boston progress radio

Shuffled! is a weekly column appearing every Thursday (sometimes later in the day) here on BPRLive. Each week, we welcome a person from the APA community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles.

Today’s Shuffler: Emily Lawsin

Emily P. Lawsin is a Trustee of the Filipino American National Historical Society, co-founder of the Detroit Asian Youth Project, co-author of Filipino Women in Detroit, 1945-1955, and Lecturer II in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, American Culture, and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. An oral historian and spoken word performance poet originally from “SHE-attle”, Washington, she has appeared on radio and stage throughout the United States and Manila. For 2008-2009, she is living in the Boston area. You can listen to the Podcast of her East Meets Words September performance here or at www.emilylawsin.com.

Let’s hit Shuffle… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.

This post appears as part of the Youth Media Blog-a-thon, sponsored by Youth Outlook and WireTap. This month’s theme is: local elections.

UPDATE: Literally two minutes – literally! – before this entry posted this morning, Sen. Dianne Wilkerson was arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes totaling over $23,000. All I can say is, I hope this is untrue and she is eventually vindicated. If convicted, she could face up to 40 years in prison. This adds a whole new dimension to the point of the following post – which was written before any of this information became public.

This is a very difficult topic to address, and you know, there’s no better way to address a tough issue than to just “sh*t your pants, jump in, and swim” – so to speak.

Boston politics are remarkably simple in many ways. Local folklore tells of a man who ran for City Council and walked around his neighborhood – I think it was the North End – going door-to-door to let people know he was running and assuage fears that if elected, he would bump his sister’s – who everyone knew was a city employee – pay grade a little higher. He didn’t win the Councilor position because people figured if he won’t even help his sister, why would he help me?

And so it goes. When I held up “Sam Yoon for City Council” signs outside a Dorchester polling place in 2005, I had a bunch of chit chat with the sign-holders for other candidates. And invariably, one of the first questions was “So how do you know Sam?” At this level it isn’t about if you think your guy is gonna be the best at the job, it’s more about how well you know him. (By the way, Sam ended up a city councilor and becoming the first Asian American candidate to ever win a citywide election in Boston.)

Most people – including myself – never think to complain about stuff like that, because while it may not follow the ideals we breeze through in civics class, it’s probably at least as good a motivation for running for office as any. If Candidate A knows 300 people well, and Candidate B know 100 people just as well, odds are Candidate A wins, right? And that means Candidate A is accountable to all those 300 people once in office, right? Having a person in local office who is accountable to the max number of people can only be good news. Right?

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Tags: Boston, Elections, Voting, Youth Media Blog-A-Thon.

Shuffled! is a weekly column appearing every Thursday (sometimes later in the day) here on BPRLive. Each week, we welcome a person from the APA community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles.

Today’s Shuffler: Grace Talusan

Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US at age 3. She grew up in the suburbs of Boston. A a child, Grace played the flute and piano. She was a member of the math team in high school, and was pre-med in college. Despite these auspicious beginnings, with the encouragement of teachers, she became a writer.

After graduating from Tufts University with a degree in English, she earned an MFA in fiction from the University of California-Irvine and then began teaching in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon.

Grace was awarded an Artist Grant in Fiction Writing from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a residency at Hedgebrook, and other fellowships and awards. She was a finalist in Creative Nonfiction’s Silence Kills Essay Contest in 2007 and won the Ivy Teresaka Short Fiction Award in 2006. Grace’s publications include work in the Brevity, the Del Sol Review, Creative Nonfiction, Parents and Kids, and The Boston Globe. She wrote the children’s book, Joey’s Special Eye, which was published by the EyeCare Foundation and distributed worldwide free to families dealing with retinoblastoma (Rb) – a rare pediatric eye cancer.

Currently, Grace teaches writing at Tufts University and Grub Street.

For more, visit her website at http://gracetalusan.com and her blog at http://gracetalusan.blogspot.com.

Let’s see her shuffle… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.

A couple of weeks ago I had a buddy chat on AIM with three members of the band, Tim Be Told, the two remaining band mates, Andrew Chae and Parker Stanley had prior engagements. It took a little while to get into the same chatroom because we thought a multiple person chat was possible on Google chat (*it is not). But when Tim Ouyang, Jim Barredo, and Luan Nguyen finally got situated, the conversation got on a roll. Their tight brotherhood bond that mixes musical work and a I make fun of you, you make fun of me attitude was physically visible even though I was on a computer miles away.

TBT is based out of Charlottesville, Virginia but play in different East Coast cities for fans ready to embrace their musical truth. The band got together in 2006, along the way they expanded their group and deepened their inspiration to have “music transcend race.” Their melodies have a relatable tune that rings true in everyone’s lives because we all go through rough times. TBT’s harmonies have a nice acoustic touch and a strong drum base allowing for songs such as “Gravity’s Hold” and “Ordinary” from their album “Getting By” to be memorable.

Jess Man: Jack told me that you guys recorded your first record in a dorm room, how did that happen? How did you all meet?

Tim Ouyang: So about a year and a half ago, a mutual friend introduced me to Andrew and we started talking about potentially starting a band. Actually it was two and half years ago. So he ended up moving from California to Virginia in September 2006. During that time I was studying at the University of Virginia with Luan and we were singing together in a cappella group. So the band started off with me, Luan, and Andrew. It was actually really difficult to get a good quality sound. We even recorded drums in there.

Jim Barredo: And it was kind of hard working around neighbor’s schedules, making sure we wouldn’t anger too many people with loud banging.

JM: Do the words or the music come first?

Tim: The words and the music happen simultaneously. For me when I write a song, there’s usually a lyric and a melody that pops into my head and then the song almost writes itself. For me to write a song, I have to have something to write about.
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Tags: Interview.

I woke up this Saturday and had my typical breakfast, a bagel with cream cheese and jam and glass of plain soy milk. I opened up my laptop, pointed my browser to the New York Times and proceeded to browse the articles.

The editorial entitled “The Acorn Story” caught my eye. For those of you who don’t know, the ACORN organization has been accused by the McCain-Palin campaign of actively engaging in voter fraud. Now, that is kind of misleading. If they have been engaged in some impropriety, it certainly is more likely to be voter registration fraud, rather than voter fraud. And according to the editorial, the number of fraudulent registrations is really really small. Why does the McCain care so much? Well, probably because ACORN is an organization that helps low and moderate income folks get better housing. In other words, ACORN looks out for the little guy and those little guys don’t tend to relate to people who own 8 homes.

One particular line in the story did catch my eye:

Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.

Whoa! 49 percent for Asian Americans? That figure is probably a little lower than what it actually is today, but still.

Voting is just a small part of being a participant in a democracy, but if you’re not registered, you can’t vote. Unfortunately, if you’re eligible to vote, but haven’t registered, you can no longer register in MA. The deadline was last week. These kinds of deadlines are, in my opinion, designed to keep those who have less access to information about voting, away from the voter’s booth. I have a feeling that those folks tend to have low to moderate incomes.

I suppose Asian Americans are also just not that interested in politics. But I’m still kind of puzzled. Any ideas why this is so? Why don’t we make it easier for people to vote? Why not just have election-day registration?

Tags: Commentary, Elections.

Lately, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to tend to the well-being of BPR. I haven’t been updating the radio consistently and the website hasn’t changed much in the last few months. Recently though, I did make one small change to how posts are displayed when you click on a tag, category, or author.

Previously, you would get a blurb of each post with a given tag, category, or author. I personally found it annoying because I wanted to see all the articles with the chosen attribute. Well, after mucking around with the templates, I’ve managed to change things up. Now, when you click on a tag, category or author, you’ll get a list of all the posts with the chosen attribute. So, for example, if you want to see all the posts written by me, you can click on my name in the sidebar (or on any previous post written by me) and you’ll see all the awesome posts that I’ve written during the last two years. As another example, check out the Shuffled! archive if you’ve missed any in the past year. It may seem like a small change, but maybe that will enable you the BPR reader to see some of our older posts more easily.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: News.

As the San Diego Asian Film Festival closed its first leg this week, and the Boston Asian American Film Festival kicks off tonight, I do want to take a minute to remember one of the VIPs on the scene.

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Tags: Appreciation, film festival, In memory of.

Chuckie Akenz is a Vietnamese Canadian rapper who was raised in the Jane and Finch neighborhood of Toronto, one of the most notorious and crime ridden areas within the city. Chuckie Akenz has developed quite the following through the Internet and the Toronto hip hop scene. He also garnered national attention when CBC (the equivalent of ABC in terms of size and exposure) decided to dedicate an entire show to life as a rapper coming from Jane and Finch.

While Chuckie Akenz has his fans, he’s also become one of the most ridiculed Asian rappers on the Internet. In 2005, Akenz released the music video, “You Got Beef.”

You Got Beef – Chuckie Akenz

In the video, a young Asian boy is playing basketball by himself when he is approached and taunted by two black teenagers. At some point, the young Asian boy calls Chuckie Akenz, who happens to be with a number of his friends. They’re predominately dressed in black, looking “hard,” and driving Japanese import cars. When they reach the basketball court, all of them pull out weapons and attack the two black teenagers. Throughout the song, Chuckie Akenz uses the word n*gga.

The chorus of the song goes:

You got beef, we got heat/
We’ll never stop, we don’t care/
There won’t be, no more peace/
It’s all about Vietnamese/

A lot of the criticism against his music video (samples can be found below the YouTube video) include comments that he’s not really tough or gangsta, that it’s inappropriate for him to use the term n*gga, and that the overall situation presented in the video is unreal. The comments come from people across the racial spectrum—including Asians.

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Tags: Identity, Video.