Education: Challenges & Perspectives – Workshop 1B: Role of Media in Community Development

Keming Liu:

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Keming Liu and the presider of this workshop today. This workshop as you see in description of today’s program is media. Media is one of the most powerful tools of image projection in America. It still relegates Asian American issues to the backburner. High profile news anchors such as Connie Chung, I cited her because most of you have seen her on TV, often fall victim in an enterprise that still favors the all-American blonde. That’s at least my perception of the media enterprise. The glass ceiling is still in place for Asian Americans to break. With us today are four distinguished speakers who are on the front line to help shape a new media savvy and empower a generation of Asians in the media who hopefully, will be capable of bringing some change.

Our first speaker is Mami Kuwano, who is the currently the Director of Youth Programs at Downtown Community Television. She will share with us today the role that media can play in community development. The second speaker is Ms. Park, who is the Director of Manhattan Neighborhood Network News channel. She is also the executive director of [inaudible] for Korean community development, and she is also an independent filmmaker. Many hats. Our third speaker is Mr. Allen Cohen. He is the Senior Advisor of the Chinese American Planning Council, program producer of Sinocast. Last, but not least, Ms. Gullas, she is the director of Asian Women in Media. Thank you for being with us today.

Mami Kuwano:

Hi, my name is Mami Kuwano. I am from Downtown Community Television, DCTV. With me is Helen Cho, she is one of my students. DCTV is a community media organization that was founded in 1973 by independent filmmakers John [inaudible] and his wife [Keiko]. John is a twelve-time Emmy Award winner, him and [inaudible] have been making documentaries about people, showing lives of the people, that are not normally shown on mainstream TV I would say. He started out making documentaries about homeless people, sweatshop workers in Chinatown. Helen is right now handing out our brochure, that’s our seasonal letters that will tell you a lot more about what we do at DCTV.

One of the important things that John and Keiko started to do at DCTV is that… they started out providing workshops to people in Chinatown, Chinese communities. But what John [inaudible] said is that DCTV is a place where just about anybody can walk in, be welcomed, and get training on video equipment, how to use video equipment, how to use video to express their own point of view. There are a lot of programs that we’ve been running, especially with the people who usually don’t get access to those expensive equipment or expensive training workshops. So what we do is we design programs working with kids in a homeless shelter, people with disabilities, new immigrants. We would have them in our facility for a certain amount of time, one year, half a year. We teach them out to use equipment, video equipment, and show them how to make a documentary that tells their own stories.
One of the problems that DCTV has always been putting a lot of energy into is the youth program where we teach high school students how to make documentaries. We call these youth programs Pro TV; short for Professional Television Training Program. It’s a program, actually, was developed by Hye Jung Park right here who’s sitting next to me. She used to be the program director of DCTV so she can answer any questions if I can’t answer. Every year we have five to eight students, we select them mainly from tough neighborhoods or people have tough backgrounds. Almost 100% of them are from minority communities. We train them for two years in television production, mainly how to produce documentaries. We have them tell their own stories about their lives or about their perspectives.

Actually, we also have them do international reporting assignments. Most of them have never left America, and a lot of them haven’t even left New York. We’d send them to places like Laos, India, Mexico, Siberia, or Russia. We have them produce documentaries about their experiences in these foreign countries. Helen over here, she went to Mexico this summer. She’s right now editing her documentary. She can tell you about what her experiences were like.

So every year we have at least one or two Asian American students among the group of students in Pro TV. From my experience, through working with these Asian American students, it was very interesting for me to find out that some Asian American young people are very strongly identifying themselves as Asian, as Chinese, or Korean. I feel like some of them have a strong identity as Asians, but there are other young people who feel like they’re just American, they’re born and raised in New York or America. They just feel like they’re Americans, but somehow a lot of Chinese don’t feel like they’re 100% accepted or approved as Americans.

It was very interesting for me to find out these kinds of things. Whatever it is, I felt it was very important for the Asian American young people to learn objectively about how they fit in American society and how they are portrayed in the American society as Asian Americans. After they learn about it objectively, I think it was important for them to speak up about who they really are and what their experiences are as Asian Americans in America. Not just American, in Pro TV, we feel that it’s first, it’s very important for them to use video to learn about themselves.

One of the first assignments that Pro TV students get after getting enrolled into Pro TV is a bio assignment. We call it Bio Project where each student has to make a short biography video about their own life for like five to ten minutes. They really have to be honest about who they really are and who they really think they are, but not who people think they are. I’m going to be showing you an example of one project that Helen made in a little bit.

Actually this bio project, especially when they have to make a video about themselves or express their own opinions that they never really expressed before, I really felt that making video is a very, very interesting grassroots media tool because we’ve had like really the most shyest, very quiet Pro TV students who would not be able to make like a one minute speech in front of three adults. Being able to make their own video, telling their own stories and showing it to 200 adults, you can impress these people. It is a very empowering thing for kids, especially from the minority community. So that’s how I feel about this program. I’m going to show Helen’s biography video, it’s only about five minutes. Then I want to have Helen comment a little about how she can help the Asian community by making these videos…

[Video playing]

Keming Liu:

So I would like to ask Helen to comment on how she feels about making these videos and how she can help the Asian community or society as a whole by showing these videos in a grassroots level.

Helen Cho:

Well starting off, I just want to say that it was really, really hard for me to make. Because first of all, I don’t really feel comfortable about making a whole video about who I am for five minutes. It was really hard for me, at the same time it’s hard for me because I’m Korean but I’m American. I grew up in American culture, but at the same time at home, it’s food Korean, language Korean, all Korean. It was really hard for me to mix that and be like this is who I am and this is my video. When it did come out, it was sort of like believing to come out and be like, I guess, this is one part of my life and to show people that, I felt like it was more like they understood who I am just by looking at that video. I didn’t have to go up to them and worry about how they are going to stereotype me or any kinds of preconceptions of who I am. I didn’t have to do that because when they saw this video, it was more like they understood who I am.

I felt like making this kind of media, especially for me being in high school, is really important because not only does it sort of deteriorate all the stereotypes that Asian Americans have, but as a person, it makes you go through the whole you know, if you’re going through the identity crisis; it makes you sort of ease that growing up thing. I felt as like I said, people were understanding more. In order for people to break away from that stereotype or those kinds of things that sometimes I feel hurt and sometimes confuses me myself being American and being not treated as American or getting racial slurs or something like people telling me to go back to my own country when this is my country.

I felt that if I show this to people who weren’t in the Asian American group, they would sort of understand me more. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but I feel like more Asian Americans have to come out with these kinds of documentaries showing their lives because everyone is different and we have to break away from those kinds of things that people generalize.

Keming Liu:

Thank you Helen. Sorry to cut you. We’re going to hold off the questions until the end with all the speakers. If you have some questions, you can jot them down now so you don’t forget.

Mami Kuwano:

Right after this, if anybody is very interested in youth films like this, we created the documentary film festival [inaudible] with public radio. It’s 4 o’clock today actually. It’s not only the videos from DCTV, it’s from all over the country.

Keming Liu:

Our second speaker is Ms. Park.

Hye Jung Park:

Hi, nice to meet you. For the last 10 years I have been working as a community media organizer and producer and have always been struggling and fighting against mainstream media and talking about representation of Asian American and Korean workers and migrants to bring out the voices of those of who had a lot of concerns and who had been always silent. It was sort of a dichotomy between mainstream media and community media. In the recent two months, I have been having a really, really interesting experience. It’s not only mainstream vs. independent media, or mainstream vs. marginalized communities, but when Keming introduced me, currently I work at MNN, I’m the executive director [inaudible], a Korean community organization.

Through a look at their, such an interesting experience about the mainstream vs. much organized video community, so how the media misrepresents those who marginalized in all the community. What happened was that, as you know, the war on terrorism is going on now. Through the war in Iraq, thousands of innocent people were killed and our soldiers were killed. But, the war is not over, it may be near the end, but the war in our community, its going on and it gets severe and thousands of immigrants are now deported and detained and [inaudible]. A lot of our people are in fear now, even those who have a green card or citizens or even who are born here are in fear. There are communities across the country which have been put under surveillance and arrest by the FBI and other agencies. Either way, this kind of war [inaudible] divides our own communities, immigrant communities, and even among people of colored communities. What [inaudible] of Korean community consists of one point of progress and one point of [inaudible] and second generation Americans.

In March, we planned to have an anti-war event in Korean Association, and it was cancelled due to one of the major Korean newspaper told to report the association. You guys are going to be in big trouble, and I am going to report this, that you have to cancel. The Korean association got a phone call from Korean consulate not to hold the event in the Korean Association. Then, since then, actually yesterday was about eight articles in the newspaper now keeps on telling us [inaudible] in Korea against the mainstream. [inaudible] communist rule, I know a particular thing happened in Chinatown too. So now the organization is being red-taped [inaudible]. Actually one person who works for the city council member [inaudible], they are pushing city hall to fire him. It’s frustrating, because that is a major Korean newspaper. And we don’t have any other, we don’t have our own newspaper. What the organization does is distribute fliers.

In our statement, we want peace, we are against war, but that doesn’t mean that we are anti-US. We are anti-war, but it doesn’t mean [inaudible]. This kind of clash is going on every day now, so if you [inaudible], yellow ribbon campaign, [inaudible] campaign is going on. [inaudible], so, I don’t really blame whatever but I think as media who are representing [inaudible] I think you have to, I want to respect [inaudible], so I support different opinions, but, until now, [inaudible]. Actually I saw some of them sitting there and, but, so why is this whole thing just going on. I feel a need to have this kind of alternative media or mainstreaming alternative to give our voices.

It’s interesting, if you look at the history of Asian American media movements, they started in the early 70’s, right after the Civil Rights movement. All those people like in New York there is the Asian [inaudible], this year they are doing their 26^th anniversary. And also [inaudible] in San Francisco based in [inaudible], and also V\visual Communications in L.A. They all started as media activists, and they were [inaudible] for Mao, [inaudible], so in the community, and become the voice of the community. And then they [inaudible] in the 80’s and 90’s, [inaudible]. I think the history of the Asian American media movement, especially Christine Fisher is interesting.

Then, in the 80’s and 90’s, I see more individual, emergence of the individual expressions and [inaudible] theories and [inaudible] and there is more creativity. I think we still but are we really, when we look at mainstream, do we have representation in mainstream or do we want representation in the mainstream then because [inaudible] is more [inaudible] commercialized, or more targeted toward consumers, do we want to be part of it, or just creating it. One good thing is that because of the whole low cost of video cameras now more and more individuals and organizations they use video, basically young people now, they just run with a camera and go out to the street. You see, they took a camera and a laptop computer and shot everything on the bus, and uploaded on the web. It was interesting, but I don’t know how to use it at all.

But I think, this technology and low cost gave tools to the communities, and [inaudible]. In Chinatown, youth and [large patch of incoherent rambling]. So I think it’s exciting in a way. But still, our challenge is that we do not have, maybe reproduced [inaudible] distribution systems is controlled by certain groups of people. We do grassroots distribution but I think its [inaudible]. Well, [inaudible] some propaganda, our young people did [inaudible], we talked about what can we do, there is the issue about the INS and deportation and all these things. So I just wanted to show you a clip, about four minutes, it was aired through the public access channels and also web-casting.

[Video playing]

September 11^thbrought on a heap of attacks that perhaps we haven’t seen before. We can’t put everything on September 11^th. September 11^th allowed this government to basically get the green light for policies that had been written and drafted and put into place years before. Our organization along with the other members of the coalition against special registration feel that its really important that people are aware of what’s going on through this program. They’re asking tens of thousands of Muslim men and teenage boys to come into an INS office and present themselves for photographic and fingerprinting, and what they’re not telling them is that they’re also presenting themselves in many cases for deportation and possible detention.

That’s it.

Keming Liu:

Where could you show once you make these?

Hye Jung Park:

It was shown through the public access channels and it was simultaneously direct-casting, so some people in San Francisco they watched it and they called for the Q & A.

Keming Liu:

Thank you, Mrs. Park, again, we’ll hold our questions off for later. Our next speaker, Mr. Cohen.

Allen Cohen:

Thank you. Can all of you kind of come up and sit here? You know, small crowd, large room, sit a little bit closer. Okay, while you’re moving, let me just introduce myself. Many of you do not know me, and you are probably wondering what is this Caucasian guy up here talking about the Chinese media. I’ve been in the Chinese community for 35 years, this is my 35^th year. I am one of the founders of the Chinese American Planning Council I was the first executive director of the council. Many of you know the council? All of you? Most of you know us, but just for those of you that don’t, we’re a soup and nuts grassroots organization starting with a bunch of volunteers in the 60’s, growing out of the civil rights movement and educating for the rights of Chinese American citizens in the U.S.

As you know, the Chinese were excluded, the only group that was ever excluded by law from the United States. The vast immigration laws through the [inaudible-Walkens] act, which was really aimed against Asians, Eastern-Europeans as well as left wing people from all over the world. Some of our board members who actually founded the group worked with other civil rights group to appeal the [inaudible], that was appealed in ’65 because the immigration began to start in ’66. Because there were really no social services in the Chinatown community in ’65, it was comprised of about 26,000 individuals, mostly men.

The individuals from the community, mostly professionals, a few Caucasians, mostly Chinese Americans, banded together and really began to think what can we do. There are no social services now in the community, no educational services except the schools. Luckily we knew that to help the community we were going to inundated very shortly by waves of immigrants and we had to help them to move into the mainstream. So with about 76 dollars, a board member sold their car, another person donated some space at 3 Pell street, board members volunteered their services, we had a few social workers and psychologists that donated their time to give counseling. Mrs. Kee who is a speaker today and is one the other founders toward the English language classes and gradually the council began to generate some interest for programs. They agitated a small grant from the city and [inaudible Anti-Poverty Act] for 76 thousand dollars in toughly about 1966, 67. I came in about ’68, became the first executive director, began to develop some strategies for services and after two years of futile meetings, still not talking, the number of church groups, the Chinese [inaudible] association, we really could not get our act together.

I decided that the reason the community was so great, we really began to do some serious service work, and we did. We began to provide multi-social services so people could come in for any kind of service that they needed, and out of that small little program about [inaudible], we developed the largest, most comprehensive Chinese-American education and social services and community development organization in the United States. Currently, we employ over one thousand people, and one thousand teenagers that work with us in the summertime are in the summer program. We have looked at the community in a totality, rather than starting out doing psychiatric services or daycare services. They say, when you look at community, you have to look at the entire community, includes women, children, parents, grandparents, you have to look at economic development as well as social development, and education development.

This was a very small organization, and we took on a big task for ourselves. Of course, and over the years we succeeded by doing well. Of course today there are many other groups in the Chinatown community doing similar types of work. Some a little bit different. But again, if you look at our organization’s goal, it is the most comprehensive in the United States in the Chinese American community. We are serving today, roughly six to seven thousand people a day. We are open seven days a week. Some of our programs like our training programs provide services on a 24 hour a day basis. We have several residence programs that people can live in our facilities 24 hours. We’ve built over 240 units of low-income housing. We’ve developed a number of economic development enterprises which generate some income [inaudible] from the sector of our work. We have childcare services, we have services for seniors, we have employment training services, English language classes, and so forth.

How did this all happen? Wow. Long story, I’ll try to be concise. And the media plays a role in this, and I think this is what we’re really here to talk about. We were fortunate in the fact that the Chinese community, like many immigrant communities, they had developed their own press resources. And as you know, there are three major presses in the Chinese community – China Press, Sing Tao, and The World Journal. What would you guess to be the circulation of the Chinese press? Daily circulation, anybody guess? 60,000 in New York City. The same would be true for Sing Tao. The biggest press is the United Journal, which has 80,000 in New York City and about 300,000 nationally.

The papers are very similar in terms of what they present to the community. They are interested in China, PRC, Taiwan. In addition there are many small newspapers, which I call penny-savers, that periodically come and go, and they are usually distributed in print. The Chinese readership is vast, and the numbers don’t really tell the whole story. Many old people go to the CPC or go to the library where there are free newspapers, they go to the associations where there are free newspapers, and the same papers are often read by 3 different people. And I believe, I don’t have the statistics to prove it, but I believe that some people read 2 or maybe even 3 newspapers daily. I see this as I go around in the community So, the media plays a very important role in communication.
Now it’s not only the print media…when I first came to Chinatown in ’65 it was predominantly the print media, there were already some radio stations. But now communications go up, there’s also television, and across the United States in most of Chinese communities, there are newspapers, St. Louis has a newspaper, Los Angeles, San Francisco, particularly on the west coast the Chinese press is really strong. Now, in addition the radio stations, the TV’s, there are two Chinese network TV’s that receive signals by satellite, so they’re bringing in, every day, I was wondering at this, wonderful technological system here, just marveling at it. And now they made the Chinese papers were very primitive, basically, when I first saw it, I see the people working here. Now everything’s electronic, and it’s like this [snaps finger], coming right off the set. I worked very closely with Sino TV, I’m not on their payroll, so they’d be surprised [inaudible]. But I’m frequently in their office. They have the most modern equipment in terms of communication. Our [inaudible] programs both from the western media and also from various Chinese media sources.

The link-ups are really tremendous, and the community day, trans-American [inaudible] I’m talking about New York City [inaudible]nationally. With the national population approximately 900,000 in New York City, I would say Chinese makes up most of that population with approximately 400,000, a little shorter than 400,000. At one time, when I first came, the Chinese were concentrated primarily in lower Manhattan, Chinatown, in a pie-shaped square of about 9 blocks. Today, it extends from Chatham Square to Houston St. and almost from river to river. Above Houston Street we have several developments uptown north of Houston St. Not only that but in Brooklyn and Queens, if you look at some of the demographic maps that we have, you will see that the Chinese are all over New York City. Again, go back 20, 25, 30 years, there probably was a Chinese family in almost every community board. The city is divided into community boards.

We were just talking the other day about some people are afraid to go to Harlem, but there are still Chinese families living in Harlem. They’ve lived in Harlem for 25, 35, 40 years. So you will find Chinese people in almost every corner of New York City. I won’t say every, because we don’t know, but even in the Bronx, we tried to establish these programs in the Bronx and we found that the Chinese are very scattered, it’s a high-income level, in the Eastern part of the Bronx and the sections with restaurants [inaudible], not a lot of concentration. So the media plays a very important role in unifying the community. Again, with the different dialects of the community, the many different dialects, language groups, of course Mandarin is the dominant language and written language and it’s the common language.

So again, the print media is a very unifying force in the community. So even if you have diverse, and I’m going to go back a second, there’s a similarity in the newspapers and what they deliver to the readers. I’m talking about news, the Asian community, overseas, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, China, South America, even. And also, the community. I happen to be monolingual unfortunately and not speaking any Chinese. My wife tells me I don’t even speak English. I grew up in Brooklyn, she tells me I’m a foreign language speaker. So, I have no problem, I’m probably the only one in my family. My grandfather spoke 5 languages fluently and was conversant in 3 others. He was a Jewish writer for a Jewish newspaper called The Forwards which was on East Broadway, now there are Chinese restaurants. So that’s my exposure to foreign press when I was growing up. Pretty similar to the Chinese households. There were three major Jewish newspapers, there was The Forwardswhich was a socialist, anti-Communist paper, there was the [Freiheich], which was a left leaning newspaper, and a newspaper called The Tug which was a middle of the road newspaper.

Over the years as the Jewish community became Americanized, second generation and third generation, the readership fell off because the children did not speak the language. Maybe the second generation spoke the language, but they didn’t read it. This is very similar to the Chinese community. As long as the immigration patterns remain strong, the continual flow of immigrants comes in, the media will remain strong. As we get into the second and third generation, as people lose the language ability, although not necessarily the interest, the media will continue to play a major role in the Americanization process because if even when you look at the Chinese paper, they are playing a significant role in bridging that gap between eastern and western cultures. They’re familiarizing.

I’m sorry for taking so long, I’ll just take one minute to say that we of the council recognized this early and we tried to use the media to educate the people, not only about our own programs, because our programs were really aimed at helping them to move into the mainstream of American life by giving them the tools necessary to make that move. Talking about entitlement programs that they were entitled to but didn’t even know about before we came into existence. Very important for many people in our community. Giving them job training programs, we tried to make them knowledgeable. And we did this through our programs, but how did we reach the community, how did they know about us?

Through the media. There’s a whole other story that would take hours to tell about our relationship with the media which hasn’t always been a great one. But we’ve always tried to involve the media in our programs as much as possible so that they could get the word out. Whenever there’s a new program involved, we try to get it out through all phases and that’s where I come in with perhaps a side note, radio[inaudible], I produce a monthly show for them, we’re now in our tenth year, we’ve produced over 100 shows about community activities, about government programs, about how they need help. It’s an interactive program where people can call in themselves. I’ll end now. I’ve done too much, thank you very much.

Cecilia K. Gullas:

I would like to talk about the role of the Asian reporters and Asian writers in the mainstream media, particularly the New York times and the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream newspapers. Lately there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about the military fighting in Iraq, and they said that there were two ethnic groups who had the most representation, Filipinos and Hispanics. When I read through the article, believe it or not, I thought that Filipinos had the highest percentage among the soldiers fighting in Baghdad. I thought that they would be pictures of Filipino families or Filipino soldiers, can you believe it? The entire article was all about Hispanics, not one Filipino was presented in the article. I said forget about the Wall Street Journal, they think they are the best, but they are really not in presenting Asians. Our task is not only to educate the media, Asian, Korean, Chinese media, to write about Asians, but also to educate our beliefs in the mainstream Americans that Asians exist. Number two, we need to have a critical voice.

Unfortunately, we come from communities that are very conservative. As I was telling the people, I was in a three day conference in the committee of Chinese Americans, the committee of 100. Very well funded, three days at the Waldorf Astoria. One of the sessions that invited the U.N. ambassador of China to the United Nations, and of course there was a lot of security, and we were all warned, the media was warned, this is strictly private, nobody may write about this, nobody may slip anything to the media about the Chinese ambassador to the U.N. has got to say about the role of North Korea or the role of Iran in the war. Nothing! Please, keep quiet. Okay, so my God I said, they’re spending so much money, and they are not even…

He was very good, very fluent. When the questions and answers came, we all had to write our question to the U.N. ambassador on a piece of paper, and it was very, what’s it called, they were only asking the questions that would not hurt the feelings of the ambassadors, and there were so many questions asked about the role of China in Iraq, and the role of China in North Korea. One of the questions that the lady asked, may I please know, what do you think about the Americans? What do you think, what do you think about Americans in New York City? I said, oh my God, this is what you called sanitized question and answer forum. Of course, the Chinese ambassador was very happy to get such a non-controversial question. The Americans are very friendly, they are very like [inaudible], t-shirts.

I said, oh my God, so, I was so frustrated like I wrote ten questions about all about controversial topics about SARS. I wanted to say, why is it the Chinese government did not say anything about SARS until it’s too late and the epidemic was full blown? So I wrote ten questions, and not one of my questions was read by the lady who was acting as a filter. Forget about the Chinese community, they’re conservative. Also, like Filipinos, I’m Filipino, and the Filipinos they only like to pray, in the newspaper I’m one of the most outspoken Filipinos. We write about something that’s very critical, the editor of the Filipino reporter is like delete, delete, delete. We write about Filipino’s in the church, [inaudible]. [inaudible] in the church. We write about Filipinos demonstrating or [inaudible], they would not put in the newspaper, delete, delete, delete.

That’s about the difference in Asian American communities, very, very conservative. Also, we don’t have a newspaper, unlike the Chinese, they have a daily one. But we need a newspaper that will cover the entire community so that people will read one newspaper. So you know what’s happening in the Korean, in the Indian community… The Indians are very good they have like ten newspapers when you go to Jackson heights, oh the Indian abroad, the Indian express, oh so many newspapers from India. But the [inaudible] community, hardly, no? They don’t have newspaper addressing the poor. There used to be one good magazine called A Magazine, used to be in Barnes and Nobles. Very good articles, excellent, but nobody was putting advertisement, only AT&T, and [inaudible]. [inaudible]. All everybody, no more, no more, all these newspapers [inaudible]. [inaudible]all these papers, no more A Magazine, no more. I wanted to write about this [inaudible]. I tried to get one article in the west side street about what [inaudible], so we want to write for the newspaper. We’re in the magazine. [inaudible] about the Koreans, about the Chinese, in India abroad they are so very generous about the community, only about India if you write about Mr. [inaudible], Mr. [inaudible] yes, but if you write about Mrs. [inaudible] no nothing, nothing. We love a newspaper that is the voice for Asians. Number two, I would like to say also as I said, we need to be more critical. For example, about Asian Americans, we are not included in the Affirmative Action.

Can you imagine that? If the average Hispanic would go to the university of Maryland or the university of Michigan, she would get 20% just because she is Hispanic. But if you are a Korean, you have to struggle, you get no extra points. Why? Why is it like that? The Bangladesh students, they are underserved The people from Puerto Rico, they come in they are already citizens, but our people are struggling just to become citizens. Why is it that we do not get any extra points? We’d like to enroll in Columbia. So I asked the president of Columbia about their affirmative action. I was the first one who marched along the island and said, why are Asian Americans not included in the Affirmative Action? Oh, because of the history, the history, you’re not included. Did you know Mr. Bollinger that yesterday there was a one day affair of the battle of [inaudible]. [inaudible].

And then I said, do you know how many Bangladeshi who study in Columbia were in that group? I said, only one, where do all the rest of the Bangladeshi go to school? Hunter? Where? Where do all the Bangladeshi’s go to school? Where? Where? In CUNY, all of them come to CUNY because it’s very cheap. They all go to community college they took mercy there. They go there from 7 to 5 in the morning to 10 at night, they are staying there, because they live in one apartment that’s in Jackson Heights, they have ten students in one room, so some work at night, some work in the day, so they cannot sleep in the house they can only change their underwear. Do you know where they sleep? They sleep at BMCC in the basement there because they have no place to sleep.

So, I’m telling you that the average Asian student is more underserved than the average Hispanic student and yet we don’t get any benefits. And we are not fighting for it. Have you seen any Asian Americans write in the New York Times? Why is it that the Asian Americans are not included in Affirmative Action? Have you seen anyone writing about it? If you see anybody writing about it, you should get checked [inaudible].

Allen Cohen:

David Chen is a reporter now of major stories in the New York Times.

Cecilia K. Gullas:

The last one, okay. It’s good, unfortunately, the good thing is that Asian Americans are finally making it to the front page. The bad thing is that the information is SARS. You have all these stories about Asian Americans, what my son told me, the way they cooked chicken in China, my son said please don’t give me any more Chinese food. I think that’s unfortunate that there are now everywhere you see China, China, China but it’s all about SARS. I’m in frustration about being Asian because there’s so much to fight about but there’s nothing changing, especially my Filipino community, nothing changed.

Keming Liu:

Thank you very much, I think we should give a round of applause to all the group members. Question time. Yes

Audience:

I have one comment and one question to all. My comment is responding to Mrs. Gullas. There are Taiwanese newspapers, one day one night. The general question, [inaudible] of the Asian week, it’s been published there on the web, but there is no Asian newspaper in English. Is it feasible to start one? That’s my general question to all of you, since you are media experts.

Cecilia K. Gullas:

Asian media is based in California? [inaudible] that was the only [inaudible] in the Rockefeller center, it used to be there.

Audience:

They are only available on the web, but it’s very simple, this is not like a subtle thing.

Keming Liu:

Before anyone would entertain this answer, I thought Mrs. Park earlier mentioned whether, should we fight to be represented in mainstream media and do we want to, and I think this question ties in very well with that comment you made. Do we want to be represented in the newspaper, which doesn’t really represent us at all as Asians in general.

Allen Cohen:

I would say that there’s been a tremendous change with and of course it’s not fast enough. When I first came to New York in Chinatown there was one Chinese person I was aware of working for the New York Times. His name was Benjamin Gin. The reason he was not on the news staff and he was like the middle manager guy because the reason I got to know him is that [inaudible] because he actually won a civil rights issue for a number of years. But today, as I mentioned, David Chen [inaudible] I read his article, he’s a regular reporter, he’s been a teacher for several months now. I’m not big at remembering names, but it struck me because the executive director CPC was David Chen, not the same genre. If you look on television, even CNN not so much, but on the major channels there’s now Kaity Tung, there is a Chinese broadcaster, usually a woman, with the exception of [inaudible]. Yea, he’s still around. Tee Wah Chang. Even when you travel outside of New York City, you will find Chinese, usually women broadcasters. In Florida I have seen Chinese women broadcasters. So, they are around. I’m also working now in developing a film project which is not a Chinese oriented but it’s about the Chinese community. If you go the movies and you watch not the big stars but the credits after, there’s a zillion names, you will find Chinese names in those credits as cameramen, as scripts, this is production of the film industry. At one point, it was only Mr. Ao who was the greatest cinematographer in the U.S. government history. But today, you will see Chinese names.

So, it’s not as fast as you would like, but it’s getting there. We haven’t broken the glass ceiling as far as I know, except in one case, CBS. In CBS, one of the major board members, I think he just resigned very recently, was Chinese. And you will find Chinese on the boards of major corporations. Again, the progress is slow, but it’s there, its moving, and I think with the young people coming up you’re going to see more of this. Going back to your original question sir, I think it’s a question of economics. I think the reason why the Chinese press is doing so well you just look at the ads, phenomenal. Business is great. Sino Cast will not give me their figures, but since they started 1480 radio the growth of the company has exploded, and its all due to revenues coming in because not only Chinese but other people seeing the need for advertising the Chinese market. So if there was a market for this, I think the papers would go, even before I mentioned the Jewish daily forwards. The India newspaper, it basically folded because the leadership was gone. However, it re-emerged as basically an English language paper devoted to the intellectual Jewish community because lots of people, Yiddish, again it’s not a huge paper, it has a relatively small circulation. So, a lot of papers to fill a void. If anybody in this room wants to start one I’d be happy to help. It requires a lot of money, it requires a lot of dedication, and you need to advertise, because basically it becomes a business situation and if you have the revenues the paper will be there.

Cecilia K. Gullas:

Responding to that, there was a film that came out, called the Chinese-American experience. The filmmaker, Bill Moyers , he was there as a Chinese-American [inaudible] and he said it would be posted on the net and you could write down your comments about this film. And it was phenomenal, everybody was emailing him, like congratulations, you did very good work for the Chinese-American community and then they were all writing about their parents, my father, how my father came here from China. We need more something like that. It took Bill Moyers who was very, very connected politically.

Audience:

I’d just like to say that there are so many things [inaudible]. First, I myself, I wrote two letters to LMDC to make comments. I couldn’t find a topic. You know what? I wrote two letters, first to LMDC to ask them to hear more about the Chinese museum in the Americas. Number two, I wrote to the New York Times, and I asked them to publish to support the Asian museums. The reason why, because we are, even though there are progress, Allen you are right, there is essential progress made, but compare [inaudible], because we Asians have no issues. Win Ho Lee, and the SARS. There are big issues. I still wish the New York times would have Asian American museums to [inaudible] all these Filipino, World War II military references, the Koreans , Bangladesh, in the museum. So this is an Asian museum, where we can worship, treasure, cherish, these most important, working, loyal, dedicated experience. This is how hard working, it’s about how America made it today.

That was not shared by mainstream Asian Americans, I think it was very important and I was disappointed in how Mr. Gin didn’t come today. He represented the old timer in Asian community journalist. The newspaper, you know, even though they make all the income, you know what, they are only for advertising. The Sing Tao, all advertising. The whole first page other than the logo, advertising. Twenty or thirty-thousand [advertising].

Keming Liu:

Ms. Gullas has addressed the issues of Asians in general. Any particular, whichever subgroup it is within the Asian continent, we are very quiet and I think that is still so. Hopefully, the new generation, the young generation will be more vocal and I think there will come a time when… We just have to continue our effort and this is today’s conference was supposed to talk about. Thank all of you, thanks to the speakers, thanks for your time.

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