Date: Friday, April 27, 2012 Time: 9AM to 4PM
Place: CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Concourse Level, Manhattan
Dennis Arguelles is the Director of Program Development for Search To Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), a social service agency serving the Historic Filipinotown community of Los Angeles and Filipino Americans throughout Los Angeles County. Mr. Arguelles is the former President and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), a federation of over 35 community-based organizations in the greater Los Angeles area.
Mr. Arguelles previously served as the Assistant Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and is the co-author and editor of several essays, articles and texts, including one of the first in-depth studies of poverty in Los Angeles’ Asian communities. In 2007 he was appointed to the City of Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Review Commission by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Mr. Arguelles received his B.A. in Political Science and M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA.
May Y. Chen is an adjunct professor at the City University of New York, where she has taught labor studies courses and coordinated labor exchanges with Asia for the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies since 2009. In October 2011, Ms. Chen was appointed as an Advisory Commission Member for the White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
Previously, Ms. Chen was the International Union Vice President for Workers United, Service Employees International Union. She served as the International Union Vice President of UNITE HERE, and Local 23-25 Manager and New York Metropolitan Area Joint Board Secretary-Treasurer.
Ms. Chen is a Founding Member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and continues to serve on its New York Chapter Board. She also serves as Board President of the New York State Immigrant Action Fund. She holds an A.B. in East Asian Studies from Harvard/Radcliffe College and an M.A. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dennis Chin is the Communications Coordinator at Center for Social Inclusion, where he oversees communications work, including media relations, online strategy and media/editorial content.
Mr. Chin’s work is informed by his early experiences within strong women of color and LGBT people of color communities organizing for visibility and survival. These experiences led him to contribute to local, state and national campaigns for justice, dignity, access and opportunity for all. He served as a communications specialist for the Center for Community Change, working to pass federal legislation for health care and immigration reform.
Mr. Chin serves on the steering committee of the Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY), and also on the board of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities.
Steve Chung has been President of United Chinese Association of Brooklyn (UCA) since 2003. Mr. Chung is an Electronic Engineer specializing in the test and evaluation field. He came to the US from Hong Kong in 1973 and enrolled as an English Language Learner in high school. He holds a Masters degree in Information Management Systems for Engineering Design.
Under Mr. Chung’s leadership, UCA has grown to be the largest and the only non profit organization that provides both direct social services and civil justice advocacy in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Currently, UCA has three major programs – Senior Service, Youth Development and Community Outreach.
James Guo is a Chinese-American undergraduate student majoring in English at Hunter College/CUNY, and has to deal with issues involved with having “Chinese-American” and “English major” in the same sentence. He often writes creatively, combining fantastic elements with urban grit and multicultural characters, and also rarely writes about himself in the third person.
James Hong is the Civic Participation Coordinator at the MinKwon Center for Community Action (formerly YKASEC). A 2nd generation Korean American from Miami, Florida, Mr. Hong joined the MinKwon Center in 2010 and oversees the Center’s Civic Participation Program, which seeks to empower the community through the electoral process by organizing voter registration, research, education, and mobilization efforts. He was most recently a Senior Research Analyst at Market Dynamics Research Group, Synovate USA and Synovate Korea.
Carol Huang is Assistant Professor of the School of Education at City College of New York/CUNY. Prof. Huang received her Masters degrees in Theater Arts from Michigan State University and Bilingual & Special Education from New York University, and her doctorate in Educational Policy from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research areas are the history of Asian Americans, Chinese foreign students in the United States, and the education of immigrants. She has won an International Biographical Literature Award for a biography of the first Chinese Ph.D. on Railway Engineering and Management, Dr. Ching-Chung Wong. She produced a documentary on classical Chinese arts for PBS, Art and Power in China, and is completing two new documentaries: one on New York City subway, “Metroxical New York,” and “Chiapas on the Prairie: Mexican Migrants in the Midwest.”
Prof. Huang currently serves on the Program Committee of the American Educational Research Association.
Tarry Hum is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College/CUNY. Prof. Hum received her Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her doctorate from UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research. Her areas focus broadly on immigration, community economic development, and urban planning.
Prof. Hum’s publications include articles in the Economic Development Quarterly, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Progressive Planning Magazine, Regional Labor Review, AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community, and chapters in edited volumes published by the Russell Sage Foundation, Stanford University Press, and Temple University Press.
Prof. Hum was recently appointed to the Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Center’s Environmental Psychology program.
Iris Lam is an undergraduate student with a double major in Linguistics and Rhetoric, Studio Arts, and a minor in Asian American Studies, at Hunter College/CUNY. She hopes to take the skills she learns and apply it to a future career in the classroom.
Russell C. Leong is an award winning prose and poetry writer (the American Book Award), and former editor of UCLA’s Amerasia Journal. Prof. Leong received his MFA in Directing from UCLA’s School of Film and Television.
Prof. Leong served as the City University of New York’s Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at Hunter College in Spring 2011 and Spring 2012. He is also the editor of www.uschinamediabrief.com.
Russell Lum is an activist and Justice and Peace Representative at Little Sisters of the Assumption. Mr. Lum represents Little Sisters at the United Nations and Occupy Wall Street, and is involved with a number of campaigns including the campaign to pass New York State DREAM Act legislation. Originally from Northern California, Mr. Lum did his undergraduate study in Political Science and Theology in Los Angeles.
Peter Kwong is Distinguished Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, Professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College, and Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is best known for his work on Chinese Americans and on modern Chinese politics. Prof. Kwong sits on the Board of Directors of several organizations: Downtown Community TV; Manhattan Neighborhood Network; International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship; and The New Press, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Foundation.
Glenn D. Magpantay is the Director of the Democracy Program at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. His work at AALDEF includes enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act with regards to bilingual ballots and redistricting, access to the vote, Asian American political opinion, and census public education, advocacy, and monitoring.
Mr. Magpantay has represented Asian Americans in high profile voting rights cases including US v. Boston which resulted in Boston’s first-ever bilingual ballots in Chinese and Vietnamese, and Chinatown Voter Education Alliance v. Ravitz.
Mr. Magpantay teaches “Race & the Law” at Rutgers School of Law – Newark, “Asian American Civil Rights” at Hunter College/ CUNY, and a clinical seminar on “Individual Rights and Representation” at Brooklyn Law School.
Mr. Magpantay attended the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook on Long Island, and graduated cum laude from New England School of Law in Boston – after being admitted as an affirmative action beneficiary.
Joyce Moy is the Executive Director of the Asian American / Asian Research Institute. She was the first Asian American director of a NYS Small Business Development Center. Her area of expertise is entrepreneurship and economic development. She has taught business law and taxation at Queens College, the CUNY School of Law, and at Cornell University School of Law. She is a former practicing attorney with over 15 years experience in corporate law, franchising, taxation and commercial areas. She recently served on the NYS Governor’s Taskforce on Small Business and co-chaired the NYC Comptroller’s Taskforce on Community Benefit Agreements.
Paul Ong is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Asian American Studies at the UCLA School of Public Affairs. Prof. Ong has done research on the labor market status of minorities and immigrants, displaced high-tech workers, work and welfare and transportation access. He is currently engaged in several projects, including studies on the effects of neighborhood economies on welfare and work, community economic development in minority communities, and the labor market for healthcare workers.
Previous research projects include studies of the impact of defense cuts on California’s once-dominant aerospace industry, the impact of immigration on the employment status of young African Americans, and the influence of car ownership and subsidized housing on welfare usage. Prof. Ong was co-author of a widely reported 1994 study on Asian Pacific Americans, which challenged the popular stereotype of Asians as the country’s “model minority.”
In Fall 2010 and Fall 2011, Prof. Ong served as the City University of New York’s Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Elizabeth R. OuYang is President of OCA-NY, a civil rights organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the political, economic, and cultural rights of Asian Americans. OCA-NY is the lead advocacy organization seeking justice for Private Danny Chen, a 19 year old soldier found dead in Afghanistan after being hazed and racially taunted by his superiors. In 2010, under her leadership, OCA-NY was the lead advocacy organization helping Qing Wu, a 29 year old lawful permanent resident secure a governor’s pardon to stop his removal from the U.S. because of a teenage criminal record.
Ms. OuYang has been a civil rights attorney for the past 25 years. She teaches a pre-law comparative constitutional course at Columbia University and New York University. In 2001, Ms. OuYang was appointed by President Clinton as a special assistant to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Emily Park is a is 1.5 generation Korean American who became involved with MinKwon Center through DREAM Act activism and internship at the New York Immigration Coalition for the summer, 2011. Ms. Park joined MinKwon Center in January 2012 as a youth program associate. She hopes to educate and empower youth by working together on issues regarding Asian American, immigration and human rights to education.
Remoy Philip is an undergraduate student in Creative Writing at Hunter College/CUNY. Originally from the quiet and dry Texas Panhandle, he now calls the entirety of the North East “home.”
Seth M. Pollack is an undergraduate pursuing a B.A. in Urban Studies at Queens College. He also serves as a co-chair of the Political Action Group at Planned Parenthood of New York City.
Iva Radivojevic spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus before settling in NYC to pursue her artistic goals over a decade ago. Ms. Radivojevic’s films explore the themes of identity, migration and immigrants.
Ms. Radivojevic is the recipient of the 2011 Princess Grace Award : Graduate Film Scholarship and her films have screened at various film festivals including Toronto’s HotDocs Film Festival and were broadcast on PBS, The Documentary Channel as well as international networks. Her work was also shown at numerous galleries around the globe and her most recent collaborative film Matthew 24:14 won the 2011 International Documentary Challenge competition for Best Director, Best Film and Best Use of Genre. She also runs a video blog where she aims to produce one film each week, follow what she’s up to at ivaasks.com.
Ken Ruan is an undergraduate student studying sociology at Hunter College/CUNY. When he is not knee-deep in sociological articles, contemporary fiction, and postmodern philosophy, Mr. Ruan is scattering ink on blank paper while combing the urban grid of New York City. As a voracious reader and short story writer, Mr. Ruan’s goal is to become a published writer and a local celebrity, poised in community activism.
Rachana Shah leads the redistricting campaign for Taking Our Seat. Ms. Shah is a graduate of Villanova University School of Law. At Villanova, she worked with detained immigrants and at a legal clinic in a low-income community. Prior to law school, Rachana worked for the New York City Council and The After-School Corporation. While in college, she interned with the Indian American Center for Political Awareness – Local Leadership Development Program in New York.
Martyna Starosta was born in Poland and grew up in Germany. A resident of Brooklyn, Ms. Starosta graduated from the University of the Arts in Berlin and is currently pursuing her MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College, New York. She also teaches Media Studies in Hunter’s Film and Media Department: Film & Media in Digital Age, and Introduction to Media Studies.
Ms. Starosta works both individually and collaboratively. Her projects have been presented in numerous festivals, shows and online platforms, including the Anthology Film Archive, Beta Spaces, 2012 City University Film Festival, Chelsea Art Museum, NYU Gallatin Galleries, Red Hook Film Festival, Union Docs (organized by Rooftopfilms), The Brecht Forum, The Commons (organized by The Brooklyn Filmmaker’s Collective).
Darrel Sukhdeo is a community leader and activist working to profile the Indo-Caribbean peoples and to build relations and partnerships between their communities and others. Mr. Sukhdeo was born in Guyana to a Trinidadian mother and Guyanese father but grew up in Trinidad where he spent his formative years and young adulthood. As a gateway to building relationships and partnerships on behalf of his Indo-Caribbean community here in New York City, Mr. Sukhdeo collaborates with Agenda21, the Rajkumari Center, the American Cancer Society, Asian American / Asian Research Institute – CUNY, Families for Freedom, South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council, and the Indo Caribbean Alliance among others.
Samantha Varn is a graduate student at Queens College/CUNY studying Urban Affairs. Her current areas of research are community revitalization and economic development. She has been active in social justice and tenants’ rights movements for many years.
Esther Wang joined the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) staff in June of 2008 after participating as an active member for several years. As a CAAAV member, she represented the organization in a city-wide coalition working on police violence issues and was active in the Chinatown Tenants Union. Prior to CAAAV, Ms. Wang worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights doing media and communications work, and has also worked as a public school teacher in New York City.
Jimmy Yan is General Counsel in the Office of the Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer. Mr. Yan is the first Asian American to serve as General Counsel to a Borough President. In this role, he advises the Borough President and his staff on all legal issues and matters in the office ranging from policy to operations. In addition, Mr. Yan leads the Borough President’s Immigrant Rights Task Force and is a liaison to the Asian American community.
Prior to the Borough President’s Office, Mr. Yan served as the General Counsel in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and as a Deputy Chief Counsel to the 2003 New York City Charter Revision Commission. He also worked as an attorney at Advocates for Children and the Legal Aid Society.
Mr. Yan graduated from NYU School of Law, and University of California at Berkeley with degrees in English and Ethnic Studies.
Planning Committee
Carol Huang
Tarry Hum
Trevor Lee
Russell Leong
Joyce Moy
Paul Ong
Antony Wong
Sponsor
CUNY Diversity Grant
