I officially write <del>in</del> for Philadelphia

Some things came out this week.

Asian American discrimination continues…

Yang is lucky if he thinks driving away from a hostile glance in the parking lot of an upstate New York supermarket, described in his op-ed, is the end of his trauma. The trauma the rest of us are combatting is both mundane and profound: the multigenerational angst of having survived near-death trauma in a Southeast Asia ravaged by American wars, only to experience verbal harassment in the U.S. Young Asian Americans — like their parents and grandparents before them — are told: Go back to where you came from. And during this pandemic, trauma is refreshed for everyone by the ongoing decimation of human beings, due to the hubris of leaders who still won’t take the necessary steps to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Watching all this, I still see red.

Rather than wear red, white, and blue, I’m opting for black instead, to mourn the dead. I’m told wearing black is how Americans demonstrate mourning, devastation, and most importantly: resistance.

Read the rest at the Inquirer

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“The Future is Philadelphia”

I love Philadelphia.

I love that when I sing the opening line of the theme song to “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” at the mention of West Philadelphia, everybody rolls their eyes with exasperation, but if I criticize Will Smith, the same people will make a silent throat-slitting gesture with their middle finger.

During an icebreaker at a conference at City Hall, where I joined a couple dozen commissioners of various interest groups, we were tasked to form small groups with complete strangers to find out what our most obscure commonality was. For example, what if we were all born in April? I mean first of all, WATCH OUTFOR ARIES if that’s the case…But anyway, when I proposed we share our favorite celebrity encounter on the off chance we had one in common, one of the respondents said “Philadelphians don’t give a damn about celebrities. Where are you from?” I lied and said France, I was so embarrassed. The most obscure commonality we ended up sharing out was that we’d all spent at least one night in a car. This is what we reported out to the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia.

Read the rest at InterTrend Communications (Medium)