 the freaking out about, am I going to destroy the world? Am I going to die? Am my family going to be OK? This is unbelievably stressful. So us, Quikping, trying to start this conversation with also meant to increase space where people don't feel alone. Obviously, we're all hella stressed out about this. At the end of the day, I just want you all to know that we are here for you, and we care. And you're not the only one who feels stressed out about this. So yeah, the agenda is basically we're going to cover some context about Chinese-Americans, high-level geopolitical discourse, how that affects Chinese-American lives on the ground, and our daily life, and what we should do and what we should avoid, cyclists. So you probably are all aware, but trigger warning for anyone because there will be upsetting topics being discussed here. Pace yourself if something is too upsetting, and we are here for you, but it's too upsetting, and you don't feel like you have to do all of this all at once, cyclists. So Chinese-Americans, we've been here since the 1800s, since the early 1800s when we came over through the Gold Rush. And the Chinese-Americans, we have a long history, not only in California, but also in other parts of the country, such as Boston trading, Opium, China in the 1800s. And so there have been many ways of Chinese immigration over time. And maybe for a show of hands, who here identifies as first gen immigrants, if you're Chinese-American? First gen, second gen? Third gen or fourth gen? OK, so mostly first and second gen. I identify as 1.5 gen. I was born in China, and I moved here in 1999 with my family. So we're kind of newbies, but there's definitely been a very long history of Chinese-Americans. Next slide. And so the way that I think about the Chinese-American diaspora is one of a migrant workforce. And so when you think migrant workforce, like, usually sometimes you don't really think that Asian or Chinese-Americans are migrant workforces. Like, I think migrant workforces, I think, are a label that are commonly given to Latino communities or even Eastern European communities. But the reality is the Chinese-American diaspora is and always have been a migrant workforce. We come here for economic opportunity, and we are not really meant to assimilate to this country. And there have been laws and reasons that have tried to control how much the Chinese-American diaspora assimilates into America. And so in recent eras, we saw a huge jump in Chinese-American immigration after 1965 immigration reform, where that opened the doors to Chinese-Americans with specialized degrees to migrate into America. So before the reform, there were smaller populations from the railroad era, from the bull rush era. But there wasn't much immigration before that because of the Chinese-Inclusion Act. But America strategically selected for specialized, specially trained Chinese-Americans to start immigrating to America as a migrant workforce to work in these, to work in, like, science and technology industries. So if you look at these charts, we can see that in the middle, the blue bar graph represents the percentage of Chinese people immigrated based on employment-based preferences. And we can see that we are overrepresented for employment-based preference immigration. And so, yeah. So the Chinese-American one of the Americans started to talk about a law enforcement tier for the golden rush. And so they were intended to return on the year than in China. Many Chinese contracted labor in, like, mining and agriculture. And their paid-significant laborers, they were favorable, which led to widespread labor. They operate humble businesses, or they're not really part of that, like, academia, PhD crowd that's significant of Chinese people are in. And a lot of these families are, like, high-generational. They've been here for a long time, third generation. They have grandparents who are here in, like, the early 1900s or 1800s. So there's definitely not a new rate of post-1965 reform are in this camp. Next slide. So here's just some data backing up what I'm saying about this middle and upwards-driving Chinese-American identity class. You can see here, this is a distribution of the ethnicity of employees at Facebook. And we can see that in 2022, there are 46.5% of employees at Facebook are Asian versus 37%, which is crazy considering Asians only make, like, what, or Chinese people or only make up, like, a single-digit percentage of the population, right? So clearly, there's some, like, over-selection for certain kinds of careers. You can see in the racial breakdown of the student body at the UCs, at Irvine, at Berkeley, at UCLA, like, there are high Asian and Chinese populations at those schools. And when we then look at the relative representation racially for different kinds of majors, we can see that Asians, despite only making up 5% of the population, they make up somehow 33% of all computer engineering majors, right? So all of this data is really no secret. Like, we all know that, like, upper-middle class Chinese-Americans tend to want to class mobility and they want material security. And so there's this kind of pattern of Chinese-American families fostering their kids to enter into elite STEM programs or get high school in order to get into these elite universities and then eventually get into, like, a nice prestigious company like Google or Facebook or Raytheon or whatever, right? So next slide. And so this is what they want. This is what the Chinese-Americans want, right? Like, our families come over here for a better life and they want... I think, like, what we want is a pretty humble. Like, we want just a middle-class home. We want, like, a car or two. We want to be able to have the stability to go to Branch 99, go get Boba, play League of Legends, and just, you know, do our job, right? Like, this is... And, like, maybe go to a rave and, you know... Every once in a while, like, I know there's a huge rave culture in Southern California and the Bay Area in general and I know Chinese people and Asians love going to these things. And on the surface level, this all looks good, right? Like, this looks great. This is what our families want. Let this country, we let China, our motherland in order to have this, to achieve this American dream. Next slide. So what's the problem? What's the problem? Like, why, if this all looks good, what's the issue, right? So, yeah, next slide. Basically, I think for a lot of Chinese Americans, when our families immigrated here, especially if you're like, post-1965 reform, China and America had this golden era of relations where the economic relationship between China and America was not adversarial. There was, it was still kind of, obviously there was exploitation, right? Like we all, everything's right in China. Like that's probably not super cool, but when they came, it was a different time. But in 2023, the geopolitics, the geopolitical situation between China and America has radically changed since the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, the 2000s. And so here's like a list of just some of the things that are issues that are coming up because of this geopolitical tension. There is a labeling that, you know, the United States and the West is in a new cold world with China because the Chinese have a, you know, state control, socialist government and economy. A COVID situation, really exacerbated relations. The proxy war in Ukraine is essentially a proxy war between the US and China. Taiwan is also a very sensitive issue. And the reason for that is because Taiwan, you know, creates technologies like they have to, to associate with competitive technologies that both China and the West and the United States are competing over. So besides microchips, other sensitive technologies that China and the United States are racing against each other for, including AI, electric vehicles, networking technology, biotech technology, autonomous cars, and just all of this like scientific intellectual property that both countries are competing against for like civilizational development. There is tension between the Chinese Yuan and the United States dollar and the Chinese Yuan might possibly be challenging the US dollar as a reserve currency, as, you know, countries in the Middle East start settling their oil trading in Yuan instead of dollars, which seriously threatens the American well-being at Hegemi. And there's talk about decoupling, right? Like everyone's talking about, oh, we got to like move all of our factories out of China. We can't like rely on them anymore. And so that's also like the whole trade war that Trump was trying to fight with China was over decoupling. So yeah, there's like a lot going on, right? Like this wasn't happening 20 years ago when our parents came here and they like bought a house and everything is like chill. So the geopolitical landscape has changed a lot. Next slide. And so obviously a lot of this tension was because of China's rise and China's economic rise. And that's definitely unavoidable. And I think for a lot of Chinese Americans, the assumption in the immigrant's thinking was that China would not catch up to the United States or China would not catch up to the United States fast enough where it would be a problem in our or our children's lifetimes. But clearly that assumption was not true, right? It's one thing if this challenge 20.3, but it's happening in 2023 now. And so clearly there's some miscalculation whether or not immigrating to the true cause of the situation. And so I'm sure most people in this room are aware, but one thing that really attracted our families to come to the United States was economic opportunity and political freedom and liberal democracy and all these things about human rights. But if we're gonna be upfront about it, the Chinese, I mean, the American empire and the Anglo-American in general has always used violence and force and economic sanctions and yeah, racism to maintain its rule. It is not clean cut where it's just, oh, we just have better morals. There is real military and economic force that is used to enforce hegemony. We saw this. And so this map covers what's been going on for the past couple of centuries, right? That they don't teach us in school, right? When as Chinese Americans rarely do we ever cover in depth like the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war. I mean, hell, many of us were children when the Iraq war was happening, right? I remember when I was eight years old, no, I was six years old when 9-11 happened. And the next thing I knew, we were going to war with Iraq, but how was I supposed to know what the meaning of that is, right? So something that we as Chinese Americans should really just get out of the way is freedom is really not free and it's obviously not equitable to everyone on the planet. And the American dream that our parents had had more costs, had more costs. Next slide. So in recent memory, we all remember what's been going on in the Middle East, right? With the United States intervention in Iraq, with millions of civilians done, making, getting, providing military support and drones and weapons to Saudi Arabia, which worsened many civil war, which luckily China has recently negotiated a peace treaty for, which is amazing, amazing, right? And the trillions of dollars spent in Afghanistan that, I mean, who knows why we're there, but who knows how much money that costs. And so the American foreign policy is very aggressive in ensuring that America's foreign policy goals are achieved to secure access to oils, to secure access to metals that eventually get shipped to our gas station when we put on our car. So there's this concept called autarky, which in international relations refers to self-sufficiency. And I think a lot of Chinese Americans assume that the United States is an autarkic country, but the reality is it's not as clean cut as that. There are real adversarial relations that happen for the United States to ensure it's standard of living for its citizens. It's like, so who here is familiar with the military industrial complex? Okay, basically everyone. So I won't go too much into it, but basically the way Chinese Americans play into the military industrial complex is really in this part of the triangle here, right? When the Pentagon funds or gives like weapons manufacturers contracts, that's with tax dollars. Those tax dollars come from citizens. And so when you have this very large migrant labor workforce that has relatively high household accounts, we are paying a lot of income taxes to the federal government and that money is going towards weapons. That money is going towards warships, radars, jets that are now being used to monitor the South China Sea, right? That's paying for all the propagandists, right? That's paying for all the propagandists that the defense companies hire to write anti-China pieces in the media to manufacture concern for war. And not only that, the problem is twofold because so many Chinese Americans work in STEM itself. And so a lot of Chinese Americans when they work on research papers in technology or AI or math or physics or medicine, that is all power that can be used to advance American hegemony and foreign policy goals. And so it's really twofold. Next slide. Does everyone know what manufacturing consent is? Okay, so clearly manufacturing, like America has somehow manufactured consent amongst the Chinese American community to basically support war. But now I think a lot of Chinese Americans kind of ignored it when it was against the Middle East or Africa or Eastern Europe. But now what happens when it's out in the country? What happens now when they're trying to manufacture consent for us to go to war against China, a country where many of us have family? Like who here is Chinese American as family in China? So I don't know about you, but it makes you feel horrible that I support a regime that potentially wants to go to war with my grandparents, with my cousins, with my uncles and aunts and my parents. No amount of economic opportunity should justify that. No, that is not what late was about, right? So next slide. And as we can see here, the U.S. is chugging right along with providing military aid to Taiwan. And every single time they do that, the shareholders get excited and shares are lucky Martin and North of Taiwan go up and to them it's just one big bag of cash to grab and not real human lives as we know, right? So next slide. And so I think one takeaway as Chinese Americans is we need to understand that the relationship that the United States has with China has become adversarial, okay? It is not the golden era anymore where China and America are just harmonious and friends. It has become an existential threat and China knows this. And we can see this through the sanctions that China is now placing onto American companies, rightfully so in my opinion, but imagine, you know, you grew up in America and you didn't really think about all this political, these politically sensitive issues. For example, I know many Chinese Americans who work at Raytheon who work at Lockheed Martin and they have been trained to do so since childhood, right? Like these good intentions that a lot of our Chinese American parents had in terms of, you know wanting us to have good stable STEM careers has turned into wartime collaboration as well. That's insane. That is absolutely insane. And I know people who are Chinese American, my age, our age who worked for these companies and now with these sanctions, I don't think they're going to be able to go back to China. And this is something that every single Chinese American should be thinking about when they take a job at these kinds of companies. Don't just look at the money. We need to look at like the political ramifications. Next slide. Okay. So we transitioned a little bit. We just talked a lot about, you know, Washington, about these big companies and corporations, all these like high level things, but how is this going to affect our daily life as Chinese Americans, I'll grab. And so clearly as competition with China gets more intense, there will be more scrutiny against Chinese Americans in terms of entering industry with sensitive technologies, whether that's research labs or companies that require defense clearance or even, you know, working at big corporations that work on advanced technology. It seems like every single year, there's at least a couple of new stories where it's like Chinese employee at Apple, steel, self-driving car, IP or Chinese professor gets fined and jailed under the China program for collaborating with the CPC. So the scrutiny has been happening for a couple of years now, but I think as the attention gets worse, so will the scrutiny and so will the sign up for real. There is a chance that if you are Chinese American and you work in sensitive technology, you will not be able to leave, or at least you will not be able to go back to China. Okay, like the United States. So when Tianxia Sen, who was one of the first nuclear scientists who was Chinese who worked on a Manhattan project, when you try to go back to China, they would not let him leave. They put him under house arrest for five years. So these types of, I think for a lot of Chinese Americans, we need to be careful about what we put our effort and energy towards. Like don't just think of it like a paycheck or we're just doing science. We need to think about like the social sensitivities and political sensitivities. There could be greater political persecution. We could be scapegoated by some political party. Judy Chu recently talked about this because especially in the upcoming 24 elections, if a candidate decides that they wanna build their platform on anti-China policies, that's gonna be hell. That's literally gonna be Red Scare round two, okay? Red Scare round two where all of a sudden every Chinese person is out of spy even though some of us were just kids while we were brought here and none of us chose to be here and we just wanted a little bit of material stability but it's turned into that kind of nightmare. And we saw this during COVID, right? We saw the hate crime. We saw the surge in elders being attacked. It was crazy for a virus that had nothing to do with us just because we were Chinese or Asian looking. And so you wanna add on geopolitical tension and pretend all that we are spies onto that. You know, it's gonna be horrible. So yeah, I mean, I think the last thing I wanna say is there's also chance of like financial danger especially if the Chinese Yuan starts challenging the value of the US dollar at a global level. Like if your savings are all valued in US dollars or if all of your assets are priced in US dollars and the US dollars start losing value because of the yen or some other currency then that's a big fiscal risk. So here are just some of the headlines that some of you have probably seen over the past couple of years. Pop left is a Chinese American professor who was falsely accused for spying for China and there have been multiple progressives like this since it's been happening all over the country. And the legal fees are incredibly expensive. You know, ruins your reputation and puts your family at danger. Several states are banning Chinese citizens from buying land in their states and like Texas is doing this, Florida is doing this. I think North Carolina is potentially doing this but like this kind of policy is unprecedented. How clearly it's not friendly for immigrants if you cannot buy property as a citizen from an immigrant from a country that you're immigrating from, the mass shooting in Allen, Texas, the shooter was in their journal and online. They were known for being neo-Nazis and having white supremacist beliefs and clearly this person actively targeted an Asian family and murdered them in broad daylight. Murdered them in broad daylight. So what do you think is gonna happen when the media starts to keep ramping up its anti-China rhetoric in order to, you know, manufacture consent for war? Like we will be the one to pay for it. We will be the one to pay for it. The next slide. So what do we do? Clearly this is very bleak, okay? We've been very bleak. It seems like the entire world's kind of falling on, the sky's falling and there's like nothing we can do but I think, first of all, thank you everyone for being here and listening, right? Because this is one of those topics that is existential because existential and horrible and feels totally hopeless. But I do think that there are things that we as Chinese Americans and as leftists and socialists and community organizers can do to stop this. Whether you're Chinese or American or not, it is in all of our best interests to redirect funds being sent to these defense contractors and towards communities, towards economic development, towards infrastructure, towards education, right? Like towards fighting climate change. Like these are all worthy uses of our tax dollars. And so, yeah, we should, I think like, we got to call these people out. We got to be aware, we got to spread awareness. We got to tell our friends and family like, hey, like having those hard conversations about this is not a good idea. Here's why and here's what we can do. And I think a lot of the battle is one of like mental health and healing from trauma, right? I think amongst the Chinese American community, there's a lot of intergenerational trauma from the war to the poverty. All the chaos that was happening that made our parents want to leave in the first place. So there's work to be done there in terms of healing and having those conversations and learning our history and trying to backtrace and find our identity and our culture and healing all those things before we can start to tackle these like higher level issues associated with the military industrial complex and Washington DC and like the G7. Like these are all things that are important, but we need to like start with ourselves and look at ourselves and be kind to ourselves and find like give ourselves that space to just heal it so we can tackle these bigger issues. And yeah, I think I really think like this discussion about Chinese American politics needs to start with our families. Maybe some of you know or don't know, but a lot of these middle class and upper middle class Chinese American families are very tunnel visioned on wanting to achieve this kind of American dream. And that discussion needs to be happened in the home, right? Like maybe the previous generation just doesn't want to listen. They're totally radicalized and they just want to build a way of Trump or Biden and just throw the entire country away, right? But one of the biggest challenges for me personally was how do I reconcile this with my own job? Like I know many Chinese Americans who struggle with parents who still believe and outdated beliefs about China and the fall for American propaganda and don't think about like broader, the broader context of like their existence and their choices. So being mindful of that is very important. Thank you. Next slide. So to me, what's happening is so crazy is because this is one, I feel like as a Chinese American, I have entered into the middle of this crazy story that has been happening for centuries. So this is a map of all the places that have been colonized by Europe or Japan, right? Since the 1500s, I'm from here. I think many of us are from here. And what this tan and yellow color means is those are parts of the world that have never been colonized before, right? And so what happened in post-1965 is Chinese people from an uncolonized part of China flew into the heart of the empire, into the middle of a story that has been of slavery, of colonialism, of imperialism, of racism that's been happening for centuries, for centuries. And we have no experience in understanding how to resolve this. It almost feels like we're like bystanders of acts of violence that are happening and we have to make a choice. We have to make this crazy choice of which side are we going to be on? Are we going to enable the oppressors or are we going to support the people who are being oppressed? That is really the choice as Chinese Americans that we have to make an excellent one. So another thing that I really wanna shout out to is obviously Wei and the rest of the Code Pink team. Code Pink, we've been having weekly meetings or bi-weekly meetings while China is not our enemy where we discuss these kinds of issues. So I think starting with community is a positive first step. So thank you all for coming. We all clearly care and this is impossible to do by yourself. And yeah, I mean, I would not be here without Code Pink support. And so I think Code Pink has a lot of great initiatives that we can use to organize and hopefully create some actionable change. Oh, next slide. So yeah, I mean, you're all very, very for coming here today and wanting to even discuss this topic because I think the Chinese American community is very reluctant to want to talk about this. Very, very reluctant for multiple reasons, whether it's low literacy in English or low, you know, less access to education or lack of privilege. But yeah, we really do have to make a choice of whether or not we're going to just ignore what happens and keep the status quo, even if it means going to war with China or are we gonna stand up and like say something or present a better way, right? So, next slide. I wanted to bring up this case of Alexander Wei. Does anyone know who Alexander Wei is? So Alexander Wei to me is like the Chinese American poster charge. His parents were both, you know, military scientists. They came on a specialized visa. You went to MIT, you won all these math competitions. He started a company, and he now is technically a billionaire and we're starting a tech company. Now, his tech company is an AI company that does data labeling and some of his clients are the CIA, the FBI, the Air Force and the US Army. So he recently said in a tweet, our adversaries, Russia and China are not going to pause because of a regulation. If anything, they're going to use this as an opportunity to tighten their grip. So clearly he's taken aside on the global stage about politics. Is this what we as Chinese Americans are on? Is this really like what we as a people should be striving for? To someday start a company that gets used by the military industrial complex to advance white supremacy and capitalism? Like, is this really what the goal is, right? Like, what's the point of taking all these math classes, entering all these competitions, taking all these like science classes, going to MIT, if this is what the end goal is? Like, is this really the best that we could do? And to me, the answer is no. I don't think this is the right answer. And I'm saying this as someone who was also part of that like tech world. I used to be in this startup tech world and I felt like something was wrong here. Like, there's no reason why I should be supporting all of these corporations that murder people for profit. That is not what I came here to do. Yeah, Alexander, if you're seeing this, let's talk, okay? Excellent. And so, you know, this is what the world looks like to a lot of us, right? Like, it's horrible. There are homeless people, you know, who can't support themselves, children can't feed themselves, child soldiers like parents who lose their parents' reward. I want to go from this, I still believe that despite the world looking like this, that we as Chinese Americans and we as community organizers and progressives, we can go from this, next slide, to this. We can do this. We can do this. We just have to look at the situation and try to fix it. But we will never be able to get to this point if we don't actually look at the facts and address them. But we can do this. And this is why I'm doing this. This is why I'm speaking out because life is too short to want to just, you know, live a nihilistic life of profit. Okay, like it's about people, it's about our families, it's about community. That's it. That's it. Next slide. Okay. Ah. I don't know. Drink the water. Sorry. Drink the water. Where's the water? Drink the water. Yeah, so that's kind of how I see it. And I've struggled for a very long time to find an audience who would even want to be having this discussion. But yeah, I mean, what do you guys, I would love to hear from you guys, what you guys think, what this presentation made you think about feedback, disagreements? I really liked it. I mean, I was expecting it to be kind of like, I thought it was going to be sort of boring. You know, I wasn't going to be personal. I wasn't going to be about people making decisions. You wouldn't mind, you know. I thought it was going to be a little bit different to what I was going to say, but that was it. No offense to co-painting. Okay. Yeah, I think it's an important part of the presentation because I really liked it. I think it's the greatest thing that I like to do as we're doing it. Yeah, my family straddles that line, you know, which is what I'm saying. I don't want to try to go around, I don't want to try to do anything. So I really had a thought about, wow, this is all the post-65 people in the segment, is there almost a consensus of how they're going to be making so that was one of the reasons. I mean, I think getting specific like that's good for a lot of different reasons. I understand why a lot of Asian Americans don't want to bring that stuff up because if you're a progressive, we're on the back of something, it's like they're paying for a lot of that kind of growth sometimes. I think acknowledging the three important programs is my worst and bad thing. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? Despite there being classified, I think the Asian Americans and the Chinese Americans have been here a long time. The ones I've met are a little bit more popular. And so these things aren't really like a surprise but yeah, the post-65 immigrants, they just got here, we just got here, we didn't have the time to watch everything happen, we couldn't have the dots. So, but the timing is really poor because of the tensions. What about I just, I hate them when I work for a whole week. I mean, does the strata of Chinese Americans, do they have experience with the 80s or do they come after that or what? Like was in the 80s, well, like Japan bashing? I don't know if they felt that. Bashing. Like a bit of a shinger or whatever. Like at least in my experience, it was basically a lot of Nazis were killing each people around Washington and up here in the big thing. Just harassing and like, you know, Well, so I think what happened in the 80s was that was the transition of power from like Mao to Deng, right? Like that's when Deng really started reeling in the power and one way that he justified his policies was owning at the West in Hong Kong and saying prosperity can only happen if you lack recognition. And so I think a lot of people from that generation grew up with this concept that free market capitalism is good and West and Hong Kong and, you know, they are more advanced than us. And so even if these hate crimes were happening, the propaganda was coming from the top that capital is good. So I don't think they're really thinking about those kinds of things, unfortunately. Well, kind of adding on to your point, there actually was a short period in the late 80s when the fears of Washington establishment was that essentially Japan would become more China is today that Japan would develop its independent path away from the West, away from the US. It would stop being kind of this client of the US which it had essentially been since after the end of World War II it would develop its own independent path. And this was the time, you know, when we started to see this huge rise in Japanese automotive during the late 80s. So that's when you started to kind of see the anti-Asian of racism being directed towards the Japanese people. But then that quickly changed and Japan kind of became in this more subordinate position towards the US and that radically changed, you know. But there was, yes, a short period where the anti-Asian racism was directed towards the Japanese. Yeah. I mean, that's why they went after Vincent Chen. I think he was a Japanese auto director. But yeah, unlike the 90s where the US was able to placate Japan by the deposit board, there is no equivalent kind of policy for that. So, I mean, they would love to, but it's a different game of China for sure. Oh, what's that called? No, forgive me, we're not going to, what accord? Oh, the Plaza accord? Oh, okay. Yeah, it was, I think they forced Japan to devalue its currency. So basically make it like more avatars for the US to import expense. Yeah, Japan is crazy. They've had a 0% interest rate for decades now and they're, yeah, it's a very different country with less people and different history. There's someone that put in the chat on the Zoom saying free market capitalism was the only thing for sale at that establishment. I think that was going back to the, when we saw the influx of Asian immigrants at the turn of like 70s, 80s. And I think that's very true because now we see this rising tension with China is because that the US to Germany sees that China as a socialist country is providing an alternative to its market capitalism for all of the countries with the Belt and Road initiatives in the global South, in Africa, in Latin America saying that you don't have to follow the US's plan in order to get to prosperity for your people. So yeah, that's why we see this rising tension towards China in the recent years. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even get to the part about the other countries, which is, we're all stuck in the middle. Okay, like, Europe is stuck in the middle, Africa stuck in the middle, and Middle East is stuck in the middle. Everyone is kind of looking at both sides and being like, like, why would I go with build back better if I can just have China in the subway system? Yeah, I mean, Germany is struggling over this, right? Because China is one of like the biggest export markets. So this is an issue that affects everybody, everybody, not just America. So yeah, there is a little bit of a, taking sides here, like both countries have their problems. Obviously, the United States have their problems, but I'm not saying China is like the answer, but I think it's good that countries have an alternative developmental model than just the United States model. I think that's better for everybody. Yes. Yeah, I think the way that you approach it with your own personal background, like when we say China's American community, that means a lot of different things, because there's not a single community. I mean, there's like, you know, disparities, relations, class, immigration pattern, lineages, generational existence within the confines of the United States. It's like, and shifts in the economy of the kind and where you, your family is in part, it's very complicated. And like, it gets even worse when you start using terms like Asian-American, because that's more of the operation of all of this because every nationality is really different. Very, very distinct. Yeah, I learned the hard way about being specific because I think my views happened to align with a lot of people who aren't second gens, but so they get very confused when I started talking about all these things about like PhD immigrants and like middle class and kumam and the idea they're just like, what are you talking about? That's weird. So yeah, I think another course of action is maybe, you know, the older generations and the different groups of Chinese people start talking to each other more because there are bubbles, there are bubbles. Or Katie has like a giant bubble, right? Like that place is crazy. Yeah. And just kind of respond to that from like my perspective as a campaigner with Code Pink, leading up to having this event, we've actually been hearing different thoughts from, like even within the Chinese-American communities, people from different generations all sharing their perspective. Obviously, Hongyi and I are from like the younger generation. So we might know like older, elderly folks who came here because of the American dream that was so to them. So they have like those ideas. And then we also have activists who are in like the older generation Chinese-Americans. And then they were saying that the people who, like the older generations, they still have some sort of like emotional attachment to the homeland versus the younger generation who were born raised there. They were just like raised in propaganda. And then they thought that it was actually younger generation being more likely to buy into war. So yeah, definitely we saw the different perspectives leading up to this. And again, just echoing what you said, really appreciate Hongyi sharing your experience with us and then using that to lead us on teaching. Yeah, happy to have the two of them. Class trader, class trader. I don't know. Do you want to have a job in right now? No, not anymore. I'm not just gonna end up doing that. That's sad. I'm wondering. Like, I mean, what percentage of Chinese-Americans do you think end up supporting the war or in this particular job? Against China or? Yeah, yeah. I hope that they know that everyone is kind of wondering. Yeah. They're like 100% or maybe 20% or maybe 20%. I mean, it's 100% because we're all paying taxes in this country and that's important. What I've heard is they just don't know. Even the people who are from Taiwan, who live in Taiwan, they just don't know. And one reason why I believe that's the case is because there's just low levels of English words that give us that definition. Right? Like, it's hard enough to like read and your times are full. Nevertheless, you can do it with devotion. So those critical reading skills are just not developed in a lot of people. Because the content that we've covered today requires context of the entire book. You have to like literally start at 1500 or just 92. You have to start there. Go through the triangular trade. You have to go through the industrial revolutions. You've got to go through like all the imperialism, colonialism, to understand white supremacy. And then you can start talking about it. And that's just out of reach for most Chinese-Americans because that's accessible. A push is propaganda, right? APU has history and ice cream is propaganda. Like one time I was like in class, they were talking about when they coup Dishon in the 50s or 60s. And I wanted to raise my hand and be like, are we gonna talk about that? But, you know, like you're gonna bring up America as evil as like a second-generation immigrant in school, like no. Like you got to get into Berkeley. I can't believe I'm just mumbling that thing back. You know, over in general, I think in general, I think like that happens a lot out there. I mean, I don't know, it's quite stupid. You worry? Well, you know, I think, well... I think a lot of things have changed. But, you know, I mean, I think, especially like the Chinese-American families, they don't really care about teaching history, right? Like what do they care? They're just here to like, we are a migrant labor workforce. We're just here to write the code and drink the moba. Like that's where the term mobile liberal comes from, right? Like wanting to only talk about the surface-level issues of like representation and, you know, stinky lunch and... Yeah, what am I saying? I'm really interesting. I guess I'm wondering, I mean, so there is that, that you're mentioning, mobile liberal. I'm wondering if I can, you know, let's say from my experience, I'm obviously not Chinese, I'm Mexican, but in our community, I think the barrier to political participation is like fear of being deported. And I'm wondering if that is also a, you think a concern, like especially for the 1965 generation. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, that is that. Well, you know, they think these people believe the right way, or the American talking point, so it's like, you know, authoritarian, you know, party state, and poverty has literally been growing at an exponential rate for like the past two decades. And yeah, there's fear. I think that might be changing now, especially as China's soft hour starts, you know, increasing and people start thinking, hey, why am I bothering to support this regime? Like, but I think a lot of people, like my age, we probably thought that was like, I gotta make it here because my parents sacrificed themselves to, you know, give me a better life. And it's like, well, maybe that wasn't a total truth. Like maybe they just didn't read it. I don't work for the church. Look at the picture. So it's not like a problem. I mean, that's a very common problem, right? Like, I think we've got the number of Chinese Americans, my age, who may have had liberal arts on probably one hand. One hand. They're all in the CS department. We're just fine, right? I wasn't there too. I think we, it's been about like an hour-ish since we began, and I don't know if you have like a time constraint because this is, we're okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you both. And let's see, I stutter because just like you said, actually it's kind of traumatic. Like, you know, think of the possibility of say for example, a nuclear war, you know, and so, so I don't even know exactly how to see and turn out like my little comments and questions. But I can say that it's touched my heart in that I was raised when I was a kid with the Chinese American friends and families like with their parents, you know. So it touches on the English and then just really briefly, I worked for the Chinese American friendship foundation where I actually taught my version of, because I created the first one really for my, for me, for me, that was okay. Just for my classes, it was an American style leadership to their, and to Chinese students that were raised in, that lived in China, you know, so they would only come to the United States to study and throw up some of them and then to go back. But anyway, my point here is just saying that actually is that I would teach them American style leadership, I would teach them about community that they didn't know about like people who may be on the left that, so it was really interesting and exciting and, but so my heart went out to the kids and then like there was a personal connection in it. So I guess, so what I'm going to just saying is that, again, I can't thank you enough because of just the confusion and the possibility of war and is mentally traumatic and emotionally. And one of the things amongst the many things that I like to say, but there's not enough time, so I can't say everything that I'm saying here, but is one thing that I was really pleasantly totally shocked and surprised about is that you've mentioned like things like, you know, we start with ourselves and our own mental health and be kind to ourselves. Like I didn't think you'd be talking about that. And as much as it might be seen as, I was talking about from morning earlier, like just lovey-dovey, you know, Kumbaya, like Peaceneck, like whatever tree-hugging thing, I mean, is that it's really, really fiercely urgently true and necessary, I think, to take care of themselves. And so where I'm getting to this is probably another reason why I've kind of had to stop and pause and think and ramble just a tiny bit is because, I didn't think I'd be talking about this at all, but you mentioned it. So mental health is like, you know, and also coupled with other huge words like conflicts like Iraq and Russia, Ukraine, and this fear, like in trauma, and we got fear. And then begging for solutions. I mean, like not begging, but this begs solutions, right? And so I was actually amongst this whole thing and I'm going to throw in here that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And so, and sometimes I get in a deep depression where it tells me since, where I feel like the one person that I'm talking to, where it tells me since, where I feel like the woman, I think that we're burying her head in the sand, or sometimes I feel like that, like I'm doing that. I sleep with everybody. And then for days, and then all of a sudden I decide to pop out of that and then become this hopefully, maybe at times, super activist or involved in the community and doing things like this and showing up or helping lead a presentation. Anyway, so what's right here is one of the themes is thank you. And another thing is I'm glad that we put the thing about mental health and that starts with our families and ourselves and healing. And then so that gave me room to say, hey, you know what? I can self-identify or I can identify or come out of the closet in terms of a lot of things. But in this case, mental health with mental issues having had a diagnosis. And so to wrap up, I don't know if it was gonna be a comment or a question, but I just like how you gave us hope. And that's the reason I'm here too, when you showed them the communities together and working together and like picture children that were all different types of ethnicities and colorators is I believe also, I believe that we can, yeah, maybe that's why most of the here can be believed that I'll just say like this, even though I think we're on the fast track to like annihilation of the planet, like as a humanity. However, I think when I'm here because, and I do the presentation everything because I believe that it's not too late and that we can transform the planet, absolutely, yeah, I understand what you're saying. So yeah, yeah, thank you for sharing. You ended up saying we can do this, we can do this. And I wrote that down, we can do this. Yeah, we can do this. But as long as we continue to work together, getting to the contact information and all that. Yeah, well, so thank you for, because the reason why I put it in there is because the Chinese American community from my perspective is going through like a mental health crisis. Asian American youth between like the ages of 18 and 24 are highest at risk for suicide in this country. You look at all of the enclaves that have high aid in populations, they are suicide clusters in the Bay Area and the Eats Post, okay, you have all these first and second gen immigrants trying to shove all their kids into these STEM programs and it's not healthy. And so I also read a lot about Asian parent stories which is this online community or Asian kids to vent about their families and it's a nightmare. It is a nightmare. And so before we even start talking about this kind of stuff, I want all Chinese Americans and Asian Americans and as people in general to understand that like, yes, I know this is a problem, but so is like your homophobic mom or like your dad who is like obsessed with like, who's in brainwash or your parents who are just so status obsessed and they can't stop bugging you about getting this job or going to this grad school or they agree with you. Because that's real, that's real. And yeah, I really do think this problem starts in the family and that has to be fixed first before we can start talking about North America. Yeah. I think it also, I think that's what you were saying there's a lot to do with obviously you mentioned like our transition, right? Our positionality and all of it. And I mean, it's about being on like, I always think about how much this country was built off of, that kind of thing. That people would probably treat nothing else than the border, I work at the border. So I see that every single week. And I don't know, I really appreciated that you brought up the fact that it gives a two-hole situation, right? Your community that our country is benefiting all of us who are like the intelligence and the skill set and the passion and the ambition of the community to use it against you, which is so, it can be shown in so many different cultures in America. So that's just supposed to show like, can you imagine if all of us came together and were like, yo, this is not right, right? And then like really like doing all of these things and for what? So, yeah, that really resonated with that. So thank you for mentioning that. But I think a lot of people, they see maybe, let's say for example, a pride thing on TV and they're like, well, that's not making it do as me. So why am I gonna show up? Why am I gonna fight for these people that I don't really, you know, whatever. One, essentially, it has everything to do with everything, right? And my family story has so many kind of those people, right? So I think I really appreciate that you brought that up to that point. And for telling me that I already knew but I didn't have the words to put it in, yeah. Yeah, no, thank you so much for sharing. The only reason I could put this presentation together is because I've learned from so many communities. So, yeah, it's, I forgot the word. I'll be more brief this time. And that is that I just started this right now on the volume of the Speaking of Thanks for your contribution. And as Chicano and just someone raised in this country, in this part of this country, sometimes amongst the different sides of the border. But so I'm just all of a sudden now we're just remembering somehow that I definitely, my experience has been that there's extreme amount of racism from Latinos towards Asian-American. I know, I mean, you know, all together, but also from Asians toward Latinos, extreme sometimes, like in-grains, like with propaganda. And yeah, and yeah, I mean, I studied, actually I did go to Berkeley, but I studied not STEM, but social justice. So it was like social protest movements. And so it was left scale things. But anyway, but I am a young woman as a fellow student who was in China. She asked me to tour her in China. We went, I mean, later on, she said, oh, I thought you were all like, like these. And like, because of what I see on TV in China. That's a problem. Yeah, and like gangsters there. So what would you say, how would you build? I mean, this is one of the ways, right? Part of the solution, the answer I'm saying, and I said everything. So finally, what I'm getting to finally is, what do you think part of the solution is to bridge? I mean, do you also agree about this racism? And how do you think that relations between Latinos and Asians can be bettered? Chinese-Americans or Chinese or Asians can be improved or transformed in our society right here? I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're all colonized for me, it's really looking at the history and looking at what's, what happened before I existed and the way things are and just deciding to push against that historical inertia instead of going along with it, right? Like, I just think about before I was born, there were like 108 billion people that I think still stick to here. I can only, we can only do so much to like change the way that history is going in our lifetime. But so I think it's just prioritizing learning about people instead of material safety, which is a privilege, right? That is a huge privilege. Like not everyone has all this time to sit around to read about post-colonial theory. That is a huge privilege. And so I think if we do have that privilege, then we should use it to kind of educate people as much as possible and mobilize. It's okay to feel empathy for other people, even if it might mean you are a little less comfortable in a little bit of a trade. So, yeah, what year was that? About what, Berkeley? Oh, it was about, it was already, God, it seems like three years ago, but it's been already about 10 years. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely, but it seems like we're all, not only life-honored, we're all working with the best, right? So, I mean, like I said earlier, we're all living together, like, it's not stopping. I have more of these, and soirees or something like social things. Yeah, no, I mean myself. And they came together with all of us. I'm gonna work. Yeah, add to like your observation about this discrimination of prejudice amongst people of color. I think it's just really important for us to realize that all of these tensions, like the two different groups, the root is what's your tendency here, right? The Asian-Americans, like, we have this idea of like the model minority. Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's okay. No, no. But I'm in that one too, so I'm good. Yeah. What's your premise? What's your premise? And model minority myth, they came up with it back in the 70s when they saw the black and brown people saying that they're struggling with stuff. They're saying, well, actually, look at the Japanese, the Asians, they're doing just fine and they're skateboarding black and brown communities for their issues instead of like addressing the systemic issues. And I actually just learned this a couple of months ago from a different clothing webinar. Actually, we got like this scholar on the history of like Chinese-Americans. And that day I learned on one of the worst lynchings that ever took place in the US took place here in Los Angeles in 1871 when a mob of like 500 people murdered 17, 18 Chinese-Americans overnight. And that was like during the post-gold rush. So like, again, going back to contract labor thing. And the mob that murdered all of these people actually made up, was made up of whites and Latino laborers. So again, it's, we have like all of these things, but then really we see that it's really the white supremacists using one group to antagonize another, but it really is time for us, all people of color to come together. And then just as you said, show solidarity and then we can just like address this issue. And we work for peace at Coating but we can have peace without justice. And there was someone said in the chat earlier, racial oppression is not a byproduct of war. It's part of the underpinning and the methodology. So as we are trying to work for peace, we also need to address the justice and we need to build solidarity of all oppressed people. And then we can work towards peace and justice. So going back to that, can we go back to that now? One with the European colonialism. We as Chinese-Americans are brand new to this stuff. Okay, like even having this discourse is like, it's like new, right? There, go ahead. I actually came up from like the northern part of China. Oh, so you have like all these, okay. Yes. No, just by the Japanese though, but because like China also has the interesting history of like the hundred year of accumulation. So we have like the European countries coming to China, they set up these what they call like concessions. Basically they get to use this land and they do whatever they want, they'll call it China. I was born in a city with the history of having concessions actually. We had concessions from nine different countries. Shandong? No, Tianjin. Tianjin, okay, Tianjin. Yeah, so yeah, yeah. So definitely like growing up, I saw like all of these Western architectures where he's like, oh yeah, come on, I was up. Well, yeah, well, I think like other minority groups in America, you guys have a very long story history of resistance and fighting against oppression and we're brand new to this, right? Like, and white supremacy is trying to, you know, perform arbitrage on our ignorance, right? Like it's almost like there's two camps. There's like the capitalists who say, hey, like write this code for us. We'll like give you some stock options and money or like that seems like really cool and sexy with like the free food bar and, you know, like the free food at Google. But, you know, most Chinese people don't come here to understand the post-colonial history that's been happening for hundreds and hundreds of years. Like, so yeah, I think it starts with talking about our own histories about how we were colonized, right? Like there's a big, one big project that I had in life that's trying to make the story about, you know, the Boston Opium trade becoming more well-known, right? Like it was highly disturbing to me. I grew up in Massachusetts and it was crazy when I left to learn, wow, like all that racism and that experience in that country, all these institutions are built on Chinese opium. Like you go to Skid Row, right? You go to San Francisco, you go to any part of the inner city and you see all these, you know, people on heroin and they look like zombies. That's what they were doing. That's what they were doing. And then they took that money, put it into Harvard, put it into a master neural hospital, built up their institutions. Princeton University's biggest ever monetary donation was $2 million by a man named John Green. He was an opium trader. So it's crazy that the Ivy League that the Chinese Americans worship and idolize so much is literally built on Chinese blood. They were causing a public health crisis. Okay, like the fentanyl situation going now, horrible. Is it coming from China? Yes, should it be happening? No. So why should it have happened centuries ago? And so like, I think the more Chinese Americans start acknowledging that this land and this civilization was not just built on merit, okay? Like the Chinese Americans are obsessed with merit and they think everyone plays as fairly as they do. Like, no, it has not been like that and it has never been like that. And so, yeah, I think in order to get the Chinese Americans to start listening, we got to, they got to start learning about themselves. Okay, and then they got to start learning about other people. And once we do, like it's going to be a very different ball game because who's going to go to Facebook? Yeah, it's like, who's going to write the code? Like no one, I mean, Chinese Americans play a very important role in the American economy. Very important. And yeah, so. I wanted to say that one thing and man, so one thing that's funny is Stanford was one of the anti-Chinese big Chinese of the morning. So anyways. And it does connect to empire. Because in the 50s, right, the Japanese Americans were coming out of the concentration camp. And basically, everybody hated Japanese Americans. They were primed to hate us because of the war, right? So they had to kind of undo that and they came up with their idea of even modern minorities were very slow. And it's also at the same time, the Japanese occupation was happening and then winding down. And so they needed to also create an image of Japan as part of the American empire, right? Because right at the end of World War II, China, which had been an ally, it instantly. And Japan, which had been the enemy of fascism was instantly part of America, basically. And so they had to cook it all around. And I think that was one of the propaganda techniques, right? They had to also reintegrate all these people in like basically a prison back in the society where the government was still in. Yeah. So it's pretty wild to be in the middle of the world. Yeah, there you go, bottom line. Yeah. And if you bought into that, like somebody that's working at anything on the food court and all that stuff, like people or whatever, right? So what you had to pay the price was higher in America. And you had to turn your back on your grandparents who work in Japan, right? You had to give all of your kids, not Japanese, but also more like you were given. You had to give them European, right? And again, these concessions we had to make in order to be re-accepted in society and stay off racist violence. Like, if I was found in the Cleveland, they filled everybody in Cleveland, they were Chinese after camp, after concentration. So there was that kind of, a lot of that kind of psychological stuff that we're never gonna become. I'll tell you right now, we're the small, slowest growing population. So let Japanese Americans be a warning for what's going on right now with the China fashion because this society will put you away as the primary scapegoat. They always change the scapegoat. Today, Chinese, yes, they Japanese, before the Mexicans, right? They may switch it up, so if we look at history, we have to understand the situation. And it is very wide in scope because it's not just about China. They start out with trans people, lesbians, gays, dehumanization of one is dehumanization of this all. And people don't get that what you were saying, right? And we have to get to the point, like you said, studying history and commonalities across different colonized people. And that's the trick. I mean, that's the only thing they have on this is cuts. They don't have the numbers. The only thing they have holding over us is the mental state. Well, I think it's possible because it's easier than ever in some ways. What are these phones for? What are these computers for? Like talking to each other, right? This webinar would not be possible like five, 10 years ago. And so you don't have to go to the library every day and you can just go online and just do your research. So that's why I believe it's possible because the world that we have today is only possible because of like the limits that we have from before but those limits aren't there in the world. So why not try? Why do we need to act like we're all in the 80s again? Like we don't, we don't need to. It's not that serious. Okay, yes. Well, first of all, I really want to thank you. And I want to thank Wayne and everyone who will organize this. You know, one thing that I think was very, that I really appreciated when your presentation was the honesty and the authenticity of what they were saying and also this need for I think a community. You know, we cannot do this work if we do not have a community. The world of social media has kind of isolated us, you know? But then, you know, and I think it was very nice, you know, being, it's very nice being a part of the, the C-Note team and Code Bank, you know, I feel that there is a community, but I think, you know, actually meeting you guys in person, having this space is so much more powerful because it's like, we get to see that we're actually like real human beings as opposed to being able to put a screen but since it was really nice having a year ago, six months ago, meeting Joey for the first time, you know? Yeah, Jody Evans at the Cuba event today, when we were together. Everyone joined. Yeah, yeah. Please join. But another thing that you said, which, you know, really resonated with you was this, was this sense of anxiety and loneliness because, you know, I feel this like all the time ago and I have to confess that this has been a great source in my depression. Yeah, yeah. Life does, you say. I've battled depression, you know? I've been battling depression since I was in college and became in high school and this is a major source of it and it's not so much okay, you know, because of what our leaders and warm-wonders are doing but it's due to the alienation caused by this that it's so difficult to talk to people about this. It's so hard, you know? And it's, you know, like, I come off as a dead downer, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. Come on. Like, yeah, you know, like that image that you showed of 99 ranching on the Volvo, like, that's basically my world. You know, my girlfriend is, you know, my family's very international. My girlfriend's political, you know? I have Chinese-Americans in my family so yeah, you know, like, I'm exposed to all of this, you know, going out, you know, the foodie culture, then Bova and then going to 99 ranch and then I bring up the cheap political stuff. It's like, Martin, why did you ruin it? How did you kill it? No, it's interesting because you are Chinese-American but you understand like the nihilistic kind of that a lot of these families have, right? And it's understandable, like thousands of years of like, you know, like dynastic rule, right? China is famous for having very, very strong states, okay? Like, there's one thing about China is that we, we have literally thousands of warring kingdoms that we whittle down through violence and blah, blah, blah until everyone was obedient. So yeah, you know, there's a tendency for us to not want to rock the boat by saying like, maybe we shouldn't have built vessels for right now into the entire Palestinian children but you know, yeah, it's the word. It is very depressing. Yeah, well, the community doesn't really exist. Yeah, and so now I'm saying this, this community, yeah, the community exists. We're trying to, we're trying to get that community going. I mean, I made this presentation because I was like, I don't know who else wants me. Like, I can't talk, like I'm trying to find all these guys. Like, let's do something. Yeah, we're here, we're here. So, I mean, now we have a small little army. What's that? Not army, no, not army. Okay, sorry. Padre. Kamaraderi. Kamaraderi, yes, family. Yes, family, I don't know. One other thing that I wanted to mention is this idea, I think, which is, which I kind of think, you know, that we're kind of getting to, you know, as far as talking about, you know, how communities here, you know, have been turned against each other, you know, different colonizing oppressed people have been turned against each other. That's why, you know, trying to revisit, trying to remind people of this idea about internationalism and how if you look at, you know, if you look at the history of modern China, you know, during the revolution, it was a very powerful force within building internationalism between building anti-colonial movements. I posted a video onto our, you know, onto our email group where these African leftists are talking about how, right after the Chinese Revolution, 1965, when China's GDP was essentially like sub-Saharan Africa, they help build rail systems throughout Africa, you know, throughout Zambia and the one in Zambia, 65 Chinese workers died in the construction of this project. You know, so this is something I think that, you know, as people, you know, who are colonized, you know, people of color who have also left this needs to be reminded of, you know, China is a great comrade, historical great comrade in our struggle. And unfortunately, it's a lot of fun. I know this is because I'm a school teacher, if I were to teach this, I'd probably lose my job. Oh yeah, you're out of there. You're out of there. You've got to get the kids to Ivy League and Berkeley. Yeah, yeah, it's not going to help with that. Yeah, I mean, if these parents, if these Chinese Americans really wanted to get their kids in the Ivy League, they would just tell them the right, you know, a song story about like local persecution, one party says something like, oh, perfect, we found our, you know, our figurehead. That's a very common thing, right? Like Chinese Americans working for Western media and saying, one choice means I listen to me and it's like, no, they're always trying to pull the strings. In the spirit of community and getting together on a political and social basis, like, so I started this couple of, started this couple of groups when it called Upward and Martin's been a huge, huge part of that. I know it was called World Peace Now. And the way I see it is, it's a fledgling movement having to be real creating peace with social justice and equity and so, so we've had our, what I call our special event meetings. So they're really meetings, but they have a flavor of a tiny bit of like, even celebration, like there's been music, like live music within the meeting and like food and everything in the meeting. So there's, you know, a social aspect of it, definitely. But I guess this is like, again, in the spirit of creating community, continuing with that, I wanted to invite people to, too bad I didn't think that I would, so I didn't have a flyer or anything, but people would come up, we're in Pomona, we would meet Pomona, but we can meet in the future in other places like here. And we meet at a book store called the amazing nonprofit book store called Cultural Center called Africa Meet Most in Pomona. And so, and a few seconds of shameless appetite during the day and the time. Yeah, okay. And that's May 20th, which is Saturday. And again, I'll repeat it. May 20th, which is Saturday, about two and a half weeks into the day is our next special event meeting. And, oh, June 20th, June 17th. Oh yeah, I put that all wrong. That was our last meeting. So it's June 17th, Saturday at 4.30 PM, at Cafe Comibos in the artistic district of Pomona. And I'll just do one last minute to make sure everyone has a right back. Saturday, June 17th at 4.30 at Cafe Comibos. But come up to me if you want more information and we can write down the address and things like that. We can go to Cafe Comibos to continue the spirit of Chinese, Chicano, Asian, Latino, Latina, solidarity, the touch of fun. Yeah, no, I think, yeah, the fun part is important. I think we had a code thing meeting. There's like, does anyone have any ideas of how we can get the message out? I'm like, I think it's music festival. Like rain? Rain? Anti-imperialist rain. As I'm hearing it, it was burning man. Yeah. I mean, that's what it's like. That was the original message of it. Guys, we need to start in music best. That's how we think about it. And the only the cool anti-imperialist we've ever been found out. Well, if you're anti-imperialist, you are automatically cool. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, we can go to Laurel Canyon and like take over again. Go to the salt and sea. I mean, this is counterculture, right? This is literally counterculture. There's a very long history of counterculture and I think while we're young, you know, let's do something, we go to work and what we think is right. Yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah, thank you. Thank you all so much. Yeah, my god. Code pink, shout out code pink. I think we have a last slide. Basically we have some petitions. So you can sign our petition. We have some petitions. You can find all of them on code pink.org or code pink.org slash China. It's like the website for our campaign and you can find all of like China related petitions there. And are we still trying to push your spot? Okay. Yeah, sorry, the one before. Yeah, we have these petitions. Yeah, so now that we feel so energized after these excellent presentations, why don't we take a naturally right now? So shameless blog for code pink. One of our ongoing action is to basically tell Congress to send for peace and cooperation with China. This year, at the beginning of this year in January, we saw that the Congress established the House Committee, House Select Committee focusing on competition with China. This is the first time in U.S. history that Congress has ever created a committee focusing on competition with another country. So, and we know this is also driving hate towards the Asian-American community. So just, I know y'all have phones and then y'all are on the computer. So go to code pink.org slash Congress China 23. So if you put in some information right here, this system is going to automatically find who your representative is and who your senators are. And we already have like a template or letter written for you. You can feel free to edit it or just go ahead and send it. Basically, it talks about the importance of, with peace with China, especially now we're talking about the Chinese-American or Asian-American community. We know if you've heard about the Stop AAPI Hate, the database, they've been collecting incidents of hate crime towards our community members since 2020. And so far, they've received over 11,000 reports of hate incidents and actually one in five of these reports, the perpetrator would say something that we see the warmongers use as part of their political rhetoric, blaming our community members for COVID-19, blaming them for espionage, blaming them for economic insecurities. So this war on China is also driving hate. And as someone mentioned earlier, like racism is part of this war and this war is fueling waste of them all together. So yeah, I really appreciate you all for being here. And again, go to clipping.org slash China, you can find all of our credentials out there. Yeah, thank you all so much for coming. And thank you both to Dave for sending the last message. Real quick, we started a new subreddit called R, The Resident Asians. And we're trying to use that to like collect news topics, you know, articles, research, main semblance like that. Just try to alternative it to must take over Twitter and all kinds of other crap that's not very progressive on Reddit. So if everybody could join that, it's really easy to post it on a WordPress site if you have one as an RSFB. But that's it, thank you. All right, we'll open mic on Friday. Okay, look it up. It's time. Oh, yeah. For crime. Hold on, it's over mic. It looks like it's on Facebook. It looks like it's on Facebook. It looks like it's on Facebook. Yeah, it looks like it's on Facebook. Is that on like poetry and bookworm or? You can go up there and rant about this topic. No, but yeah, it's on poetry. Yeah. What? It's on that day. Hey, Pam, cool. On this Friday? This Friday? No. I'm really intrigued. I guess I'll go ahead. Yeah, no, I know you guys, but we're not actually at a purpose that we need. So we can break and let you guys forward the video. Oh, what's three other events coming up in the city? We talked about China, not in India. Just one journal. Thank you. What's the next one? Yeah. Next one coming up is actually going to be this coming Monday. Our co-founder of Coping and also who created this campaign, Jolie Evans, probably heard of her. She's really awesome. She's currently on a trip to China and she's coming back in a few days and then this coming Monday, June or maybe check out the calendar to make sure I have the right date at 4 p.m. Pacific time, since we're just all here in California. We are going to be on Zoom. I'm sure Jolie's going to share about her experience in China and what she's learned, what she's seen, what she's witnessed and everything. That's going to be our next webinar. We are also planning some more actions coming up for June is that we are going to be in DC and talk to the committee that we mentioned. It is a McCarthyist committee are driving hate, like driving this new Cold War on China. So we are going to do teachings for the committee members. We're going to deliver all the petitions that we currently have on our website. So if you sign one of our petitions, we guarantee that we will physically deliver these petitions to our congress members. And we're going to teach them all about China because the weapon industry, like everyone's talking about war, what they need to hear is voices for peace. So yeah, if you could join us in DC, that would be really awesome. It's far, but it's far. Cool, all right. And yeah. Thank you. All right, thank you all. Have a good one. Have a good one. Have a good one. Thank you.