Bay Area DOR reflects on past and present

The Bay Area Day of Remembrance took place Feb. 17 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco’s Japantown. The annual gathering commemorates the nearly 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II. This year’s DOR, the 34th iteration of the San Francisco Bay Area’s ceremony, celebrated […]

NDAA law on indefinite detention risks repeating Japanese American incarceration injustice

On Dec. 17, 2012, the families of Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi filed an amicus brief in Hedges v. Obama, a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA). The brief was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second […]

Feinstein seeks to amend National Defense Authorization Act

On Feb. 29, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to amend the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act, which allocates funding to the nation’s military and its activities, includes provisions that authorize the “indefinite detention” of American citizens suspected of terrorism without charge or trial. Feinstein, who opposed the bill last December with another […]

S.F. DOR remembers civil rights icon Hirabayashi, urges vigilance

On Feb. 19, hundreds gathered at the Bay Area Day of Remembrance (DOR), which was held at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco’s Japantown, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. The order, signed by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, authorized the mass incarceration of some 120,000 Nikkei during World […]

LA DOR: Human Relations Chief Warns of Dangers in Defense Authorization Act

LOS ANGELES — Robin Toma, the executive director of Los Angeles County’s Human Relations Commission, warned about threats to human rights and civil liberties in the National Defense Authorization Act that President Barack Obama signed into law at the end of last year. Toma sounded the alarm during his keynote speech Feb. 18 at the […]

RABBIT RAMBLINGS: How to be Asian American

I have been seeing a young black writer, Baratunde Thurston, on TV who is promoting a book that he has written called, “How To Be Black.” I have not read it yet, but I plan to, since the concept is, first, sort of funny (ha ha!) in that there’s some kind of “way” of being […]

Letter to President Obama Re: Indefinite military detention

January 10, 2012 The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Obama, Before I begin, I must say that I have the utmost respect for the Office of the President, and I want to thank you for the job you are doing […]

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