Join me on Saturday, February 12 from 8:00pm - 10:00pm at the Soap Factory on 514 2nd Street Southeast in Minneapolis. We'll be holding ALL OUR BE-LONGINGS, a TalkingImageConnection reading.
It's free, with hot cider and features the great local writers Sarah Fox, Didi Koka, Alison Morse, Andy Sturdevant, Stephanie Wilbur Ash and I as we invent poems, songs, and stories in response to Rosemary Williams' installation "Belongings" at the Soap Factory.
For more information contact 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org.
TalkingImageConnection brings together writers, contemporary visual art and new audiences in art galleries around the Twin Cities.
See you there!
Monday, January 31, 2011
31 Days in Laomerica: Part 14.
Some of the big meetings this month was with the students of the Lao Student Association of the University of Minnesota. I always appreciate them coming in to visit with us because there aren't very many of these organizations in the country, even with 230,000+ Lao.
Among the deep concerns in Minnesota in both the legislature and among community foundations this year are proposed cuts to higher education and support for after-school programs to support students and prevent them from dropping out.
We've discussed the figures many times that less than 7% of the Lao in the country have a bachelor's degree, and in Minnesota figures that suggest nearly 12,000 of the 25,000 Lao have less than a high school diploma.
Still, even at a greatly underestimated average of $20,000 a year, Lao Minnesotans represent at least $500,000,000 in economic activity. It's probably much higher, but we've never been provided the resources to study this in great depth.
I'm frequently concerned because as a community, it's safe to say we see less than even 1% of this circulating in our non-profits, temples and cultural activities. We certainly do NOT see anywhere close to $5 million circulating from our charitable efforts.
So where does it go?
And that's all a circular way of getting to the point of the meeting with the Lao Student Association, whose members are trying to raise $2,345 to hold a Lao New Year Festival on April 23rd at the University of Minnesota's Saint Paul Student Center.
They're in a good position, needing approximately $985 to meet their budget to feed and entertain approximately 500 people.
Having run enough projects like this over the last 20 years, I'd love to see them raise more for what they're trying to do.
It's a modest budget, with most of it split between food and the space and equipment rentals. Their plan is to use a Lao-owned business to cater the food, Reun Thai from Osseo.
Supporting efforts like this matters.
Too often there are those who simply take it as a given, that it is a historic inevitability that these events will take place. But that's just not so. Given every other thing that can take up our schedules or distract us, it takes a particular choice and commitment to organize a student New Year celebration.
I hate seeing them struggle for resources, especially less than a thousand dollars.
As a community, we need to step up.
Many hands make light work, as they say, and like they say we need to put our money where our mouths are, especially those who keep calling on the youth to help preserve the culture.
I don't want to see them emerging from this experience saying: "When we ask for help from our own people, they turn their backs."
Lao student New Years are always fascinating to me because it allows us to see what we've instilled in the youth as essential stories and traditions and artistic expressions to transmit to themselves and to others.
Do they retell the classic folktales or present sketches of our journey from Laos? Do they present a fashion show or a slideshow of their families over the last 35 years in America? Do they use the New Years to discuss the past or to explore what our future can be?
And for me, as I look at the history of our culture over the last 600 years, I see one of diversity and hospitality, one that has welcomed many others in the pursuit of harmony and the truth.
So, I often look at the student new years to see how they welcome others, especially non-Lao to show them the best of what we've tried to pass down for generations.
Like a good jazz performance, I don't expect these moments to be perfect. I think they're more interesting for how our emerging youth come together and learn from it, to roll with the uncertainties and everyday mishaps and not be paralyzed by chance and the whims of fortune.
Above all else, they're just a great bunch of people who were there for us when we needed them at so many events, such as the Lao Writers Summit and Legacies of War: Refugee Nation and many other projects to build our community. If you're interested in helping them, drop me a note at thaoworra@Gmail.com and let's help them make this an amazing year!
Bridging the Digital Divide: Is Community Wireless the Answer?
The New America Foundation and the Yale Law School Information Society Project are raising an interesting question this week at a meeting called Bridging the Digital Divide. They are revisiting the question of whether community wireless holds the answer.
Their opening premise is that "Communications technologies have continued to evolve and now increasingly provide opportunities for deploying low-cost broadband. However, conventional commercial business models for providing broadband often create bottlenecks to spreading connectivity."
If you look back, especially over the last five years, little attention or credibility has been given to the community and municipal wireless networks. But I'm writing this entry thanks to the availability of a municipal wireless network in Minneapolis, and I know many others who benefited regularly enough to say it's worth having the alternative. Growing up in rural Michigan, I remember the constant frustration from a lack of access and can still see the effect that lack can have on the quality of life regarding economic, educational and recreational opportunities there.
I can say personally that efforts like the Greater Columbus Freenet of the mid-1990s in Ohio were pivotal in connecting me effectively to a wider world and my reconnection to fellow refugees across the country. Back then, internet access was still mostly restricted to people in higher education and we were running the risk of creating a dangerous gulf between the digital haves and have-nots. The Greater Columbus Freenet served as a way to democratize the Internet, and increased demand and demonstrated the potential these services could provide. It was a dial-up initiative but much of the same community building spirit then should be what drives our work today to keep one another connected and to have equitable access to key services and transformative opportunities.
While the seminar with the New America Foundation covers mostly efforts in Europe and America, I am interested in how similar efforts have and will continue to take hold in countries like Laos. There non-profit organizations worked to establish bike-powered computers to provide internet access in remote villages, among other initiatives.
The most notable example was the Jhai Foundation’s Remote Information Technology Village Project, a concept that received support from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Nations Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme. But I think we can and should do more to support not only the presence of viable community access points but effective education and exchange opportunities there.
The Jhai Foundation is an American non-profit organization, begun in 1997 by Lee Thorn, a Vietnam War veteran who participated in the bombing of Laos, and Bounthanh Phommasathit, a Lao refugee from the American bombing. In the spirit of reconciliation, Jhai has undertaken several community development projects in 13 villages. The Remote IT Village Project was included in The New York Times’ list of top ideas of 2002. But as we move forward in the next decade, what next?
In 1998 there was a book called Does Jane Compute? by Roberta Fuger. It worried that women in America who were not engaged in computing might become second-class citizens. It did not address our worries for refugee and immigrant women who might easily become third or even fourth-class citizens for lack of access.
We need to be concerned when we see the recent results of the 2009 American Community Survey that indicates less than 4% of most Southeast Asian refugees in American over 25 have a college degree. The Vietnamese community has a 6.7% achievement rate, but considering the national average is 10.3% and among Asians overall is 19.8% there's clearly a lot left to do.
With my work with Lao non-profits and other refugee communities in the Midwest, can I say this access would improve our community efforts in economic development and recovery and supporting our elders and youth? It's not the absolute or magic solution, but it is an essential part of the process and we need to look into it and the opportunities it presents.
Their opening premise is that "Communications technologies have continued to evolve and now increasingly provide opportunities for deploying low-cost broadband. However, conventional commercial business models for providing broadband often create bottlenecks to spreading connectivity."
If you look back, especially over the last five years, little attention or credibility has been given to the community and municipal wireless networks. But I'm writing this entry thanks to the availability of a municipal wireless network in Minneapolis, and I know many others who benefited regularly enough to say it's worth having the alternative. Growing up in rural Michigan, I remember the constant frustration from a lack of access and can still see the effect that lack can have on the quality of life regarding economic, educational and recreational opportunities there.
I can say personally that efforts like the Greater Columbus Freenet of the mid-1990s in Ohio were pivotal in connecting me effectively to a wider world and my reconnection to fellow refugees across the country. Back then, internet access was still mostly restricted to people in higher education and we were running the risk of creating a dangerous gulf between the digital haves and have-nots. The Greater Columbus Freenet served as a way to democratize the Internet, and increased demand and demonstrated the potential these services could provide. It was a dial-up initiative but much of the same community building spirit then should be what drives our work today to keep one another connected and to have equitable access to key services and transformative opportunities.
While the seminar with the New America Foundation covers mostly efforts in Europe and America, I am interested in how similar efforts have and will continue to take hold in countries like Laos. There non-profit organizations worked to establish bike-powered computers to provide internet access in remote villages, among other initiatives.
The most notable example was the Jhai Foundation’s Remote Information Technology Village Project, a concept that received support from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Nations Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme. But I think we can and should do more to support not only the presence of viable community access points but effective education and exchange opportunities there.
The Jhai Foundation is an American non-profit organization, begun in 1997 by Lee Thorn, a Vietnam War veteran who participated in the bombing of Laos, and Bounthanh Phommasathit, a Lao refugee from the American bombing. In the spirit of reconciliation, Jhai has undertaken several community development projects in 13 villages. The Remote IT Village Project was included in The New York Times’ list of top ideas of 2002. But as we move forward in the next decade, what next?
In 1998 there was a book called Does Jane Compute? by Roberta Fuger. It worried that women in America who were not engaged in computing might become second-class citizens. It did not address our worries for refugee and immigrant women who might easily become third or even fourth-class citizens for lack of access.
We need to be concerned when we see the recent results of the 2009 American Community Survey that indicates less than 4% of most Southeast Asian refugees in American over 25 have a college degree. The Vietnamese community has a 6.7% achievement rate, but considering the national average is 10.3% and among Asians overall is 19.8% there's clearly a lot left to do.
With my work with Lao non-profits and other refugee communities in the Midwest, can I say this access would improve our community efforts in economic development and recovery and supporting our elders and youth? It's not the absolute or magic solution, but it is an essential part of the process and we need to look into it and the opportunities it presents.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Haiku Movie Review: The Green Hornet
Alas, Green Hornet.
From your roots we got Bruce Lee
Here, not even close.
From your roots we got Bruce Lee
Here, not even close.
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