June 9, 2025

Hello AACP Newsletter Blog Readers.

A lot of things have happen since I last wrote in this blog. Apologies for not updating this as frequently as I need to for you online followers of AACP.

The most significant thing that happened is that we lost another founder of AACP, Rosie Shimonishi. She was the last of our founding board members that still regularly participated in board meetings when I started with AACP.

You can read more about her in our May newsletter message at “The Passing of One of AACP’s Founders Rosie Shimonishi.”

The other article we have for our May 2025 newsletter is titled “What We’ve Lost: The Ending of an Executive Order Meant to Help Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.”

What I didn’t mention in the article was that the original law establishing AAPI Heritage Month (HR 5572, Public Law 102-450, Oct. 23, 1992) outlines specifically what the president is supposed to do for the month. Here’s the text

“FEDERAL PROCLAMATION.—The President is authorized and requested to issue annually a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe the month designated in subsection (a) with appropriate programs, ceremonies and activities.”

Note that the law only authorizes and requests the president to make a proclamation. It doesn’t specifically “require” the president to do this. Even though President Trump made his proclamation for AAPI Heritage Month in 2025, the law does not require him to do this in the future.

With or without the presidential proclamation, it truly appears that AAPI Heritage Month is here to stay (we hope).

In our April newsletter, we had an article on ancient Chinese history regarding the advised treatment of foreigners and immigrants. Here’s a link to “On Expelling the Foreigners: A Warning from Ancient China.”

For our March newsletter, we have an article from one of our volunteers about her experience here in America, titled “Raise Our Voices.”

For our other newsletter article from March, we have an article titled “Roots of Resistance Advancing Ethnic Studies Pedagogy in K-12 Classrooms” about a session from the recent California Council for the Social Studies Conference that we attended. This session was given by a former board member of AACP who is now running her own business called “RealSoul.”

The last thing I wanted to mention for this blog entry is that author/poet friend, Frances Kakugawa, was featured on the radio program “The California Report Magazine.” You can read or listen to the program by clicking on the following link: “How Poetry Helps Dementia Caregivers Find Shelter from the Storm.”

Oh, one other thing – if you are interested in volunteering with us this summer (parents, this message goes out specifically to your kids :) please contact us. We’d be happy to have your help either as volunteers or interns.

That’s all for now.

Have a wonderful summer!

Leonard Chan