Garcia's safety.

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Through twitter, Al Jazeera shares the video story of a group of Afghan women who are using poetry as a way to empower themselves and reclaim their voice.

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For BC Pires, the highlight of the launch of the inaugural Bim Literary Festival wasn't the speeches or cultural presentations but the greeting of two “literary giants.” 

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Judge Jacqueline Nguyen was confirmed Monday by the full Senate to the Ninth Circuit, becoming the first female Asian judge on the federal appellate bench.The vote to confirm Nguyen, 46, was 91 for and 3 against, The Hill reports. Judge... Bolsavik.come http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

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To a casual observer, the Russian protest movement seems current and contemporary. Undeniably, it is. The throngs of people. The charismatic young leaders and elder statesmen. The use of social media networks in their multitude to communicate, organize, and argue. The positioning of the protests within a global movement: from Occupy to Tahrir and the Arab Spring.

Amidst all the excitement, it is easy to forget that the core of the protests — the professional revolutionaries, the leaders, young and old, the activists and the reporters, the analysts and the bloggers, the Russian political tusovka and its online extension — has now existed for almost a decade. Few bloggers last this long. Certainly, the entire Internet infrastructure has changed several times over during the period. Nevertheless, the tusovka endures, perhaps due to the peculiarity of the Russian blogosphere and its longtime sequestration at LiveJournal.

That is not to say that the scene has ossified. On the contrary, relationships have changed, as have account names. Some figures lost prevalence; some have switched sides and opinions. But on the whole, the RuNet of the early oughts is a microcosm of modernity. Pick any recent protest organizer. Oleg Kashin has blogged on LiveJournal since 2002, the same as Sergei Parkhomenko. Ilya Yashin began in 2004 (and has been a promising young politician since). Alexey Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov’s wife, Anastasia, started blogging in 2006, a year after Ilya Ponomarev and Garry Kasparov.

Or pick a critic: former Natsbol and current DemVybor functionary Stas Yakovlev started writing in 2004, while the unabashedly pro-Kremlin Maksim Kononenko (formerly known as Mr. Parker) and Konstantin Rykov have been prominent bloggers for over a decade (though both have since abandoned LiveJournal).

Then, as now, they not only blogged on the same platform; they also argued and engaged each other in polemics. A snapshot taken seven years ago of these movers and shakers would today present many familiar faces and opinions (although notoriously flip-floppy Kashin has done his best to keep things interesting).

Screenshot of Andrei Morozov's LiveJournal, 18 May 2012.

Bearing this in mind, it is perhaps fitting that the man who last Sunday threw tomatoes at Ilya Yashin and journalist/writer Yulia Latynina was a man who did precisely the same thing seven years ago. Andrei Morozov (also known as “Murz,” who blogs at kenigtiger), wearing the same jacket he had on seven years earlier, approached a crowd of OccupyAbai protestors during the “Control Stroll” rally. He threw two tomatoes at the speakers (both missed), after which he was detained by the crowd, who mistook him for a Nashist. Oleg Kashin reported the small incident, lamenting a forgetful new crop of protestors.

Indeed, during the summer of 2005, Morozov gained RuNet notoriety for what he called the “Red Blitzkrieg.” It was the heady summer after the success of the Orange Revolution — the summer of Russian youth politics, and the summer of tomatoes. “Red Blitzkrieg” was what Morozov named the tiny Stalinist-nationalist group he had founded around the time, but the phrase referred more visibly to his strategy of throwing tomatoes at political and ideological opponents.

“Tomato terrorism,” as Morozov jokingly called it, claimed several victims that summer. The first was Yashin, then a leader of Young Yabloko and a memeber of Oborona (a youth organization modeled on Pora and Otpor). On June 20, 2005, Oleg Kashin wrote in his blog, “Today, at Kitai-Gorod, unknown parties threw tomatoes at the Oborona picket line (the tomatoes were good and fresh).” Yashin later posted the name of the assailant, identifying him a member of Dugin’s Eurasia group.

Morozov, who spent a day under arrest for the incident, responded in his blog (vandalized and deleted in 2009; an archive exists on the alternative lj.rossia.org service), claiming full responsibility and denying membership in any political group:

And in general, dear “orangists,” get used to the fact that someone can throw a tomato at you without it being some kind of political commission, but simply from the bottom of their heart, out of aesthetic considerations.

Perhaps because of the gleeful response of Russian netizens to his actions, several days later he tomatoed (”otpomidoril”) the editor of the occasionally sensationalist newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, which had published an article about World War II with which Morozov disagreed (the author controversially wrote that the USSR should have surrendered to Germany, and was “ice-creamed” by another activist on the same day). Soon after came a failed attempt (Morozov missed) of tomatoing Yulia Latynina, whose revisionism of WWII orthodoxy also angered the Red Blitzkrieg.

Ilia Yashin, a member of the Solidarity coalition, 23 November 2008, photo by Lena Lebedeva-Hooft, CC BY-SA 3.0; Wikimedia Commons.

In the meantime, Morozov showed up at another Oborona action, and this time gifted Yashin the tomatoes, rather than throwing them. He followed a similar strategy at a book signing by Maksim Kononenko (whose book of Putin anecdotes was published by Parkhomenko). In August came the tomatoing of the Polish embassy (a response to a scandal involving children of Russian diplomats in Poland, for which Morozov and an accomplice spent three nights in jail), and in September the tomatoing of Echo Moskvy's offices (on general principle).

Other noteworthy incidents included an October small-sword duel (described here by Morozov’s second) between Morozov and a defender of Latynina's honor (which thankfully led to no bloodshed), as well as a failed (and ill-conceived) attempt to throw mice at an opposition rally.

In 2007, Morozov did something even crazier than usual. He had always claimed that his “tomato terrorism” was equal opportunity; that rather than singling out the liberal opposition in his actions, they just happened to be in the way. And so, one cold spring night, Morozov armed himself with a sawed-off shotgun, fired it at the Moscow office of United Russia, and blogged about it. As he had also managed to hit the FSB office located in the same building, this escapade did not end well. He was sentenced to three years in prison for the shotgun, and, under Article 280 of the Criminal Code, for extremist rhetoric in his blog (becoming one of the first Russian bloggers to serve time for extremist speech).

By the time he was released in 2009, after serving eighteen months of his sentence, “Red Blitzkrieg” had fallen apart. Morozov himself states that he has quit public politics, calling it an ineffective waste, and that personal, not political, circumstances were behind his arrest. While it appears that he still has some connections to the nationalist underground, claiming membership in the so-called “Black Blitzkrieg,” he has dismissed his ‘tomato period' as childish, which makes the May 13, 2012, incident all the more surprising.

Morozov described the impetus for his return to form in a May 12 post. “Fate itself,” he argued, brought together in one place his old opponents, Yashin and Latynina. He could “no longer stand” the concentration of “abomination” in the center of the city. ‘Action had to be taken.'

After he went to prison in 2007, Morozov fell off the RuNet radar, though he has been writing regularly since his 2009 release. Most of the protestors present at his latest action had no idea who he was. The ones who did recognize him reacted with disbelief and nostalgia. “F…, the man who threw tomatoes at Yashin was the notorious Murz? Now that's f-ing something!” tweeted Kashin. “The very same?” sentimentally asked Rykov.

There is definitely something romantic about Morozov's little acts of defiance. Of course, there are always questions. Is he a Kremlin project or his own man? Does he believe in what he says or is he just very good at “trolling”? These same questions were asked seven years ago, to no avail. Kashin later succinctly summed up the sentiment: “Today is the same day it was yesterday.“

Written by Andrey Tselikov · comments (0)
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