FREE EST. 1974 - International Examiner to grocery shopping. I go two to five ... Sandwiches’...

CELEBRATING NEARLY 40 YEARS

FREE EST. 1974 — SEATTLE VOLUME 40, NUMBER 15 - AUGUST 21, 2013 – SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

The country’s premier nonprofit pan-Asian newspaper

THE NEWSPAPER OF NORTHWEST ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN COMMUNITIES. FIND YOUR INSPIRASIAN.

First and third Wednesdays each month.

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Photo Credit: Joseph Walsh.

BACK TO SCHOOL, BACK TO BASICS

2 —— August 21, 2013 - September 3, 2013 INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE BOARD OF DIRECTORSJoyce Zhou, President

Gary Iwamoto, V.P.Arlene OkiAndy Yip

ADVISORRon Chew

EDITOR IN CHIEFChristina Twu

[email protected]

DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATEKathy Ho

[email protected]

ARTS EDITORAlan Chong Lau

[email protected]

BUSINESS MANAGEREllen Suzuki

[email protected]

CREATIVE DIRECTORRyan Catabay

[email protected]

PRODUCTION DESIGNERNari Fateha

[email protected]

WEBMASTER/IT SUPPORTJimmy Tang

[email protected]

ARCHIVES PROJECT MANAGERStephen Jeong

[email protected]

HERITAGE SPECIALIST &RESEARCHER

Eleanor [email protected]

INTERNSMenaka Narayanan - Editorial Midori Nasu - Marketing

Clarrie Ng - Digital Media

CONTRIBUTORSRon Chew

Jessica DavisCarina A. del Rosario

Stephen Fong

Yuri GuanJesse Hagopian

Amy HirotakaSam Kenyon

Susan KunimatsuHuy X. Le

Nagisa LeonardMichael Lozano

Atia MusazayMenaka Narayanan

Clarrie NgMinh Nguyen

Hayat NorimineTravis Quezon

James Tabafunda

Don’t Get Take-Out — Have it Delivered!SUBSCRIBE TO THE IE! Support Your Local News! $35 a year, $60 for two years — 24 in-depth issues a year! Go to www.iexaminer.org and click on the SUBSCRIBE button or mail a check to: 622 S. Washington St., Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you!

Established in 1974, the International Examiner is the only nonprofit pan-Asian American media organization in the country and the oldest, most respected APA publication in the Northwest. Named after the International District in Seattle, the “IE” strives to create awareness within and for our APA communities.

IE EDITORIAL

I realized recently that I have an addic-tion to grocery shopping. I go two to five times a week. After a bad day, usually most weekdays and Sundays, there is nothing like walking down the aisles of Safeway or Trader Joe’s. The shopping cart making that delightful rickety sound; all the lights and colors; the waxy, shiny fruit — grocery shopping is a sexy, sexy experience. I get hot and bothered when Barilla pasta is on sale, 10 for $10. And, “Oh hells no, organ-ic tamari soy sauce in travel-size packets?! Twenty packets for $4.99? Who HASN’T experienced the frustration of being on a picnic and wishing desperately for a packet of tamari?! No one, that’s who — except maybe crazy people!” I don’t know where this compulsion

comes from, but it probably has some-thing to do with growing up as a poor refugee. This survival mentality has appar-ently affected me in a couple of ways. First, whenever I see food items that are on sale, I must buy them — never mind if we will ever get around to using them before they expire. Going through the pantry the other day, I found the Arborio rice I bought six years ago when I wanted to make that wild mushroom risotto! And there’s the dried wild mushrooms mix! Paradoxically, though, growing up poor and unable to afford gourmet food also makes exotic and expensive, high-end food items very attractive — now that we can actually afford them. Jameelah — maybe because of her own childhood or maybe because I’ve infected her — is also addicted. Every other day, one of us would come home with some crazy new food item. This is Seattle, with its creative hipsters making stuff like applewood-smoked-olive-flavored caramel sprinkled with pink Himalayan sea salt and hemp seeds, or organic lavender-infused coco-nut flakes mixed with truffled agave syrup-flavored goji berries or something. Once, Jameelah came home with some weird, yellow spiky fruit. “What is it?” I asked. “I don’t know! But it was only $6 for one!” Last month, we bought a new fruit

called lekima for five bucks; it was dis-gusting. A while ago, I was cleaning the fridge and came across a bottle of chipotle blackberry barbecue sauce and could not remember when or from where we bought it. It looked expensive and expired in 2010. Digging out the rest of the fridge and pantry we found all sorts of stuff we bought, some of which we can no longer recognize. That weird powder is either garbanzo flour or vital wheat gluten … or maybe polenta? “All right,” I told Jameelah, “We can’t keep spending money on food. Let’s do a use-the-[stuff]-we-have challenge this month. We can only buy fresh fruit and veggies. No more spices, processed foods, simmer sauces, etc.” She agreed to it. It has been two weeks now since our challenge started, and it is hard. What the hell do we do with arrowroot powder or

three-year-old garam masala? Wanting to not think about it, and lucking out on a babysitter, we decided to go see a movie. The theater was next to the World Market, a magical place with food from all around the world. We forgot our challenge and bought several bars of high-end choco-late. Then we ran into some olives that were stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, so we had to have a jar of those. And we had to have these bottles of mangosteen and pomegranate soda. At the cash regis-ter, there were cans of sparkling moscato wine for four bucks each, and the novelty of wine in a can was enough to entice us to get one. We ate and drank our goodies while watching a movie, then felt bad that we had failed our challenge with so much of August left. This is a classic symptom of addiction: You indulge in it, then you feel like crap afterward, and you vow to get better. We have to get better. Each month, childcare is literally more than our mort-gage. Feeling awful and stuffed with strawberry-champagne-flavored choco-late and moscato, we drove home and made wild mushroom risotto.

Read more Jagged Noodles at Jaggednoodles.com

I get hot and bothered

when Barilla pasta is on

sale, 10 for $10

HUY X. LEIE Columnist

Jagged Noodles:

The Dangers of Grocery Shopping Addiction

IE COMMUNITYSNAPSHOT: Seattle’s First AdoboFest Stirs Crowd and Appetites On Sunday, Aug. 18, a noon to 5 p.m. event on

Beacon Hill promised several varieties of delicious adobo. Adobo lovers lined up to get their first taste, voting for their favorite dish. DJs Sabzi and 100 Proof were spin-ning. By 2:30 p.m., the adobo was sold out, around the time Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn entered the scene qui-etly. By 3 p.m. he would begin performing his public duty: serving as an official judge for Seattle’s first AdoboFest. He was gathered alongside six other judges selected by Geo Quibuyen, who spearheaded the event, including Nicole Ramirez, an organizer with Anakbayan Seattle,Grayskul emcee JFK, Geo’s son Johnny Quibuyen, a father-pro-claimed “eight-year-old adobo connoisseur,” and Aleksa Manila, a seasoned adobo cook, “drug counselor by day, drag queen by night,” in the words of Geo. In the end, the prizewinners were chefs Garrett Doherty and Irbille Donia of pop-up restaurant Kraken Congee for their pork belly adobo variety. The won a trophy, $100 and an opportunity to have their adobo featured in Beacon Hill Sandwiches’ “Jose Rizal” sandwich.

LEFT: The crowd cheers for an entertaining cast of characters, the adobo judges. Photo credit: The Station. MIDDLE: Caught in the aerial view of AdoboFest are Geo and Sabzi to the left. Photo credit: The Station. RIGHT: The judges make their first impressions before the tasting begins. Photo credit: International Examiner.

International Examiner 622 S. Washington St.

Seattle, WA 98104

Tel: (206) 624-3925Fax: (206) 624-3046

Website: www.iexaminer.org

August 21, 2013 - September 3, 2013 —— 3INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

Seattle’s Garfield High School, home of the bulldogs, is used to winning. Our jazz band is a perennial winner of the Essential Ellington national comple-tion, our track and basketball team are perennial state contenders, our drumline took the top place in the end-of-the-year regional competition and we have award-winning clubs such as Junior State of America debate team and the knowledge bowl. In the 2013-2014 school year, we’ll see the fruits of a whole different kind of victory: Not a high score on the test, but a defeat of the test itself. Not a win for a competition, but a victory for the solidar-ity of students, parents, and teachers in the struggle for authentic assessment over standardized testing. Last winter, teachers at Garfield announced their unanimous vote to boy-cott the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test. “Our teachers have come together and agree that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or use-ful tool in measuring progress,” said Kris McBride, Garfield’s academic dean and testing coordinator, at a press conference. “Students don’t take it seriously. It produc-es specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.” Teachers cited several facts: the MAP isn’t aligned to the curriculum, it is inap-propriate for special-education students and English-language learners, and the makers of the test acknowledge that the test should not be used to evaluate teach-ers—as well as the fact that at the high school level, the test has a higher margin of error than expected gains, rendering it statistically invalid. With that, Garfield High School launched a boycott of the MAP test that spread to other schools in the city and helped spark a national movement to

oppose the abuses of standardized test-ing. In the ensuing weeks and months we saw, in what is becoming known as the “education spring,” Portland students ini-tiate their own boycott of the OAKS tests, some 10,000 parents and students march in Texas against the overuse of high-stakes tests, and kindergartners and their parents stage a “play-in” at the Chicago School District headquarters against the replace-ment of the arts with norm-referenced exams, among many other examples. The Seattle School District initially threatened to punish teachers —including a 10-day suspension without pay — but with the unanimous vote of the Garfield High School Parent-Teacher-Student Association and student government, and after hundreds of phone calls and emails from parents and teachers around the country poured in, they eventually backed off from the attack. After months of ral-lies, teach-ins, call-ins, and opt-outs, we received proof positive that a group of determined people can still make change. In an all-district email sent on May 13, Superintendent José Banda wrote, “High schools may opt out of MAP in 2013-14.” This victory against a standardized test represents a high-stakes test for education reformers who have attempted to reduce

the intellectual process of teaching and learning to selecting answer choices, A, B, C or D. Their entire project of denying stu-dents graduation, firing teachers, closing schools and privatizing education through the proliferation of charter schools rests on their ability to reduce teachers and students to a single score. In an effort to demonstrate what authen-tic assessment could be, educators in Seattle established a teachers work group on assessment, which engaged in months of research resulting in the “Markers of Quality Assessment” — recommended guidelines for developing assessments. The guidelines promote assessments that reflect actual student knowledge and learning, not just test-taking skills; are educational in and of themselves; are free of gender, class and racial bias; are dif-ferentiated to meet students’ needs; allow opportunities to go back and improve; undergo regular evaluation and revision by educators. The work group concluded that quality assessments, at their base, must integrate with classroom curriculum, measure stu-dent growth toward standards achieve-ment and take the form of performance tasks. Teachers across Seattle are working

this summer to use these guidelines to develop assessments that will replace MAP with high-quality assessments that stem from the actual work being done in the classroom across the curriculum. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called education “the civil rights issue of our time.” His vision of this civil rights movement is his signature Race to the Top program that pits school districts against each other in a vicious competition for desperately needed federal funding. Only the districts that promote charter schools and increase the use of standardized test-ing are eligible for these federal dollars. Duncan even went as far as proposing that the anti-teacher and anti-public edu-cation film “Waiting for Superman” was the “Rosa Parks moment” of the move-ment for education. Secretary Duncan is right that the struggle for quality educa-tion is a major civil rights issue of our time. Yet I seem to remember that the civil rights movement wasn’t started by bil-lionaires, their foundations or a film they sponsored. If I remember correctly — I do teach U.S. history, so I hope I got this right — the civil rights movement was launched with a certain boycott. As Garfield special education teacher Serena Samar said of the MAP boycott victory, “Our actions as a staff have reignited the belief that a group of people can make a difference.” If we ever hope to transform our schools from “fill-in-the-bubble” factories into problem-solving academies that nur-ture the critical thinking, creativity and collaboration necessary for young people to overcome endless war, mass incarcera-tion and climate change, it will take noth-ing short of the kind of mass civil disobe-dience that propelled the civil rights movement.

A version of this commentary was origi-nally published in GOOD. More GOOD at www.good.is.

Featuring a broad range of perspectives on standardized testing in schools, Town Hall Seattle is hosting the panel discussion, “To Test or Not to Test” on Tuesday, Sept. 17, starting at 7:30 p.m. Voices include Wayne Au, an associate professor of education at the University of Washington Bothell. Details: www.townhallseattle.org.

How Garfield High School Advocates Catalyzed a National MovementIE EDITORIAL

BY JESSE HAGOPIANIE Contributorwww.good.isJesse Hagopian is a teacher at Garfield High School and associate editor of Rethinking Schools. Follow him @JessedHagopian.

Photo from www.wisegeek.org.

Op-Ed: Differential Tuition Discourages Students from Making the Best Choices

Should I opt for another major because it is cheaper? Many people say taking a degree in engineering or business will provide a high and stable income in the near future. The college-bound and college students all over the world will struggle with this question. In making cru-cial decisions such as choosing a major, students should be wary. Differential tuition — the concept of raising tuition rates for select majors such as engineering and nursing — has recently entered the popular pubic education dis-course with a new study released this sum-mer showing the consequences of higher tuition rates in select competitive majors. The already difficult decision of choos-

ing a major is compounded by other struggles students must deal with. The beginning of this year, I was approached by a student while I was in the University of Washington (UW) hub area reading. She asked me if I would like to sign a peti-tion for the UW United Students Against Sweatshop (USAS) to support worker’s and student’s rights. First of all, it never occurred to me that tuition is a student’s right. Being from Singapore, my educa-tion was publicly funded, and not some-thing I had to fight for. That same day, I stepped into a meeting room with a group of students who were taking jobs while studying at the same time and are worried whether they should drop out a quarter or two to earn enough income before head-ing back to school. It dawned on me that any increase to their tuition could result in them dropping out of school altogether, and that if dif-ferential tuition were implemented, I am not sure if they would still be sitting in the same room as me.

Whether to drop out or not based on the affordability of a major is one difficult choice students should not have to make. The essence of differential tuition is to offset the higher cost off student tuition that is funded with financial aid. This also has the consequence of preventing them from choosing a course they want to pursue. According to the new National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released last month, the enrollment deci-sions of female and minority students are more likely to be influenced negatively by higher tuition rates for programs. Also, the study found no evidence that addi-tional financial aid negates the impact of higher rates for select programs. Kevin M. Stange, the NBER researcher who led the study, says his findings for engineering degrees suggest that colleges may not gain much additional money from raising rates in expensive fields, since the institutions could end up with smaller numbers of students. The logic that certain majors would

ultimately earn more than other majors is subjective at best. Some majors do have additional costs such as utilizing labs and other materi-als. This is understandable, but beyond the additional lab fee, students should not have to pay extra just because they decided to major in a more popular course. There are some students who reach their fourth year to realize that they want to pursue something else – is that their fault then for not being decisive at an age where many are still exploring their options? Overall, I think that differential tuition on many different levels is unfair to many stu-dents. From my interactions, many American students are already taking on loads of responsibilities as they step into the univer-sity setting. With the rise of student loans and debts, any additional burden on them might deter them from making the right choice for themselves, which will be costli-er in the long run.

BY CLARRIE NGIE Digital Media InternClarrie Ng is a communications student at the University of Washington Bothell.


LONG BEACH, CALIF. — Kulia I Ka Nu’u. This was the motto of Hawaii’s Queen Kapi’olani, one she told her peo-ple, which means, “Strive for the very top of the mountain; strive for excellence.” It’s a message that still has relevance for the U.S.-based Pacific Islander com-munity that, more often than not, is left to overcome challenges on its own. For years, Pacific Islanders from Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga and Guam have been misunderstood in the U.S., due in no small part to their inclusion under the umbrella term Asian Pacific Islander (API). With use of the term becoming widespread since the 1990s, the specific struggles faced by the Islander communi-ty have been obscured. Lumped together with other Asians and stereotyped as a model minority, Pacific Islander issues have been left out, for example, of the national discourse on education. The reality is that Pacific Islanders (PI) are only half as likely as the general population to have graduated from col-lege, and are five times less likely than other Asians to hold an advanced degree. Like some Latino and African-American communities, many in the Pacific Islander community face economic and structural barriers to academic success. “As communities of color, we’re faced with a lot of the same issues,” said Joey Quenga, who is Chamorro from Guam and host of “The BBQ,” a monthly radio show for the PI community that runs out of the Pacific Islander Ethnic Museum in Long Beach. “You’re talking about impov-erished communities, and you’re talking about gangs.” One of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the nation, 23 percent of all Pacific Islanders living in the U.S. cur-rently reside in California, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Many of them live in West Long Beach, and surrounding cit-ies like Carson, Cerritos and Oceanside. Pacific Islanders have the highest high school dropout rate in Long Beach — with rates at about 10 percent, compared to a 3 percent rate for both Asian and white students. Nine out of 10 Pacific Islander students are not prepared for college-level coursework, according to a study by Education Trust-West. “Many come to the States and are unable to immediately find a well-paying

job,” said Dan Hatori, Project Director of UCLA’s Pacific Islander Education and Retention Program, in an email to VoiceWaves / New America Media. “This leads to students being enrolled in public schools with curriculum which may be less rigorous than other schools.” Violence and gang affiliation may be another barrier for some PI youth. Violence has become a pressing issue in the community as the Tongan Crip Gang, Sons of Samoa and other gangs roam the tough parts of L.A. County, Hatori said. One of those areas is West Long Beach. “When you don’t have much money, you live in areas where it’s gang infested and there’s a lot of crime,” said West Long Beach resident Seila Tuliau, the mother of a former Sons of Samoa gang member. “It’s the only area you can afford to live. It has a big effect on growing up because those are the people you hang out with.” Hatori suggested that more awareness is needed of the specific issues confront-ing the Pacific Islander community. “Being grouped in with all Asians when using the term API (Asian Pacific Islander) in statistics to judge whether a particular race or ethnicity is doing well or not is often deceptive,” Hatori said. “People who are not very knowledge-able on the issues the Pacific Islander community faces will look at API num-bers and think Pacific Islanders are not struggling at all,” he added.

Such misconceptions are having hor-rid effects on Pacific Islanders’ prospects for scholarships, advocates argue, and therefore, college access. Many scholar-ship programs decline applications from Pacific Islanders, mistakenly assuming those students are as privileged as their peers from other Asian backgrounds, when, in fact, 19 percent of Tongans are currently living at the poverty rate. Despite such barriers, many remain steadfast in their dreams for success and continue to see education as a path to their dreams. “I’m going back to school,” said Eric Tuliau, who joined Sons of Samoa at age 15, but is not involved with the gang any-more. “I’m going to get my GED. I also hope my little brothers and sisters go to school.” Quenga has also left behind a lega-cy. His fraternity, TAO, was founded by Pacific Islander students in 1997 and continues to exist at various campuses today. Members of the fraternity are now employed at UCLA and in the White House, and the name TAO has signifi-cance for young aspiring Pacific Islander students today. “It’s a word in the Pacific Islands that means warrior,” Quenga said. “We see ourselves as warriors here in the new land. Instead of spears and slings in fight-ing the enemy, our weapon of choice is a bachelors, a masters or a PhD.”

Architects, Consultants

& ContractorsKCLS Library Contract

Information Available Online!www.kcls.org/buildings Information about KCLS construction and the latest available details on current and pending projects.

Requests for Proposals•Requests for Qualifications•Current Project Bid Listing•Call for Art Proposals•Site Selection Policy•Announcements of Finalists•Community Meetings•Contacts•New Releases•

The King County Library System recognizes strength and value within our communities, and we encourage all interested and qualified service providers to review our public bid construction opportunities.

Contact Kelly Iverson Facilities Assistant

[email protected] or 425.369.3308

BY MICHAEL LOZANOIE ContributorVoiceWaves / New America Media www.newamericamedia.org

IE NEWS

Photo from New America Media.

Pacific Islanders Fight for Academic Success on Their Own

MyIESound-off at www.iexaminer.org.


IE NEWS

International Community Health Services (ICHS), which operates full-service medical dental clinics in the International District and at Holly Park, recently announced that it has joined the network of providers for military veterans. “Those in the military and their families deserve the same kind of access to cultur-ally appropriate health care that civilians enjoy,” says ICHS CEO Teresita Batayola. “We’re looking forward to expanding our outreach to veterans and seeing many more of them in the ICHS clinics.” TRICARE, the health care program serving uniformed service members, retirees and their families, has tradition-ally delivered its services to veterans in military medical facilities. Now that UnitedHealthcare handles referrals and authorizations for medical treatments of military members and their families, the choices have expanded to include addi-tional providers like ICHS. In the past, Asian Pacific American veterans have been underrepresented in Veterans Administration (VA) medical

facilities despite outreach efforts targeted toward communities of color. Jack Pang, a World War II veteran, attributes the small number of Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) going to the VA for help, in part, to the smaller number of Asian Americans who’ve chosen the military as a career

choice. “In my generation, not a whole lot of Chinese or other Asians felt there was much of a living in going into the military,” he said. Pang is senior com-mander of the Cathay Post #186 of the American Legion, a Chinese American veterans group based in Seattle.

The number of veterans — across various branches of the U.S. armed forces — may be growing, according to recent reports. For example, in 2013, APIs now comprise 6.5 percent of the active duty naval force, according the Navy News Service. However, at ICHS — which has pro-vided health care to the API community for 40 years — few veterans have sought out its services. In 2012, ICHS only served 98 veteran patients, totaling less than 1 percent of the total patient population. Pang, a Shoreline resident, said many veterans tend to gravitate toward the health care facilities closest to where they live because of convenience and a desire to reduce travel costs. He said he currently goes to Northwest Hospital and Medical Center to get his medical treat-ment. Batayola hopes that veterans of all generations – including younger veterans from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – will seek out the services of multilingual, culturally sensitive services offered by ICHS, especially as the agency expands to Bellevue and Shoreline in the next two years. Pang, for one, is eagerly awaiting the opening of the Shoreline clinic. Construction began earlier this month and is scheduled to be completed by late 2014. “It’s very close to my house,” he said.

IE COMMUNITY

On a thick, balmy August day, Seattle City Hall is packed with officials, com-munity members and the press. This time, they gathered to hear the insights of eight young panelists, ages 16 to 20. “You all have been talking about the different systems,” said Enrique Gonzales, an adult community leader posing his question to the panelists. “The juvenile justice system, the school system … these systems seem to function compartmental-ized. How do you get systems to talk to one another?” Andrea Lopez-Diaz, a 19-year-old Mexican-American panelist, took ahold of her mic. “They are speaking, but they’re having the wrong conversation,” she pointed out. “Systems of expulsion and suspension are setting youth up for incarceration. Police, instead of [surveillancing] schools, need to have conversations with kids about staying out of prisons.” The panel presentation was the cul-mination of this year’s 22nd Tyree Scott Freedom School that welcomed 25 stu-dents this year, including the incisive Lopez-Diaz. A program of the American Friends Service Committee’s Community Justice Program run by Director Dustin Washington, the Freedom School is a

twice-annual free program that convenes young adults for eight days to examine institutional racism and structural poverty, learn their rights with the police, review activism history and discuss what sort of issues of inequity impact youth of color in Seattle. Participants of Freedom School this summer took a field trip to Seattle’s Chinatown-International District to learn about Asian Pacific American history, and to the King County Courthouse to meet Lisa Daugaard, the director of the Defender Association. In addition to run-ning in the summer, the Freedom School also holds sessions during Seattle stu-dents’ winter breaks. Today’s Freedom School stands on the shoulders of the 1964 Freedom Summer, where young people fought against harassment, beatings and death under the Mississippi sky for their own and future generations’ rights. In the summer of 2013, Freedom School carries forward a legacy and operates in a new context of growing discontent around institutional racism. This, as of late, has been heightened by nationwide protests around George Zimmerman’s “not guilty” verdict and Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, and U.S. Court Judge Shira Sheindlin deeming the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” tactics unconstitutional and an act of “indirect racial profiling.” Momentum is also building around criticism of cor-

porate education reform that often leaves poor youth of color behind. The Atlantic calls this a “Coming Revolution in Public Education.” During these urgent times, Tyree Scott Freedom School validates student experi-ences with racism and ties it with the structural context that students can see reflected widey in enduring racial gaps in food security and income, and racial dis-proportionality in school discipline and

juvenile detention. Freedom School mentor James Fontanos, a 20-year-old Filipino American, said he left high school in his sophomore year because “life got in the way of school.” “Freedom School gives people a per-spective that they don’t teach at school, but that they need growing up,” he said.

ICHS Expands its Outreach to Military Veterans

Tyree Scott Freedom School Brings Civil Rights to the Classroom, Youth to the Mic

BY RON CHEWIE ContributorRon Chew is the executive director of International Community Health Services Foundation.

ICHS will make special efforts to reach API veterans with health care who have historically been underrepre-sented in the Veterans Administration medical facilities. Photo credit: ICHS.

Khoa Nguyen speaks on the Freedom School panel at City Hall on Aug. 2nd. Source: The Seattle Channel.

BY MINH NGUYENIE Contributor


IE COMMUNITY

“We have three generations of Husky in our family,” Irene Fujii Mano, 80, is proud to report. Mano, the board president of the University of Washington Nikkei Alumni Association (UWNAA), graduated from the UW in 1954, but her history with the association goes back to childhood. Her parents Yoshito and Yukiko Fujii, were active members of UWNAA — her father Yoshito from the very beginning. It was their generation — Issei — that experienced when Japanese Americans were systematically kept out of UW’s Greek row. So they sought to provide their own University District home for Japanese-American students. Though stu-dent groups were meeting informally around 1920, it was in 1922 when the need for a Japanese-American student hub became the genesis for the UWNAA, which was then incorporated as the University Students Club, Inc. Led by Yoshito Fujii, its first members ran a fundraising campaign extending its net across the Pacific Northwest, raising enough to purchase the association’s two-story building with a basement to host its first meeting in June of 1922. The student center was located where the current UW School of Social Work building is now standing on Fifteenth Avenue Northeast. Post-World War II, the student center and association’s legacy became welcom-ing and honoring Nikkei veterans. The renaming of the center to SYNKOA House became symbolic of this era. “SYNKOA” was an acronym that reflected the last

name of fallen soldiers. Some of those commemorated in the acronym includ-ed George Tatsuya Sawada, Frank Masao Shigemura, George Yamaguchi, Hideo Heidi Yasui, Shigeo Yoshioka, William Kenzo Nakamura, Jero Kanetomi, Yoshio Kato, John Ryoji Kawaguchi, Francis T. Kinoshita, Takaaki Okazaki and Eugene Takasuke Amabe. The building was eventually sold to UW in 1962 for just more than $52,000, ending an era, closing a chapter in the association’s history and opening the door to start a scholarship fund for Japanese-American UW students in 1965 with the building’s net sales. To date, at least 224 students have received $316,000 since the scholarship fund was first established. Throughout its 90-year history, the most remarkable moment, says Mano, was in May of 2008, when more than 400 honorary degrees were issued to UW

students forcibly taken from campus to report to internment camps during World War II. This was the fruit of countless hours of work on the “The Long Journey Home” project, where participants con-ducted a nationwide search to track down these students — a project in which UWNAA played a leading role. Mano remembers one particular grad-uate at the UW ceremony that spring. “She was not able to finish her college education,” she says. “She said seven in her family had gone to college, and this was something she always wanted. She said it was the happiest day of her life.” After the degrees were issued, “the audience gave about a nine-minute standing ovation,” Mano remembers. As for the next generation of Japanese Americans, Mano hopes she sees some “fresh faces” both on the UWNAA board and in their membership

“A lot of [young people] now are more curious about their background and ancestors,” Mano says. She hopes that the historical resources of the UWNAA will attract new young members.

The UWNAA celebrates thir 90th on Saturday, August 24th, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the new UW Campus HUB in the North Ballroom. The event will welcome UW President Michael K. Young, honor Sen. Bob Hasegawa as this year’s UW distin-guished alumni and showcase the talent of jazz pianist Deems Tsutakawa. Contact Lillian Hayashi at [email protected] for tickets and pricing.

Learn about UWNAA membership, schol-arship opportunities and more at www.uwnikkeialums.org.

UW Nikkei Alumni Association Celebrates 90 Years of Community and Social ChangeBY INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER STAFF

PHOTO LEFT: UWNAA’s board of trustees (from left to right): Front row - Elsie Leilani Taniguchi, Ken Sato, Irene Fujii Mano, Don Maekawa. Back row - Sharon Maeda, Erin Shen, Cecilia Kanako Kashima, Lillian Hayashi, Sandy Fujita, Emi Suzuki and May Sasaki. Not pictured: Harold Taniguchi and Beth Fujii Kawahara. Photo courtesy of Elsie Taniguchi. PHOTO RIGHT: SYNKOA House.


soundtransit.org

Take your commuteout of

SLOW MOT ION.

Says

LET GO. RIDE THE WAVE.

For tickets, (888) SEA-HITS, Ticketmaster Ticket Centers, or

Alderwood MallBellevue SquareSouthcenter Mall

Downtown Seattle (4th and Stewart)Safeco Field

Also at MarinersTeam Stores:

A day at the ballpark. A lifetime of memories.

MARINERS.coM/SPEcIALS

Family NightsGrab the gang for a night

out at beautiful Safeco

Field during select Monday

games. View Level tickets

are just $10, $12 on day of

game. Courtesy of BECU.

Grand Slam Family PackagesGet a ticket, hot dog and Pepsi

starting at $15 per person for

families of 4 to 12 during select

Wednesday games. Courtesy of

Safeco Insurance.

seattlecentral.edu1701 Broadway on Capitol Hill

Learn more. Do more.Direct your future

★ Transfer to a four-year college or university. ★ Degree and certificate programs

★ Day, evening and online classes ★ Financial aid options ★ Affordable tuition ★ Convenient downtown location

★ Also offering ESL, Basic Studies, GED and high school programs



Between 2010 and 2012, Internet use in the U.S. by people older than age 65 rose from 41 percent to 54 per-cent, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. This is particularly good news considering that increased Internet use has been shown to reduce depression and isolation among seniors. A study in 2009 by the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Policy Studies determined in its evaluation of 7,000 retired elderly persons that Internet use reduces the probability of a depres-sion categorization for elderly persons by about 20 percent. Among Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) elders, digital inclusion efforts by service organizations through-out Washington have allowed elders to access computer education and gain tech-nology literacy. Through an applied use of technological skills, APIA seniors can pursue jobs online, use social media to

reconnect with family and engage in civic affairs in their own languages. This embrace of technology may be a useful tool to overcome lapses in services observed by the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA). A survey con-ducted by NAPCA in 2012 reached out to more than 500 community-based organi-zations (CBOs) across the U.S., seeking to assess the priorities and challenges facing APIA seniors today. A total of 97 CBOs returned completed surveys. The respons-es showed that social isolation and mental health were among the top issues that were not being adequately addressed by organizations in APIA communities. Kin On Health Care Center (Kin On), located in Seattle’s Columbia City neigh-borhood has been using technology to bridge the digital gap for its workforce, some of whom are APIA seniors. The mission of Kin On is to provide cul-turally appropriate long-term care and sup-port services to Asian seniors and families in Greater Seattle. In recent years, Kin On has made deliberate efforts to better serve its residents by incorporating technology

into the nursing home operations. “Technology is a powerful tool for us to bring our operations to the next level,” said Kin On CEO, Sam Wan, “not only to improve efficiency and productivity but ultimately to provide better care for our seniors and families.” Three years ago, Kin On successfully implemented the CareTracker system to automate resident care documentations. Touchscreen devices (kiosks) are installed throughout their nursing facility for staff to document resident care electronically. The system is picture-based with simple keywords, accommodating employees who are limited English speakers. The touchscreen kiosks also allowed staff to input information easily despite having lit-tle to no experience typing on a computer keyboard. This system has enabled the whole operation to capture more detailed and accurate information, generate timely reports, help pinpoint problem areas that need to be addressed, and ultimately improve the overall care for residents, Kin On administrator, Kenny Chan, explained. Since the initial implementation, Kin

On has upgraded to a more robust docu-mentation system and implemented a new wireless call-light system to improve response time for residents, among other technological initiatives. In addition to digitalizing its operations to better serve nursing home residents, Kin On’s Healthy Aging Programs help Asian seniors stay socially active through regular gatherings and workshops. In 2012, Kin On partnered with Jade Guild, a community group of Asian-American women, to offer a “Facebook 101” workshop to Asian seniors, accord-ing to Jessica Wong, Kin On fund devel-opment and communications associate. The workshop introduced seniors to the website and talked about how it can be used as a social tool. “[Facebook] is a good form of commu-nication to stay in touch with family mem-bers,” Wong said, while acknowledging that social media alone lacks a personal aspect achieved through genuine face-to-face encounters. Kin On held regular in-person social events, including “Story Circle” gatherings where seniors engage in dialogue about everything from social bar-riers to NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin. Chinese Information and Service Center of Seattle (CISC) also offers regular computer classes to seniors at different levels — teaching elders how to write emails and resumes, make flyers and watch international news online. CISC helps more than 20,000 immigrants and their families each year overcome social barriers and assimilate into mainstream community through its programs. “Technology use among seniors varies, but they want to learn,” said Boliver Choi, a program coordinator at CISC. Choi said that because Internet brows-ers are often only in English, however, APIA seniors are sometimes discouraged from learning computer skills because of the language barriers. A common obstacle for seniors that do want to improve their computer skills is simply finding a computer to use, said Jeff Wendland, director of employment and citizenship at Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS), a nonprofit orga-

BY TRAVIS QUEZON IE Contributor

Digital Use Helps Combat Isolation and Depression Among Seniors

Every business owner knows the for-mula for success is a good idea and great execution. HMart, short for “Han Ah Reum” (mean-ing “one arm full of groceries” in Korean), started in 1982. It began as a small gro-cery store designed to serve a modest but growing population of Korean customers in Queens, New York. HMart has always carried a wide vari-ety of pan-Asian products, which led to a diverse and loyal customer base — a key component to its growth. Thirty-one years later, HMart has ex-panded to more than 60 locations in the United States and Canada. In West-ern Washington, the three stores in Lyn-nwood, Federal Way and Tacoma enjoy strong business sales. Two additional lo-cations are scheduled to open next year, including one in downtown Seattle, where Nordstrom Rack was formerly located. To serve their thousands of customers a day, HMart knew investing in technology would be critical to their success. In Tae Kim, general manager of the Lynnwood store that opened in 2008, said his store relies heavily on Internet for credit card

processing and website management. With the volume of customers they see, he asserts, “speed is critical.” Kim worked with Comcast Business to set up his high-speed Internet, telephone and television services for the Lynnwood store. Free long-distance between the U.S. and Canada helps the business in its inter-national dealings. The store also installed television monitors at each of its check-out lanes, a unique service offered to its customers waiting in lines. Four addition-al televisions are planned for its popular food court. Comcast Business is a unit of Comcast Cable. It provides advanced communica-tion solutions to help organizations of all sizes meet their business objectives. Kim, described what makes the grocery chain unique. “[Our] international food selection, quality Asian deli products, a broad and diverse fish inventory that is flown in weekly from around the world and fresh vegetables and fruit at prices lower than what the typical customer will find at a mainstream grocery store chain,” he said.And his typical customer isn’t always Ko-

rean. Kim said at his Lynnwood HMart location, only 30 to 35 percent of its cus-tomers are of Korean heritage. HMart’s ef-forts to provide a wide array of products across Asian ethnic groups and situating their business in key locations across the Puget Sound have made their chain acces-sible to a wide demographic. The HMart Lynnwood location also houses several other ethnic businesses. AmorePacific Cosmetics is one. Founded in South Korea in 1932 and expanded to the U.S. in 1976, Amore-Pacific has approximately 50 locations across the country with two in Washing-ton state, including one at the Neiman Marcus in Bellevue. Sook Namkung, owner of the Lyn-nwood franchise, relocated her store there in 2012 after experiencing less than ideal traffic at a former location. She had been with AmorePacific for 15 years and, after the move, saw her sales increase. Unlike HMart, most of her custom-ers are Korean. The cosmetic company

Good Internet, Good Business

BY INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER STAFF

SENIORS, Continued on Page 13

BUSINESS, Continued on Page 13

A Kin On Health Care Center nurse, who prefers to be unnamed, stands next to her “med cart,” complete with a laptop that allows nurses to quickly pull up resident records electronically, Photo courtesy of Kin On Health Care Center (Kin On).

In Tae Kim in front of his Lynnwood HMart store. Photo credit: Tae Lee.

THIS SPECIAL SECTION IS A BROUGHT TO YOU BY COMCAST | NBCUNIVERSAL


The “digital divide” is the ever-increasing discrepancy in access to information technology across demo-graphic groups. About 100 million Americans still don’t have broadband Internet access. A disproportionate number are minorities and those with little education. This divide continues to be a prob-lem for Asian and Pacific Islander (API) immigrants in the Pacific Northwest despite Seattle’s second-place honors on CNBC’s 2011 list of “America’s Most Wired Cities” and third place on Forbes Magazine’s “Most Wired Cities” three years ago. Efforts to close the digital divide include city programs, state poli-cies and corporate initiatives such as Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, which provides Internet service at the discounted rate of $9.95 a month for

families with children participating in or eligible for the National Free and Reduced Lunch Program. At the federal level, the Federal Communicat ions Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke about the importance of digital inclu-sion in a 2011 speech. “Broadband is no longer a luxury. It is necessary for full participation in our 21st century economy and society,” he said. “The costs of digital exclusion are rising, too, when it comes to education and health care. That’s why closing this divide is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time.” For API immigrants, there are unique barriers that keep the digital divide in place. The Zhao sisters are recent immi-grants to Seattle from China. They emi-grated with their parents from Jiangmen in the Southern province of Guangdong. Hui Ying, 21, Zhulian, 22, and Hui Wen, 20, arrived last month. Improving their ability to speak English is their first priority, a major cultural barrier

they share with many other Asian immi-grants. In China, they learned mostly how to read and write in English. Their oldest sister, a resident of Washington state for the last three years, urged them to take free English speaking classes at Seattle Goodwill. They fol-lowed her advice and are now among the 12 students from China in instructor Jim Blackburn’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class. “The language barrier can become a technology barrier, I think, for many people who have not been here for very long,” Blackburn pointed out. The Zhao sisters also signed up for Seattle Goodwill’s computer basics class. After their first week of classes, they learned how to use a mouse and can type 50 words per minute on the keyboard, says Hui Wen Zhao. Once she completes her classes, Zhulian hopes to attend Seattle Central Community College and eventually work in graphic design. Both Hui Ying and Hui Wen want office jobs. “We want to learn more,” Zhulian Zhao said. She acknowledged her parents do not use the family’s computer because such technology wasn’t even available decades ago in China, another barrier that many Asian immigrants have in common. Her parents learned to live

their lives without a computer. The cultural barrier of poverty is another reality faced by Asian immi-grants. Trang Hoang is a Neighborhood House family center support and edu-cation specialist at High Point Center (HPC), a “home for anti-poverty ser-vices” in West Seattle for mostly Vietnamese, Cambodian and Somali families. It, too, offers a computer lab. She says poverty is a barrier for Asian immigrants, making them less likely to use information technology. “For people with low income, the Internet is not cheap,” Hoang said. “[For] a lot of people who come over here as immigrants with not a lot of resources, it’s hard for them to navigate the system here. It has been a barrier just to locate these people and have them come to us.” Once cultural barriers are overcome, Hoang said Asian immigrants become empowered to achieve even more in their lives. She said one Vietnamese woman in her 60s who uses HPC’s computer lab went on to use what she’s learned on an Apple iPad. “They go beyond technology,” Hoang said. “It’s just seeing that growth. When you see it, I feel that’s when you see that moment of success.”

Seattle Goodwill and Neighborhood House are both partnering with Comcast Washington to advance digi-tal literacy to its thousands of clients across the Puget Sound.

For additional information about Seattle Goodwill or Neighborhood House, please visit www.seattlegoodwill.org or www.nhwa.org/high-point.


The East African community is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups to call the Emerald City home, with at least 100,000 residing in the city, according to the Center for East African Community Affairs. It includes the communities of Somali, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The countries are sometimes collectively known as the Horn of Africa due to their position at the Northeast corner of the continent. In many ways, the East African com-munity is no different than any other immigrant and refugee community that resettled in the U.S. Its people seek to acquire U.S. citizenship or work visas, secure employment, improve their quality of life, honor their cultural traditions and remember their history. But among the many characteristics that make the community unique are its many community organizations — a testament both to the communities’ desire to support one another and the critical needs that exist. At East African Community Services (EACS), based in South Seattle’s New Holly Neighborhood Campus, their computer lab is essential to their mis-

sion. Resources from the heavily traf-ficked lab provide tools and services for youth, adults and families to succeed. In February 2013, EACS and Comcast formed a partnership to continue to help serve EACS’s community with Internet basics and computer upgrades. The upgrade allowed the use of tools such as Photoshop and video editing programs for about 200 high school students who made films about their cultural identity this past school year to share at Cleveland High School’s annual talent show. Everything revolves around the lab, located in the center of the agency. Clients from across the New Holly neighborhood and surrounding areas come to apply for U.S. citizenship and work visas, research and secure employment, and learn how to use computers and applications, no mat-ter what their skill level. A multimedia youth program allows them to produce films that share their perspectives on East African culture and their identities. One of the first steps in helping refugee families adjust to living in the U.S. is helping community members

and clients learn English, a class that is combined with citizenship classes at EACS. “With our organization, a lot of the adults who tend to use our computers, a lot of them applied for citizenship,” says EACS Executive Director Faisal Jama. “They’ll apply for a green card or citizenship online.” He remembers a young man he met at EACS a few years ago who advanced very fast in their English and citizen-ship classes. “After only a month he really started to use our computers he was able to find a job,” says Jama. “I saw him a month ago and he’s still working at that [same] place.” Dozens of clients and community members use the computer lab every month, according to Jama. He’s proud to report that 400 EACS community members have passed their citizenship tests since 2008. To learn more about East African Community Services and their work, please visit www.eastafricancs.org.

East African Community Services (EACS) Gets an Upgrade


Faisal Jama is the executive director of East African Community Services.

A Digital Divide Still Exists Among Area APAs in One of America’s ‘Most Wired Cities’

BY JAMES TABAFUNDAIE Contributor

Trang Hoang, Neighborhood House family center support and education specialist at High Point Center in West Seattle. Photo credit: James Tabafunda.


From left to right, Hui Ying Zhao, Zhulian Zhao and Hui Wen Zhao. Photo credit: James Tabafunda.


There are still 100 million Americans living in areas with Internet service that are not subscribers, according to a 2012 report from the Federal Communications Commission. An additional 19 million Americans have no option to of buying broadband Internet service. To meet this need, Comcast launched an initiative to expand broadband access in 2011. In its third year, Internet Essentials has grown to provide nearly 220,000 families in the nation with Internet access, or around 900,000 individuals, according to Steve Kipp, Comcast Washington’s vice president of communications. The discounted broadband service is just $9.95 a month for families with children currently eligible for par-ticipating in the National Free and Reduced Lunch Program. There are no activation fees, and rates do not increase. (Visit www.internetessentials.com or call 1-855-8-INTERNET for more details and eligibility informa-tion). With regular Internet access becom-

ing as basic a need as food, heat and other utilities, Comcast’s Internet Essentials program is as essential as its name suggests. In today’s digital age, being able to apply for a job online can make or break a chance at a career; and access to the Internet to utilize a school district’s resources can mean a better chance at success for a student. “More and more, com-panies are no longer accept-ing paper applications and are requiring job applicants to apply online,” says Kipp. “The same holds true for schools, which now post grades and homework assign-ments online. This can be a big disadvantage to students and families without broad-band access.” This doesn’t solve entirely the complex issue of the digital divide we face in communities across the

country, but it’s a significant first step in getting digital

access to those who need it and would benefit from its advantages. Bridging the digital divide has become the rally-ing call of the company and its Internet Essentials program a “cornerstone” of its community investment, describes Kipp. (To read more about the “digital divide”, read James Tabafunda’s article on page nine in this issue.) Affordability, easy access, awareness and education are key in ensuring long-term Internet use for lower income families. With monthly rates of $9.95 for eligible families, the option of purchas-ing a Netbook computer at $149.99 and access to in-person, free digital literacy trainings at local community agencies are a few ways Comcast is seeking to further support families. In Washington state, 11,000 families have subscribed to Internet Essentials in areas where Comcast provides ser-vice, according to Kipp, with 7,600 in the Seattle metropolitan area. “The vast majority of those families have never had access to Internet at home before,” he says. “The impact to these families is substantial and we’re glad to provide that. It’s the right thing to do for our communities.” Comcast considered many factors when designing the Internet Essentials

program — including partnering with local community organizations to make available free digital literacy trainings. It became an indispensable part of the overall effort by the company to bridge the digital divide. “We realized at the outset of the program that access wasn’t enough,” says Diem Ly, Comcast Washington’s external affairs manager. “If we want to make a true difference in these families’ lives, we have to address other needs that intersect with this, such as aware-ness of the Internet’s vast potential to contribute to your quality of life, and education and training to get started.” This training, facilitated by com-munity partners and supported in part by Comcast, includes the basics of computer use, software applications, finding and applying for employment, and how to research online for social

services or school district resources. “This Internet Essentials program is just one step towards a solution to bridge the digital divide. There is still much more to do and learn from our communities,” Ly adds. “In the end we’re really helping a family participate in the 21st century and this new digital world that we’re in,” says Kipp. “We’re getting them that level playing field and that platform to make a better life for themselves.”

So who’s eligible and how can fami-lies subscribe? Learn more about Internet Essentials and if you or someone you know is eligible by vis-iting www.internetessentials.com or calling 1-855-8-INTERNET.


Over the recent school year, 14 teens took part in the Comcast Digital Connectors program at Neighborhood House in Rainier Vista twice a week. The program taught students technol-ogy skills, leadership skills and media literacy. Sponsored by Comcast, Digital

Connectors consists of 156 hours of train-ing across 12 core competency areas. “The Comcast Digital Connectors pro-gram was created with the goal of helping entire communities by making it possible for hundreds of young adults to develop their skills in using computers, applications and the Internet, and then sharing their new-found knowledge in the communities where they live and go to school,” said Steve Kipp, Comcast Washington’s vice president of communications. “It’s a lot of their time, and it’s a big commitment, but it really does pay off — all of that hard work,” said Kate Farmer,

the center manager at the Rainier Vista Neighborhood House. Primarily low-income students were recruited by the program. In addition to valuable experi-ence for their resumes, students also received a Cisco networking certification, a digital camera and a Netbook after they completed the program. The last class graduated in late May 2013, and the next class will begin around October. “It’s such an accomplishment,” Farmer said, adding that the students were especially pleased about the experience for their resumes. “For some of them, it’s really their

first job,” she said. The program brings in guest speakers from companies such as Microsoft or Comcast to show poten-tial careers in technology to the stu-dents. Helping the youth find employ-ment is part of the overall goal of Neighborhood House. Founded more than a century ago, Neighborhood House is one of the old-est nonprofits in Seattle. The goal of the organization is to provide services and resources to underserved communities.

BY SAM KENYONIE ContributorSam Kenyon is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.


Internet EssentialsBack to School, Back to Basics

Program Helps Young People ‘Digitally Connect’ with Community

PROGRAM, Continued on Page 11

The points on this map indicate Internet Essentials subscriptions. Map provided by Comcast.

Photo credit: Joseph Walsh.



Its services include helping finding employment, teaching English as a sec-ond language and offering citizenship classes for immigrants. The organization serves all ages and offers “things to make sure that the entire family is supported so they can move towards self-sufficiency and have the best, happiest life possible,” said Kathryn McGhee, former Digital Connectors instructor. Benjamin Guth, a 19-year-old recent graduate of Roosevelt High School, completed the program in May. “[Digital Connectors is] important. It helps a lot of people,” he said. Guth joined the program because

he is interested in technology. He feels that he has definitely gained value from the experience and would recommend Digital Connectors to others. McGhee has taught Comcast’s Digital Connector’s program for the last three years. For her, teaching media literacy is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. “I think it’s had a really strong effect on their critical thinking skills,” she said. She described how many students had never fully examined the media they consume. Now, the students are more aware of the deeper messages they are exposed to. Connecting with the community was one of the original goals of the Digital Connectors program. Like the other

students, Guth completed 56 hours of community service. He helped local res-idents connect to the Internet at home, or program cell phones for people who did not know how to do it themselves. “The kids are basically taking what they’ve learned and giving it back to the community,” Farmer said. In addition to the tech support train-ing, the Connectors also benefited from the relationships fostered through the program. Youth from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds spent time together and learned about one others’ experiences and perspectives. “We would have students that had never met each other before become friends through the program,” McGhee said. “We would have conversations

about stereotypes, about discrimina-tion, and the conversations youth would have with themselves was always really, really interesting.” Students would talk about how they are portrayed by society at large, and how those images are often not accu-rate, she said. “Having the youth talk to each other about … how it made them feel, and how they can get through that as a community ... I think is always really exciting,” said McGhee.

Learn more about Comcast’s Digital Connectors program at Neighborhood House’s Rainer Vista location by visiting www.wacomcast.com.

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDETHIS SPECIAL SECTION IS A BROUGHT TO YOU BY COMCAST | NBCUNIVERSAL

On Wednesday afternoons, patrons line up at El Centro de la Raza, a social service and community center for King County’s Latino community, to collect groceries at El Centro’s food bank in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Denise Perez, human services coordi-nator at El Centro said their food bank serves 3,000 individuals per month. Many people, when asked, stated they did not have access to Internet at home because they could not afford it. This includes Mauricio, who asked that his last name not be published. Mauricio, an El Centro de la Raza volun-teer, stated that standard-price Internet at home was not affordable for his family. As a result, he can’t communicate with his large family in Mexico, though he wishes he could Skype with them. His children — ages 16, 13 and 3 — also “need it for school” he said, but he wasn’t aware of any low-cost options. “Schools are underserved in regards to technology. Computer labs are not acces-sible for everybody and for a very limited time,” said Alex Bautista, an El Centro program coordinator. “In this day and age we live in, a digital life is essential.”

According to a study by the Pew Research Center in February 2013, middle and secondary-school teachers agree that access to digital technolo-gies is essential to success in school. Of teachers surveyed, 67 percent said the Internet has a “major impact” on their ability to interact with parents and 57 percent said it has had such an impact on enabling their interaction with students. The parents’ inability to access tech-nology — whether because of cost, language or ability — is a major road-block to parent involvement in their children’s schooling, said Bautista, who asserted the majority of “our ethnic parents are not in that loop.” Nearly 73 percent of advanced place-ment and National Writing Project high school teachers surveyed said they and/or their students use their cell phones in class to complete assignments. Whether it’s using an iPad to teach, apps on a smart phone to learn math skills, e-readers or researching on Internet databases, digital technolo-gies have dramatically transformed the school system, rendering it necessary for good grades and graduation. Comcast partners with the Highline School District to increase access to the Internet and digital literacy. The Highline School District Foundation said more

than 70 percent of its students are on the National Free and Reduced Lunch Program and is one of the most diverse school districts in the state. Among Comcast’s support was sponsoring the district’s Back-to-School Fair on Aug. 15 from Valley Ridge Park in SeaTac, where 3,000 backpacks full of school supplies were passed out to students in need and Internet demonstrations from the Comcast tent helped families navigate the district website for critical school resources. Mauricio and his fam-ily could also benefit from Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, which offers Internet broadband service to eligible low-income families for $9.95 a month, along with free digital training and the option of a low-cost Netbook computer — something that is indispensable to today’s K-12 curriculum. “In Highline, we have made a com-mitment to using cutting-edge technol-ogy programs to support instruction,” said Rachel Klein, Highline Public Schools director of student advance-

ment. “In elementary schools like Seahurst, this means purchasing adap-tive, digital tools such as math ‘games’ that rapidly assess students’ skills and then give them increasingly-difficult problems to solve.” Klein said they are also piloting digi-tal libraries that give students a choice of e-novels to read at their level and on various topics that might meet their interests. “We are also using online science sites and foreign or English-language practice applications,” she continued. “For all of these tools, students are able to continue learning at home or wher-

ever they have access to the Internet. We know that our middle-income fami-lies provide Internet access at home, but without Internet Essentials, not all of our lower-income families are able to do so. Programs like that help us further our mission of providing equi-table access to education for all of our students.” Equitable access to broadband is a continued challenge. According to the same 2013 Pew study, there is a signifi-cant gap between families with Internet access at home. While half of all teach-ers of students in upper-income fami-lies said all or almost of their students have Internet at home, only 20 percent of middle-income kids had access. A staggering 3 percent of low-income students have Internet, according to the report. More than half of teachers surveyed said the difference in access is leading to a gap in performance. Free Wi-Fi is provided in many parks, libraries and other public places , but with the barrier of transportation

and daylight hours, access is certainly not equal across the board for students, said Bautista. El Centro’s Perez agrees. “As a low-income community and people of color who don’t have the luxury of a computer, we need to know that exists.”

Comcast is a long-time supporter of El Centro de la Raza’s mission to serve and uplift the Latino American com-munity. To learn more about El Centro’s services, please visit: www.elcentrode-laraza.com.

A Gap in Tech Access Can Lead to a Gap in Student Performance

Alex Bautista is a Hope for Youth program coordinator at El Centro de la Raza,. He believes families and stu-dents should have equitable access to digital resources. Photo credit. Atia Musazay.

PROGRAM, Continued from Page 10

BY ATIA MUSAZAYIE Contributor Schools are underserved in regards to technology. Computer labs

are not accessible for everybody and [available only] for a very

limited time. In this day and age ... a digital life is essential.

- Alex Bautista, Program Coordinator at El Centro de la Raza



Families Should Approach Technology Use For Kids Like a Diet, Says UW Director

With rising graduation and college entry standards, as well as a com-petitive job market, the need to be technologically savvy is crucial for a student’s future. Comcast believes technology access and regular, hands-on support and mentorship are critical to success. That is why the company helps fund such organizations as the nonprofit social services agency, Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS). Comcast recently awarded funding sup-port to ACRS, of which the bulk of the funding was designated to go to the agency’s Southeast Asian Young Men’s Multimedia program, which develops not only multimedia and technology-based career skills, but offers academic support, job searching and opportuni-ties for community dialogue. “Connecting youth to the advantag-es of technology will benefit our com-munities and society in the long-term,” says Diem Ly, external affairs manager for Comcast. “It’s a privilege to help provide that digital access and aware-ness for youth, families, and communi-ties that need it. As a technology-based company, we can see how far-reaching investing in our young people’s and families’ potential is. That’s why we make this a priority.” “It’s a natural fit for us to part-ner with the Asian Counseling and Referral Service,” she continues. “They are a leader in the APA (Asian Pacific American) community and advocate for

its causes, among them being digital lit-eracy. Their computer literacy courses serve as an invaluable tool for the young men’s community. We support their multimedia program because it’s a great way to connect young people to technology that can transfer into educational tools and job skills.” The program is currently producing a short film, anticipated to be released early next year, geared toward a middle school and high school-aged audience. It will address the digital divide in rela-tion to model minority myths. Joseph Mills, facilitator of the Southeast Asian young men’s group, says the issue of digital divide is particularly significant in communities of color. “We want to allow kids the opportu-nity to express themselves about issues in the community or about their lives that have special meaning to them,” says Mills. “Other topics we have addressed deal with bicultural identity, the Southeast Asian refugee experi-ence, and issues dealing with drugs and alcohol.” The program has had far-reaching impact. Minhkennedy Pham, an ACRS volunteer and former member of the young men’s group, appreciated the dialogue on Southeast Asian roots and culture the program offered. “It gives me an identity, so that I know who I am and so I don’t have to resort to drugs or gangs to affiliate with something,” said Pham. Pham’s parents emigrated from Vietnam, and he was born in the U.S. And although he has had access to technology his whole life that his par-

ents did not, participat-ing in the group offered him an opportunity to gain technical skills he wouldn’t have other-wise. In the program, learning how to hold and operate a camera, craft a story and edit video “was a new expe-rience for me,” Pham says. “I had never worked with film or video ever.” In addition, ACRS was one of 24 organi-zations to be unanimously approved on Aug. 12 by the Seattle City Council to receive a Technology Matching Fund grant (which is administered by the Community Technology Program of the City’s Department of Information Technology and is funded with cable franchise fees). The City of Seattle will award a total of $320,000 in matching funds to support technology projects across the city. At least 18 of these grants will directly serve immigrant and refugee groups. ACRS will receive a $19,987 Technology Matching Fund grant for its retail technology class, which will be offered to people with mental illness. In the class, students will learn iPad point-of-sale (POS) systems, computerized cash registers, inventory management and sales reporting. Students will prac-tice their newly acquired retail skills at Café Hope, ACRS’s in-house espresso stand. Other benefactors of the grant

include the Filipino Community of Seattle (to be awarded $19,400 to pro-vide a robotics and computer literacy program targeting low-income, at-risk youth of color in grades 8 to 12 who have little or no technology or tech-nical skills), the Lu-Mien American Association (to be awarded $10,000 to use toward the purchase of computers to provide low-income Laotian families basic technology literacy training, par-ticularly school-aged children, seniors and those who lack adequate skills or knowledge to be employable) and the Jack Straw Foundation (to be awarded $15,580 to enable English language learners at the Seattle World School to increase their English literacy, while learning to use portable and computer-based audio technology).

For more information about ACRS and its services, please visit www.acrs.org.

On a recent summer day, Jennifer Kim sat with her two kids at University Village in Seattle’s University District. One child played with her iPhone, while the other played with his iPad. They were 3 years and 22 months old, respectively. We’ve all had that observation of a toddler able to navigate an iPad or iPhone with more dexterity and speed than their parent. More and more chil-dren are being seen at a younger age interacting with handheld devices. Today, families struggle with the deci-sion — how much exposure to technol-ogy is too much? Some families choose to allow mini-mal technology access to their children, and others, like Kim, have children who are iPad experts by the age of 3. Kim agrees with both perspectives: while interactive technology can be educa-tional, she said, it may also be beneficial for kids to learn to live without it. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children under the age of 2 not to have any screen time. Sarah Roseberry-Lytle, Director of Translation, Outreach and Education at the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Science, said research has shown no benefit to tech-nology exposure for children under 2. And time spent on iPads or iPhones is

time that could have been spent on more ben-eficial practices, like reading or socializing. When time is spent with tech-nology, she said, it helps when an adult is making sure it’s struc-tured and chil-dren understand the meaning behind that time. “If you’re looking for any sort of learn-ing outcome, research shows that having an adult, having someone there to do that sort of staff-holding … will improve child outcomes,” Roseberry-Lytle said. As for children over the age of 2, Roseberry-Lytle said families should approach media like a diet. Include some time spent with media, but dis-burse it with other elements of edu-cation like physical books, toys and social interactions with other kids. “Everything in moderation.” “It really depends on the outcome you’re trying to get out of that expe-rience,” Roseberry-Lytle said about families allowing their children to

use technol-ogy. For Kim, a mother of two boys less than two years apart, tech-nology didn’t just serve edu-cational pur-poses. If she needed one of her boys to stay occu-pied while she tended to the other, the iPad would hold their atten-tion. She has two iPads and one iPhone. Her first-born,

Jonah, started playing with her iPhone a month after she got it. At the time, he was just under 2 years old. But she says she immediately regretted giving him that access. “He doesn’t really know the limita-tions,” Kim said about her first son, Jonah, spending all his time on the iPhone. “He was so young. There were no guidelines.” It would be less tempting, she said, for her to resort to using technology to occupy her kids if circumstances had been different—more time on her hands, more help, or if her two boys

had a wider age gap. Kim said there were benefits. Jonah grew up learning his basics, like his ABCs and color names, through iPhone apps. But that comes with being unsat-isfied whenever there are alternatives to interactive technology. “At the same time, that’s all they want,” she said. Tania Gould, a children’s author, chose to publish her book “Samuel T. Moore of Corte Magore” through an iPad app rather than a physical book. The app allowed her to include a nar-rative, music score and moving anima-tion. While she said she grew up with physical books and values them, she wanted children to be able to interact with her story. “I think that books are a great way to get kids thinking early and speaking early,” Gould said. “But with an app I see a whole different level of engage-ment that you don’t really see with a conventional book.” Gould said that while there are chal-lenges in tackling this new kind of plat-form, publishing companies will con-tinue to take advantage of the potential of innovative technology. She said she’s optimistic about technology’s positive influence on early learning. “What you’re seeing is kids that have an incredible technology knack these days,” she said. “There are some draw-backs, but I think it’s probably the way of the future.”

From left to right, Eric You, Jimmy Truong, Cyrus Malapajo, Minhkennedy Pham and Gabriel Estrella. Photo credit: Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS).

Multimedia Group Spurs Dialogue Among Southeast Asian Young MenBY JESSICA DAVISIE Contributor

BY HAYAT NORIMINEIE Contributor

Joshua Kim, 22 months old, plays with his iPad at University Village as his mother watches over him. Photo credit: Hayat Norimine.



Internet access is a human right, declared so by the United Nations in 2012. Yet for many residents right here in King County, access to technology and the Internet remains out of reach. This is particularly true for immigrant and refugee communities. New initiatives and efforts are being made to increase home access to the Internet, but public computer labs continue to be a critical resource for people to use computers and gain essential skills. The Communities Connect Network (CCN) is at the forefront of digital inclu-sion efforts in Washington state. CCN, established 13 years ago as a coali-tion of individuals, organizations, gov-ernment representatives and companies working for digital inclusion, was instru-mental in shaping the 2008 digital inclu-

sion and broadband legislation, signed into law by former Governor Christine Gregoire. In 2010, CCN was the recipient of a $4.2 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Over the last two years, CCN distributed the funds to 22 public computing centers across the state, many in Seattle includ-ing: Helping Link, Chinese Information and Service Center, Multimedia Resource and Training Institute, Neighborhood House and Horn of Africa Services. The centers used the funds to purchase new computers and software and increase the amount and types of training they offered to clients. Through the BTOP grant, CCN increased the number of public computer workstations among grant recipients by 299, and centers had an average of 206 extra visitors per week in 2012. CCN also created an online statewide directory of public computer labs, allowing visitors to search by location, training options, number of computers and languages served — among other criteria. Through my work with CCN, I have had the opportunity to see firsthand the necessity of these public computing cen-

ters in different communities. At the Yesler Lab, for example, students ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade use the com-puters to complete their homework after school, often staying until closing time. At Horn of Africa Services, immigrant families use the computers and webcam technology to connect with family in East Africa. At Helping Link, clients learn how to create resumes using Microsoft Word – and use curriculum that has been trans-lated into Vietnamese. Home Internet access can be cost prohibitive for many families in our region. The City of Seattle Community Technology Program and CCN recently held a webinar about the low-cost home Internet options available for Seattle and King County residents. Through Comcast Internet Essentials, qualifying residents can get home Internet for $9.95 per month, and a lap-top computer for $149. Comcast has also partnered with school districts to connect more families to affordable broadband and digital literacy training. CenturyLink has a similar pro-gram called Internet Basics. Locally, Interconnection offers low-cost refur-bished laptop and desktop computers. The City of Seattle just completed the first Technology Indicators survey of Seattle residents since 2009. Results will be published this fall, but a few findings are worth sharing immediately. Focus groups conducted in Vietnamese and Chinese show that there is great inter-est in using high-speed Internet to con-

nect with community, but survey results indicate that Asian Pacific Islanders as a whole use the Internet less than whites. “Income and education continue to be big contributing factors,” says David Keyes, community technology program manager at the City of Seattle. In order for public computer labs in our region to continue providing essential Internet access and technology training, they need sustainable sources of funding. The BTOP grant has ended, and many labs are searching for ways to maintain levels of service for their clients. The state budget has infamously been all about spending cuts this year, but I implore our state senators and representatives to work creatively to meet the goals of the 2008 digital inclusion and broadband bill. The digital divide persists and continues to unfairly impact our communities of color. Equitable access to the Internet is critical for our region, and we need seri-ous investment in digital inclusion.

City and State Technology Resources

Low-Cost Home Internet and Computers:www.seattle.gov/tech/free_stuff/

Directory of Public Computer Labs in Washington State: www.communitiesconnect.org/net-work-directory

Digital Inclusion: Efforts Build a Broader Network

nization that offers a broad array of human services and behavioral health programs to APIAs in King County. ACRS provides computer classes tailored to what clients ask for, Wendland said. ACRS also offers English classes and incorporates different online learning tools in the curriculum. “When people come in [to ACRS], we’re prepared to teach them at what-ever level is needed,” Wendland said. Elderly clients are usually less tech savvy and have varying needs, Wendland said. Some seniors need to learn how to use a mouse and turn on a computer. While computer literacy may be going up for people older than 65, those who are immigrants are facing chal-lenges, Wendland said. “A lot of materials for citizenship aren’t necessarily available in second languages,” Wendland said. “It’s a good idea to create more services on profi-ciency and access.” ACRS recently shared with its clients a video conference, spoken entirely in Vietnamese, about the benefits and the process of becoming a citizen that encouraged responses from audience. “There is use of technology for teach-ing seniors,” Wendland said. APIA women ages 75 and older have a suicide rate of 7.95 per 100,000, com-pared to the rate of 4.18 for white women and 1.18 for black women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By embracing technology and encouraging APIA seniors to explore new options in the digital world, local service agencies may have new tools to combat social isolation and depression among seniors.

BUSINESS, Continued from Page 8

quality products in Korea, and the name recognition resonates well with clients from the Korean community. Namkung also signed up for Comcast Business, working with a local, bilingual representative. With the service, she was able to set up AmorePacific’s point-of-sale (POS) client management system, which al-lows her to store information about each client’s skin type, skin test re-sults, preferences and past sales history. This data — combined with Namkung’s advanced training in cosmetology and knowledge of the cosmetic industry — enables her to provide highly personalized, client-focused customer service. “If we didn’t have Comcast, we couldn’t do business because of (our reliance on) the POS (point-of-sale),” Namkung said. She also shared that Comcast’s high-speed Internet service enables her to use security cameras to moni-tor the store from home. As an owner of a small franchise location, this provides her peace of mind while she is off-site. Both Kim and Namkung asserted that technology played a crucial role in helping their businesses thrive. It gives them the competitive edge they need to succeed in todays’ market where businesses are competing for consum-ers’ attention and dollars. In the end, it’s about providing the best customer experience they can — and their expe-riences confirm that what they’ve done is worth the investment.

Special thanks to Tae Lee, business account executive for Comcast, who provided interpretation services dur-ing the interviews.

BY AMY HIROTAKA IE ContributorAmy Hirotaka is the out-reach manager for the EdLab Group, and serves as board secretary of the Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation (ACLF).

SENIORS, Continued from Page 8


At the bottom of a bookshelf in my room, there are about a hundred comic books, each containing a different story in Hindu mythology. When I was a toddler, I would bring one of those books to my mom every night, pestering her to read it to me. It has been more than a year since I opened one. As children of immigrants grow up to become high school students, the books of their heritage sit idle, cobwebs collecting on the neglected pages, waiting for the day when they will pause their busy American lives and set aside five minutes for their culture. My parents moved to Seattle from Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in 1990 to study at the University of Washington. I was born seven years later, and have lived in North Seattle for my entire life. Growing up, my parents spent significant time and energy teaching our culture to my sisters and I. Up until the age of six, I didn’t know that my father could speak English. He con-

vinced us that he couldn’t understand what we were saying unless we spoke to him in Tamil. To this day, I still speak Tamil much better than other American-born Indians. My mother always took us to the temple, cooked delicious South Indian meals every night, taught us about different poojas (offer-ings to God), celebrated every Hindu festival and ensured that we were well informed. As a result of my parents’ toil, I was a very culturally aware child. I went to Tamil class, learned about all the states in India, and knew a multitude of stories about the Hindu gods. I even memorized and sang Jana Gana Mana, the Indian national anthem, for my mother’s birthday. And I did these things because I wanted to – not because my parents told me to. My Indian cultural values were clearly vis-ible in my conduct. Respect for teachers was apparent through the flowers and gifts I would give to them at the end of every school year. I was courteous towards elders, and rarely ever talked back to my parents. I never spoke ill of anyone, and I never cheated. But as I grew older and became exposed to more American pop culture, my efforts to retain my Indian heritage began to dwindle. English was mixed into the Tamil that I spoke at home, and the stories that I had carefully studied were pushed to the dusty, back corners of my mind. Giving gifts to teachers received the label “teacher’s pet.” Respecting my parents

made me an outsider to the mass of parent-hating teenagers. I watched as everyone around me gossiped behind each other’s back and cheated on tests. It became harder than ever to hold onto the morals that my culture had taught me. With schoolwork, sports, extracurricu-lar activities, hanging out with friends and worrying about the future, embracing and preserving my cultural traditions has been shoved down my list of priorities. Last year in social studies, I studied the waning of local culture and the spread of Americanization — a subject directly rel-evant to my life. If English is the language of the future, and the world is becoming homogenized at a breakneck speed, why should I spend my energy preserving my culture?

Resistance to assimilation, and accep-tance of all cultures, is what will keep the world the diverse place it is. With diversity comes an array of perspectives, ideas and knowledge. America is not a melting pot, but a fruit salad, with each fruit retaining its own flavor and contributing to the overall luscious combination. Those who resist homogenization can experience the joy of sharing their culture with others. Every year, my family hosts a Navarathri Golu, a doll showcase attended by all our American friends. The festival celebrates the three main Hindu goddesses and their representation of wisdom, wealth and power. Every person that attends the festival leaves with a greater understanding of Indian culture, as well as bindi and sandal-wood to put on their foreheads and necks, some lentils, a fruit, and a gift such as a cone of henna or an embroidered bag. My culture is not just a language and a religion. It is a way of life. It has nurtured into me values like being humble, valuing education and always doing my best. These are priceless lessons that I want my children and my grandchildren and my great grand-children to continue to learn. First-generation kids like myself can get swept away with the American lifestyle. But those comic books from my childhood will always sit there, gazing at me reproachfully as I bustle here and there. Five minutes today of reading those for-gotten pages will save me the guilt of aban-doning a bit of myself tomorrow. So I brush off those cobwebs, and read.

What Does Cathy Tashiro Suggest Reading this Summer?

In an enduring effort to pro-mote reading and literacy, the IE features summer read-ing suggestions from remark-able people in our community.

We hope our readers will be inspired to pick up a book and share it with others this season. In this installment, we asked Cathy Tashiro, associate professor emerita at the University of Washington and author of “Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed Race Americans,” to share her current favorites. Here are her reasons for recom-mending these five.

1. 2.

5.

4.

1. “A Tale for the Time Being” By Ruth Ozeki “Love everything Ruth Ozeki has written, and this one is over the top,” says Tashiro. “I espe-cially liked Nao’s voice … Time, Buddhism, Japan, bullying, environmental degradation - this book has it all.”

2. “The Woman Upstairs” By Claire Messud “One of the most revealing and nuanced accounts of a woman’s interior life I’ve ever read, and along the way, we get rapier-like insight into the world of contemporary art.”

3. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” By Mohsin Hamid“[This] should be required reading for anyone in the NSA (National Security Agency).”

4. “City of Tranquil Light” By Bo Caldwell“Superb, luminous writing that depicts essen-tial human goodness that transcends spiritual boundaries.”

5. “Ape House “ By Sara Gruen“Just plain fun with good chimps and villain-ous humans, plus a righteous ending. I learned a lot about bonobo chimps, though I have had a soft spot in my heart for them ever since I first learned about them in graduate school.”

IE COMMUNITY

BY MENAKA NARAYANANIE Editorial Intern & Youth ContributorMenaka Narayanan, 15, will be a junior at Roosevelt High School this fall, where she will be a feature editor of the Roosevelt News.

Making Time for My Tamilian Culture

Menaka Narayanan (second from the left) as a baby with her sisters and grandparents in India.


The Not So ‘Tiger Mom’ Approach to School Success

Through most of elementary school, I believed myself to be truly stupid. Unaware then that I have dyslexia, all I knew, and all my parents could see, was that I hated any-thing and everything to do with reading or writing. But instead of trying to force better grades out of me, whether by hiring a tutor or by piling on extra homework, they took a more accommodating approach, which proved even more effective. When I was in third grade, my dad brought me to a live marital arts perfor-mance. He knew I was struggling in class and hoped to find other ways to instill confidence in me. I fell in love almost instantly and joined a nearby martial arts school soon after. The daily routine of kicks and punches, I began to think, weren’t that unlike what I did in the classroom — only the mechanics of martial arts seemed to come a lot easier. Around the same time I also began to learn Chinese, which tipped my parents off to my dyslexia. Unlike English, where letters and words often

became jumbled on the page, I always got the strokes right when I wrote in Chinese. These were minor victories, but for me, they helped reverse growing insecurities about my own ability to succeed in school. My parents helped in other ways, too. I remember one night coming home late after working on a group project with classmates. I was starving; all I could think of was filling the nagging hole in my belly. As soon as I came through the door, I was greeted by the crackling sound of food on the stove and the aroma of steaming rice in the cooker. Within minutes, my mom had a table full of hot food laid out in front of me. In fact, our house maintained a regimented mealtime (with the exception of an occasional late night), which helped me structure the rest of my day. I always knew there’d be food waiting for me at home, and a ride to school in the morning. Until high school, I assumed most stu-dents were ferried to and from school by their parents. Most of my friends were driven to school, so I never conceived of it as a luxury, but simply part of the daily routine. Then came the day for my SAT. I saw a fel-low student getting off the bus as I was being dropped off, and began to wonder about how much earlier than me she had to wake up to get to the test site on time. Not only that, while I sat in the relative comfort of my parents’ car, she jostled with crowds of mostly unruly kids before sitting for the four-hour long test. Both of my parents are college teachers, and so their schedules allowed for at least one of them to be there for me most days. I know not all parents have the same luxury. Still, more than anything else, my parents’

attention to providing me with the basic comforts helped me stay focused and took the edge off of school, which in turn, led to improved performance and better grades. Without that sense of security and comfort, I’m not sure I’d be where I am now, getting ready to leave for college.

- Stephen Fong

Childhood Relics

My parents arrived in San Francisco from China when they were both in their mid-20s. Back there, my dad was an engineer and my mom a general doctor. However, when they moved here, it was hard to transfer the cre-dentials they held in China, so they worked their way into the dry cleaning business instead, eventually opening up their own shop in the Outer Sunset neighborhood. It was there that I spent every day after school and throughout the summer, scrib-bling away in the gray sheets of my work-books. After a 10-hour workday, my mom would check my reading comprehension booklet using the answers in the back and make me recite old Chinese poems while my dad would go over my math problems. There were times when frustrations boiled over. My parents’ limited English meant things sometimes got lost in translation. I remember my mom would often grow exas-perated trying repeatedly to get me to under-stand some passage of classical Chinese poetry, while my dad would throw his hands up when I didn’t get some algebra problem. But as I grew older, my parents became less familiar with the material I was studying. As a result, I became increasingly inde-

pendent and learned to check and re-check my own assignments. Still, they weren’t done with me quite yet. By my sophomore year in high school, my parents began attending free semi-nars on the college application process that were advertised in the local Chinese papers. They would fret about my SAT scores and lecture me about my grades. It seemed like college was all that mat-tered to them, and I began to feel stifled by their growing obsession. I wanted time to explore other parts of my life not tied to academics (which I did get, sometimes without their knowledge). Other friends with immigrant parents told me this is how they show their love. But my parents sole focus on school also made it hard for me to see them as people I could confide in. When I was in middle-school, I was diagnosed with scoliosis and had to wear a back brace 23 hours a day, which I wore hidden under a large t-shirt for about a year. While I became more and more insecure about my appearance, I kept my anxieties to myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my par-ents; I had just grown used to associating them solely with my academic wellbeing. I never felt the need to talk with them about my personal life. Today, even after graduating high school, the bookshelves in my room are still filled with the relics of my childhood education: K-8 level reading comprehen-sion review booklets, workbooks on just about every math subject expected to be covered in elementary school, and Chinese textbooks with stories and vocabulary checks at the end. Whenever I see these, I’m reminded of all the things my parents taught me — both directly and indirectly.

- Yuri Guan

Advice for Asian Parents: Food, Flexibility is KeyIE EDITORIAL

BY STEPHEN FONG AND YURI GUANIE ContributorsNew America Mediawww.newamericamedia.orgNAM intern Stephen Fong is a gradu-ate of Galileo High School in San Francisco. He begins college this fall at the University of Arizona, where he plans to major in East Asian Studies. NAM intern Yuri Guan graduated from Lowell High School this past year and will enroll in UC San Diego in the fall.


At a lecture in Seattle many years ago, photographer Graciela Iturbide talked about the commitment it took to photo-graph people. For “Images of the Spirit,” (Aperture, 1996), she traveled throughout her native Mexico, often staying in the communities she documented over several months or sometimes years. When asked what project she was working on next, she said birds. She needed to take a break from people. Lucky for us, the break wasn’t exactly permanent. Her latest book, “No Hay Nadie, There Is No One,” presents a quiet meditation on humanity through the imprints people leave behind. It is an inter-esting approach to photographing India, the second most populous country on the planet. Unlike the work of Raghubir Singh, Steve McCurry and others who have trained their lens on the diverse peoples of India, Iturbide’s images are not of streets

and temples bustling with crowds of color-fully clad people. Her serene black and white images reference them: a simple bowl framed by stones, the beggar; dozens of shoes nailed to a wall, the cobbler; dan-gling prosthetics, the disabled; handprints smeared on to a door, people wanting pas-sage to nirvana. The accompanying essay, “Appearances Don’t Deceive,” by Oscar Pujol, provides a thought-provoking context to these haunt-ing images. He writes, according to the Vedas, the Hindu’s sacred scripture: “The world is eternal. …. Its inhabitants come and go, leaving tracks as if they were leftover food. Narrators, like crows, devote themselves to looking at these tracks, rum-maging in them in search of food for their art. Idle by experience, they look for nourishment in an abandoned landscape. …Nothing lies behind the images: only a pulsation. It is enough. The landscape does not demand figures; like a handless glove, it reveals the fingers by their absence.”

Iturbide’s photographs reveal so much with so little, and allow the viewer to pon-der the self instead of individuals. This col-lection serves as a kind of continuation of her earlier book, “Images of the Spirit,” but this time, it’s not of a specific people, but of humanity.

When I heard that noted Northwest photographer Johsel Namkung had died in late July, I tried to recall when I first encountered his name. It may have been in David Ishii’s used bookstore in Pioneer Square soon after I moved to Seattle in the late ‘70s. On the walls of his shop, you’d find photos of his favorite writers & artists, Asian American baseball stars and even a photo of a master fly fisherman and author. From the corner of my eye I noticed a photo of a man walking up a ridge, a large camera and tripod slung across his back as he inched towards the horizon. When I pointed it out, David told me it was a picture he had taken of his friend Johsel Namkung.

“Joe likes to scout locations, and when he finds the right one, he’ll stay for hours wait-ing for the right moment,” he said. He explained to me it could be when the light reaches a mountain peak at a certain angle or when the wind blows and makes the leaves tremble. Ever the booster for his friends, David then pulled out of a drawer, a color catalog of a show Namkung had at Seattle Art Museum and pointed to a worn shoebox of postcard images from the show. It felt as though I had entered another world, slices of nature

turned into slides slid under the concentra-tion of a magnifying glass. At first glance, stillness pervades but upon closer observa-tion, one feels a world teeming with activ-ity. In “Snoqualmie Pass” (circa 1977), a coppery sheen off ice cold water reflects dusk surrounded by rocks capped with freshly fallen snow, and the naked branch-es of shrubs stand stark like brushstrokes along the water’s edge. A few months later, Johsel popped into the shop to say hi and David introduced me. When my wife and I interviewed him for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art in the fall of 1989, the details of his extraordinary life began to come together. Namkung was born in Gwangju, a city in South Korea famous for historical uprising against its own govern-ment or those of colonial powers like the Japanese during World War II. His father studied in the U.S. and became the first Korean to receive a doctorate of divinity. In Pyongyang, the family lived in a seminary compound amongst American and other foreign missionaries where his interest in Western music and culture was nurtured. At the age of 12, he made up his mind to sing German lieder upon hearing a record-ing of Schubert with fellow music enthusi-asts. At 16, he took first place in singing at

the All Korean High School Music Contest. He would later study at the Tokyo Conservatory where he met his first wife Mineko Suematsu. They lived for a time in Shanghai, where they taught music and worked with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra. But the winds of war followed them everywhere. They moved to Nara, Japan, but con-stant American bombing of the cities sent them back to Korea. Anti-Japanese senti-ment and fear for his wife’s safety and an American college scholarship brought them to Seattle. In Seattle, the couple’s first friends were artists George Tsutakawa and Paul Horiuchi and eventually Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson and other Northwest artists. Working as a translator with Northwest Orient Airlines took up so much time that Johsel could not continue singing. He resorted to photography instead. He worked for more than 20 years as a scientific photographer for the pathol-ogy department at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. During this time he also had a career as an illustra-tive photographer and still had time for his own work and trips to the mountains. When his first wife Mineko died after a prolonged fight with cancer in 1999,

he found solace in music. At a Seattle Symphony concert, he talked to a woman who had been sitting next to him the entire season. This is how he met his second wife, Monica. Or as he would explain in a brief autobiography published by the Korean American Historical Society: “As my first marriage was made through music, my second also was made through music.” His commitment to the art of photogra-phy was explained to me this way: “I don’t photograph to sell, I don’t photography to exhibit, I don’t photograph to publish — I do it because I have to.

Any photographer worth his salt must be able to do the entire process by himself. I don’t like the idea of many photographers who say they just do the photograph and have someone else do the print. The act of creative execution is

not unlike performing music on the stage. You cannot sing three times and tell the audience to select the best performance they like the best. My negatives are my definitive statement and they need not be cropped or altered. At least that is what I aspire to.” Johsel often said he was inspired by his late older brother, John, whom he called a “renaissance man” because — although he was self-taught — he seemed to excel at everything he picked up. In my mind, Johsel Namkung lived several lifetimes in one, and he, too, was a renaissance man. He is the last of that generation of self-made individuals and a link to an earlier generation of Northwest artists. His presence will be missed but his legacy will endure in every image he left behind caught “in the moment.” When I asked him what makes a good photograph, he told me the importance of having an open mind: “You can’t have any preconceived ideas. You have to be open so you can respond at what you see and find. The most enjoyment I get out of it is the ordinary thing like roadside weeds. And where people wouldn’t pay any attention, there is the beauty.”

NOURISHMENT IN AN ABANDONED LANDSCAPE

In Memory of Johsel Namkung: 1919-2013The Image As Music – The Open Mind of Johsel Namkung

IE ARTS: Visual

Johsel Namkung at Hurricane Ridge. Photo credit: Ken Levine.

“Lake Julius, North Cascade” taken by Johsel Namkung in 1981.

BY ALAN CHONG LAUIE Arts Editor

BY CARINA A. DEL ROSARIOIE Contributor

Where people wouldn’t pay any attention, there is beauty.

-Johsel Namkung (1919-2013)


Patti Warashina’s world is an exuber-ant place where people of many sizes and shapes run, ride, dance, tumble, bal-ance acrobatically and stand majestically. Some colorful, some stark white, they act out domestic dramas, political com-mentaries, inside jokes and reflections on the human condition. “Patti Warashina: Wit and Wisdom,” on view now through Oct. 27 at the Bellevue Arts Museum, is an exhilarating trip through her cosmos of clay. It is hard to know where to begin to describe this show of more than 130 works spanning a prolific career. On a purely visual level, these ceramic sculptures are dynamic and colorful and fun. But underly-ing each piece is a story or opinion, usually alluded to rather than literally expressed. Warashina confronts stereotypes with sly humor and veils sad-ness in whimsy. The show is arranged in roughly chronologi-cal order, a journey through a remarkable range of ideas, aesthet-ics and scale. In five decades of making art, Patti Warashina has never stopped mov-ing and has apparently never run short of inspiration, fearlessly mining life and world events for subject matter, not shying away from things that are personal, difficult or that make her angry. “I have always felt that if you were short

on ideas, look at the news!” she told Bellevue Art Museum’s Stefano Catalani recently in an interviiew. “It’s full of Surrealism and you don’t have to look very far.” Warashina made a career of defying expectations. A sansei (third-generation Japanese American) raised in Spokane, she — like many Asian-American children — was groomed to be a scientist. At the University of Washington, she discovered the school of art and the ceramics studio. “I just liked the feel of clay, and I never got bored with clay,” says Warashina. “It still creates a challenge for me.” She entered the field when abstract expressionism was the major movement in art. “Everybody else was just splashing this stuff around…but it wasn’t very personal to me,” she recalled. Influenced by pop art and funk, she elaborated on traditional vessel shapes, glazing them in bright colors. The term “rep-resentational” loosely applies to artifacts like “Airstream Turkey” (1969), a stylized chrome turkey complete with drumsticks, housing a diorama of a camping trip. For her Kiln series, Warashina re-envisioned everything from a cottage (“Sure Fire Kiln”

1971) to a convertible (“Convertible Car Kiln” 1971) in brick and cartoon flames — parodies of the ceramics kiln. The evolution of her work from ves-sels to figures is illustrated through several pieces. “Ourselves” (1975) is a pyramid of stacked vessels inspired by the bento box,

decorated with autobiographical imagery: portraits of Warashina, her husband and daughters, dragons, the rising sun, the Space Needle (actually a pair of legs sup-porting a hot pot). With the “Altar” series (1976), Warashina began the transition from two- to three-dimensional figures. Painted portraits of women in stereotypi-cally feminine roles, their sculpted arms and noses projecting toward the viewer, the “Altars” pieces take aim at cultural and gender bias. In her three-dimensional figurative sculpture, Warashina pushed clay to its physical limits, asking a solid earthen material to defy gravity, to fly or drape like fabric, to climb like a vine. For her “White Figures” series, she combined sim-ple porcelain figures in complex narrative groupings. Several themes and symbols

recur: birth (eggs, butterflies and cocoons), art (paint cans and brushes), mazes (her daughters owned an ant farm). One of the most poignant themes is transition and loss as symbolized by the long boat. “Lighter Side” (1989) was executed during the ter-minal illness of her friend and colleague Howard Kottler. Evocative of funerary ves-sels crossing the River Styx, the piece is ultimately optimistic, emerging from dark-ness into light. Twenty-five pieces in the show represent the “White Figures” sculptures, a major body of work that occupied Warashina for a decade. By 1990, she was ready for a change in the scale of her work. Larger-than-life female figures, one more than 9 feet tall, evoke Nile temple guardians and classi-cal caryatids, influenced by her travels in Egypt, Turkey and Italy. In the past decade, she has dialed back the scale and ratcheted up the political and social content. Warashina refers to her cur-rent work body of work as “Conversations.” Groups of figures are again important, but they don’t fit under glass, they fill rooms. Viewers can stroll among and stand eye-to-eye with the nine figures in “The Circus: Real Politique” (2003-2004), allowing a rare intimacy with the art. “Scrutiny” (2011) comprises five female figures of indetermi-nate age sitting on a shelf. A person stand-ing on a large, red “X” on the gallery floor will find themselves the focus of the wom-en’s gaze. The viewer becomes the viewed, and should feel fortunate to be part of this conversation.

“Patti Warashina: Wit and Wisdom” is on exhibit through Oct. 27 at the Bellevue Arts Museum. Information and a schedule of educational and art-making activities can be found at www.bellevuearts.org. A full-color catalog with essay by local art historian Martha Kingsbury accompanies the show.

When Gen Hayashida, also known as “N39,” sends a postcard through the mail, the journey of the object becomes part of the artwork itself. His exhibit, “Handled with Care” — now showing at Paper Hammer Gallery — presents his playful, mixed-media sculptural variations on the familiar image of the postcard. Prior to the exhibition, he sent much of his work from Santa Fe, New Mexico to the Seattle gallery through the United States Postal Service (USPS) — one piece at a time. I recently interviewed the artist in his Santa Fe home-studio where he lives with his partner, Pamela. Her name appears on the mailing address of many of his postcards. I found the artist himself to be easygoing and unpretentious — something reflected in the vegetable and flower gar-dens, homemade greenhouse and back-yard chicken coop they tend together. Hayashida seemed immediately inter-ested in showing me his work, but a little shy when it came to a personal interview, saying modestly that he’d prefer his art be the center of attention rather than himself. I asked about the significance of his moniker, N39. It’s “G-E-N” alphanumeri-cally spelled upside down. When he pro-

duced a business card from a container and handed me one, I noticed a unique, used postage stamp glued to the front of each and every one. At the time of my visit, he was working on what resembled a chocolate bar wrapped in tinfoil, with the mailing address embossed on the surface. Like any regular package, this one will be sent through the USPS with a postage stamp attached. Some of his postcards are covered with genuine two- and four-cent stamps in a repeating pattern. Occasionally, pieces like these are delivered with a “postage due” notification sticker if the object requires more payment, but they usually end up arriving at the intended destination. Hayashida chuckled at this, saying it adds something to the piece. He wants his art to tell a story, and in this case, it’s the story of a physical journey with the postal

service as an active participant. Using various found objects to put a creative spin on the simple act of send-ing a postcard by mail, Hayashida works with themes such as repetition, opposition, inversion, positive and negative space, shadows, mirror images and visual puns. His work consists of everyday items, play-fully transformed and melded together into cohesive units. Exploring tactile and sensory aspects along with the visual, one example is a package that makes a sound when shaken, much like a rattle, adding an auditory element. Yet another example is weighted to stand upright when set down on a flat surface. An obvious fondness for puzzles can be seen in several of his pieces. He showed me a postcard-sized jigsaw puzzle that he glued together as well as another postcard made of four moveable metal tubes that

require individual rotation for the address to be readable. In another example, the mailing address is visible only by tilting a mirror a certain way to get a reflective view of the desired information. Examples of objects used in his work include typewriter keys, scrabble pieces, dice, mahjong tiles, dollhouse accouterments, packing foam and customized wooden pencils. At one point during our interview, he took out a box and presented me with a pencil bearing his address. When ordering custom pencils he had to buy a few hun-dred while only using about a dozen in the actual postcard. Looking around his home, I noticed a Japanese-style cabinet known as a tansu, which led me to ask about his Japanese background. Born in Tokyo and raised in the nearby Yokohama area, Hayashida first came to the United States in 1984 as an exchange student. In comparison to Japan, the easygoing and non-conformist atmo-sphere of the U.S. appealed to him. Having grown up in an artistic and musical fam-ily, creativity came naturally to him, and he eventually found his way into graphic design, then illustration, and eventually from illustration to painting and sculpture. I asked if Japanese culture or aesthetics have had any influence on his art, to which he replied: “Maybe unconsciously, since it’s a part of me.” He said the same of Santa Fe, N.M., and mentioned his appreciation for the region’s sunshine, clean air, artist community and relaxed pace of life. Much like his post-cards, Hayashida made the journey from Santa Fe to Seattle for the opening recep-tion of his show.

From Santa Fe, with Love:

A Wise and Witty WorldviewBY SUSAN KUNIMATSUIE Contributor

IE ARTS: Visual

Gen Hayashida’s elaborate postcard-inspired work is now on display at Paper Hammer Gallery in Seattle. The exhibit, “Handle with Care” will be up through Sept. 28. Photos courtesy of Gen Hayashida.

Patti Warashina’s “Passage Through Venetian Light,” 2012. Low-fire clay, underglaze, glaze, mixed media 122 1/4 x 60 x 60 in. Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Rob Vinnedge.

Postcard Artist Debuts ‘Handle with Care’ in Seattle

BY NAGISA LEONARDIE Contributor

In five decades of making art, Patti Warashina has never stopped moving and has apparently

never run short of inspiration, fearlessly mining life and world events for subject matter, not shying away from things that are personal,

difficult or that make her angry.


COMMUNITY RESOURCE DIRECTORY

VNSF enables underprivileged students in Viet Nam to achieve success and happiness through education. We are looking for volunteers and board members to join the team and make a difference in the lives of kids in Vietnam.

P.O. Box 16016 Seattle, WA [email protected] www.vnsf.org

1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101Ph: 206-654-3209 Fx: 206-654-3135SAM connects art to life through special exhibitions, educational programs and installations drawn from its collection of approximately 25,000 objects. Through its three sites, SAM presents global perspectives, making the arts a part of everyday life for people of all ages, interests, backgrounds and cultures.

Arts & Culture

[email protected] www.deniselouie.orgMulticultural preschool ages 3-5 years old. Now enrolling Private Pay full-day ($900/mo) and part-day classes ($500/mo) with locations at ID, Beacon Hill, and Rainier Beach.

3327 Beacon Ave S.Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-725-9740

Education

Housing & Neighborhood Planning

HomeSight5117 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-723-4355 fx: 206-760-4210www.homesightwa.org

HomeSight creates homeownership opportunities through real estate development, home buyer education and counseling, and lending.

Don’t get take-out! Have it Delivered!

Please mail a check for $35 to the International Examiner

or donate to: 622 S. Washington St.,

Seattle, WA 98104.Thank you for your contribution.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER FOR$35/YEAR FOR

24 ISSUES!

Professional Association

WE MAKE LEADERS

Queen Anne Station, P.O. Box 19888, Seattle, WA [email protected], www.naaapseattle.orgFostering future leaders through education, networking and community services for Asian American professionals and entrepreneurs.Facebook: NAAAP-Seattle Twitter: twitter.com/naaapseattle

InterIm Community Development Association310 Maynard Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-624-1802 fx: [email protected] www.interimicda.orgAffordable housing development, multi-lingual low-income housing outreach, rental information, financial literacy, neighborhood planning and outreach for APAs, immigrants and refugees.

Asia Pacific Cultural Center4851 So. Tacoma WayTacoma, WA 98409Ph: 253-383-3900Fx: 253-292-1551faalua@comcast.netwww.asiapacificculturalcenter.orgBridging communities and generations through arts, culture, education and business.

Korean’s Women Association123 E 96th St, Tacoma, WA 98445ph: 253-535-4202 fx:[email protected] www.www.kwacares.orgProvides quality multicultural, multilingual, social and human services including but not

limed to: In home caregiving for the elderly and disabled, support for abused, children and families, homeless, hungry, or those who need naturalization assistance. Translation assistance provided.

221 18th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-322-4550 fx: [email protected] provided affordable housing and support services to people over 62 years of age. Lunch is served 7 days per week to people over 60 years of age for a $3 donation.

Address tobacco control and other health justice issues in the Asian American/Pacific Islander communities.

601 S King St.Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-682-1668 website www.apicat.org

Asian Counseling & Referral Service3639 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-695-7600 fx: [email protected] www.acrs.orgACRS offers multilingual, behavioral health and social services to Asian Pacific Americans and other low-income people in King County.

Social & Health Services

National Asian Pacific Center on Aging Senior Community Service Employment Programph: 206-322-5272 fx: 206-322-5387www.napca.orgPart-time training program for low income Asian Pacific Islanders age 55+ in Seattle/King & Pierce Counties.

1601 E Yesler Way, Seattle, WA 98122ph: 206-323-7100 fx: 206-325-1502 www.nikkeiconcerns.orgRehabilitation & care center; assisted living community; senior activity program; continuing education.

Legacy House803 South Lane Street Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-292-5184 fx: [email protected] www.scidpda.org/programs/legacyhouse.aspx

Description of organization/services offered: Assisted Living, Adult Day Services, meal programs for low-income seniors. Medicaid accepted.

Community Care Network of Kin On815 S Weller St, Suite 212, Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-652-2330 fx: [email protected] www.kinon.orgProvides home care, home health, Alzheimer’s and caregiver support, community education and chronic care management. Coordinates medical supply delivery. Installs Personal emergency Response systems. Serves the Chinese/Asian community in King County.

Kin On Health Care Center 4416 S Brandon St, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-721-3630 fx: [email protected] www.kinon.orgA 100-bed, Medicare and Medicaid certified, not-for-profit skilled nursing facility focused on meeting the long term care needs of the Chinese/Asian community members.

Senior Services

WE MAKE LEADERS

Queen Anne Station, P.O. Box 19888, Seattle, WA [email protected], www.naaapseattle.orgFostering future leaders through education, networking and community services for Asian American professionals and entrepreneurs.Facebook: NAAAP-Seattle Twitter: twitter.com/naaapseattle

Social & Health Services

Chinese Information and Service Center611 S Lane St, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-624-5633 fax: [email protected] www.cisc-seattle.org

CISC helps Asian immigrants make the transition to a new life while keeping later generations on touch with their rich heritage.

International District Medical & Dental Clinic720 8th Ave S, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-788-3700 Holly Park Medical & Dental Clinic3815 S Othello St, 2nd Floor, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-788-3500

Bellevue Medical & Dental ClinicComing in 2013!

Shoreline Medical & Dental ClinicComing in 2014!

We are a nonprofit health center offering affordable health care services, including primary care, dental, behavioral health, phar-macy, laboratory, acupuncture, and health education.

Our programs help people meet their immediate needs and gain the skills and resources needed to reach solid ground and achieve their dreams.

1501 N 45th St, Seattle, WA 98103ph: 206-694-6700 fx: [email protected] www.solid-ground.org

ph: 206-624-3426 www.merchants-parking-transia.org

Merchants Parking provides convenient & affordable community parking. Transia provides community transportation: para-transit van services, shuttle services and field trips in & out of Chinatown/International District & South King County.

Seattle Rotary ClubBill NagelMeets Every Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.New Hong Kong [email protected]://www.seattleidrotary.org/Improve the local community by engaging activities such as community improvement

projects, scholarship opportunities, and undertakings that promote education.

PO Box 14047, Seattle WA 98114(206) 325.0325 (Helpline)[email protected]. apichaya.orgAPI Chaya is dedicated to serving survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking in the Asian, South Asian

and Pacific Islander communities. We offer multi-lingual services that are free and confidential.

Seattle Chinatown/International District Preservation and Development Authorityph: 206-624-8929 fx: 206-467-6376 [email protected]

Housing, property management and community development.

Executive Development Institute 310 – 120th Ave NE. Suite A102 Bellevue, WA Ph. 425-467-9365 • Fax: 425-467-1244 Email: [email protected] • Website: www.ediorg.org EDI offers culturally relevant leadership development programs.

Professional & Leadership Development


check out our new menu!

Tuesday:

King Crab$36.95

4PM - 9PM

Monday: Cajun and snow Crab$25.95 • 4PM - 9PM

Friday: seafood$28.95 • 4PM - 11PM

add a Lobster Tail for only $10

Sunday: dim sum and snow Crab$25.95 • 4PM - 9PM

Wednesday: brazilian$27.95 • 4PM - 9PM

Saturday: Prime rib$25.95 • 4PM - 11PM


Thursday: Prime rib$25.95 • 4PM - 9PM


I-90 East to ExIt 27 • I-90 WEst ExIt 31snoqualMIE, Wa • 425.888.1234

snoCasino.Com – SEATTLE’S CLOSEST CASINO –

When there is Internet at home,there is opportunity for success.Back to school means getting back to basics. That’s why Comcast helps local families

get affordable basic Internet at home. Families with children on the National School Lunch

Program may qualify for Internet Essentials now for only $9.95/month.*

For more information, visit www.internetessentials.com or call 1-855-8-INTERNET.

*Subject to eligibility requirements.© 2013 Comcast all rights reserved.

FREE EST. 1974 - International Examiner to grocery shopping. I go two to five ... Sandwiches’...

Documents

Transcript of FREE EST. 1974 - International Examiner to grocery shopping. I go two to five ... Sandwiches’...