The recent pro-Palestine protests occurring on college campuses across the country, including UCLA’s own Palestinian Solidarity Encampment (PSE), have garnered widespread criticism and have been met with extreme police responses. Student protests of the past and present continue to prove that freedom movements will persist so long as systemic issues go unaddressed by those in power. Understanding this history on both a local and national scale can emphasize the importance of questioning dominant narratives and the power of community-building and actions of solidarity.
On May 1, 1922, Bang Jeong-hwan declared the first Children’s Day, marking one of his most prominent achievements as someone who believed that children were the key to Korea’s future as an independent nation.
Based on Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel, Randall Park’s 2023 romantic-comedy Shortcomings succinctly captures the state of Asian-American representation in the film industry today, while also speaking to the issues that our youngest generations face when it comes to race, gender, sexuality and relationships.
In the age of social media, sharing one’s romantic relationship with the world is common practice. For Asian American women who are in a relationship with a white man, the reaction has become increasingly hostile. At the forefront of this hostility – reference to a 2010 academic article, known better in online comments as “the Oxford study.”
In April 2024, Wisconsin passed a bill by Governor Tony Evers that will have K-12 public schools teach Asian American and Hmong history as a part of their required curriculum. Since Illinois set this precedent in 2021, 20 other states have mandated the teaching of AAPI history, according to The Asian American Foundation, with Wisconsin being the 21st. This is huge for the APIDA community as it allows for more representation and compassion within the United States.