AACP June 2020 Newsletter

When we say “Black Lives Matter” we’re not saying that one group should be given preference over another. Sure, all lives matter. When we say “Black Lives Matter,” it means that we wish to lend our support to the Black Community in getting social justice and that we truly care about our fellow man. This is important to express, especially when you’re not directly a part of the group that is currently being discriminated against.

Being a part of Asian American Curriculum Project, a group that has it foundation in first telling people about the injustices committed against Japanese Americans during World War II, I often catch myself wondering about what I, as a Chinese American, would have been doing back then to help the Japanese American Community in their time of need.

Sure we’d like to think that we’d be heroic and do something grand to help anyone in need, but it is so easy to look away and preserve ourselves. We may think that someone else would go to help or that “I’m sure glad that it wasn’t me.” Well the next time just may be you.

Whether we like it or not, we’re all in this life together. Rules and laws are created to help us all live in a society that is growing and becoming ever more complex. Sure, sometimes those rules and laws can be wrong or unjustly applied. Justice and fairness is complex (read Michael Sandel’s book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? or watch his videos on Justice). But we live in a country where we have some control over these rules and laws, and the ones that enforce them, so we should to try to fix these things when they're not working right.

Lastly, for all those that value their freedom so much that they protest wearing face masks and social distancing during a time of pandemic, these rules are being applied to protect us all, even you. The founding fathers of our country had no idea how viruses were spread. I’m sure that if they had known, they would have felt fine with us making rules to protect us all. Is your freedom really that important that you would jeopardize all our lives for this notion that freedom has no limits?

Please stay safe everyone and remember to look out for your neighbors too.

Leonard Chan

By Leonard Chan

So much has already been reported, written, and editorialized on the George Floyd killing that I’m not sure if there is more that I could add to this topic. But as a member of a nonprofit organization whose mission includes fighting racial injustices, I thought it is important that I do try to contribute something to this national and world discussion.

First of all, I’d like to give my support for those that are protesting for justice in the Black Lives Matter movement and for those that are marginalized around the world. I wish I could be doing more than just writing this article.

At California’s governor Gavin Newsom June 5th press conference, he used the following quote (wrongly ascribed to Dante; it was really a spiritual philosopher named Henry Powell Spring who wrote the following), “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

Former officer Tou Thao, the Asian American police officer involved in the George Floyd killing, is perhaps emblematic of all of those that stand by without taking action. Are all of us that are not taking an active role in making positive changes also feeling the heat?

By Leonard Chan

A foreign country interferes with another country’s government by corrupting officials in that government and then uses those officials to convince the head of state to remove the one honest person that stands in their way of dominating that country.

In 278 BCE, about 45 years after the death of Alexander the Great, that exiled government official in the kingdom of Chu China, killed himself by jumping into the Miluo River. Nearly 2300 years later, many Asians around the world still celebrate his life with a festival, the Duanwu or Dragon Boat Festival.