Apr 24: Vigil for VA Tech - photos, flowers, and prayers

Community Vigil for the Virginia Tech Tragedy
April 24, 2007
Pacific School of Religion, chapel steps

Sponsored by the PANA Institute and the PSR Office of Community Life

Prayer

Dear Holy One,

We, as ones who have received Your grace and ones who are enabled to call upon you, are before You.
We thank You. Thank You for Your grace to know You and be known by You. Thank you for our new identify as Your children and to be a part of Your reality of community.
We thank You for allowing the community of PANA, with the office of Community of Life at PSR, to have a space for this gathering.
As brothers and sisters, we are here to dedicate our hearts and minds in remembrance of those souls affected by the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech.
Here, we call You to Your presence. Here, we call You for Your guidance and Your comfort, because we are sad, and sorrow for those who are not here any longer and for those who suffered through the loss.
Let our spirits be touched by Yours, for only You can read and know our inner state of hearts and minds.
And only You can create our new space to initiate our comfort and peace and to guide and sustain that condition for our blessings and for Your glory.
Therefore, open Your ears to hear our inner voices and open Your eyes to see our devotions.
We pray that through this time of gathering, You grant us Your strength and comfort so that we can have our peace.
Thank you and pray in the name of Your Son Jesus. Amen

-- prayer led by Kyung-Min Daniel Lee

About the Centerpiece

The centerpiece of today’s vigil was designed by PSR student Yi Rang Lim.
The center collage features those who lost their lives in the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Surrounding their images are those of persons who mourn and grieve over the tragedy—while they may have no direct connection to those who perished, they feel connected to them and have been affected by their lives and by their deaths.

Surrounding the images are stones representing our own organic connectedness to the earth.

In many Asian cultures, water symbolizes the cleansing of pain and grief. Symbolically, the tragedy at Virginia Tech rests under the cleansing power of clear water.

Also, in many Asian cultures, white chrysanthemums symbolize grief and mourning—by placing the flowers into the pond, we share in another’s pain.

In addition, there are 33 candles, one for each of those who died in the tragedy.

Today, we encircle these images and symbols as a way of standing in solidarity with those who are in pain, those who mourn, and those who grieve at Virginia Tech and around the globe—we do so knowing that whatever affects one, affects us all.

Related post:

PANA Executive Director Fumitaka Matsuoka's letter about the tragedy.

Apr 13: R2W's intergenarational event with Samoan Community

April 13, 2007, R2W Staff, Michael James, Lauren Quock and Crystal Talitonu headed out to Calvary United Methodist Church in San Jose to present the R2W Summer Program to Samoan youth and their families from Daly City and San Jose. The evening started off with culture circle introductions by all who were present along with a sentence answer to the following question “What do you think is the biggest struggle facing youth in your community”. It was an intense moment of sharing that was made real through the next phase where we were able to act out “the dramas of our lives” through Popular Theatre. Following a wonderful dinner that was catered by L&L Hawaiian BBQ people got to watch a slideshow from past program attendees as well as statistical facts about the Samoan community. Overall the evening was a blessed event that captured the beauty of the R2W program and the people in the community across generations who maintain hope for the next generation of leaders.

Community Vigil for VA Tech

Community Vigil
In remembrance of all those affected by the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech
(Please bring a flower)

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
1:00-1:30pm

Steps of the Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion
1798 Scenic Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94709

Sponsored by the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific Asian North American Religion (PANA Institute) and the Office of Community Life at the Pacific School of Religion.

For more information, contact Rev. Deborah Lee at
(510)849-8260 or dlee@psr.edu.

Related posts:

• PANA Executive Director Fumitaka Matsuoka's letter about the tragedy.
• Photos and text of prayer and sacred-art offerings at the event.

In God's House accepted at multiple film festivals!

Since its release in October 2006, In God's House: Asian American Lesbian and Gay Families in the Church has been screened in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Taiwan, Samoa, and Japan. We have received rave reviews and held captivating discussions for seminary students, API churches and communities, educators, and film festival audiences.

The film has recently been accepted in the Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Frameline LGBT Film Festival in San Francisco, and the Aomori International LGBT Film Festival in Japan! We have a community screening coming up in Chinatown, San Francisco at the beginning of Pride month and we will be screening the film and conducting workshops at faith-based conferences in Asilomar, CA and Nashville, Tennessee this summer. Check out our screenings page for a screening near you and help us spread the word!

Notes on Race, Representation, and the Expression of Marginalized Views in the Wake of Virginia Tech

Elaine H. Kim, Professor, Asian American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

I often feel that there is a subterranean current in our society that erupts in moments of crisis, bringing into view some things that are ordinarily hidden. For instance, some Americans, accustomed to images of Denzel Washington as savior of the nation, Will Smith as President of the U.S., and Morgan Freeman as God and to the feeling that they have an African American friend because they watch the Oprah Winfrey Show every afternoon, might have been shocked by the images of real African Americans stranded for days on end after Hurricane Katrina. During crises, a bright spotlight often illuminates dark corners for a brief moment, giving us the chance to see things differently.

I would like to open a space for a few additional or alternative viewpoints about the mass killings at Virginia Tech, soon after which I began receiving email messages from Asian American and especially Korean American students and friends. Forgetting for a moment that most people in the U.S. don't differentiate among Asian ethnicities, Chinese and Vietnamese American students admitted that they were relieved to hear that Cho was Korean. Korean American students reported that their parents called them, asking them to come home or telling them not to go out. Were the parents over-reacting? Perhaps they remembered the backlash against South Asians, Arabs, Muslims, and even Latinos who "looked Middle Eastern" in the U.S. after 9-11 or were thinking of what happened to Korean and other Asian shop-keepers in the wake of the L.A. riots. Some of them might have known the internment of Japanese Americans as enemy aliens" during World War II or even about the long history of racial exclusion and violence against Asian immigration and labor.

Many students wrote that when the news first broke, they had imagined the killer as a white male, like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in 1995, Jeffrey Dahmer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who murdered and ate 17 boys and men, many of whom were Asian Americans, between 1978 and 1991, and numerous other mass murderers in U.S. history. They knew that news stories never identify white mass murderers or serial killers by race. "I really envy white people," wrote one student, "because when white people do something so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says,' Do you think it was because he's white?' There are no headlines calling him 'the white shooter.' No one mentions race, because no one thinks his race has anything to do with his crime."

After the Columbine massacre, one television news story after another conjectured to an assumed white middle class viewership about what had made these boys "go wrong." Though angry and alienated like Seung-hui Cho, Harris and Klebold were represented as part of the community, not outside it. In contrast, the Virginia Tech stories invariably described the shooter at first as foreign and later as a lone lunatic. Even though he came to the U.S. at the age of 7 or 8 and spent 2/3 of his life here, attending primary school, middle school, high school, and college in the U.S., Cho was described as Asian, South Korean, Korean, of Korean descent, an immigrant from South Korea, or a Korean "alien resident," Like many other Americans, although he had a green card, he spoke fluent English and was, in fact, much more "American" than "South Korean." One student thought that the news media tried to designate what he did as a "Korean" - as opposed to a crime that was "made in the U.S.A." Another thought that the media stories about the tragedy not only reinforced stereotypes of Asians as "eternal foreigners" rather than as Americans or even as individual human beings but also exploited old racial stereotypes of Asians as inscrutable robotic nerds - cold, robotic, friendless, and weird.

Since the media never let them forget their race and ethnicity, some students remarked that they could not help feeling connected to Seung-hui Cho, even though they if don't want to be. Unpopular as their viewpoint might be, some, without excusing or condoning Cho's actions, did not ascribe to the media portrayals of him as "alien" and "non-human." His face reminded them of friends and relatives.

"I couldn't help but feel like this man deserved…sympathy…. delusional or not, he felt like he was standing up for himself and for others like him, people who were tormented and traumatized for not being able to speak English at first, for the way they look, for being who they are. There's no possible justification for his actions, but it's sad to think about what he must've gone through to finally reach this brink. It's a shame and a pity that there are probably many people who can relate to him because they feel as alone and angry as he did."

Clarity of vision can come in a moment of crisis. In the wake of the Virginia Tech slayings, students wondered how poverty and unfamiliarity with mental health resources might inhibit a family's ability to deal with mental illness. They thought about what would have happened if there had been better gun control and about the insanity of the gun lobby's suggestion that all students be armed. The crisis also exposed the power of the mass media. Of course everyone is horrified and saddened by the murder of innocent people, regardless of race or nationality, several students said, but the South Korean government's condolences are not extended to Iraq, even though more than 200 people were killed and 150 wounded in the four days immediately before and after Virginia Tech. We don't know what those people's faces looked like or what their stories were, not just because they aren't Americans but also because American stories dominate world news 24/7, as Iraqi - and South Korean stories do not. The sudden and massive national attention on a Korean American made them think about how invisible Korean Americans usually are in U.S. national culture.

I am hoping that this crisis will give us all new insights that will stay with us, giving us new courage to express otherwise marginalized views so that we can all participate in dialogues that will strengthen multiracial democracy.

PANA Letter on VA Tech Tragedy

April 18, 2007

We, the members of the Institute for Leadership Development & the Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion (PANA Institute) of Pacific School of Religion, are deeply struck by the recent tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech University. We extend our heartfelt condolences to all the people of the university. Our prayers are particularly for the victims, their families, and friends. The horrifying tragedy affects us all like an abrupt rupture of a thread in the web of humanity that sets the whole web trembling.

We at the PANA Institute are also deeply concerned about the fear and anxiety that are fast surfacing in Asian and Oceanic American communities about a possible backlash and retaliation against these communities and their members because of the suspected gunman’s racial and ethnic identity widely reported in the media. Such reporting can subject Asian and Oceanic American communities to unfair portrayals in the current tolerant climate for racial slurs and jokes against people of color.

We at PANA stand with those who are afraid of possible negative repercussions from the tragic incident. We stand with those who may be subjected to all kinds of evil against them because of the racial twist in the reading of the tragedy. We stand with those who hunger and thirst for racial justice. You are not alone. Blessings are particularly yours.

We at PANA appeal to news media of all forms to refrain from referencing and emphasizing the race and ethnicity of the suspected perpetrator of the tragedy. Such an accent does not serve any useful purpose. It only fuels the current climate in this society that demeans people, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

Too many tragic incidents like Virginia Tech have happened in recent years. We at PANA urge faith communities of America to work toward ending violence as a means to settle grievances, may they be personal, communal, or international. It is easy to blame the perpetrators of violence for each of the series of incidents. These individuals and the victims of their violent acts may well be the “canary in the coalmine shaft” of the toxic societal environment in which we all live.

---Fumitaka Matsuoka,
Executive Director, The Institute for Leadership Development & the Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion, Pacific School of Religion

Related posts:
Response by Professor Elaine Kim
Community Vigil at Pacific School of Religion

KPFA broadcast - Apex Express - Sikh Gurdwara

Wednesday, March 7, 5:30- 8:30 pm
Community Visit: Gurdwara Sahib El Sobrante
Led by Jaideep Singh, Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for the PANA Institute's Civil Liberty and Faith Project, and instructor of PSR course RSHR-1070: "Presumed Guilty: Race, Religion, and the Post-9/11 Racialized State"
PANA organized a community visit to the gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) in El Sobrante, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the state. One of the founders of the gurdwara will gave us a tour and describe the struggles the local Sikh American community encountered in the early days, as well as more contemporary social issues facing the community. Other speakers addressed the role of women in Sikh communities and the sacred text of the Sikhs, and the rash of murders of Sikh American cab drivers in the Bay Area since September 11, 2001. We participated in the Sikh prayer service and vegetarian meal.

Apex Express producer Gina Hotta came along too...

Apex Express April 12 show archive on KPFA radio. "Hear about a Samoan Warrior, Clement Brown Kelemeke currently held in the "Adjustment Center" at San Quentin State Prison. Apex's Wayie talks with his wife Berta about why this Samoan Warrior, who helped unify Samoans, Tongans and Polynesians is held without due process. Also Racial profiling, religion: hear how these come together on tour of a special Sikh community gathering place. We also talk about the shooting of taxi drivers and the targeting of this South Asian community in the Richmond area."

4/10 Manzanar Class: Wounded Resurrection

Join us on April 10^th, 2007 6:30-9:30 for a Community Program on

“Wounded Resurrection: Intersections and Solidarities”

the experience of Japanese American internment during WWII and its ongoing message for the present.

Film Showing : “Caught in Between: What to Call home in times of war” video documented by Lina Hoshino, 2004

Reflections:

Grace Shimizu, Japanese Latin American Oral History Project

Chizu Iiyama, Lt. Ehren Watada Support Committee

Rev. Sharon MacArthur, pastor of Sycamore Congregational Church

Sycamore Church members

Location: Sycamore Congregational church

1111 Navelier Street El Cerrito, CA 94530

Free, Open to the Public and Wheelchair accessible.

Carpool Available : Leaving Pacific School of Religion at 6:00 pm ( Meet in the PANA driveway, 2357 Le Conte Ave.)

*This is part one of five sessions in preparation for the 38^th annual pilgrimage to the former WWII site of Japanese American internment at Manzanar. For more information or to sign up for the pilgrimage, contact Shinya at pana2@psr.edu; 510-849-8226 or go to the PANA website: pana.psr.edu.