UCANewsletter(English)_Volume002

UCA Harvey Relief Fund

to Help Houston Chinese Community

Nothing could be worse than being hit by a ruthless hurricane like Harvey; nothing, however, could warm your hearts more than getting all the support and care from Chinese American communities across the nation.

After the hurricane hit Houston, local Chinese community organizations, such as Sunrise Youth Soccer Club and Houston Chinese Alliance (HCA), http://hcaus.org/ , started recruiting and training volunteers to help local families with their flooded and damaged houses.

UCA also reached out to Chinese community in Houston and set up jointly with Chinese Community Center, http://ccchouston.org/, and Southern News Group, http://southernnewsgroup.com/, an UCA Harvey Relief Fund and provided $3000 to HCA to supplement the tools and equipment that the Sunrise and HCA volunteers needed for their relief efforts started on the Labor Day weekend.

Those volunteers are true heroes of our community. Some of them left their own flooded houses behind, and instead worked day and night to help other families. Thousands more houses got flooded by discharge from the nearly overflowing reservoirs after the hurricane. In a race against time, they had to remove flooded drywalls and floors and to dehumidify interior of houses to avoid the growth of mold, an extreme hazard to health after flooding.

The recovery and rebuild will be a long process. Tens of thousands of Houstonians will have to live in temporary housing for months and may be longer. Hurricane Harvey brought out the best of humanity and has made the Houston Chinese American community stronger than ever! Please read more...

UCA in Actions

Kick-off of ICAHM Program

UCA launched the first US "Interactive Chinese Americans Heritage Map (ICAHM)" in July 2017. UCA will evaluate, verify and select entries to be used in Chinese American Heritage database. The initial version of ICAHM will be released at UCA’s 2018 convention and made accessible to the public. Read more.. .

Summer UCA Fundraising a Success

Starting from August 18 through 21, UCA had raised over $60, 000 online, while UCA’s friends in Los Angeles, under the leadership of Gene Chang and Lisa Zhou, had raised $42,120 in a house party hosted by Lily Lee Chen, the first Chinese American Mayor of Monterey Park. The two total was over $100,000! Thank you for your generous contribution to the UCA! Together we will make a difference for our community! Acknowledgment letter from UCA team...

"American Chinese Remember" Program Gets Reported

The newly launched project "American Chinese Remember" got the media attention. On August 6,2017, the leading Chinese Newspaper World Journal featured some full-page special reports on the topics such as "Hump Hero Came Back to be Buried in Hometown", and "UCA Chinese Americans Remember". The UCA project "Chinese Americans Remember" is designed to immortalize sacred memory of GI who fought and some lost their life in China-Burma-Indian Theater during the Second World War, pay tribute to those heroes and their families, and help bring peace and prosperity between the United States and China in today's uncertain world. Please read the World Journal report...

Serve and Inspire

On July 29, 2017, over 45 Seniors from three Downers Grove buildings and Naperville families attended the OPUS Fantastic 15 Gala chamber concert in Wentz Concert Hall downtown Naperville, IL. This event was organized by OPUS and sponsored by the UCA IL Chaper, which arranged for 9 high school volunteers to assist many of the seniors to attend this concert. Read more...

Lecture on "Water Tossing Boulders", A story about Chinese American's Fighting for Education Rights

Together with 1882 Foundation, UCA sponsored Adrienne Berard, the author of "Water Tossing Boulders", to give a talk about her new book in DC Chinatown on 27th, August. This book is about how a Chinese American family in Mississippi fought all the way to the US Supreme Court to try to get their kids into better and White schools. Although they lost their case, our forefathers' fight for the educational rights of their kids is still highly relevant and encouraging to us today.

To let more people learn about this historic story, UCA will invite Berard to hold a webinar after her paperback book will be published at the end of this year. After the lecture, Berard happily accepted the invitation to attend UCA's 2018 Chinese American Convention. Read more...

Representatives of UCA Visits Family of Xiyue Wang

On August 26, UCA President Haipei Shue, UCA Board member Bonnie Liao and others visited Ms. Hua Qu, wife of Mr. Xiyue Wang, a Princeton University Ph.D. student who was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in Iran. UCA senior advisor, Princeton University Professor Yiguang Ju, arranged this meeting. UCA conveyed the care of our community for the Wang family, and discussed with Ms. Qu on how the Chinese community can provide assistance to Mr. Xiyue Wang and his family. UCA has called on the Chinese community to extend their support to Mr. Xiyue Wang for his early return. For more, read the details in Chinese. Read more...

Statement of UCA Denouncing White Supremacy and Violence

On August 12, 2017, right after the incident of racist rally and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, UCA promptly issued a statement condemning the racist rally and violence that ensured in Charlottesville, VA. Read more...

Bridging Sides, UCA Held Asian Date Disaggregation Discussion

Recently, the topic of Asian data disaggregation has triggered an intense debate in the Chinese community. UCA organized a telephone conference to gain further understanding of the issue and to nurture a dialogue among people on different sides of the debate for the first time.

On August 7th, UCA invited some community leaders and UCA board members to a telephone panel discussion, moderated by Aryani Ong, a civil rights lawyer and UCA advisor. The panel includes Janelle Wong, Asian American Studies professor at the University of Maryland and Principal Investigator of the 2016 National Asian American Survey (NAAS); Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor and associate dean at the University of California-Riverside, Director and Principal Investigator of NAAS; Karin Wang, Vice President of Programs and Communications of Asian American Advancing Justice In LA (AAAJ); Quyen Dinh, Executive Director of Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC); Robert Teranishi, Professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, The panelists presented the rationale for data disaggregation and collection.

The participating Chinese community leaders raised various questions regarding the matter. They also passed on some of the reservations and concerns from the Chinese community, and suggested some policy alternatives.

A few days later, Haipei Shue was invited by VOA to participate in a live discussion on the topic.

Influential Chinese

“Water Tossing Boulders” is a new book about how a family of Chinese immigrants led the fight to desegregate schools in the Jim Crow South. A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told before.

On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending the middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites only. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Although the fight ended in failure, it set the precedence for future Chinese generations to follow. What can we learn from the struggle of Chinese pioneers for equal education rights? Read book review here...

Chinese Person of the Month

Less than two months from November 7, the 2017 Election Day, the campaigns for Chinese Americans running for public offices are entering the critical period. In this issue, we interviewed Mr. Yingchao Zhang, a UCA Board Director and a frontrunner of the emerging Chinese political force in NJ. From running for and serving as a school board member at the West Windsor- Plainsboro Regional School District, Mr. Zhang has gained valuable first-hand experience on local issues and politics. Now running for West Windsor Township Council, Mr. Zhang is paving a new way for Chinese Americans to engage in American politics. Please read our exclusive interview here...。