Introducing UniSpotlight

New this week to UniPro's list of community building events and initiatives is "UniSpotlight." UniSpotlight is an online series of video interviews that showcases notable Filipino Americans in the community here on the East Coast. They will be sharing their stories and discussing their current or upcoming projects. The new project allows us to inform our network of young professionals and students to connect with interesting leaders and organizations.

UniSpotlight #01 - Ron Morales is the writer and director of the independent film, Graceland. The film was a featured selection in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, Fantasia 2012, Fantastic Fest 2012 and is the winner of Best Narrative Feature in the San Diego Asian Film Festival 2012. The film will be premiering nationwide in 20+ cities on April 26th and staying in theaters until May 2nd. 

(They have a screening in lower east side at the Village East Cinema and will be holding a Q&A session on Sunday 4/28 and 4/30 at the 7:50pm screening)

Graceland is about a family man named Marlon Villar - a longtime chauffeur to corrupt Filipino politician Manuel Chango - is faced with an unthinkable predicament when he is ambushed while driving both his boss's and his own daughter home from school one afternoon. In the chaos of the kidnapping attempt, things go horribly awry and Marlon's daughter is taken and held for ransom instead. Desperate to save his daughter, Marlon must navigate the conflicting motives between the ruthless kidnappers, untrustworthy Chango and determined detectives eager to name him a suspect without letting on the wrong girl was taken hostage. As events spin wildly out of control, Marlon, Chango and their families are forced into a rapid downward spiral of deceit and betrayal that will leave no one innocent.

For inquires or interested in being on UniSpotlight, email meriden.villanueva@unipronow.org.

Planning Summit 2013

Note from the editor: This text was originally delivered as a speech to the UniPro staff at April's staff meeting as written and performed by UniPro Vice President, Iris Zalun. For more information about UniPro's third annual Summit, or to purchase early bird admission (offer valid until 4/30), visit the event's Facebook event page. Scarily enough, Summit 2013 is quickly approaching. Even though it’s stressful, even though I’m losing sleep over it, even though Gecile and I spend hours and hours every week in meetings talking about logistics, speakers, the itinerary … I still love this shit.

But I didn’t always. Last year, as most of you already know, I was the Summit speaker chair. Which means I was in direct contact with almost 39 community figures and had to make sure they would actually show up on June 2nd. THAT is stressful. The emails, the meetings, the late hours … I asked myself, “Why? Why am I even doing this?” I wasn’t getting paid for what was essentially a second full time job. No one was. How was planning a small conference for a bunch of Filipino kids going to help me at all?

But I realized during last year’s Summit, it wasn’t about just helping myself. Last year, through all that hard work, through my bugging speakers for their bios, photos, magazine responses, and for their commitment to come to Summit at all, through the hard work of our co-chairs Rachelle and Judy, and our entire staff … we contributed to something bigger than ourselves, to the “Renaissance” of our people. It was a day to celebrate the successes of individuals from our community, from Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga, which builds sustainable communities in slum areas, to Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant, fighting for immigration reform, to Ayesha Vera Yu, who worked as an investment banker then used her business knowledge to found Advancement for Rural Kids, investing in poor, malnourished children in rural areas of the Philippines to help them climb out of poverty. It was a day to celebrate these individuals and to recognize the progress of the community due to their work, but also to acknowledge that more needs to be done. It was a day to inspire the eager delegates like us, the passionate leaders like us, the ambitious young lawmakers, nurses, and writers like us, who will take up the struggles of our community and the unfinished work of Tony Meloto, Jose Vargas, and Ayesha Yu, to make positive and tangible change.

Being in UniPro, to be sure, is damn hard work. Once in a while, all I want to do is just go home, not talk to anyone, and watch The Walking Dead in my bed. But I can’t b/c more often than not, I’m Google hanging out with at least three of you. Do I really care about watching Rick kill zombies? I mean, a little bit, but mostly no, because at the end of the day, I care about our development as leaders for the ultimate purpose of helping our community.

Filipino historian Renato Constantino said, and I’ve quoted him before, “Leadership is the opportunity to learn.” One reason why we are in UniPro is because in order to solve issues, we have to learn about the issues. Did you know that one in ten Filipina women aged 15-49 has experienced sexual violence? That the voter turnout rate among Fil Ams in ‘04 and ‘08 was at less than 10%? That the Philippines still adheres to laws set in place during the Spanish era? This, and so much more, is the kind of information our peers need to know, and which I learned because of UniPro.

Learn from our own events and from the amazing work of other community organizations. BAYAN-USA and its many chapters confront problems such as the trafficking of Filipino migrants. PAGASA provides programming for our senior citizens. FALDEF, AF3IRM, FACE, Kalusugan Coalition, Leviathan Lab … they all have worthy causes and it is our job as UniPro to provide a platform for them to reach the community.

The “community.” We always talk about the “community.” Who are the faceless and nameless members of the “community” that we are working so hard for? They are our peers - the youth who are curious about the issues, or who feel passionate about certain campaigns but may not have the knowledge or tools to take action. They are the disenfranchised and the underrepresented. They are the undocumented immigrants, hiding and afraid, whose families brought them here to pursue a dream, but whose “illegal” status is preventing them from following their own dreams. They are the migrant workers, vulnerable and eager for jobs, who are tricked into being trafficked. They are the hungry children who drop out of school to sell dried flowers in the streets, already broken by a system that has failed them. We cannot pass up this opportunity to help those whom opportunity has passed over. UniPro is that opportunity. Rise and grab it.

The State of Undocumented Immigrants

Note from the Editor: This post was submitted by emerging leader, Adinah Lagud. Adinah will be attending the upcoming State of Undocumented Immigrant Rights and Resources at the Philippine Consulate on April 18 at 6PM. Click here for more information about the event, to which you are invited to attend. The immigration debate, in recent weeks has garnered a substantial amount of attention in Congress. Though not a new issue, this increased attention was brought about by a bipartisan group in Congress known as the “Gang of Eight”. These members have been working on an all-inclusive immigration reform plan to present to Congress. With the rekindling of this national argument, I believe that it is particularly important for young leaders in the New York community, i.e. college students and Filipino organizations, to become actively engaged and cognizant of an issue that directly impacts the future of the Filipino and Fil-Am community.

As a leader in my own Filipino organization at Stony Brook University, I’ll readily admit if I was asked about my views on immigration a year ago today, I would have shrugged my shoulders in indifference. Not because I didn’t care about those struggling around me, but because I did not take the time to educate myself in order to formulate an opinion. I had ignorantly viewed “illegal” immigration as a matter pertinent to the west coast and their undocumented workers. After all, growing up in a conservative Southern town, that was dialogue surrounding me. I didn’t realize that the Philippines came in second (only after Mexico) in the number of annually distributed family based visas. These are the same visas that some members of Congress are looking to decrease. Not to mention that some petitions dating back to 1990 are still backlogged, so Filipinos have been waiting over twenty years to be reunited with their families.

In regards to undocumented immigrants living in the United States, people who relocated here as minors are able to apply for President Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” but only a little over 3,000 undocumented Filipinos have applied nationwide. To put this into context, 2009’s estimated amount of unauthorized immigrants from the Philippines was 270,000. It’s safe to assume, many are not taking advantage of the resources available to them. Whether it is caused by fear, shame, misunderstanding, or pride, immigration reform is not a topic limited to other minority groups, we Filipinos are standing at the forefront of this issue.

I urge young adults, students, and Filipino clubs to take this up as an important issue to be educated on. We need to support organizations and institutions in our community who are working towards creating a viable way to distribute information and resources on immigration. If we collectively become informed and engaged on this debate, we have the power to thwart incorrect assumptions on undocumented immigrants and the immigration process as a whole within the Filipino and New York community.

Spoons, Forks and the Cultures that Use Them

When I was 18, I worked at the Times Square Swatch megastore as a cashier. I was the only Filipino and only Asian there, and once in a while, I would come in with some baon from home for lunch. One night, I had some sort of fish and rice deal courtesy of my mom, which I eagerly dug into—with my spoon and fork. One of my co-workers looked at me with the most puzzled look, as if I was eating duck fetus or something (what was this, Sunday?).

"What?" I said.

"Why in the world are you eating with a fork and a spoon? And where's the chopsticks?" she asked.

This was the single most ridiculous question I'd ever heard, and not because of the (totally forgivable, honestly) cultural misconception about Pinoys and chopsticks. I replied with what I thought was an equally ridiculous question: "You never seen anyone eat with a fork and a spoon? Hahaha."

Hahaha indeed—but the joke was on me. This was my first foray into the world of having to explain eating habits that I assumed were universal. The fork's the broom! The spoon's the dustpan! But as my co-worker started calling the attention of other employees to look at me eating with both basic utensils simultaneously, I began to realize how alien and unique the Pilipino eating style is to the mainstream.

And, as we know, it doesn't just stop with the shovel-spoon. There's kamayan, the hand-eating technique employed by most of the developing world, but which has such a codified set of steps in the Pilipino culture that it might as well be considered an art form. But perhaps more defining is our lack of chopsticks.

Since the Detroit murder of Chinese-American man Vincent Chin in 1982 for being mistaken as Japanese, the countless Asian immigrant communities in America have undergone a reactive transformation, a social merger that has proved less polarizing and, quite frankly, beautiful. The decades since have seen the emergence of the term "Pan-Asianism": No longer are we simply Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, etc. in the eyes of mainstream America. We can collectively call ourselves Asian-American, and very proudly. It's something that could only have happened in the environment that the United States creates for immigrant groups. Despite differences between countries that are sometime stark and prejudice-inducing back in the Far Eastern mother continent, the world's largest and most diverse demographic has found a united identity in this term.

For better and for worse. Pan-Asianism has introduced a subconscious sharing of relatively small details with origins in individual cultures. Boba, originating in Taiwan, has become an Asian drink. Lucy Liu, Harry Shum Jr and Andrew Yeun aren't just Chinese and Korean actors, they're Asian. It's become vogue (and then not vogue, and then vogue again) to have Asian Fusion food—an amalgamation of the best things about all these culture's taste buds.

And while much can be said about the Filipino's rising image in this as well as mainstream entertainment's milieu—as dope as it is—it's important to remember and appreciate the little things about Pilipino culture that set us apart. The double utensils, the hands, and the chopsticks.

Well, the lack thereof.

Photo credit: Live in the Philippines

UniPro's The Vagina Monologues: Breaking the Maria Clara Image, Indeed

Moans, writhes, orgasms … it wasn't your typical UniPro event. On March 9, UniPro hosted The Vagina Monologues: Breaking the Maria Clara Image at Cap21 Studios. Based on interviews with real women, The Vagina Monologues is a play by Eve Ensler featuring hilarious, heartbreaking and uncomfortable confessions from different women about their, well, vaginas, relating to their personal stories of femininity and sexuality.

UniPro’s The Vagina Monologues production starred an all-Pilipina cast, with a special Pilipina twist added to parts of the script. In one monologue, for example, a “lola” ashamedly discussed her “down there.” Then at the end of the play, the cast stood side by side onstage, taking turns to share disturbing facts about victims of sexual violence:

"One in three women on the planet will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. That’s more than one billion women living on the planet today."

"The NDHS revealed that one in five women aged 15-49 has experienced physical violence since age 15."

"One in ten Filipino women aged 15-49 has experienced sexual violence."

Following the play was a panel of representatives from various women’s rights organizations. These distinguished women included Ivy O. Suriyopas, Director of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative at AALDEF; Kristina K. Joyas, a member of AF3IRM (and UniPro’s Director of Staff Development); and Zarah K. Viñola, Vice-Chairperson for FiRE. They discussed ways their organizations are tackling issues that affect Pilipinas, as well as their own definitions of the term “feminist.”

Confronting topics ranging from rape and sexual violence to self-image and self-discovery, the night was emotional and thought-provoking. It was a seamless event and production, organized by Kirklyn Escondo, our Community Building Director, and directed by Precious Sipin and Leslie Espinosa. Music also added to the drama of the play, with Andre Ignacio Dimapilis on the didgeridoo and Andy Jean-Gilles on the djembe drums. Lastly, Stella Ma also spoke on behalf of the NYC Chapter of the National Pacific American Women’s Forum, informing the audience of the recent publication of their Health Resource Guide.

It’s rare seeing Pilipinas onstage, portraying characters with real depth to whom we can actually relate. It’s a stark difference from the roles Asian Americans are usually degraded to: the token Asian friend, unnamed nerd or exotic lover. Let’s not forget the title of our production, which references Maria Clara, the iconic character from Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. This tragic heroine is known for her sweetness and obedience; she is a symbol (or perhaps a caricature) of the ideal Pilipina. Well, with all the talk of vaginas that Saturday night, the strong and talented women of UniPro’s production of The Vagina Monologues couldn't be any farther from Maria Clara.