I happened to be driving through Dayton, a step ahead of the president who was starting his “Condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy, I really mean it,” tour. It’s where presidential responsibility as consoler-in-chief meets campaign self-interest.
I’m just trying to get home. Trump’s just tryi...
Center for American Progress - Homeownership and high-quality affordable rental housing are critical tools for wealth building and financial well-being in the United States.1 Knowing this, American lawmakers have long sought to secure land for, reduce barriers to, and expand the wealth-building capa...
The evil that’s gripping the country, the deadly mix of guns, and white supremacy, Asian America has seen it before.
It’s definitely in our history. Just remember the name Fermin Tobera.
In the 1930s, when Filipinos were brought to America as 100 percent legal, colonized U.S. nationals primarily t...
After the first CNN Democratic debate, I noted that it was held in Detroit, the scene of the most famous Asian American hate crime that galvanized Asian American political activism and awareness. But in 2019, we didn’t really show up.
It was the whitest of the two debates, and the one who really pu...
Vincent Chin, the most famous of all Asian American hate crime victims, was murdered in the Detroit area, so maybe that was our way of being present at CNN’s Democratic presidential debate 2019, night one.
We were ghosts.
I listened for us. I didn’t hear Asian Americans mentioned once. Not even in...
I lost my chance to own and possess it.
I wanted it on eBay–but was outbid.
It was one of the original brochures of the 1904 World’s Fair. The one that had the human zoos with the Filipinos, euphemistically called a “Filipino Exposition.”
An expo, what fun!?
A friend of mine found it for me. Dur...
Know your rights! Come to AALDEF’s free immigration clinic on Thursday, July 25, 2019, 6 pm to 8 pm, at Flushing Library, 41-17 Main Street, in Queens. Free legal consultations, assistance with DACA renewal applications, mental health resources and benefit screenings, and information about financial...
Glefen is a Lyft driver I met this week in DC. He immigrated here from the Philippines as a kid, and is in his twenties now. A naturalized American.
He makes me an OG. But what does that make my dad? An OOG?
Glefen has the AC on in DC, where we’re coming up to the hottest day in the last few years...
I finally get out of Iowa, where it’s not inhospitable, but I am reminded of a group of Filipino men and their Japanese American wives and their Filipino-Japanese American kids who showed up in Iowa to live and farm in 1942 and were told to get out.
It happened. It made the news.
In 2019, after my...
I’m hurtling through the heartland where the majority of the time the posted speed limit is 75-80 mph. Then my car broke down.
I’m heading to Washington, DC to do my show, “Emil Amok: All Pucked Up.” (Get your tickets here.)
I just thought replicating my father’s immigrant experience in my own cou...
On June 5, 2019, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) opened a third notice and comment period for its proposed rule changes affecting the fee waiver application process. These proposed changes would discourage immigrants from filing for fee waivers and immigration benefits and would li...
With the Supreme Court hearing the DACA appeal in the fall, Trump’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will surely a campaign issue going forward. Same with the Census citizenship question that was blocked for now but thrown back to the lower court. And then there’s the 5-4 SCOTU...
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision to block the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census in Department of Commerce v. New York (18-966) and remanded the case for further proceedings.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) and the N...
The New York Times has been called “The Gray Lady” for decades, supposedly because its inked front page always gave a gray, bland appearance with few or no pictures.
The digital age has brought more color, but Wednesday morning was exceptional.
The picture said it all.
Facedown in the river were ...
Are you still in that reflective meditative coma I’ve suggested? Or have you busted out, ready to take action?
Five years ago, I proposed a special time– a period of community reflection– as an adjunct to May’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, these days reduced to an obligatory and ...
NBC News - After waiting nearly a decade, Jin Ming Cao still hasn’t seen his money.
Cao, a 36-year-old former waiter in Manhattan, had joined some of his co-workers in 2008 to sue their employer, a popular New York Chinese restaurant, Wu Liang Ye. The charges included failure to pay minimum wage an...
Last night, the New York State (NYS) Senate passed the “Green Light Bill,” which restores access to driver’s licenses to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status. Shortly thereafter, Governor Cuomo signed the bill into the law, making New York the 13th state in the country to provide equal ...
The pictures from Hong Kong are impressive.
Hong Kongers are resisting and standing up to China’s real attempt to extradite dissidents and transform the old “one country, two systems” idea into more of the ruling party’s autocratic view.
Seeing the massive crowds, it’s never been more clear that p...
Every year I tell you, dear readers, about how my dad died the week of Father’s Day.
This year, I’m announcing my show about my 1920s Filipino dad is coming to the east coast.
“Emil Amok” is about how a colonized Filipino arrived in America in 1928, and how I completed his journey taking him to Ha...
I wonder if Trump could imagine an Asian American war hero like Dan Inouye, the former Hawaii Senator awarded the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart for what he did in the south of France during World War II? Or would he see a Democratic firebrand who was leading the charge against him?
Too compli...
