These images have never been shared with the public. I had only taken them for myself to remember that day. Most people remember exactly what they were doing that morning, where they were, and how they were reacting as the events unfolded. I was a college student who had lived in New York City for nearly a year and was getting ready to make the commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I never made that commute. I remember sitting in my living room that morning listening to the radio with a feeling of deep disbelief and helplessness. The pictures you see below were my attempts to come to grips with reality. Unlike those who witnessed the collapse in person or on television, I was instead confronted with ashes in my face, smoke, and burnt pages of paper floating down like feathers to the ground. The experience wasn’t “like a movie,” something I have heard repeated by detached witnesses over and over. For me, it was the closest I had ever come to mass destruction and death and I was forever moved by that sight.

It is difficult to forget the day of September 11, 2001 when much of what is going on today is in some way a consequence of the occurrences of that day. From the emotionally impacted individual to the drastic reactionary measures in foreign and domestic policy, the character of this country has changed for better and for worse. When historians in the future attempt to trace the roots of this change, this day will surely be marked a turning point.

]]> http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/09/september-11-2001/feed/ 0 http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/08/town-hall-with-rep-adam-schiff/ http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/08/town-hall-with-rep-adam-schiff/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:09:36 +0000 admin http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/08/1073/ ]]> http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/08/town-hall-with-rep-adam-schiff/feed/ 0 http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/07/ensenada-the-makers-and-pushers-of-a-tourism-economy/ http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/07/ensenada-the-makers-and-pushers-of-a-tourism-economy/#comments Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:45:51 +0000 admin http://www.waynehuang.net/?p=884 ]]> http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/07/ensenada-the-makers-and-pushers-of-a-tourism-economy/feed/ 0 http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/06/iran-election-protest-in-irvine-california/ http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/06/iran-election-protest-in-irvine-california/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:59:44 +0000 admin http://www.waynehuang.net/?p=797

June 25, 2009 – Iranians of Orange County rally at Irvine City Hall to make their voices heard and to show solidarity and support for the uprising in Tehran.

Brian Doan in his Long Beach studio.

Brian Doan, 40, was born August 22nd 1968 towards the end of the Tet Offensive in the Central Vietnam city of Quang Ngai. The Tet Offensive was a turning point in Vietnamese history as it marked the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of what would be a new kind of struggle for an entire generation of war-weary South Vietnamese refugees. Doan and his family remained in Vietnam while his father suffered through ten brutal years in a Communist reeducation camp. Their struggle was one of trying to cope with living under a regime that regarded them as second-class citizens.

His father was stationed in Quang Ngai during the war as a security officer with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). When the war ended in 1975, Doan and his family migrated to Saigon while his father was serving time in a reeducation camp. Not more than a few years after they settled, they were forced to return to Central Vietnam into a “new economic zone.” Families that were of the former South Vietnam middle and upper class were sent there to work as farmers.

Not content with their situation, the Doan’s escaped towards the South again, migrating from city to city, town to town until they finally settled in Long Khanh—a small, developing community of Catholic Vietnamese about 100 kilometers outside of Saigon, known by then as Hồ Chí Minh City. This is how Doan remembers his childhood in Vietnam—always being on the move and never having a permanent home.

These days, Doan lives in an upscale Long Beach, California neighborhood with his wife and two children. Between being an associate professor at Long Beach Community College he is an internationally exhibited photographer who has built a reputation as a controversial and provocative artist within the California Vietnamese community.

His photograph in the recent group exhibition F.O.B. II: Art Speaks at VALAA Center in Santa Ana sparked fierce protests from local anti-Communist Vietnamese and eventually lead to the city ordering the closure of the exhibition.

“Thu Duc, Vietnam,” the title of the photograph at the center of the controversy, depicts a Vietnamese woman wearing the yellow star of the Vietnamese communist flag. Next to her is a bronze statue of Hồ Chí Minh, founding leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and a despised figure within the Little Saigon community.

These two images have the potential to incite a fiery rage of protest in the local community as was demonstrated in the massive fifty-three days of protests against Truong Van Tran, then-owner of Hi Tek video rental. Tran defiantly displayed the Communist flag of Vietnam and posters of Hồ Chí Minh in his store saying that by doing this he was encouraging a freer Vietnam by showing the freedoms that existed in the United States.

Doan, on the other hand, did not share the same intention as Tran in making and exhibiting his controversial photograph. His was a personal observation and interpretation of the sentiment of young Vietnamese people living in a rapidly developing Communist country. In fact, he was more interested in exploring the similarities between people in this globalized world rather than exposing the differences.

Despite accusations of being a Communist sympathizer, Doan is not. At the same time, he isn’t on the side of the anti-Communists either. In his words he’s “…just an artist.”

With that said, what defines the work of an artist is usually their life experience and what they draw from that experience. This crucial aspect is the one thing that was missing from the opposing disputes playing out in the media. Telling his story might have helped to avoid this whole fiasco and brought about much needed understanding.

WH: What was growing up in Vietnam like on a day-to-day basis?

BD: It was pretty hard. I mostly remember that we didn’t have anything to eat. When we arrived in Long Khanh around the mid 80’s, it was kind of a jungle area. It was remote and away from any civilized condition. When we arrived, we were still young and afraid of many things. It rained a lot, we were surrounded by trees, and kids didn’t have clothes, but we were able to live peacefully for a couple of years because we didn’t have any harassment. We lived poorly, but we weren’t harassed by the government like we were in Central Vietnam. Central Vietnam was where most Communists were based. More towards the South, people were more relaxed. There were fewer Communists. It was tough, but we survived day-by-day.

WH: Out there in the jungle area, was there a big community?

BD: It was a small Catholic community. My mom decided to live in a Catholic community because at least they could protect us. They really helped us when we didn’t have our father around. My big brother tried to escape Vietnam many times and spent time in a reeducation camp as well. My mom was a vendor selling used clothes on the streets town-to-town so she wasn’t home mostly. My sister, who was 17-years old at the time, had to take care of the five of us [siblings]. I remember I learned quickly how to trap animals and hunt. That’s all the meat we could gather for meals. We didn’t have rice to eat. We ate mostly corn. Things got better when two of my brothers separately escaped Vietnam to Japan in ’79. We got some money from one when he was living in the Philippines in a refugee camp. He was able to send us money to buy food.

WH: In your interview with Richard Chang of the OC Register, you said of the woman in Thu Duc, “she lives in the Communist country, but look at her. She’s looking away, dreaming. She wants to escape Vietnam. Hồ Chí Minh is next to her, but Communism is no longer in her.” How much of this has to do with your own feelings of living in Vietnam?

BD: I went back to Vietnam four times. The first time was in ’98, second in 2001, 2004, and last year 2008. I’ve seen Vietnam change like China or other countries around in the last 10 years. I think it’s due to the way the economy has gone. It’s not like the time we lived there. Now people are able to have an education, dress nice, or start a business. You see some rich people with Mercedes Benz’s, you see new houses, luxury hotels, cafes, internet cafes. You go there and you’re surprised people pay $10 for a meal. I mean, it’s more expensive than it is here. I see now young people working for banks or foreign companies, trying to get scholarships to travel and study in some country. There are a lot of tourists too, a lot of Westerners in Hanoi and Saigon. It’s funny, now there’s a luxury town outside of Saigon. Only Taiwanese, Chinese, and Koreans live there. My friend and I was there visiting, taking pictures and my friend says, “Hey Brian, you feel like we’re walking in Brooklyn, New York?” There was a Louis Vuitton store, Mercedes Benz’s, BMW’s, Hummers lining the street, sushi restaurants. My friend and I were like, “Wow.”

WH: Twenty years ago, this was non-existent?

BD: Before it was just empty. Now there are skyscrapers and the people…all foreigners. It’s funny that there are no Vietnamese there. There are some Vietnamese working there, but it’s mostly foreigners working in Vietnam who live there.

WH: When you say “…Communism is no longer in her,” is this the popular sentiment of people there today?

BD: Of course Communists still control the government and society, but the Vietnamese population is like 80 million people now and the Communists are only maybe 3 million members? Most Vietnamese want to move forward. Young people have no idea who Hồ Chí Minh is or know about Communism. They are more interested in getting an education, moving forward. Also I see more consumerism. They want to have Japanese cars, motorcycles, nice watches, nice clothes, and hang out in clubs. That’s all they care about. I’ve asked them, “You think about freedom?” “…about the Communists?” They avoid the question. They say “No.” They accept where they are.

WH: When you say they want to escape, you don’t mean they literally want to escape Vietnam?

BD: No, no, most of them want to go to the U.S. to study. Before they could go to Russia or China or Korea for college, but the majority of students want to go to the U.S. and study there. If they’re lucky, they’ll marry someone and get a job and never go back. In my time there, we had to join Communist youth groups. They organized people and you had to be a member of a group to be able to socialize in school. They really controlled you and you had to be loyal to the government, to Hồ Chí Minh, but now you don’t have to do that. People had to join those kinds of organizations to be able to get a job from the government.

WH: Nowadays, it kind of resembles a capitalist society, right?

BD: Exactly. If you speak English and your GPA is high, a foreign company will hire you then. Before, if you had a Communist member in the family, you get a job. Now with foreign companies they hire people with quality, not background.

WH: Now going back a little bit, you said you tried to escape Vietnam and you were imprisoned two times.

BD: I tried to escape Vietnam 11 times with my family. The first time I got caught was in ’78 at 10 years old. My brother and I spent like two and a half months in prison. The second time I got caught was in ’86…no ’83 or ’85…I don’t remember. I got seven months.

WH: How did the authorities treat you when they caught you?

BD: Horrible. They mostly allowed Vietnamese to try to escape Vietnam. They typically put us in a small cell. I remember when I got caught in Central Vietnam there were 98 people in a small room. We didn’t have enough space to live. People were layered up like sardines.

WH: Were you trying to go by boat or trying to cross the border?

BD: By boat. The border patrol saw our boat sinking. They sent us to prison. By that time, I was about 15 or 16 years old. I denied my background because I was afraid if I told them my real background, my father would have problems. He had already been released from the reeducation camp and I was afraid they would harm him some way. I gave them my fake I.D. so they wouldn’t be able to track down my address. They tried to investigate who I was, what my real name was, stuff like that so I was kept a long time.

WH: Were you with your siblings or by yourself?

BD: My sister and my dad got caught.

WH: Is your whole family in the U.S. right now?

BD: Yes.

WH: How did you eventually get here?

BD: In 1991, my father applied for a program for political refugees. We came here at the end of ’91, three days before Christmas.

WH: You came here more than a decade later than the original Boat People, who mostly settled in Little Saigon as you know. You came here for the same reasons, but the circumstances in which they came were different than the circumstances in which you came. How does this disparity affect how you relate to the community and their concerns?

BD: We first landed in San Francisco, and then we went to live in San Jose for a while. My brother flew from Japan to visit us. We had friends here. One was a friend of my dad who was able to escape in ’75. We are different, I have to say. They spoke differently, they were more successful, and they looked good.

They did not treat us very well. They would say, “You have to do this or that,” “If you don’t speak English, you’re in trouble. You’ll just end up washing dishes in restaurants.” I said, “No, I want to go to college.” They would say, “No, forget about college, go and wash dishes.”

Six months we lived in San Jose and then we decided to move to Little Saigon. My cousin thought we could find help in a bigger community. A couple of my father’s former army subordinates had successful businesses so I had opportunities for work, but I ended up not working for them. First, they didn’t want to hire me, because how would they treat me? It was better for them to hire Mexicans so they could do whatever with them, but hiring me meant they had to watch out for my dad because my dad was their boss before. So I couldn’t find a job through my father or with Vietnamese who came here before me because I think they didn’t know how to treat me or my brother. They couldn’t treat us badly because we didn’t have strength like Mexicans to carry boxes around. We were skinny and just came from Vietnam so we could not work as much as Mexican workers.

Secondly, they couldn’t treat us badly because of my father. They knew him. So we couldn’t find a job. It’s weird that they kept saying, “You have to work this and that and forget about school.” They gave us a bunch of advice, but it wasn’t really helpful. Even with my own brother, it’s kind of different. He would say, “We came here when there were no Vietnamese at all, we worked hard, went to school, and now you guys are lucky. Now with Little Saigon, you’re able to have Vietnamese food.”

But you know when they came, the system provided welfare with help from the Carter administration. Vietnamese people could get support from the government. By the time we came, we only had six months of welfare to better our English, to find work. Not a lot of time. The people who came here first really looked down upon us.

WH: How did you feel about that?

BD: Kind of small. Not to say that I hate them, but I felt they shouldn’t have treated us like that or talk like that to us. Once I was at a party that my father’s friend invited us to. He had a big house. Pointing at me, he said to his son, “You remember this guy? He used to be in kindergarten with you.” Now he was a doctor, owned a business. His son said “Yeah…yeah,” but he barely remembered. How could he remember when we were kids, 5 or 6 years old? He spoke English. Of course, I didn’t speak English at all. His girlfriend was Caucasian and he was dressed in a suit. I didn’t have clothes. We just came from Vietnam. I really must have looked like a monkey to them. They tried to be nice, but I thought, “Please, at least talk to me in Vietnamese.” They kept talking to me in English and I didn’t understand, then his father said, “You know…now he owns three houses.” I just felt like, “Is it really necessary to tell me that?” It was just intimidating to see how successful they were. We just got here, new, cold, and looking horrible.

WH: Were you the first in your family to go to college?

BD: No, two of my brothers who escaped to Japan have a degree. In the United States, I’m the only one to go to college.

WH: How did you become interested in photography?

BD: When I came here, I dreamed of being a writer like Hemingway, but I figured out that it was too late to become fluent in English. I came here when I was 23 or 24-years old and was working a lot and going to school part-time. I liked to draw. I took some art classes; I loved painting, then I found a passion for photography with some encouragement from Jerry Burchfield at Cypress College. I was working on several projects and Jerry said, “Brian, I think you should go for photography instead of computer science.” I took computer science like all Vietnamese guys, but then I asked myself, “Do I really want to do computer science? I think I like photography.” My mom, dad, and sister all went nuts. They asked, “What are you going to do with photography?” At that time, to an Asian family, engineering was a career. Photography or art was something fun, but not a career. I really drove them nuts. They kept trying to call me to talk about it, but I’m stubborn. If there’s something I want to do, I’ll do it.

WH: What does Thu Duc mean?

Thu Duc, Vietnam

BD: Just a location where I took the photograph. It’s in the outskirts of Hồ Chí Minh City.

WH: Tell me about the subject in the photograph. Who is she?

BD: Last year when I was in Vietnam I hung out in coffee shops. I met couples and individuals at the shop. I just approached them and said I was working on a project and if they’d be able to pose for me. Some of them said yes some of them, no. So that girl is one of the people I met. I don’t remember her name. Maybe she gave me a fake name or something, but I just made an appointment and shot her.

WH: Out of your series of portraits of Vietnamese people, this one strikes me as the most overtly political. What was going on in your life or what feelings did you have at the time that resulted in the idea for the photograph?

BD: I got the idea before 2008. I collected a lot of things about Communists and things from the Vietnam War and I wanted to do something with that. Two-thousand eight was the first time I was able to go back to Vietnam as a scholar or a photographer, to observe and look at things in a mature way, not like a student. Sitting in the coffee shop interviewing people, I saw a lot of things were different. Now, when I see the Communists, I no longer hate them. I don’t like them, but my hatred is gone.

Detail of Hồ Chí Minh statue and the yellow star of the Vietnamese Communist flag.

The people here, they keep that hatred inside. Some want to kill them. It’s time to stop hating. Both sides have been doing wrong, but we should talk. The younger generation like the girl in the photo is my message. She’s in a Communist country. The things she wears may be Communist, the things next to her may be Communist, but she’s not a Communist.

I wanted to show something political, but I also wanted to show that the sad thing about Vietnam is that it is divided in two parts, North and South. Like North and South Korea. The North was supported by the Chinese and Russians; the South was supported by Australia, U.S., and the free world. We were fighting with AK-47’s and M16’s. None were made by Vietnamese. Both were given to the Vietnamese to fight each other.

So why do we keep fighting? The war is over. The Communists won. The South Vietnamese in Little Saigon lost and ran away to live here. The yellow flag to me has no meaning. I didn’t grow up with that yellow flag with three stripes. No, I grew up with a Communist flag. We have to accept the reality that 80 million Vietnamese live in Vietnam and that some of them like the Communists, some of them don’t. We have to ask the question, “Why are brothers fighting brothers?” That was my point.

In my series about Vietnamese people, most of the pictures are weird…like me. I’ll never be normal. How could I be normal growing up in society that treated me like a second-class citizen? I could never be psychologically normal like people who grew up here. I think most Vietnamese are somewhat psychotic. In many Vietnamese families there is always a conflict between father and son, wife and husband and we somehow isolate ourselves in different corners. I don’t know why. I wanted to show that in my series.

WH: What do you want your critics to understand about you?

BD: I hope they accept me as who I am, respect different voices from a younger generation and different political views. Asking people to understand me is hard. We are multicultural here, a salad bowl. That’s what’s beautiful about the U.S. I understand the Vietnamese here escaped from the war. They’re not really into art. Most want to talk about politics and how to overturn the Communist regime. They came to the F.O.B. exhibition to look for something to protest. We had a beautiful gallery about gay, lesbian Vietnamese. We had different rooms with wonderful work from artists much more talented than me. I was nobody there, but they just targeted me because of the red flag. That blinded them to the whole exhibition. I asked for them to tolerate, to look at the other works as well. Look at the issues the young generation is dealing with such as being gay, identity issues.

It’s not about politics, Communists, a red flag or a yellow flag. Don’t show me a red or yellow flag and tell me to accept one. My flag is the United States flag. People called me a traitor. I didn’t get money from the South Vietnam government; they didn’t pay me to fight the Communists. How can they call me a traitor? I grew up a Communist. Nobody can call me a traitor because I escaped them, and South Vietnam…I didn’t grow up with that government. They got money from the U.S. government to fight the Communists, not me. They lost the war, not me. I’m just a victim. I mean, be able to accept the generation that wants to forget and move on, be able to accept the pain from the North Vietnamese too. I’m just an artist that wants to speak my views on the issue of a divided Vietnamese people.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – In the district of Praça Onze, around the corner from Rua Marquês de Sapucaí where the world-famous Rio Carnaval makes its annual procession, the presence of Crescer e Viver, or “Living and Growing,” is unmistakable with its prominent blue-and-white striped circus tent. It is fenced off in an almost sanctifying gesture from its surroundings of a junkyard, an empty tarmac lot dotted with a few cars, and backed by a panorama-spanning view of one of many favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro.

Across from the lot, the newly built Praça Onze metro station stands in stark contrast to the old, crackling buildings- a sign of progress in this decaying part of Rio de Janeiro. The facing walls of the cozy and quaint staff offices at Crescer e Viver are one continuous mural, colorful and bright, depicting cartoon characters, clowns, and smiling children. Painted in bold, block letters are the Portuguese words: “ART & CULTURE! Promoting citizenship.”

Under the tent, children are gathered in various groups, each led by an instructor. Some of these instructors were once students themselves. A group of about a dozen bright-eyed youths are being taught tissu, a form of aerial ballet using silk ribbons. Some appear nervous, others eager, as they watch a peer climb and descend in daring twists and turns. The younger ones, about 6 or 7-years-old, are gathered in a circle doing stretches and push-ups. The more advanced and experienced teens learn the staples of circus acrobatics: back flips, front flips, somersaults, and tumbling. The reverberating laughter and chatter of children at play mixed with the rhythmic stamping of feet upon the cushioned mats is constant under the 40-meter high tent.

The children mostly come from the surrounding favelas of Coroa, São Carlos, Estácio, Querosene, and Zinco, places where laughter is sometimes drowned out by the ominous sound of gun battles. It is the all-too-familiar sound of turf wars fought between rival drug lords or shootouts with the police or special military units. This drug war has been a fact of life for favela dwellers ever since the Colombian cocaine trade expanded into Brazil in the early 1970s.

Ironically, many of the soldiers who fight this brutal war are the children of these communities. These “lost children,” writes scholar of Brazilian studies, Joseph Page, in his book, The Brazilians, are “part of an ever-expanding pool of people without hope, a dehumanized subspecies that poses a threat to social stability.” He says they are the byproduct of the savage capitalism that fed the Brazilian economy in the late 1960s and early 1970s and took an especially harsh toll on the children of the families forgotten in the countries rush to development.

That generation of children was raised only knowing poverty, crime, and violence. With the military dictatorship at the time turning a blind eye to the problem, it became a vicious cycle that has continued on to the current generation of children. Many have ended up as part of the growing population of “street children,” estimated by UNICEF to be at around 12 million in the entire country.

If these children aren’t making their living on the streets selling their bodies, candy, or stealing, they are caught up in the drug trade or are at risk of becoming involved in gangs actively trying to recruit them. Jens Glüsing, a Brazil-based correspondent for Spiegel International, says gangs target children 16 and under specifically because they can not, under current law, be given an adult prison sentence. This means if they are arrested, they would only be in prison for a few months, and in most cases, would return to the gang shortly after release.

It is these at-risk youths and adolescents that Vinicius Daumas and Junior Perim founded Crescer e Viver for. The organization was born out of the Porto da Pedra (Port of the Rock) Samba School in the neighborhood in São Gonçalo. In 2001, their chosen theme ‘crescer e viver agora é lei’ or ‘growing up and living is law now’ paid homage to the Statute of The Child and Adolescent. Passed in 1990 by the Brazilian National Congress, the landmark legislation guaranteed children and adolescents the right to protection of life and health through the implementation of public social policies. After carnival, several members proposed transforming the theme into a social program and 3 years in, it had become an institution with about 200 members, a number that has grown beyond expectations.

“Nowadays we are independent and recognize our history and birth in the samba school, but we are not attached to that anymore. The samba school plays carnival, which is its real purpose. The social program, Crescer e Viver, became an organization and has its own life. The son was born, grew up and walks with its own legs” says Daumas.

He and Perim both recognized early on that, despite the passing of the statute, underprivileged children and adolescents were still falling through the cracks of society and into all the wrong places. No samba school, including Porto da Pedra, is equipped to tackle the problem as their limited resources are put into the competitions.

Since the 1990 statute was passed, there has been a slow, but steady shift in societal attitude from exclusion and blame of the street child to incorporation and acceptance of collective responsibility for the welfare of the child, a move that Daniel Hoffman of the North American Congress on Latin America wrote in a 1994 report was “a greater challenge than writing new laws.” Crescer e Viver and the thousands of non-government organizations like it that have sprang up since the last decade to meet this challenge, are a testament to that change.

However, on the part of the government, little has changed. Hoffman, in the same report notes, “The obstacles to implementation of the Child Statute are considerable, including lack of basic resources and infrastructure, resistance from local and state-level politicians, and non-compliance within the judiciary (which loses much of its power under the new laws). Application of the Statute is blocked, above all, by popular attitudes that continue to regard street children as present or future criminals that need to be repressed.”

To Daumas and Perim, tangible and permanent social change comes in the form of grass roots movements dedicated to the empowerment of young people. “It’s what we call socio-productive inclusion of these young people” says Daniela Ramiris, former Assessor of Institutional Development at Crescer e Viver. She says using the circus program as a vehicle, the organization instills in these young people the will to transform society and the conditions they live in and educates them on their rights as citizens. Their ultimate goal is to give them the practical skills, knowledge, and confidence to pave their own path in life.

In the United States, this is the expected role of teachers and mentors, but in Rio, the public education system is in a constant crisis. Teachers are underpaid and lack basic teaching supplies, many facilities are in disrepair, and misplaced priorities at the local and state level leave things like after school programs and computer labs something to wish for. Since the early ’80s, the nonprofit sector, which includes social, art, and education programs like Crescer e Viver, have been making up for the shortcomings of Rio’s public sector, especially in those areas. Not many complain though. Self-reliance is as Brazilian as samba.

]]> http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/05/faith-and-tradition/feed/ 0 http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/05/us-mexico-border-fence/ http://www.waynehuang.net/2009/05/us-mexico-border-fence/#comments Sun, 03 May 2009 22:59:43 +0000 admin http://www.waynehuang.net/?p=849 ]]>

No Man's Land, U.S.-Mexico Border Fence between San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Mexico. Click on image for 360 degree QTVR.

The 1,951 mile (3,141 km) border between the United States and Mexico traverses a variety of terrains, including urban areas and deserts. The barrier is located on both urban and uninhabited sections of the border, areas where the most concentrated numbers of illegal crossings and drug trafficking have been observed in the past. These urban areas include San Diego, California and El Paso, Texas. As of August 29, 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had built 190 miles (310 km) of pedestrian border fence and 154.3 miles (248.3 km) of vehicle border fence, for a total of 344.3 miles (554.1 km) of fence. The completed fence is mainly in New Mexico, Arizona, and California, with construction under way in Texas.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had more than 580 miles (930 km) of fence in place by the second week of January, 2009. Work is still under way on fence segments in Texas and on the Border Infrastructure System in California.

The border fence is not one continuous structure and is actually a grouping of short physical walls that stop and start, secured in between with “virtual fence” which includes a system of sensors and cameras monitored by Border Patrol Agents. As a result of the success of the barrier, there has been a marked increase in the number of people trying to illegally cross the Sonoran Desert and crossing over the Baboquivari Mountain in Arizona. Such illegal immigrants must cross 50 miles (80 km) of inhospitable terrain to reach the first road, which is located in the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation.

There have been around five thousand migrant deaths along the Mexico-U.S. border in the last thirteen years, according to a document created by the Human Rights National Commission of Mexico, also signed by the American Civil Liberties Union Between 43 and 61 people died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert during that same time period; three times that of the same period the previous year. In October 2004 the Border Patrol announced that 325 people had died crossing the entire border during the previous 12 months. Between 1998 and 2004, 1,954 persons are officially reported to have died along the US-Mexico border. Since 2004, the bodies of 1086 migrants have been recovered in the southern Arizona desert.

U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector reported on Oct. 15, 2008 that its agents were able to save 443 illegal aliens from certain death after being abandoned by their smugglers, during FY 2008, while reducing the number of deaths by 17 percent from 202 in FY 2007 to 167 in FY 2008 . Without the efforts of these agents, hundreds more could have died in the unforgiving deserts of Arizona.

The sustained trend of quality enhancements including additional manpower, growing infrastructure and improved technology have allowed the Tucson Sector agents to expand border security, reducing the number of apprehensions at the borders by 16 percent compared with fiscal year 2007. Tucson Sector agents apprehended 317,696 illegal aliens that attempted to circumvent enforcement efforts at the border and interior checkpoints. 12,267 of those arrested were from countries other than Mexico. (Source: Wikipedia)

A young Tibetan student prays before the beginning of each class.

Downtown Los Angeles, March 10^th, 2009: “What do we want?” asks a rally leader on a megaphone, “Justice!” responds the marchers.

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

These are the voices of Southern California’s Tibetans in exile.

Their chants are still loud and in uniform, their vibrant Tibetan flags still wave with vigor after the two-hour march from City Hall to the Consulate General of China.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet against their Chinese occupiers. Tibetans worldwide rally each year to commemorate this day and remember the 89,000 Tibetans who died fighting for their country.

But they also rally to remind the world what’s going in Tibet today.

This year is especially significant to them because a year ago on the same day, a demonstration in Tibet was brutally put down by Chinese authorities resulting in 218 Tibetan deaths and the disappearance or imprisonment of hundreds.

It was the most violent confrontation between Tibetans and Chinese authorities in recent history. In the aftermath, China imposed a military lockdown anywhere there are Tibetans and all foreign journalists were expulsed.

Tibetan monks in front of the General Consulate of China in Los Angeles

According to a Human Rights Watch report on media access in Tibet, foreign journalists, even after the Olympics took place, are still facing difficulty accessing “forbidden zones”—geographical areas and topics which the Chinese government considers “sensitive.”

Ground reports and images of the violent crackdown on demonstrators have had particular resonance with young Tibetans in exile.

“Many of the demonstrators were not much older than me” says a young Tibetan marcher born in Dharamsala, who took the day off work to attend the rally.

He and a small group of other young Tibetan men and women carry banners and posters and wear their national flag with pride. “We are here to show solidarity and support for [Tibetans in Tibet] during this difficult time,” he says.

He has a younger sister who is in high school and could not come to the rally. He says she was born in the United States shortly after his parents gained asylum status and were able to stay permanently in the country.

“My sister cares about what’s going on, but she is graduating this year and is so preoccupied with what college she will go to,” he adds.

His sister represents another challenge Tibetans in exile are facing today—that is, ensuring the first generation outside of Dharamsala have a sense of Tibetan culture and ethnic identity in an environment where the youth are so easily absorbed by mainstream culture.

Knowing your mother tongue is a vital part of this identity, according to Dr. Nawang Phuntsog, assistant professor of bilingual education at California State University, Fullerton.

“Language and culture are so closely intertwined, one would not exist without the other,” says Phuntsog, who was just a toddler when his parents—barley and wheat farmers in the village of Kangmar— were forced to flee Tibet to India.

He returned to Tibet in his adult life to find the state of his native language critically endangered.

“When I spoke with young Tibetans in Tibet, they could hardly count in Tibetan. They had to first recite the numbers in Chinese,” says Phuntsog.

In Tibet, all students are required to pass a Chinese language proficiency exam and admission to higher education is heavily based on a student’s performance on the exam. Tibetan language plays no part in the education system in Tibet.

“As a result,” says Phuntsog, “they’re forgetting their own language, which will lead to the degeneration of the culture as well.”

At 2 P.M. every Sunday, Tibetan mothers and their children congregate in a multipurpose room at the Culver City Veterans Memorial Hall. On the door is a sheet of paper taped to a small window that says: TIBETAN LANGUAGE CLASS 2-4 PM.

The children, some as young as 5, trot into the room toting backpacks, while others carry notebooks and folders. Most of these children were born in the United States and at least three out of the thirteen are mixed-race—half Tibetan, half Caucasian.

Yeshi Farber, math instructor, teaches counting in the Tibetan language

When they are seated and settled, Lobsang Dolma, 42, leads a Buddhist mantra that goes: Om ah prajna dhrika ha hum. With palms together, heads bowed, and eyes closed, the children listen and repeat after Dolma in a collective monotonic chant.

Soft-spoken and with a motherly demeanor, Dolma instructs the children in Buddhist chanting and prayer at the beginning of each class with the goal of instilling a sense of Buddhist spirituality—a central aspect of Tibetan culture and identity.

If it wasn’t for the chupa (CHOO-pah), a traditional Tibetan dress Dolma wears and a woven hanging of the Buddha she puts up every Sunday, there would be little evidence on the surface that this is a gathering of Tibetans. The children and the other teachers are all dressed in Western clothing.

“I wear the dress because I want the children to know who we are,” says Dolma.

In her previous life, she was a teacher at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Northern India for 15 years where she not only taught Tibetan, but also math and science.

These days, her focus is squarely on teaching Tibetan language. She is one of the few, if not, the only qualified Tibetan language teacher among the estimated 300 Tibetans living in Southern California.

What is different in the classroom now, besides the setting, is the reliance of the children on English to help them understand what she teaches. “Sometimes they don’t understand something, but it’s hard for me to explain because my English is not so good,” says Dolma.

Teaching Tibetan culture, history, and geography is left to Dorje Lhamo. Lhamo, 34 and married to a Caucasian-American, exerts a youthfulness that the children respond well to. She wears fashionable sunglasses on her head to keep her hair back and is adorned with traditional Tibetan jewelry.

During the last half hour of class, she gathers the children, including her own mixed-race son, around a table for a verbal discussion of the three provinces—U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo—that make up historic Tibet and the distinct cultures of each.

“Amdowa are known for their horse riding skills,” says Lhamo of the native inhabitants of Amdo.

She begins to sing a verse from a traditional Tibetan folk song and the children repeat: Chamdo ma cha Amdo cha, Chamdo Chuni parla Chayu. Amdo ma cha Amdo cha, Amdo tsetan deilang Chayu.

“If you know this song, then you’ll know Tibetan geography,” says Lhamo, referring to a Tibet before the Chinese invasion.

For a moment, she touches on politics. “You know Amdo is in the Northeast of Tibet. Right now it’s mostly under China and we are asking for autonomy,” she tells the children.

One student asks what autonomy means and she tries to explain in Tibetan the best she can, this complex issue. She mentions the Dalai Lama several times and in English, “self-governing.”

Throughout the afternoon, Yeshi Farber, the math teacher, passes out kasai, fried twisted dough sticks, and cups of yak butter tea to the children to, as she says, “cheer them up.”

The Tibetan Association of Southern California (TASC), which founded the school in 2004 and helps to organize community events throughout the year, do what they can to try to engage and educate young Tibetans, but their influence is limited.

“The older kids, they don’t like to come. They feel uncomfortable being in a room with younger kids especially if their Tibetan is at the same level as them,” says Farber. Instead, at the nearby Veterans Park, older Tibetan youths play basketball, while others relax in the shade.

Often times Sunday classes are canceled or attendance is low. Yangchen Dolkar, a volunteer teacher who keeps track of attendance, says it is because many Tibetan families live too far away or the parents have to work on the weekend. “Some live more than an hour away,” says Dolkar.

Because the classes are only once a week, the teachers rely heavily on the parents to do their part by helping their children with their homework and speaking to them in Tibetan, but they admit there’s only so much they can do.

A children's workbook on basic Tibetan

“Tibetan parents try their best to speak Tibetan at home, but [the children] are so much more comfortable speaking English. It’s a battle,” says Pema Choden, current president of the Tibetan Association of Southern California.

Choden points out that large ethnic enclaves, such as the Chinese and Armenian communities in California have been able to establish full-time schools within the state education system. “They’re able to practice their language at home and at school,” notes Choden.

She says the Tibetan community in Southern California is not big enough and not well-established enough within the education system to achieve full-time schools.

The community is disadvantaged in that respect, but as a whole, Tibetans in exile are not unlike any other immigrant groups who have acculturated or are in the process of acculturating to the American way of life, while simultaneously trying to maintain their cultural and ethnic identity.

But there is a sense of urgency in that maintenance when it comes to passing it onto the next generation. It is a consequence of the dire situation in Tibet. According to Buddhist scholar and Tibet activist, Robert Thurman, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Tibet is an endangered culture.

Despite the scattering and small number of Tibetans throughout Southern California, the TASC has made progress in strides, as they always have since its’ establishment in 1993.

According to the Government of Tibet in Exile statistics, there are an estimated 7000 Tibetan exiles in the United States and Canada. Organizations that represent them, like TASC, are a tight-knit network.

Last April, the Office of Tibet in New York organized a 2-day conference in Minnesota where teachers representing Tibetan organizations nationwide convened to discuss the establishment of a primary education system and a standardized curriculum. A second meeting is expected soon.

Dolkar and Dolma both attended and sees this as a first step in addressing the differing fluency levels of the students. Secondly, it would also ensure that if a student were to move somewhere else, they would be able to enroll in their local Tibetan school and continue on with their education using the same material.

“This is one of the things His Holiness wishes for Tibetans,” says Choden, “setting high goals and making sure all our children get the best education possible.”

The Jongo da Serrinha Cultural Group Association was created in 2000 aiming to continue the historical heritage protection of Jongo. The original social protection project was founded more then 40 years ago by Vovó Maria Joana Rezadeira and Mestre Darcy do Jongo.

Jongo is a manifestation of Afro-Brazilian culture, originated in the African Banto rites and rituals, blending circle dance, music and, some Umbanda processions. Jongo has been carried out since the time of slavery in Brazil. Jongo (“amusement” in Banto, cf. Alceu Maynardi) has its origins in rural Africa, most likely in Angola. It was brought to Brazil, during the colonial time, by the slaves who came to the country to work in the plantations of coffee and sugar cane of states like Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. In times of captivity, Jongo would be one of the rare moments of interaction among slaves, and it was practiced during the parties, holidays or just during a moment of rest after harvesting.

With the end of slavery and the economic crises in some regions of the country, the slaves managed to migrate from the plantations of Paraiba river valley to the hills of Rio de Janeiro, and began the first Jongo associations clustered in specific slums (favelas) locations of Rio de Janeiro, and in Madureira (Northern Rio), in a slum called Serrinha, the perfect environment to settle and carry on the tradition of Jongo. It did not take long to observe the influence of the accent of the ‘Carioca’ (Native of Rio de Janeiro) infused with the Jongo tradition. The manifestation of Jongo, its characteristics and core values, strongly influenced the history of samba and Popular Brazilian Music (MPB).

Jongo as it flourished in Rio de Janeiro, and more precisely, the one developed in Serrinha, is a dance usually with instruments (usually two sticks), percussion of different types, called “caxambú” and “candongueiro” encourage the participants to reach out for their spiritual enbodiments, connecting “earth and heaven”. The music leads to the motion, to the dance, easing the integration of the movements whereas the song carries important historical messages that speak about the mystery of the traditions and memories of the past. (Source: Dreams Can Be Foundation)

Mat Maneri, born on October 4th, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York is an American composer, improviser and jazz violin and viola player, specifically derivatives such as the five-string viola, the electric six-string violin, and the baritone violin. He is the son of the saxophonist Joe Maneri.

Maneri has recorded with Cecil Taylor, Matthew Shipp, Joe Morris, Joe Maneri, Gerald Cleaver, Tim Berne, Borah Bergman, Mark Dresser, William Parker, Michael Formanek, John Lockwood, as well as with his own trio, quartet, and quintet. He has also played on various band releases: Club d’Elf, Decoupage, Brewed by Noon, Paul Motian’s Electric Bebop Band, Buffalo Collision. Maneri has worked with Ed Schuller, John Medeski, Roy Campbell, Paul Motian, Tomasz Stanko, Robin Williamson, Drew Gress, Tony Malaby, Ben Monder, Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre, Marilyn Crispell, Craig Taborn, Ethan Iverson, David King and many others.

Maneri started studying violin at the age of five and received a full scholarship as the principal violinist at Walnut Hill High School. He also studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, he then went on to pursue a professional career in jazz music.

He is an experienced educator who has taught at the New England Conservatory and the New School among others. He has taught privately for over 15 years and has frequently presented specialized workshops on improvisation, performance technique, ear training and theory both in Europe and North America. In 2006, Maneri was nominated for a Grammy award in the category “Best Alternative Music Album” for the CD Pentagon.

Mat and his wife Lucy live in Brooklyn.

(Source: Mat Maneri’s MySpace page)

I would spot Leroy, a homeless Vietnam Veteran, at the 34th St. Madison Square Garden station. He would usually be sitting at the bottom of a stairwell with a box for people to throw money in. A few times he would have some artwork he had made expressing certain spiritual beliefs he held, especially of the Islamic faith. There was also a time when he adopted two kittens that stayed beside him. He got more money and attention by having these kittens. Could anyone blame him for this plea for sympathy? Certainly not I.

Throughout the years, I saw his health decline–he complained of being unable to hold down any food except for bread and water, anything else gave him diarrhea, a swelling eye filled with pus, and when I last saw him, he was slumped over in a wheelchair after having fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him where he had gotten the wheelchair and he said the VA gave it to him.

I made these pictures of him on two separate occassions, however I saw him at least a dozen times throughout the years.

When Tsering Dolma first arrived in New York City in 2004, she barely spoke a word of English. She came only with a determination to survive and support her family still living in the Tibetan refugee villages of India. Like many other older, less-educated Tibetan women in exile, she went to work as a nanny and house maid to the wealthy elites of New York City.

Her journey to this new life began in 1996 when she escaped her homeland of Tibet along with her husband and three children to the refugee villages in Dharmsala, India. She recounts a life of oppression and abuse by Chinese authorities in Tibet. Rape at 16 by two Chinese soldiers on her father’s farm, jailings, beatings, and intimidation. While pregnant with her third child, Tenzin Sangmo, she was dragged out of her home one evening, placed in jail and kicked in the belly repeatedly. As a result Sangmo was born with neurological handicaps that make it difficult for her to perform everyday physical tasks.

Since settling in the U.S. she has gained refugee status and is on her way to gaining permanent residency. In the two years of working and saving, she was able to reunite with her family with the support of a philanthropist whose children she was a nanny to.

Dolma’s story is just one of millions of people displaced in their own homeland.

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