When I think of Jan. 6, I think of Michael Fanone, the Metropolitan Police Department Officer who’s become somewhat famous for defending democracy. As he was brutally attacked at the Capitol, his plea for mercy was a simple one.
“I have kids,” he told the mob.
And he does. Three of his four kids a...
Asian Americans on to the next thing should really take a longer look at that picture of President Biden and Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
I paid $6 bucks for gas this weekend. And I’m still not over the “fist bump for gas pumps” photo op quite yet.
Not if you have any Fil...
It’s amazing what happened when NASA pointed its James Webb Space Telescope into a patch of darkness. Suddenly we saw the whole truth—-stars and galaxies we never knew existed.
It was a look back at the speed of light, about 13 billion years.
I wish all of America could see more clearly right here...
If you’re a Dreamer in the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, my heart goes out to you after last week’s court hearing in Louisiana at the Fifth Circuit.
My father was undocumented.
He didn’t need any.
Documents, that is. Not in 1928. He was born in the Philippines an American...
You don’t have to be a world leader to mourn the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The longest serving prime minister of his country, Abe was always the symbol of political Japan to me. He was just always the man.
As Asian Americans, whether immigrants or born here, we alwa...
Ready to get arrested?
You weren’t just going to grill cancerous hot dogs for the holiday, were you? (At least get the vegan ones.)
This holiday weekend, you may have noticed our rights and our very democracy hanging by a thread.
I’m sure you’d rather be doing something more American, more produc...
You may have been marching and protesting this past weekend, but few had the kind of stage as Olivia Rodrigo, the Asian American Filipina pop megastar.
She spoke out as a voice for her generation before tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival in England.
“I’m devastated and terrified,” Rodri...
I saw a crying Asian American woman on the TV news.
She reminded me of my daughters.
What is worse? To kill abortion in America, or to kill our sense of freedom and American democracy?
In Friday’s rulings, the Supreme Court of the United States managed to do both. The court declared itself a poli...
This weekend is a confluence of historic moments on one day, June 19th, that should make every Asian American and everyone, not just members of the BIPOC community, pause for meditation.
Sunday is Father’s Day, and for so many of us, we are here because of an action our parents and forebears took t...
To paraphrase the Bard, if all the world were a stage–like the Tonys–we’d certainly be better off. Especially if Ariana DeBose emceed everything.
I’ll talk about the necessary diversion that is Broadway in a sec, and the importance of getting our diverse stories—the real narratives of our lives—tol...
I’m paying over $6 dollars for gas, am concerned over record inflation, general economic inequity, plus the lack of attention to public health amidst a pandemic, climate change, prospects of greater global conflicts, not to mention racism.
Oh, and gun violence.
How about you?
Think you should vot...
The first mass killing I ever covered in my journalism career was in 1980.
It was in East Texas, about 90 minutes by helicopter from Dallas.
I saw a lot of Texas underneath me that day as I landed in a place called Daingerfield.
There, a shooter named Alvin Lee King III, dressed in camouflage gar...
I look at the two pictures, one of Amerie Jo Garza, the ten-year-old honor student at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The other of her classmate, Xavier Lopez, holding his honor roll certificate.
These students were a big part of America’s diverse future.
And now they are a big part of Am...
This week, we all got a lesson about the concept of “strategic ambiguity.”
That’s the strategy that says it’s sometimes helpful to speak out of both sides of your mouth.
Good for international diplomacy, perhaps.
Just not for Covid policy.
I shall explain, and give you a way to develop your own ...
America is trying to let the three most publicized shooting incidents of the last week fade away.
We can’t afford to let that happen again. Not after Newtown. Orlando. Las Vegas. Not to mention Christchurch, New Zealand. Have you forgotten all those?
The Buffalo supermarket shooting was like an ec...
Ten African American people in Buffalo shot dead on Saturday in a shocking racist killing. It was a headline the country didn’t need. We have too many of them already.
Surely, Asian Americans know the violence all too well.
May has been one violent Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander H...
If you think democracy is getting tarnished in America, you could be a dual citizen of the U.S. and the Philippines. And then you’d be feeling twice as bad today.
Monday, May 9 is election day in the Philippines.
And it looks like the U.S.’s first colony–which ultimately was modeled to be our demo...
I wasn’t thinking about Norm on the first week of what he first coined as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
On my “micro” news/talk show on the web, I was prepared on Tuesday to talk about the Supreme Court leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose.
Did y...
Let me be the first to welcome you to May, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, our month in the nation’s diversity calendar.
It begins as we all wait to see if anyone famous/important tests positive for Covid after the weekend’s 3,000 person indoor celebration of free-speech and normalc...
When an Asian American politician accuses an opponent of racism, that’s usually worth a mention.
But it’s worth a double take when the accusation is made by one Asian American against another.
Asian vs. Asian racism? That’s the issue in California, and it’s a situation the entire AAPI community sh...
