July 31 is the deadline to submit an application to perform/participate in this year’s VOR: FAIR AND LOVELY! Please forward the call to your friends/colleagues who may be interested in participating. We are specifically looking for proposals from visual artists and dancers–so network away, folks, and help this year’s VOR committee!

Please direct your friends/potential applicants/artists extraordinaire to the following address where they can find info and our Call for Artists:

http://www.sapac.org/blog/2010/05/16/are-you-fair-lovely/

Thanks so much for all of your help! We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Best,
SAPAC and the VOR committee

Asia Pacific Forum
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
8:00-9:00 pm EST

WBAI 99.5 FM, New York City
Podcasting and streaming live at Asia Pacific Forum

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NYC Solidarity with Immigrants in Arizona: On July 29th, the State of Arizona is expected to implement the controversial immigration law SB 1070. To stand in solidarity with those fighting the law, groups in New York have organized a march across the Brooklyn Bridge and protest on Thursday, July 29th. We speak with the event organizers, MONAMI MAULIK of Desis Rising Up and Moving and MICHELLE FEI of Immigrant Defense Project, about the solidarity action and how laws like SB 1070 are relevant to immigrant communities here in New York City.

Experimental Prison Units for Muslims and Environmental Activists: The Federal Bureau of Prisons operates two “Communications Management Units”–experimental prison units in Illinois and Indiana designed to isolate prisoners from the general population.  Two-thirds of the prisoners housed there are Muslims who have been banned without explanation from interacting with other prisoners and regular phone calls and visitation. Environmental rights activists are housed there too. RACHEL MEEROPOL, Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, joins us to talk about the recent federal lawsuit she filed against the Federal Bureau of Prisons challenging the CMUs, and the government’s recent attempt to have the suit dismissed.

MI21:  Mother India–the 21st Century Remix: MI21 reimagines and reworks Mother India, the epic Bollywood film that captures the post-colonial Indian psyche, into a performance piece–60 minutes of visual images accompanied live by a DJ and musicians. We’ll talk about the relevance of the film for contemporary audiences and the creative process behind adapting such an iconic film with JOYOJEET PAL and INDY HUNJAN of Kala Phool in advance of the U.S. premiere of MI21 at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Thursday, July 29th.

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This program is brought to you by Silky Shah, Chitra Aiyar, Naureen Shah, and Amna Akbar of the APF Collective.

For last week’s show on Chenoan and US militarism, gentrification in Chinatown, and a “non”Asian-American arts exhibition, click here.

Every Tuesday from 8-9 PM EST, Asia Pacific Forum brings you coverage of Asian American and Asian news, politics, and culture. For more information see Asia Pacific Forum or contact them via info@asiapacificforum.org.

via The Hindu: Life & Style / Metroplus: Sunrise symphony: Some intrepid writers from The Hindu boldly take a morning walk around their fair city.

Lodhi Gardens, New Delhi, India

]]> http://www.sapac.org/blog/2010/07/26/sunrise-symphony/feed/ 1 http://www.sapac.org/blog/2010/07/09/of-torture-and-inquiry/ http://www.sapac.org/blog/2010/07/09/of-torture-and-inquiry/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:52:05 +0000 takhallus http://www.sapac.org/blog/?p=501 On July 6, 2010, the British government launched a judicial inquiry into the collusion of British officials with acts of torture carried out by U.S. officials as part of the so-called “War on Terror.”  In accordance with the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, proven victims will receive financial compensation.  This monumental decision was announced one day before the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 Tube bombings, and so somewhat ironically, coincides with heightened security measures and counter-terrorism efforts in the U.K.

Hopefully, the U.K.’s willingness to open this line of inquiry will increase pressure on the U.S. government to investigate this inglorious part of its own history and to reconsider the strategies it currently employs as part of anti-terrorism campaigns. There has been wide-ranging resistance from U.S. officials to exploring claims, prosecuting perpetrators, and compensating victims.

This issue seems particularly relevant here and now because of the recent trial of former Chicago police detective Jon Burge. Burge’s alleged torture of African Americans on the South Side of Chicago has been documented by the Chicago Reader for two decades.  Burge was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice as related to past abuses, but the statute of limitation has expired for prosecution for the torture itself.
The South Side of Chicago, Guantanamo Bay, secret detention camps in Pakistan, Abu Ghraib:  very different settings, all too similar stories. People detained (often without just cause), abused, and eventually released. Public officials colluding with cover-ups. Racial and religious profiling and persecution.

I don’t know if it was a coincidence that the U.K.’s torture inquiry opened the day before the anniversary of the Tube bombings. It seems to me an acknowledgment that an essential component of assuring the security of any country is a willingness to openly discuss and redress past injustices.

Laughfest @ North Shore Center for the Performing Arts
Friday, July 2 @ 8:00pm

South Asian Arts Festival presents comedians Azhar Usman, Sugar Sammy, and Brown Man Group; dancers Kashif Memon, Qasim A, and UIC Dhamaal; and musicians AbsoluteRaag and DJ Bornswift, all for a reasonable $21. Use promo code “fiveoff” for a discount on tix purchased through DesiClub.com.

Numbfeel @ Viaduct Theatre ADDED 7/9
Sunday, July 4 – Sunday, July 25

Lavina Jadhwani (familiar to many Rasaka Theatre patrons) directs Numbfeel, a new play by Chelsea M. Marcantel about what attracts us to each other and what drives us apart. Part of a three-play production called (a)Symmetry Cycle that “follows seven characters in a traditional cycle format (creation, destruction, reawakening) and explores the wonder of human relationships through the lenses of biology, chemistry and neuroscience.”

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan @ North Shore Center for the Performing Arts
Saturday, July 10 @ 7:30pm

The Maestro of Sarod and fellow performers bring a night of music to Skokie.

Red Baraat @ Chicago Folk & Roots Festival
Sunday, July 11 @ 5:30pm

Red Baraat

Red Baraat claims to be “the first and only dhol ‘n’ brass band of its kind in the States, melding the infectious North Indian rhythms of bhangra with brass funk and expressing the human spirit through improvisation and a powerful live sound.” From what I hear, it’s a band not to be missed. On July 11 they’ll be at the Old Town School of Folk Music’s annual fest at Welles Park (Lincoln and Montrose in Chicago). You can also catch them at the following venues:

Monday, July 12 – ABC7 News @ 11am
Wednesday, July 14 – Martyrs
Thursday, July 15 – Chicago SummerDance
Saturday, July 17 – Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival

Subcontinental Drift Open Mic @ Ethiopian Diamond II
Thursday, July 15 @ 7:00pm

Subcontinental Drift – Chicago presents its second free open mic event that celebrates the South Asian community. Performances include stand-up comedy, spoken word, and music. The event is followed by a desi dance party. Special performance by “America’s Funniest Muslim” Azhar Usman. (He’s funny. It’s free. Go!)

Aman Ki Aasha @ Rosemont Theatre
Friday, July 23 @ 8:30pm

A Bollywood concert featuring 30 musicians and dancers.

Interfaith Conference @ Kriya Vedanta Gurukulam ADDED 7/9
Saturday, July 24 – Sunday, July 25

This new nonsectarian ashram in Joliet hosts an interfaith conference as part of its three-day grand opening. Discussions begin at 3:00pm each day and include free dinner. Featured speakers include Swami Sharanananda, Chinmaya Mission; Rabbi Charles Rubovits, Joliet Jewish Congregation; Hema Pokharna, Jain Interfaith Committee; and Mazher Ahmed, Batavia Islamic Center.

Band of Joes @ Jazz Showcase ADDED 7/24
Monday, July 26 @ 8:00pm & 10:00pm

Jazz ensemble Band of Joes, featuring local musician/composer Vijay Tellis-Nayak on keyboards, performs 2 shows at the Printers Row club.

UIC Bhangra @ US Cellular Field ADDED 7/24
Wednesday, July 28 @ 6:40pm

The Punjabi Cultural Society of Chicago presents UIC’s Bhangra team at the White Sox – Seattle Mariners game.

Natya Dance Theatre @ Storefront Theater
Thursday, July 29 – Sunday, August 1

Two of Chicago’s dance companies, Mordine & Company and Natya, collaborate on a trilogy of works that incorporate Western contemporary and Indian classical styles for a show called “Encountering the Other.” Friday’s performance includes a post-show discussion with the artists.

Janaka Selekta @ Funky Buddha Lounge ADDED 7/13
Friday, July 30 @ 9:00pm

San Francisco-based DJ/Producer Janaka Selekta spins for Bhangratheque’s latest party. DJ Jimmy Singh and free Bhangra dance lessons by Ajanta are also on the bill.

Satya & DJ Joe Bryl @ NNWAC: Wicker Park Art Center ADDED 7/16
Saturday, July 31 @ 8:00pm

SAPAC fave & friend Satya Gummuluri helps launch HotHouse’s new World Underground monthly music series, which “joins up-and-coming regional artists with underground legends who established many of the cultural scenes we enjoy today.” Satya’s a mesmerizing jazz vocalist who sings in Hindi, Portuguese, and English; Bryl’s a Chicago fixture who co-created HotHouse  and has been deeply involved with Funky Buddha Lounge, Sonotheque, and The Shrine. The artists share an affinity for Brazilian music. Should make for an intriguing collaboration.

Amidst Joel Stein’s very useful analysis of those damn Indians ruining his hometown and Arizona immigration laws targeting anyone who might be an immigrant, I guess it’s at least nice to have someone that changes up the generic “Where are you from?” with something new.  It’s also another reminder that even though I’m supposed to be proud to be an American this weekend, I (still) am not seen as one.

Today, a friend sent a distressed email over the Trikone-Chicago listserve, severely upset that a picture of him at a Trikone event had appeared in a publication; he’s not out.  I got the email on my phone while I was at dinner with a friend with whom I was extensively discussing an email he was painstakingly crafting to come out to his straight desi friends.  He was writing this email because he felt that he had grown apart from these friends by keeping this part of his life separate from them.  All this fuss over being out.  I came out to my parents when I was 18, visiting them back home in Ghana after my first year of college.  I was outed to the rest of my relatives when my uncle found an article I wrote for my college newspaper online, and forwarded it to the family.  I’ve come out (to friends, family, and strangers), been outed (intentionally and accidentally), and outed other people (intentionally and accidentally).  Sometimes I wait eagerly for a trashy tabloid to announce that Karan Johar, Gurinder Chadha, Rekha, Kal Penn, and Jay Sean have come out, too.  Instead we get Lance Bass, Ricky Martin, and some random country singer.

I guess I’m wondering if visibility politics still matter, or if coming out is just something celebrities do when they need a popularity boost.  Outness clearly matters for my two queer desi friends who attach value to other people knowing they are gay, a value that will either include or exclude them from the communities that matter most.  And of course, it depends on the kind of queer we come out as.  Jim McGreevy (former governor of New Jersey) coming out as a “gay American” certainly made him more palatable to the general public.  And a paparazzi spotting of a hate-mongering homophobe with an escort that he hired to “carry his bags” carries a very different pleasure than knowing that we were right about Ricky Martin all along.  Coming out is and isn’t a radical act, and outing someone is and isn’t a useful means to a political end.

Coming out can be an act of intimate exchange with our loved ones, a sharing of what we imagine to be our true self.  It can be a means of making our sexuality known so that no one uses queerphobic language.  Or making our sexuality known so that we pique the interest of the other (cute) queers in the room.  Coming out also puts us at greater risk for physical and verbal abuse in our heightened visibility.  Some of us have come out to these friends and not those ones. And we don’t have to.  Being out is not the end goal of being queer.  And sometimes we can be out without having to come out; sometimes the people around you just know, and they’ve learned how to signal that “it’s all good.“  Often, the act of coming out is not the declarative statement, “I’m gay/lesbian/bi/trans”; it’s a fashion choice, that little rainbow keychain, a reprimand for queerphobic language, the usage of ungendered pronouns, or (if you’re going for some drama, honey!) bringing a same-gender partner as your guest to a cousin’s wedding.

So why my interest in coming out?  As one of the coordinating members of Trikone, I’ve been trying to think about what sort of politics suit a queer desi organization.  There are certainly many critiques of visibility politics that argue that coming out only marks us as good consumer citizens that can be marketed to: we own the entire seasons of “Will & Grace” and “The L Word,” go to gay/lesbian bars, buy fancier underwear, get gym memberships, go on Rosie O’Donnell’s cruise, and pay more for haircuts.  Coming out isn’t a means of sticking it to the man (no pun intended?) anymore; but was it ever?  I’m not concerned that coming out or showing queer pride is what desis should do.  But rather, my two friends in Trikone show that we’re not past these things; the stakes are still high in being seen as queer by our peers and loved ones.  And so I hope we can reflect on how and why we come out, as opposed to whether we do or not because, as Monisha Das Gupta writes in Unruly Immigrants, we can “retool visibility politics” to critique structures of racist-heteropatriarchy rather than simply reify them.

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Trikone-Chicago is a social, activist, and support group for Queer Desis and their allies.  To find out more about Trikone-Chicago join our listserve or join us on Facebook.

Trikone’s Pride Cocktail Party: This Saturday, June 26^th, from 7-10:30pm.  Call 413.672.1861 or email Kareem for more info.

March in the Dyke March this Saturday: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14233764762

Coming out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_out

Additional reading:

• Monisha Das Gupta – Unruly Immigrants: Rights, Activism, and Transnational South Asian Politics in the United States (2006)
• Gayatri Gopinath – Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (2005)
• Martin Manalansan – Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (2003)

The dancing itself is passable, but nothing great (at least with Jose). What really bothered me were the ridiculous costumes and motif and the judges’ reactions.

Let’s start with those costumes. As my friend Sandhya exclaimed over email during the show, “SERIOUSLY, GENIE IN A BOTTLE???!!!?!???” The portrayal of South Asians as genies in a bottle, along with the stupid “I Dream of Jeannie“/Aladdin costumes, were enough to ruin whatever positives might come from a mainstream show featuring an aspect of desi culture. If this truly is “the Indian-American decade,” some people desperately need to catch up and ditch those age-old stereotypes.

Then there were the judges. Ah, the judges. So often encouraging and constructive in their critiques, but just as often awkwardly inarticulate. In this case, they were just dumb. They ripped Billy for his unconvincing krumping, Alex for his not-smoldering-enough Fosse, and Kent and Ashley for not emoting enough–even though they all neared technical perfection–but gave a pass to Jose for his technically incompetent Bollywood dance because he was “having fun.” It might have been the most blatant double standard I’ve ever seen on reality TV, and I’ve watched every season of “Top Chef.”

If they really want to be able to judge technique, why not tackle a classical South Asian dance form like Bharatanatyam or Kathak–or even Bhangra, which many people don’t realize is quite challenging when done correctly?

The similarities in the biographies of these groundbreaking individuals have been widely noted, including here, here, and here. Both were born in the U.S. in the early 1970s to recent Indian immigrants. Both converted to Christianity.  Both have impeccable conservative credentials and names that are easily pronounceable to most Americans. Both have been hailed as the future of the GOP, and both are assumed to have an eye on the presidency.

Jindal’s election in 2007 was mystifying for many reasons. After all, this is a state that reported a total Asian population of 1% in the 2000 census and that usually elects Democratic governors…and where former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke earned 44% of the vote for governorship just 17 years prior to Jindal’s election.

Having chalked Jindal’s victory up to a fluke, I was shocked when Nikki Haley nearly won an outright majority of votes in the Republican gubernatorial primary earlier this month. South Carolina also reported around a 1% total Asian population in the last census (comparatively, California had 13%), and Haley was the target of a racial epithet from her own Republican colleague during the race.

In addition to the racial makeup of these states, studies show that South Asians largely affiliate with Democrats. So from a statistical standpoint, Jindal and Haley’s success stories don’t make sense. Data regarding Haley’s election are still forthcoming, but exit polls and shifting demographics in Louisiana provide some insight into Jindal’s victory:

• There was a significant decrease in voter turnout in the 2007 Louisiana election, with the most marked drop noted in the heavily Democratic New Orleans area after the Katrina exodus. Low voter turnout, especially by African Americans, shifted several parishes that have historically been Democratic strongholds to Republican hands. 2000 census data indicate Louisiana consists of 65% whites and 33% blacks, and exit polls reported a turnout of 51% of white voters and 35% of black voters.

• Exit polls also indicate that Jindal received 63% of the white vote and 10% of the black vote. His nearest competitor was a Democrat (Louisiana does not have party primaries), who won 14% of the white vote and 36% of the black vote (this was the extent of the vote breakdown available). Essentially, Jindal carried every parish in the state except New Orleans, even very conservative northern/eastern parishes that supported David Duke. In contrast, Barack Obama carried just 14% of the white vote in Louisiana in 2008.

That Jindal had much more success with white voters in Louisiana than Obama is not that surprising, given how conservative this voting bloc has historically been. And both he and Haley only speak of their ethnicity in the context of the added credibility their second-generation status gives them as fiscal conservatives, a great tactic in states where the Tea Party is flourishing. They may also benefit from the “model minority” perception of Asians in these states with high degrees of racial polarization.

I think there are many layers to this complex situation, only a couple of which I alluded to here.  As different as my politics may be from these two, I can’t help but feel a twinge of satisfaction when the Louisiana of David Duke and the South Carolina of Strom Thurmond move toward electing South Asian governors. A record-high six South Asians nationwide (all Democrats) are running for Congress this year—a notable shift for South Asians from fundraising and campaigning to candidacy.

On a more macro level, it’s much less clear (in my mind at least) what the goals of immigration reform should be.  That is, what does the ideal immigration policy look like? Totally open borders? Quotas based on labor skills? No immigration at all?

The reality of whatever policy or policies we choose is that they have direct effects on the function of our economy and, perhaps a major consideration, our ability to finance basic social services including education, health care, and welfare.

Recent trends in the labor skills of immigrants indicate an increasing concentration in low-skilled manual labor and thus low pay.  Moreover, those with low levels of skill tend to utilize a significantly greater share of public assistance than they pay in taxes, creating a net fiscal burden.  Particularly in states with high levels of immigration (not even accounting for undocumented workers) such as California, New York, and Illinois, the strain on the budget for social services is not insignificant.

The point is not to suggest that we should have an immigration policy that disqualifies people based on their earning potential–but we also cannot expect to have a functioning social safety net and make it available to anyone around the world that wants it.

Thoughts?