Yuzuru Hanyu, (羽生 結弦) two-time Olympic men’s figure skating champion, announced his retirement on July 19, 2022. Hanyu broke the news of the end of his 12-year competitive skating career during his first press conference since the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics expressing great gratitude for continued support throughout his career. He thanked his fans and looked to the future, “Now instead of only at competitions, I hope there will be more opportunities to show off my skating, and I’m looking forward to creating those opportunities.” Born in 1994, Hanyu picked up skating at the age of four. In 2008, he won Japan’s Junior Championships at the age of 13, thus qualifying him for the 2009 World Junior Championships. Hanyu’s first breaks began in 2013 after he won four straight Grand Prix Final golds as well as two world championship titles in 2014 and 2017. Hanyu’s rise to stardom began during the 2014 Winter Olympics after he made history as the first Japanese man to win the gold medal in figure skating and the first skater to score over 100 points in the short program. His success continued when he won his second consecutive Olympic gold medal in 2018—the first to do so since 1952. At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Hanyu attempted the elusive quadruple-axel, a trick never landed before in competition. Unfortunately, he was unable to land the full 4.5 rotations, much to the dismay of his hopeful fans. Hanyu’s skating career has not only inspired future generations of skating, but has also gained respect from the figure skating world. Recognized as Japan’s “Ice Prince,” he has gained respect from many fans and world-renowned skaters such as Nathan Chen, Evgeni Plushenko, and Evgenia Medvedeva who all praised Hanyu’s legendary career. Chen thanked Hanyu for his contribution to skating and said, “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to have been able to stand on the same ice as Yuzuru Hanyu.” Yuzuru Hanyu is considered by many to be a legend in the figure skating community, bringing the difficult sport to the center stage. Despite his 12-year competitive career coming to a close, fans and skaters alike have plenty to look forward to as Hanyu continues to pave the way in the world of figure skating. Editor: Chloe M., Chris F., Lang D.

Dear Asian Youth, Immigrants have always been labeled as “other.” In a court of law, they are still called “aliens,” a dehumanizing term that once again separates immigrants from the rest of society. For far too long, immigrants — especially undocumented immigrants — have been considered dangerous, lazy individuals exploiting hardworking Americans to get by. This stereotype may be partially because of the belief that undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes, but this could not be further from the truth. According to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, a non-partisan non-profit, undocumented immigrants paid around $11.74 billion in taxes in the 2014 fiscal year alone. The Congressional Budget Office claims that researchers estimate between 50% and 75% of undocumented immigrants pay their federal, state, and local taxes. Evidently, these workers do make monetary contributions to the government. In fact, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not care about immigration status. Undocumented residents are still legally required to report all of the income they make. Furthermore, most immigrants are required to pay taxes to maintain a positive tax history before applying for naturalization and/or immigration benefits (Citizen Path). Unfortunately, undocumented immigrants’ path to filing taxes is significantly more difficult, because they do not have social security numbers. In the US, a social security number is a nine-digit number used to identify and record an individual’s wages and benefits (SSA). Most are required to obtain an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) in place of a social security number. For people in the US who are born citizens, a social security number is a birthright, so many, including myself have never really considered its privileges. But you need a social security number to open a bank account, apply for a loan, seek unemployment benefits, enroll in medicare, obtain a license, and to file your tax returns (Investopedia). So, obtaining an ITIN is a necessity for most undocumented immigrants. But the process for obtaining an ITIN is long, and most people seeking an ITIN require help from outside organizations due to the complexity of the law, especially when simultaneously applying for immigration benefits. While helping non-English speakers try and obtain an ITIN, I have read the 15 page instruction pdf that the IRS has posted to guide people through the process. The contradicting laws and loopholes confuse me no matter how many times I read them. I can’t even imagine how anyone who does not speak English is expected to manage this process. Furthermore, the income that is reported on tax returns with ITINS cannot be made from a job with a W-2 form because undocumented immigrants are technically not allowed to be hired. For reference, a W-2 form is given by an employer to any and all employees in order to report wages (IRS). So, undocumented immigrants need to make money on their own or start a business to file their taxes, as opposed to being able to obtain a regular job. This makes the entire situation worse, because those who file Schedule Cs (self-employed income) without a social security number end up paying a social security tax. For those with social security numbers, this tax is meant to help the individual who paid it later on in life. Most notably it provides taxpayers with retirement benefits. But this is not the case for undocumented immigrants who are essentially throwing this money away. Furthermore, it is ridiculous to assume that undocumented immigrants are exploiting the system when laws are so unfair towards them. Just last year, mixed-status households were ineligible for a stimulus check (CNBC). This means that when a couple filed married jointly, and just one person in the family had an ITIN instead of a social security number, the entire family (including children with social security numbers) was ineligible to receive any government compensation. Though rectified in the 2020 tax year, I have encountered many families who were unaware of this law and missed out on much needed government compensation in the face of the pandemic. The law was clearly attacking immigrant families, since ITINs are most commonly used by immigrants without social security numbers. The worst part is that nobody talked about it. It was slyly written into the stipulations for receiving a stimulus check and affected too many families to count, but very few were even aware that illegal immigrants were being held to a different standard. All in all, stigma against immigrants is unfair and unwarranted. These valuable members of society are forced to jump through more legal hoops than everyone else, and are then criticized for not contributing to society. I hope to see less of this inequity both in terms of public opinion and in the law itself. -Lora Kwon Cover Photo Source: KQED

Have you ever had the feeling of alienation? Of being afraid that people will realize you are just sustaining a facade behind which all your incompetencies and insecurities lie? That you are not actually deserving of your successes? Many people actually feel this way day in and day out. Deep down, they feel as though they are mere charlatans whose valuable life experiences take root in fortuitous luck. In fact, even prominent figures like Maya Angelou and Albert Einstein, despite their far-reaching accomplishments, bore feelings of fraudulence not unlike everyone else. What is Imposter Syndrome? Imposter Syndrome (IS) is a psychological phenomenon that reflects the tendency of a person to perceive his or her faults as grounds for inadequacy of accomplishing goals despite evidence of achievements. First identified by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, IS has been characterized as a repository of frustrated feelings and disbelief in one’s talents and capabilities. Through research, light has been shed on its prevalence as it manifests in people from various backgrounds, social statuses, and levels of proficiency. Imposter Syndrome is having the belief that your threshold for competence is not the same as those of others, thereby overriding feelings of triumph and jubilation and resulting in inability to internalize and embrace your own accomplishments. High achievers often suffer from this chronic internal experience, so IS does not necessarily equate with a lack of self-esteem or self-confidence. Types of Imposter Syndrome In her research, Dr. Valerie Young uncovered patterns in people who encounter feelings of pretense stemming from a set of strict internal standards to which they attempt to adhere. Listed below are her five generalizations: 1. Perfectionists These people set very high expectations for themselves. When they feel like they have come short of reaching what they originally set out to do, they undergo fits of questioning their self-worth and competence. In addition, they have difficulty in delegating tasks, for they always strive for their works to be executed with utmost accuracy and finesse; when they do entrust the accomplishment of a piece of work to others, they often feel like they could have done so better themselves. 2. Experts People with this competence type feel the need to always expand their body of knowledge to the point where they can safely say that they have acquired sufficient information for them not to be established as inept or unknowledgeable in their field. They aim to have a spotless resume so as not to shy away from the possibility of seeming inadequate to others. 3. Natural Geniuses Natural Geniuses believe that the speed of mastering something takes precedence over the significance of efforts exerted. In addition to having unreasonably high expectations just like the Perfectionists, they ascribe their being competent not only to their ease of doing things but also to getting these right on the first try. 4. Soloists People of this type believe that reaching out to others for help is an indicator of their inability to sustain independence to do things on their own. They refuse and altogether shun assistance so as to prove their worth, blinded by the viewpoint that victories are mutually exclusive from interdependence on others. 5. Supermen/Superwomen These people incessantly push themselves to excel in all areas of life to prove they are not frauds. They often feel a lot more stressed when they are not working for the pursuit of something, convinced that spending some time for self-recuperation is a waste of precious time. This framework of thinking, however, can very likely take its toll on their mental health and relationships with others. How Do You Cope With Imposter Syndrome? Although there is no one definite means of mitigating feelings arising from an obsession grounded in seemingly perpetual self-consciousness, below are some suggestions to help combat IS: ❏ Recognize your feelings. Take due time off to have some introspection for the thoughts and emotions that consume your mind. May it be through writing, listening to music, or making art, allow yourself to accept that feelings are just as important as concrete actions. Try your best not to inhibit negative and often gloomy thoughts from flowing, for they too contribute towards self-improvement once properly dealt with. ❏ Have a realistic assessment of your thoughts. Try to make sure that your thoughts are rational and have reasonable grounds for taking up your time. Consider the context in which you are in, and have this serve as the basis to which you evaluate how you are feeling. ❏ Stop the comparison. Albeit easier said than done, refrain from the toxic tendency of comparing yourself with other people. Everyone has his or her own set of troubles and pace in handling them, as well as distinct characteristics and personal values through which he or she operates. Similarly, engage in social media moderately so as not to be pressurized by several mere misconceptions circulating in the internet. ❏ Share your feelings. In some instances, you may not even be aware that you embody signs of Imposter Syndrome. One way to know whether you do is to share what you feel with someone. Bottling up your emotions can very likely lead to further frustrations and notions of self-incompetence which can fester when concealed and not talked about properly. ❏ Reframe failure as learning avenues. Do not let insecurities, setbacks, and failures get the better of you! Feelings of inadequacy and incompetence may arise, but these are nothing when compared with the experiences and learnings that you would be adding to your repertoire. Things may be difficult, but there is always more than one way to go about them and succeed. ❏ Baby steps. Be kind to yourself. Although striving for flying colors can help shape you into a more persevering and courageous version of yourself, also be mindful of its excessiveness and how working too much with undue pressure and effort can slowly drain you. Imposter Syndrome can manifest in people from all walks of life. Often correlating with social anxiety, feelings of fraudulence leave people berating their own performance due to an addiction to self-perpetuating improvement and frustrating, perfectionistic ideologies. Due to its pervasiveness across humanity, referring to Imposter Syndrome as a syndrome almost downplays its manifestation in everyday telltales of anxiety surfacing from the burning desire to fit in with peers and in the institutionalized constructs imposed by society. Encouraging feelings of imposter can also cost people a sense of comfort and happiness when they engage themselves in rest and activities that help maintain their well-being. In light of this, we should all be aware of the incisive fact that no threshold of accomplishments can appease one’s chronic worries. Rather, it is the journey and lessons learned that truly make a lifelong impact on him or her. The concept of Pluralistic Ignorance also comes into play when people doubt themselves privately and believe that they are alone in feeling the way that they do since no one else voices his or her own troubles. This mentality can prove to be very toxic as it causes people to downplay their own capabilities. They tend to lay in juxtaposition their internal experiences alongside just the external image that others project, manifesting bias towards their own nagging anxieties, feelings, and idiosyncrasies, all the while romanticizing others’ experiences. All these in mind, it is important to remember that the people around us are not entirely strangers. This is for the reason that they too exhibit characteristics that may be ingrained in us. We are, truthfully speaking, encountering people who, in spite of surface evidence, are very much like us. Taking into account our flaws and shortcomings, it is contrary to the nature of humankind to believe that we are capable of doing everything, and doing so with unparalleled skill at first attempt, for mistakes are vital towards authentic self-actualization. References: Harvard Business Review. (2008, May 07). Overcoming Imposter Syndrome. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://hbr.org/2008/05/overcoming-imposter-syndrome The Muse. (2020). 5 Different Types of Imposter Syndrome (and 5 Ways to Battle Each One). Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.themuse.com/advice/5-different-types-of-imposter-syndrome-and-5-ways-to-battle-eachone Time. (2018, June 20). Yes, Imposter Syndrome Is Real. Here’s How to Deal With It. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://time.com/5312483/how-to-deal-with-impostor-syndrome/ Very Well Mind. (2020, May 01). What Is Imposter Syndrome? Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.verywellmind.com/imposter-syndrome-and-social-anxiety-disorder-4156469 Chronic doubts about ourselves and our capabilities may, more often than not, plague our mind. These can lead us to question our worth and often bring it to comparison with others'. Don't worry, because this happens even to the best of us! Especially during these unprecedented times, it is totally acceptable and justified to feel as though the world is crashing down upon us; it is not easy to proceed with our daily activities and tasks without the subliminal worry of "Am I doing enough?" or "Is what I'm doing productive?". In this piece, learn more about the rationale behind Imposter Syndrome and its different forms. Featured author: Nicola Jade Caparas Instagram: @jadecaparas

Arranged marriages have long been perceived as a symbol of wealth and status within India’s community-oriented cultures. Societal norms often paint women with internalized conservative attitudes by using words such as “mother” or “sacrifice” to describe their social roles, which insist that they embrace a family-oriented image while selflessly adhering to everyone’s needs. For traditional (i.e. cisgender and heterosexual) marriages, this translates to society dictating that they typically be organized and paid for by the bride’s parents, and that there are expectations that money, jewely, or other valuables would be given to the groom’s family in the form of a dowry. As a patriarchal system rooted in patrilineality, the practice of dowry can compromise the physical and psychological well-being of child brides and women as assurances of their safety are exchanged for material worth, as it implies that a bride is only as valuable as the price for which her family is willing to give her away. The amount that a bride is worth depends on factors like the in-laws’ region, religion, caste and subcaste, the groom’s education (which suggests his earning potential and thus his level of respect in the eyes of society), and the bride’s skin tone. If a woman is well-educated, she might be penalized for it as her husband would demand an exorbitant dowry to make up for her earning as much as or more than her husband. Despite the deep-rooted misogyny permeating the practice, dowry has become a symbol of pride in Indian society rather than being regarded as the criminal offense that it is. Economic security is linked to land ownership in many South Asian countries, particularly in agricultural communities; in India, 2005 amendments to the Hindu Succession Act in inheritance laws allowed women and men equal access to securing land. However, the continuing practice of dowry, which is often considered the daughter’s share of a family’s assets and “has long been accepted justification for unequal inheritance,” disrupts the country’s progress towards equality as men who are considered to be from well-established families demand large dowries in exchange for taking care of their wives. For decades, activists, lawyers, and economists have argued that dowry payments “commodify a woman’s worth and domesticise her identity.” Yet, the normalization of monetary expectations within marriage arrangements that tie a woman’s worth to the money expended on the wedding by her family has allowed other practices like domestic abuse and sexual assault to become prevalent. The unfairness surrounding the commonly brushed aside and justified fact of violence within marriages does not come as a surprise when we consider the fact that, in a country where a woman is raped every 13 minutes, marital rape is not even considered a crime. As anecdotal evidence will suggest, when patriarchal conditioning throws hate and shame at abused women and excuses men for their actions, many women would rather accept abuse as a normal part of married life for failing to act as a “good wife” for their husband than escape the financial and social “security” they may have been forced into. The Dowry System & Dowry Deaths The 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act made the dowry system illegal and punishable by a fine of up to 15,000 Indian rupees and a minimum of five years in prison. Despite the law, as dowry-related violence continued to rise, the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 was changed to include a presumption of suicide abetment if the woman is subjected to mistreatment by her husband or his relatives, and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalized cruelty by a spouse or his relatives in 1983. Still, harsher penalties have not deterred the practice of dowry as a fundamental institution of Indian marriages – with modern-day gift-giving in the form of gold, land, or cars by the woman’s family presented as a loophole to the law. With over 13,000 dowry complaints and 7,100 dowry deaths in 2019, only 35.6 percent of the over 3,500 dowry fatalities tried in court resulted in criminal conviction, owing to the difficulty for families in proving that a woman died as a result of dowry abuse. At the end of 2019, 46,000 dowry cases were still awaiting trial. In 2020, Dehli recorded the highest dowry suicides of any city at 108 deaths, and 30 percent of all crimes against women in India were registered under “cruelty by husband or relatives of the husband”: one of three laws under the IPC designed to prevent dowry-related abuse, but a law that lacks clarity on exactly what percentage of cruelty cases are linked to dowry. After months of abuse over a dowry of which her family were aware, Vismaya’s death by suicide – after accepting that “it was her fate and she had to deal with it” – led to her husband Kiran Kumar’s sentence of 10 years in jail. An analysis of Vismaya’s case reveals the immense fear ingrained in girls from a young age of the social stigma that comes with leaving their matrimonial homes. Gouri Chaudhary, Chairperson of ‘Action India’, a grassroots charity striving to empower women in low-income areas through education on family planning, domestic violence and healthcare access, relates how girls have kept the fact of their torture from their parents to prevent embarrassment after “spending all this money on their marriage.” Indian Law: Marital Rape is Not Rape Recently, a deodorant ad by Layer’r Shot portrayed a group of men preying on a woman’s fear of rape when talking about who would take the last “shot” of the remaining bottle of spray; as the camera focuses on the woman’s reaction to the men’s discussion instead of on the product displayed behind her, it is implied that the group is discussing who would be the last person to sexually molest the woman. Condemned for its sexist message in promoting rape culture, the ad is one of many over the years that have reduced stark social issues to “banter.” By neglecting the irreverisible harm that trivializing rape may cause, sexual assault is framed as the norm rather than an offense, causing groups like the media to continue normalizing such widespread atrocities. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 724,115 women found that the average Indian woman is 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from her husband than from anyone else. Spousal violence affects roughly 30 percent of women aged 18 to 49, and one in every five women is subjected to non-consensual marital sex. In addition to these figures, NFHS data revealed that 99 percent of sexual assault went unreported in 2015-16. India is one of 32 countries in the world, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Libya, where marital rape is still not considered a crime. In 1736, Matthew Hale’s “History of the Pleas of the Crown” stated that the husband could not be guilty of raping his lawful wife, as she had “given up herfelf in this kind” to her husband through mutual matrimonial consent and contract. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code criminalises rape to punish non-consensual sexual acts, but the exception to the law states that, since marital relationships are different from other relationships, it is not relevant within the scope of the section. The Marital Rape Exemption (MRE), which treats forced sexual intercourse differently when concerning a married couple, is a blatant violation of Article 14 of the Constitution that demands equality before the law. Marital rape was first discussed in the 42nd Law Commission Report in 1971, which highlighted the presumption of consent when the husband and wife are living together and the differentiation between marital rape and “other” rape. Though the Indian Supreme Court ruled in October 2017 that part of the IPC which excused marital rape of minors aged 15-18 was unconstitutional, the exception for marital rape of adult women remained. The split verdict by a two-judge bench, Justice Rajiv Shakdher and Justice C. Hari Shankar, in the Dehli High Court on 11th May 2022 while hearing a case against marital rape meant that the safeguard for a husband against a rape charge by his wife remained intact in the IPC. While Justice Shakdher deemed the law unconstitutional and “steeped in patriarchy and misogyny,” Justice Shankar felt that removing the law would hurt the institution of marriage in Indian society as sex, “whether consensual or non-consensual,” is not rape as a marriage assumes a “legitimate expectation of sex.” The 2021 report by Equality Now, an organization working to protect and advance the rights of all girls and women, on “Sexual Violence in South Asia: Legal and Other Barriers to Justice for Survivors” claimed that consent to marriage “cannot and should not be construed as lifelong consent to sex.” Thus, a marital relationship should not act as grounds to defend against rape. If a marriage assumes a woman’s lifelong consent to sex, in a gang rape involving the husband of the victim, he would not be accused of rape alongside others due to his relationship with the victim. Justice Shankar’s views, like Hale’s statement over 200 years ago, essentially eliminate women’s bodily autonomy as marriages, with systems like dowry in place, continue to be seen as a transaction of property – namely, women’s bodies as objects of male property. However, Justice Shakdher supports the notion that any woman who enters marriage does not “subjugate or subordinate herself to her spouse or give irrevocable consent to sexual intercourse in all circumstances.” Furthermore, the right to “withdraw consent at any given point in time forms the core of the woman’s right to life and liberty which encompasses her right to protect her physical and mental being.” What’s Fueling India’s Misogyny? As Professor Praveena Kodoth from the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram states, “Men are not seen as lifeless if they don’t get married, women are.” In Malayalam, the saying “ninakku oru jeevitham vende?” translates to “Don’t you need a life?” Similar phrases like “got left behind, got sat behind” are used to convey how, if as a woman you are not married, you do not move forward in life. An article by The Diplomat notes that Indian women have become trapped between a “traditional yet patriarchal society on one hand and a liberal yet exploitative one on the other.” In poorer rural parts of the country, girls continue to be seen as a financial burden and are treated as less than boys, resulting in over 63 million ""missing"" girls by 2018 due to infanticide. Dowry practices add to the narrative of a woman’s sole purpose as being confined within the rules of domestic life, whereas men grow up to believe in their superiority as the potential breadwinners of the family. More often than not, this excuses men’s behaviour in claiming that they have the “right,” as marital rape laws suggest, to sexually assault their partners. Despite the fact that various parts of the country have become more ""liberalized,"" there have been exploits of gender equality by powers such as the Indian media – particularly Bollywood and its changing portrayal of women in cinema over the last few decades. While the 1990s saw women being cast as either meek damsels in distress or maternal figures, recent films show a growing trend of often excessively sexualizing young actresses. From the 1970s to the 1990s, certain movies had mandatory rape scenes where a woman being molested would be saved by a hero if she was the heroine; if not, she would be brutally killed and the entire movie would follow a revenge plot. Bollywood even had special actors that appeared as rapists in most of the films they acted in – a concept that audiences seemed to love. So-called “item numbers” like ‘Jalebi Bai’, ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’, and ‘Chikni Chameli’ have seen a rise since the 2000s. The term “item” indicates a sexually charged woman with a “corrupted” sense of morality – who usually has no direct connection with the main plot of the narrative since many films rely on these personas for sales – carrying out a risqué music-and-dance performance with lewd lyrics to “titillate” the audience. While for some, these dancers are argued to be a symbol of sexual freedom for women, others view them as a normalization of the male gaze and female objectification; in ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’ (‘Munni is dishonoured/disgraced’), women are described as a piece of chicken, and in ‘Chikni Chameli’, girls are fetishized for drinking in secret. As these women break away from the common societal notion of the monogamous woman, they become “a source of contention… [which] leads to the need of banning such songs before they ‘corrupt and deprave’ the society.” Even then, the blame seems to fall on the woman for being too sexual, too suggestive, too free. Songs under censorship bypass the objectification contained within lyrics and choreography, and focus instead on the encouragement of “harmful images” of sexuality that clash with traditional Indian values. Meanwhile, the male lyricists and audiences who form the image of these “item” women are left to either become enraptured by them or be forced to look away as long-held ideas, like “boys will be boys” and the belief that they could not possibly be able to control themselves when presented with sex, add to the cycle of sexual abuse and its prevelance in Indian society. As an article from The Chakkar relates, actor and film-maker Soni Razdan says that women have been seen as objects of desire for decades, and to ban or suppress this would be more damaging when better sex education and less taboo around the topic of sex would prove better for Indian society. As for the crassness of the lyrics and choreography of item songs, the industry should consider the views of actors and encourage self-agency over how they wish to be described in these songs. The inherent biases within India’s codes of law and societal norms battle with concepts like that of marriage as an individual choice that does not affect the inherent worth of the individual. When the law continues to excuse sexual abuse under archaic ideas of male entitlement and people continue with immoral practices like dowries to conform to an abstract concept of “the way it is done,” there is a long way to go to make a difference in terms of women’s rights in both the traditional and increasingly liberal parts of the nation. Editors: Adele L. Raniyah B., Amber T., Uzayer M.

“We assume the situation is getting worse, not better,” said Michael Ryan, emergencies chief of the World Health Organization (WHO), addressing the COVID-19 situation in North Korea on June 1. On May 12, the state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the presence of the Omicron variant in Pyeongchang, marking the first public acknowledgment of COVID-19 in the notoriously secretive country. President Kim Jong-un subsequently enacted lockdown measures, but the administration eased restrictions, citing low case counts. On May 15, KCNA reported close to 400,000 new “fever” cases, but the daily case count has since fallen to less than 10,000. In addition, KCNA has reported a total of 71 ""fever deaths,"" but only two deaths due to COVID-19 and one death as a result of fever since the beginning of June. Public health officials have cast doubt on the miraculous public health success story that state statistics spell out. Prior to May 12, many doubted the absence of COVID-19 in North Korea given the country’s shared borders with Russia and China as well as its poor health infrastructure – especially outside of Pyeongchang, where hospitals often lack medicine and supplies. Now, health organizations like the WHO operate under the assumption that North Korea may become a breeding ground for infections and new variants because the country has no vaccination program. Throughout the past decades, North Korea has adopted a policy of isolationism and censorship across the board; the government has criticized what it views as Western interference in matters ranging from nuclear weapons development, to extrajudicial killings and labeled humanitarian aid as an extension of underhanded diplomacy, meant to create political dependency. The government tightly controls the flow of information across its borders by limiting freedom of the press, so little confirmed information exists regarding the country’s common access to resources and quality of life. For example, the United Nations estimated that 11 million people, roughly 40 percent of the population, were malnourished in 2019. That number has likely increased due to food shortages caused by the pandemic and closed borders, but global bodies can only estimate the high hunger and poverty rates; the last census was published in 2008. The COVID-19 situation is a prime example of how such a political approach may come at the cost of civilian lives. Here too, little information exists, but it's likely that, by and large, the North Korean populace is unprotected from the virus since there is currently no state-sponsored mass immunization program, and though there is evidence the government received a small amount of the Sinovac vaccine from China in February, the government has rejected all other offers of assistance with vaccination from international organizations and individual countries alike. North Korea is not a part of the Access to COVID-19 (ACT) Accelerator initiative sponsored by the WHO and other organizations. The initiative's COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) pillar covers the global distribution of vaccines scientifically proven to reduce hospitalization and mortality rates, and, in September of last year, North Korea rejected millions of Sinovac doses along with AstraZeneca vaccines paid for by COVAX. According to the chief of emergencies, the WHO has offered vaccines three times and continues to offer vaccines, treatments, and medical supplies, albeit in vain. During a visit to South Korea in May, U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed receiving a similar nonresponse, and an article published last year by the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs decried U.S. humanitarian aid as part of a "sinister political scheme." Certainly, North Korea's actions and replies to international invitations have clarified the country's desire to be self-sufficient and its stance against South Korea as well as the other country's democratic allies. However, this approach is problematic as government statistics may not reflect reality. There may be many more people affected by COVID-19 than the published statistics suggest - and correspondingly, many more cases and deaths that will be swept under the carpet as government officials continue to insist that the pandemic has been resolved. Even if government rhetoric asserting that outbreaks have been contained and that no further action is necessary rings true, the status quo leaves the majority of North Koreans without adequate protection from future variants and recovering patients without potentially life-saving resources. COVID-19 is a mutating virus; as is the case with every disease, the chance of reinfection rises with each subsequent variant more unfamiliar to the body. While the vaccines unavailable to North Koreans cannot offer complete protection from new variants, they can offer partial immunity and, again, reduce hospitalization and mortality rates to lessen the strain on healthcare systems. Continuing, the ACT initiative oversees the development and global distribution of not just vaccines but also diagnostic kits, medications, and medical supplies. Typically, the unvaccinated need more care, whether that translates to breathing machines or antiviral drugs, but North Korean hospitals may lack the resources needed to treat vulnerable patients, especially in rural areas. The net result is preventative and remedial treatments that are only available to wealthy North Koreans if they travel to other countries; North Korea will be a state wherein socioeconomic circumstances determine health outcomes. In North Korea, the issuing of geopolitical statements takes precedence over preserving the safety and well-being of citizens. Political and social factors converge to strip agency from all but a select group with the money and resources to cross borders in a land dispute. The pandemic has thrown North Korea in sharp contrast to other countries demonstrating transparency and a willingness to participate in global programs, and the situation at hand is perhaps best seen as a harsh reminder that, ultimately, it's people trapped in unfair situations who suffer the consequences of political conflicts. Editors: Cydney V., Blenda Y., Rachel C., Evie F. Image Credits: Kim Won Jin—AFP/Getty Images

In the morning of June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively retracting federal protection over the right to abortion. The case between the Mississippi Health Department and the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The case upheld that the Mississippi 15 week abortion ban was constitutional gutting Roe, and starting a chain reaction of abortion bans across the U.S. Back in early May, Samuel Alito, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote a majority opinion draft that was leaked to the press and published by Politico. The document showed the Supreme Court’s intent to rule in favor of Dobbs, going against precedent and overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark case decided in 1973, which upheld the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. when it was reaffirmed in 1992 in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Alito’s opinion states, “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment”, this section of the ruling foreshadows many of the fears of what the future may hold. While the constitution may not hold any specific provision regarding abortion, at the time when the U.S. Constitution was written, there were no laws regarding abortion. Many historians of the era agree that abortion was “not prosecuted or condemned up to the point of quickening—the point in which a pregnant woman could feel the fetus’ first kicks and movements.” Until the mid-19th century, what we consider early induced abortion today wasn’t even called an abortion then. Women who did not want to be pregnant had several options available to them, including herbal concoctions that could be self-administered to “cause menstruation.” Pregnant women could consult a midwife or head to a local drugstore; however, the decision to end a pregnancy was mostly a private one. Lack of contraception, the cultural stigma against having a child outside of marriage, and the dangers of childbirth at the time meant it was not uncommon to choose to terminate one’s own pregnancy. Some estimate that 20-35% of all pregnancies were terminated in what we now would consider early induced abortions. The constitution does not have any reference to abortion because there was no need to reference abortion at that time. The language and narratives that exist around abortion today were non-existent at the founding of the country. And even still, it does not mean that abortion should not be protected by the law. Most anti-abortion laws came about in the 1860s when a coalition of white male doctors with the support of the Catholic Church and other groups began to push legislators to enact abortion bans. Abortion was nationally banned in 1910. However, underground abortion services continued due to lack of regulation, and many women risked complications or died from botched abortions. When abortion was legalized in the 1970s following Roe v. Wade, there was still the issue of access. Despite this, the ability to receive an abortion from a trained doctor or medical provider hugely lowered the risks. Even with Alito’s originalist interpretation, there are plenty of court rulings that protect many things not specified in the constitution. These are called “unenumerated rights” and include the right to travel, privacy, dignity, and autonomy, which are not stated directly in the constitution but decided upon to be implied in its message. Outside of the constitutional debate, the ruling has a deep and far-reaching impact on the country as a whole. The case not only immediately endangers the lives and livelihoods of thousands of women and birth givers across the U.S., but also sets a dangerous legal precedent for future Supreme Court Rulings. Justice Clarence Thomas stated in a concurring opinion that the court “should reconsider” previous decisions and it’s the court’s duty to “correct the error” in regards to Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges – three cases that defend rights to contraception, LGBTQ+ sex, and same-sex marriage respectively. In the first two cases, protections were given under the 14th amendment and a citizen’s “right to privacy” which was also the original justification for Roe. Roe v. Wade is not at all unpopular. A Pew research poll states that between 1995 and today, 61% of people believe in the right to abortion in almost all circumstances. Only a mere 37% believe that it should be the opposite. However, we do not see this opinion reflected in this country's leadership, which is supposedly built to represent the people. The following afternoon after the decision was released, protesters filled the steps of the Supreme Court. Several more protests started to appear in many other major U.S. Cities. With Roe now gone, 13 states have enacted “trigger laws,” which were set to ban abortion the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned. Several other states have plans to enact laws that will either severely restrict or outright ban abortion. Several states also plan to enact laws that will criminalize abortion providers and those that assist in helping people get abortions. In states such as Texas, which has such trigger laws, all abortion procedures have immediately ceased and face legal uncertainty. The same has followed in other states such as Oklahoma and Utah, even though it may take a few days before the law takes full enforcement. Missouri was one of the first states to enact its trigger law, with its attorney general publicly announcing the banning of abortion in the state. The stark reality that we are facing is millions of women and birth givers will now have to contend with the reality of leaving their state to gain access to abortion. Some may face criminal charges for doing so. Abortion providers in many states now can face legal action and also be criminalized for assisting or providing abortions. Some states don’t even protect the right to abortion in cases of rape or incest – which touches on deeper issues of human rights. There is no middle ground when it comes to the topic of abortion. Outlawing abortion does not end abortion. Instead, it increases the number of unsafe abortions, which increases the number of deaths from unsafe abortions and incomplete miscarriages. Criminalizing abortion providers and enacting laws like SB8 in Texas puts a bounty on doctors and healthcare providers. Meanwhile, other states have sprung into action to defend the right to abortion. California, Oregon and Washington have pledged to protect against judicial and local law enforcement cooperations with out-of-state investigations and refuse non-fugitive extradition of individuals for criminal prosecution related to accessing legal reproductive healthcare. In Colorado, which is surrounded by states that plan to either restrict or ban abortion, Democratic state representative Yadira Caraveo stated that Colorado would be a “big island” of abortion access for the middle of the country. In Massachusetts, Republican Governor Charlie Baker reaffirmed his stance on abortion by signing an executive order that would protect providers who perform abortion services for those out of state and protect those that seek reproductive services in the state of Massachusetts. So what now? We face this grim and stark reality in an already divided nation. Now further divided, not only on ideological lines, but now along the lines of whether abortion access is protected, or criminalized. There is a lot that is unknown. Several other states do not have laws that protect abortion, and while legal now, it can easily change depending on who’s in power. Meanwhile, we must do what we can. Call representatives to push for codifying the right to abortion into law, donating to abortion funds which help to provide wrap-around care for abortions such as out-of-state travel and lodging, transportation, and more. For those living in abortion-hostile states, purchasing emergency contraception or abortion pills can be an option. Donate to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood, or even volunteering to help out if you are able. Research and support pro-choice politicians and leaders, and take to the streets to protest. The Supreme Court decision leaves a lot of questions that will only be answered with time, but we must do what we can to affirm that the right to an abortion is a constitutional right, and we must continue the fight to expand access and codify it into law. Editor: Chelsea D., Lillian H., Amshu V.

Dear Asian Youth, In the past six months, it has become very evident through word of mouth and social media forums that 2022 has been defined as the year for diversification in films. Many have been calling it the “resurrection of original cinema,” with major box office hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), and many more making waves through the social circle. Underrepresented people are becoming more highlighted in cinema and television, and it is crucial now more than ever that this continues, as it is opening the metaphorical door for many aspiring writers and actors to tell the stories they have always wanted to, despite the years of beratement Hollywood has given them when considering these ideas. Additionally, diversity in film has been spanning across different countries, aside from the United States, particularly in Bollywood culture in India. In conjunction, there are many films in Bollywood culture that are becoming more accessible to Hollywood viewers. Many of the latest Bollywood films are available on many streaming platforms, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. A few weeks ago, my family and I decided to have a movie night, and we decided to watch Jugjugg Jeeyo (2022), translated from the Indian language of Hindi meaning to “Live a Long Life.” It is a romantic comedy on Amazon Prime centered around an Indian, cisgendered, heterosexual couple. Jugjugg Jeeyo can be viewed by anybody twelve years and older, as it contains a few scenes of minor physical abuse and rude language. In the film, The wife, Nainaa, is the breadwinner of the couple, earning a six-figure salary at a reputable business company. Her husband, Kuldeep “Kukoo” Saini, works as a bouncer for a nightclub. Because of Kukoo’s dissatisfaction with his career combined with his lack of love for life, Kukoo and Nainaa’s relationship is at a crossroads despite being married for almost five years. After the two of them have the same realization that their relationship has been stagnant for a while at an anniversary dinner, Nainaa and Kukoo know they have familial obligations to worry about and must be in attendance for the wedding of Ginny, Kukoo’s younger sister. While at the wedding, Nainaa and Kukoo go back and forth debating whether to bring their marital concerns to the ears of Kukoo’s parents, as they do not want to use Ginny’s wedding as a means for them to sour the celebration and want to maintain the peace. Little do the couple know, the rest of Kukoo’s family have secrets of their own that they’ve been hiding from the two of them. While the director, Raj Mehta, attempts to incorporate some humor into Jugjugg Jeeyo, the film discusses serious topics, like divorce, emotional relationships, the divide between love and lust, career hierarchy, and both cultural and traditional standards set towards women. Without giving away any spoilers, Jugjugg Jeeyo attempts to balance all these topics and get every point across, although some scenes are dragged on for longer than necessary, and miss the chance to seamlessly transition to the next point. Aside from some inane dialogue, over-convoluted plot points at times, an endless stream of degradation for ALL characters involved, as well as the side characters/extras present at the wedding, this is a surprisingly entertaining film. The actress who played Nainaa, Kiara Advani, helmed her role very well and displayed a solid performance. It has been a long time since I have immersed myself in the wonderous world of Bollywood dramas, so I had not seen Advani’s filmography prior to this film. On the other hand, Kukoo, played by Varun Dhawan, had some great leg moves in one of the hip hop dance numbers, and it was amazing to see how his dancing abilities have evolved over the last few years in the films he has starred in. Looking deeper at the social and emotional issues tackled in the film, I felt empathetic towards every character at certain points, and found myself agreeing with both the best and the worst parts of the film. This is not a perfect film by any means but it offers a more progressive look into modern marriage in Indian culture, which is a world that I definitely do not wish to explore for a while. In Indian culture, marriage is constantly celebrated and brought into discussion the minute any girl turns a significant age. From twelve to twenty-one, some random uncle or aunty will find a way to sneak the topic into conversation. It is sad to see “love” forced onto people this way, especially at pivotal points, where many girls are still trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do before even considering the idea of marriage. In my household, my dad has been hinting at the idea of me getting married in the next year or so. I verbally retort my destment of the idea to him everytime he brings it up, and I think after watching the film, he’s getting the hint. This film is important today because it provides interesting insight into family dynamics when faced with relationship strain. Despite its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, I think it’s worth the watch. It presents itself as an interesting film to show your non-Indian friends just how out of hand some relationships can get, especially in different cultures where the rules and social norms are unfamiliar to someone who did not grow up from that background. Indian people, of the older generations specifically, are used to the societal prejudices that have been passed down from generation to generation regarding the subject matter of divorce and career status. Thus, having a film like this garner traction on a major streaming platform is a huge step for Indian audiences to start broadening their perspectives about the ideas of divorce and marriage at the dining table. Not everybody wants to follow tradition, and it is prevalent from the influence of social media that many people, especially those of the younger generations, are beginning to see this point of view on these topics. There will not be major acceptance overnight, but this film will spark conversation about biting social topics and may even have people feeling better about their current life situations after watching the film, particularly if they view it from a more cynical perspective. Editors: Rachel C., Cathay L., Joyce P., Lang D. Photo Credits: Dharma Productions/Viacom18 Studios

I remember having a conversation with one of my Asian-American friends about a mutual white acquaintance of ours where we discussed something this acquaintance had asked my friend regarding their culture and background. It was a question of ignorance, prefaced with the phrase ""I don't know if this is offensive..."" - an all too familiar phrase we had both laughed at. In my conversation with this friend, she had said something along the lines of, ""I let her ask these questions, even if I do find them offensive, because how else are they supposed to learn? I'd rather she ask me instead of someone else. She could live with that bias her whole life if I didn’t correct it."" This struck a chord with me. I found her sentiment to be valid, but it certainly wasn’t a simple subject. In observing this bias correction, I found myself with many questions - sure, I felt a similar responsibility to confront ignorance, especially when it occurs right in front of or towards me, but why should I feel this obligation? Why must I be the one to confront implicit bias? Part of having white privilege must very well be that non-white people are obliged to politely confront your biases and prejudices. As such, being that non-white person - in other words, playing that role of the “educator” - is exhausting, and it's led to many reflections on my own personal values. In this piece, I'd like to discuss my experiences of existing in a predominantly white space, which, in many ways, has made me hyper-aware of my own racial identity. Existing in White Spaces I recently finished my first year of university - I attend a small liberal arts school in New Jersey. It was a place far from my home in Texas, a complete departure from the dry heat and rapidly growing suburbs that I had exchanged for a sleepy East coast college town. This was a fresh start for me, through and through. In high school, I kept my circles small. It was easy to exist in small bubbles. The same groups of kids took the same classes year after year, but in starting my journey in university, I set forward, as many bright-eyed freshmen do, with the goal of putting myself out there. Stepping out of my shell and breaking those pre-constructed bubbles. In reflecting upon my freshman year experience, I certainly think that this goal was achieved. I believe that socially, I’ve improved in strides. This did not come, however, without its hurdles. These were things that I had been initially wary of even when I had first applied to the school. My university is a predominantly white institution (PWI), where a little over half of the student population is white. Truthfully, the entire institution of higher education in America is a predominantly white institution. Ethnic minorities have experienced decades of inequitable distribution of educational resources, and though the proportion of minorities enrolling in higher education has been rising, it still lags behind the attendance rates of the national norm. Something I noticed in many formalized studies is that the heightened enrollment of minority students is often framed as a massive stride from the decades past - while this is, indeed, an advancement, much of the language used in these studies refers to minorities as a monolith. A short summary of a report by the American Council on Education reads, “In 2015–16, approximately 45 percent of all undergraduate students identified as being a race or ethnicity other than White, compared with 29.6 percent in 1995-96.” It feels, at times, that is all there is. White and non-white. No specificity, no acknowledgement of our diversity. Just one melting pot. At this, I can only remark facetiously - the monolith seems fitting, for our plight in these spaces is often a shared one. Everyone has prejudices in some form - but prejudices belonging to people with the most privilege are perhaps the most damaging, as those with privilege hold the most power. They have the ability to form institutions against minorities, both in social and formal settings. It is these kinds of prejudices that I have become most hyper-aware of. I believe that confronting prejudices of every kind starts with a mindset. My conversations with people who don’t have a lived experience under discrimination are sometimes difficult, and often in my collegiate setting, many people consider themselves progressive; aware of human rights issues and current events. This is a respectable quality. I’ve found, however, that many believe a surface level “wokeness”, upheld by equally superficial research, is sufficient as a means of being an activist. Quite frankly, I’m not sure what entails wokeness - looking back into the word’s origin, which is in Black culture, it refers to the idea of staying alert of the deceptions of other people as a basic survival tactic. This term took a new life following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, becoming a phrase used as a rallying cry against police brutality. Nowadays, staying woke feels extremely vague, morphing from a word to a concept. That concept of course, being political ideology - wokeness today refers to leftist belief systems and, in general, progressiveness. While I don’t believe it is fully productive to politicize these core issues of racial injustice, I know that this is simply the way things are and have been since this nation’s conception. To demand basic rights is inherently political, as we demand them from institutions higher and more powerful than us. I suppose this demand for equality is modern wokeness, a movement appropriated from Black activism, that has been made more vague to include a wider audience. Still, this is not where the message of “wokeness” ends. It is the unironic usage of this phrase, which is already so divorced from its original meaning, that I use to mark performative activism. It is easy to memorize the frequently used rhetoric of progressivism - being woke is one of those saturated phrases that has been used so frequently that many do not retain the true meaning of it. It is not just “woke” either - we find performative activism in corporate pride collections, social media movements, and street murals. What I’m getting at is that this cloudy, modern idea of youth activism is label-driven and superficial, based upon the language and aesthetics used by movements with perceived progressivism. I find that many white people who attempt to be “woke” aren’t actually very educated about the problems within and the nuances surrounding being a BIPOC. This is expected, and there is nothing inherently wrong with ignorance - all that should be present is a willingness to learn. Still, I have my gripes with the attitudes toward informing white people. A friend of mine had off-handedly commented about Indian wedding piercings, believing them to be cosmetically “cool” - when it was pointed out that the tone in which he talked about these piercings exoticized them (a comment that was made as a polite correction by an Indian friend), he had apologized. Another person had nonchalantly remarked, “at least he said sorry.” This exchange revealed a fundamental problem to me. I am sure that white activism, most times, comes from a place of good will. The people mentioned were both white, and I’m sure they genuinely meant no harm. Regardless, there is this inclination towards rewarding white mediocrity, which is itself a harmful attitude. A white person’s simple acknowledgement of the plights BIPOC go through seems sufficient. After all, these problems are not and will never be experienced by white individuals. It is enough for them to be able to identify the issues we face - they are not held to a standard of action, and they simply can not experience the same degree of emotional labor that BIPOC are expected to perform. But this is why a genuine apology is to be expected; it is not an action that needs to be acknowledged or applauded. I am not impressed by progressive rhetoric or lukewarm and obvious takes on social justice. Many are simple ideas that do not need to be stated because they should be the standard. I will not be impressed by your disgust at the micro-aggressions I face, the appalling history of our nation, or the injustices experienced by immigrants. I expect it. The Importance of Cultural Spaces I personally believe that there is value to providing safe spaces specifically for minorities. A 2017 study on the retention rates of students of color at PWI’s observes that the factors of university retention for BIPOC are: The inclusion of students, faculty, and staff of color Updated curriculum that displays the current and historic experiences of individuals of color Programming/initiatives that support the enlistment, preservation, and commencement of students of color Cultural spaces I would like to discuss the fourth item on this list, cultural spaces. I was very fortunate to have this kind of community at my university - not just in the Filipino league organization, but also in the friends I made. It is easier to express the struggles of racial injustice with people who can understand it on the same experience you do. Most universities, I feel, view their multicultural clubs as an opportunity for education. Education of who? White individuals. I think this idea needs to be reframed. We should view these organizations not only (in fact, I’d argue not even primarily) as an opportunity for cultural exchange, but as places of respite for BIPOC students. This is especially true for PWI’s. Cultural spaces are worth discussing because it is an idea present in many political philosophies, particularly Malcolm X’s. Malcolm X’s antiracist philosophy was at its core an anti-assimilist philosophy. In his Ballot or the Bullet speech, he presents Black nationalism as an ideology that uplifts Black communities through internal support. This is a concept of grassroots activism, where actionable change occurs within the local community because of the shared goals of that community’s population. His ideas are simple: “the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community.” The community needs to be understood by the individual for this to work. The first time I read this speech was in one of my political science classes. It stayed with me, encouraging me to reflect upon why I found inherent value in existing in spaces with people who looked like me. In a sense, it was a confirmation of my personhood. There is an immense validation in being understood. That is what cultural spaces did for me. In understanding myself, I better understood what I have a right to as a person. I have become more confident in my ability to demand respect and grace. Burnout and Challenges It is easy, in my experience, to take a nihilistic stance when you are a burnt-out activist. Discussions become circular, seemingly unproductive, and pointless. My own experiences with microaggressions have taught me that effective re-education isn’t always possible, not because people are incapable of change, but because it is difficult to fully articulate yourself and even harder to get others to listen. Furthermore, especially as a BIPOC, the pressure of performing emotional labor on behalf of educating others is exhausting. The climate of modern activism is exhausting - and, unfortunately, heavily based on performance. A lot of progressiveness feels like a complete wash, something with so much time, effort, and energy invested into it that leads to no measurable change. NPR reported on the concept of “racial battle fatigue”, which is the “cumulative impact of experiencing racism day to day.” My race is part of who I am. Existing within a predominantly white community has made me very aware of it, and there is not a day that goes by where I don’t think about my race. This exhaustion is one I’ve experienced many times - I am shaped by the strangers who call me exotic, who ask me if I can speak English, by the friends to whom I am the first Asian they have ever regularly interacted with. During the rise in hate crimes towards Asian-Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I experienced anxiety towards public transit and solo travel - it wasn’t a worry for just myself. When my parents and grandmother visited, I remember cautioning them against using public transit when venturing into New York City. They assured me that it was something they had already thought about. The truth is, I don’t know how to be a good activist. I never feel like I’m doing enough, but there always feels like there is too much to do. I know this much - I don’t want to be relied upon to teach other people. White people will call themselves allies, tell me they are listening and note that they care. It is here I am asked to be an educator. Perhaps it is callous of me to call these types of conversations selfish, but I find true allies in an effort that is collaborative, where we both pull an equal weight. And truly, I care more for an advocate than an ally. Conclusion: So, What’s the Point? I am drawing from my own experience in writing this in the hopes that I can provide comradery and my own takes on possible answers for people with the same questions as me. I don’t know, however, if I can call this productive activism. My own issues with discourse about racial injustice lie primarily in the fact that a great deal of it has no bearing on the palpable issues that affect our communities. What can we do about income inequality, the greater prison industrial complex, and the erasure of history? There are problems that feel beyond the scope of mild microaggression, so it feels easier to laugh at a seemingly miniscule exchange with an ignorant stranger, trivialize it, and move on. Well, once again, I believe that activism starts with mindset. It is not just the ideas of anti-racism that needs to be ingrained in others, but the very concept of effective activism. I dedicate myself every day to a particular task, no matter how small, to find meaning and structure in the things I do. I exert my actions in activism in a similar manner: remember the ends. We do not need complex ideologies or radicalism to promote our ideas. We need support systems, spaces where we can exist as BIPOC unapologetically and freely, and allies that hold themselves to a standard of not only seeking education, but also inward rumination and reflection upon the state of their own mindset. I myself have much to learn, and while I rely upon collaborative discussions with others to some degree, I seek to educate myself in all sorts of resources. I’ve found that it is not enough to simply consume content by minorities - we must mold our cognitive functions to properly digest this information. We must transform the way we think. This is the path to action. Editors: Image Credits: Alica Brown

With the onset of social media, trends are easily diffused throughout the masses. These trends are not exclusive to clothing or beauty products - many hobbies and lifestyle practices have been popularized through the means of Instagram, TikTok, and other forms of social media frequented by young people. This rings true in a world recovering from the difficult throes of a pandemic. Many have explored new things in the state of isolation, especially when this state of solitude is coupled with a bustling social media scene. One that has been particularly popular is the exploration of spirituality. Renewed interest in meditation practices and cleansing is apparent in the volume of posts on platforms pertaining to the subject - however, this particular genre of content is composed of a very random melting pot of stolen rituals, closed practices, and misinformation. This, though potentially exacerbated by the pandemic and technological advancement, is nothing new. The global market has enabled a commodification of sacred practices, as religion has been cleaved from its place of origin and can now be made marketable. Spiritual practices are now tradable, easy to adapt, and align with local environments. Take yoga, for example, a meditative and athletic practice with distinct Indian roots, it has been adopted as a secular hobby in the west. Yoga in these spheres relies on flimsy and quasi-spiritual philosophy. Eden Ballard of UCLA’s The Ballard argues that the power of yoga as it exists in the western world is based upon an inherent need for community, a desire that may exist due to the decline of religion in these regions. Regardless, yoga is adopted as part of an industry - it is packaged to be easily consumable. Yoga’s relation to religion outside of the west is contentious, but within the west, its spiritual components flourish. There is a curiosity about spiritualism that many young people hold. And while there is certainly no problem with exploring one’s spirituality, issues of cultural commodification and exploitation crop up as byproducts of this widespread curiosity. It is easy to take in pre-packaged, perfectly marketed fragments. Take the practice of burning white sage. Corporations like Vogue, recognizing general trends towards spirituality, are eager to capitalize on these interests, promoting something called “spiritual hygiene”. White sage is recommended for cleansing, as smoke-based energy clearing has risen in popularity among younger demographics. Colleen McCan, stylist and spiritualist, gives Vogue the maxim of “eat, sleep, work out, and sage!” For years now, fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands have been promoting sage as a wellness cure-all. While these intentions are not inherently malicious, there are some major downsides to the popularization of white sage that negatively affect Indigenous communities. Among many tribes, white sage has been used in rituals for cleansing or prayer, a practice often referred to as smudging. It is also used as a medicine for a host of problems, from menstruation issues to sore throats. Sage is considered sacred and full of utility. Nowadays, however, it is often over-harvested for use by non-indigenous communities, which can bar indigenous people from access to their traditional medicines. In fact, nowadays white sage is being harvested illegally. In 2018, four people were arrested for smuggling 400 pounds of sage from the North Etiwanda Preserve of Rancho Cucamonga, California - a behavior that is becoming increasingly common due to the increased demand for sage. Regulations on sage are extremely lax - the illegally sourced herbs could end up anywhere because there are no trading restrictions. And while this practice of burning sage may seem harmless and peaceful, it is something that has been historically used as leverage against indigenous people. Bianca Millar, the mind behind A Tribe Called Beauty and resident of the Québec Wendac reserve, stated in a Fashionista article, “In Canada in 1876, my people were banned from not just using sage, but any traditional medicine. It outlawed all religious and cultural activities, which obviously include smudging, and I think it wasn't until 1951 that it thankfully was abolished, and we were finally allowed to use our medicines."" This is a sacred practice with a torrid history that has experienced distillation and adoption as a trendy lifestyle ritual among white consumers. The things for which indigenous peoples have been oppressed are celebrated in non-indigenous circles. It is often white masses that spearhead spirituality movements in the West. Even though people of color have been practicing these religions or spiritual practices for centuries, enduring scrutiny and oppression, parts of their culture are being cherry-picked and sometimes reshaped to fit a western, white frame. The nazar, or “evil eye”, is a prime example of how spirituality is adopted based on how well it fits an aesthetic. The nazar is its Arabic name, and it holds significance in many cultures. Dating back to ancient Greece, Sumeria, and Egypt, it is used to protect one from the “evil eye”, or a curse from an ill-intentioned glare. Many corporations like SHEIN, Walmart, and Forever 21 have noticed the popularity of the symbol, and have pushed out accessories and decor with the nazar adorning it. It can be found on bracelets, rugs, and pillows - almost anything you can think of. Here, it is reduced strictly to a decorative element, eclipsing its cultural value. It is a trend, stripped of its great significance. The meaning of these practices cannot be diminished. They carry weight beyond being trendy lifestyle practices tinged with quasi-spiritual rhetoric. They carry immense history unbeknownst to many who adopt them. They are worthy of respect and reverence - as are their respective communities of practitioners. Spirituality is a great way to discover more about yourself and the world around you. No one should be discouraged from exploration, but it is important to proceed with care and the correct mindset. Elements of spirituality cannot be carefully selected for the sake of an idealized and glamourized conception of life. Spirituality needs to be treated as more than just a trend. Editors: Evie F. Amshu V. Image Credits: United Plant Savers

Representation is a subject that's widely discussed when it comes to content consumed by the public. However, the interpretation of the actual word may vary. According to Merriam-Webster, representation means, "one that represents: such as an artistic likeness or image." In Western media, the standard for representation sometimes is simply having a person of color on the roster. However, the narratives and actors audiences see on screen should accurately reflect the group of people they portray. Representation is far bigger than just having a person of color on the screen. In the long history of the entertainment industry, Asian people - and other marginalized groups - have been reduced to offensive stereotypes and are sidelined as the main character's best friend, in other words, not true representation. A report from Nancy Wang Yuen, Stacy L. Smith, and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that out of 51,159 speaking characters in 1,300 top-grossing movies from 2007 to 2019, only 5.9% were Asian American or Pacific Islander characters, and only 44 films had AAPI leads. Out of those 1,300 films, only 241 creatives who worked behind the scenes were AAPI, and out of the 50 AAPI directors, five were women. Nuanced stories about the Asian experience are only beginning to break through into Western media. Change is on the horizon, but it is necessary to examine where it began to see how it's going. The history of how Asian people have been represented in the past is inaccurate and often offensive. For example, In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" the audience is greeted with Mickey Rooney portraying Mr. Yunioshi, a buck-toothed Asian man with a heavy accent. In "Lawrence of Arabia" Alec Guinness portrays an Arabian prince and Ashton Kutcher with darkened skin and a mustache appeared as Raj in a Popchips advertisement. It should be noted that Rooney, Guinness, and Kutcher are not Asian men. Hollywood has a long history of casting white actors in Asian roles. Ethnically white actors would darken their skin tone or use prosthetics to appear Asian; this tradition was coined yellow-face. Nancy Wang Yuen, Associate Professor at Biola University, said, "Putting on a costume, and everyone knew you were in a costume, and then using that yellowface performance to ridicule or villainize Asians in a way that was entertaining for its audience."" The first instance of yellow-face in American entertainment was in 1767 during Voltaire's theatrical performance of "An Orphan of China," and D.W. Griffith's "The Chink at Golden Gulch" was the first time yellow-face was used in film. Yellow-face persisted through the 1930s, and Asian people would be portrayed as villainous characters in movies like "The Mask of Fu Manchu" or as submissive and meek characters in "Madam Butterfly." One of the main reasons for these casting decisions was the Hays Code: an internal set of guidelines. The code included restriction of sexual interaction between actors of different races. This explains why Anna May Wong lost a Chinese American role to Louise Reiner in the 1937 film "The Good Earth." She allegedly said, "You’re asking me, with Chinese blood, to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters," when she was offered a role as a concubine. Wong left Hollywood for Europe, where she felt like she would have more autonomy in her career. Meanwhile, Reiner would later go on to win an Oscar for her role, becoming the first person to win an Academy Award for a role in yellow-face. This was the decade that yellow-face became extremely normalized, and the practice continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s. As yellow-face became less common, whitewashing soon replaced it. In this practice, actors wouldn't alter their appearance to look Asian, but non-Asian actors would still fill roles meant for Asian people. There are many instances of this occurring. For example when Emma Stone was cast as a quarter-Hawaiian, quarter-Chinese, Allison Ng in "Aloha." Oh was also referring to Scarlett Johansson who was infamously cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi in "Ghost in a Shell," an adaption of a series entirely composed of Japanese characters, but the main cast was not Japanese. Additionally, Hollywood has been known for mischaracterizing and stereotyping its Asian characters. Hari Kondabolu, comedian and creator of the documentary "The Problem with Apu," spoke about the mischaracterization and stereotyping of South Asians in American media at a panel held at Carolina Union's Great Hall. He discusses how The Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon was voiced by white actor Hank Azaria, who put on a heavy stereotypical Indian accent. However, the show did announce in 2020 that white actors would no longer voice characters of color. Kondabolu said that these generalizations can encourage teasing and alienation of people of Indian descent. “When something is effective as art, it's like propaganda," Kondabolu said. "It spreads messages, and you ignore it because you laugh."" Another character who enforced harmful stereotypes is Long Duk Dong in "Sixteen Candles." A gong would sound when he would appear on screen, and his sexual ineptitude was pointed out throughout the film. "Asian Americans who grew up in the second half of the 1980s complained that they were called 'Donkers' in junior and high schools," Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a researcher at Georgetown University. Asian men are portrayed as effeminate, losers, and nerds in the media; meanwhile; Asian women are hypersexualized as either shy and submissive or as femme fatales. These stereotypes only harm the Asian community further. It was discovered in a study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, that less than a quarter of Asian characters were meant to be funny– almost half of them were laughed at, suggesting that they often serve as the punchline. These caricatures are more than just jokes as these stereotypes can impact how Asians are perceived outside of the media. Madhavi Reddi, a Ph.D. student in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, said, “There are different ways to maintain white superiority. One of them is to marginalize via humor." When representation comes to mind, the actors everyone sees might be the first to come to mind. However, offscreen representation is equally as important. When the original animated feature film "Mulan" came out in 1998, Disney hired Chinese American writer Rita Hsiao, and many of the voice actors were Asian American. So, when Disney announced a "Mulan'' live-action remake, expectations were high. The main cast was Chinese, but it was revealed that very few of the creatives behind the scenes were of Chinese descent - director, screenwriters, and costume designer. Dr. Nancy Yuen believes that not having diversity behind the scenes can lead to one-dimensional general stories that lack nuance and don't accurately reflect the community. However, the history of Asian representation and diversity in the media hasn't always been abysmal. Sessue Hayakawa, famed silent film actor and arguably the first Asian movie star, was frustrated with Hollywood's offensive depiction of Asians in film and the material he was being offered, so he started his own studio in 1918, Haworth Pictures. He made 23 films and was one of the highest-paid actors of his time, and earned an Oscar nomination in 1957 for his role in "The Bridge on the River Kwai." Bruce Lee opened many doors for future martial artists like Jackie Chan and Jet Li after the success of "Enter the Dragon" in 1973. M. Night Shyamalan found directorial success in the supernatural horror genre after "The Sixth Sense," and director Justin Lin brought the Fast and Furious franchise to the global market. "Harold and Kumar" was the first Hollywood franchise led by Asian American actors. "Crazy Rich Asians" turned stereotypes on their heads with Henry Goulding playing a charismatic rich Nick Young, and through Rachel Chu, the Asian American identity was explored. Though, in the past few years Asian–centered stories have been coming to the big and small screen. Back in 2020, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite'' won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Director, making it the first Korean and non-English-language film to win. The 2020 film "Minari" followed Korean immigrants chasing the American dream, and it earned Steven Yeun a Best Actor Oscar nod, the first Asian American to be nominated in this category, while Korean actress Youn Yuh-Jung won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as the feisty grandmother; she is only the second Asian woman to win in this category since Japanese-born Miyoshi Umeki won in 1957 for "Sayonara." Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" is the first of its kind in the superhero franchise: an all-Asian-led film with an Asian director. It garnered rave reviews and broke pandemic box office records. Pixar's "Turning Red" is another instance where Asian voices have been brought to mainstream media. Asian stories have also hit the small screen too. The Netflix smash hit, "Squid Game'' also broke records on the streaming platform as the biggest series debut, and it made history at the Screen Actors Guild Awards as the first non-English-language series to win SAG awards for best female and male actor categories. Netflix's coming-of-age "Never Have I Ever" follows Devi Vishwakumar, her friends, and her family. The show complicates many stereotypes about Asian Americans including perceptions of intelligence, religion, and social status. Netflix's "The Half of It" takes on race, religion, sexual identity, and combines it into a story about first-generation Chinese American daughter, Ellie Chu. Fans of the animated series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender" can also look forward to a live-action remake that has been confirmed to have cast Asian and Indigenous actors for the lead roles. With ongoing discussions of what is good or bad representation, some may call into question why discussing representation even matters. To some, it doesn't matter who plays their favorite characters, but to many marginalized groups accurate representation matters. Earlier this year, it was announced that American Girl Doll would release the first-ever Chinese Girl of the Year, Corrine. Author Wendy Wan-Long Shang and illustrator Peijin Yang created two books featuring Corinne said, "I think when readers feel seen, they realize that they matter and their experiences matter, and that they are meant to be the stars of their own stories!" Sesame Street has also introduced their first Asian American character, Jiyoung. Kathleen Kim, the puppeteer, created Jiyoung's personality and hopes that Jiyoung can be the representation she never had. A fellow puppeteer reminded her, "It’s not about us ... It’s about this message." Representation can come in many forms. Whether it is ""good"" or ""bad"" is up to the audience. The history of accurate and nuanced stories of Asian people has had its ups and downs, and progress is beginning to show. Mainstream media has reached a point where simply having an Asian person on screen is not enough. There is a difference between being on screen and being seen. Poorna Jagannathan, who plays Nalini in "Never Have I Ever" said, "Character arcs for minorities still feel underdeveloped and stereotypical. As a result, the audience doesn't fully see us. They don't get the three-dimensional version of us, and it's that version that moves the needle. That's the version that can create empathy, understanding and change." Developed and nuanced stories and characters are important to truly capture Asian experiences. Not every movie or television show will perfectly encapsulate every Asian narrative, but the progress that has been made is something to celebrate. With works like "Minari," "Parasite," "The Farewell," "Blinded by the Light," and others on the way, Asian stories are gaining exposure they haven't had in the past. Asian people should be in charge of their own narrative, this way they can be as human and complicated as they want to be. By being human, audiences can finally see all dimensions of a community through these stories, and then true representation can be achieved. Editors: Evie F., Rachel C., Amshu V., Blenda Y. Image Credits: Gabriel Campanario - The Seattle Times

TW: violence, sexual assault, murder The Escalation of Instability Within Myanmar & its Bordering Countries Discriminatory policies have plagued Myanmar’s socio-political landscape since its independence in 1948 (then known as Burma) when the citizenship law’s exclusion of the Rohingya people was developed to strip the ethnic group of their access to full citizenship rights under the military junta in the 1980s. This led to hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya, who continue to be a stateless population, fleeing the country’s predominantly Buddhist landscape to find shelter from persecution either in Bangladesh or daring the journey by sea to countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The nation’s governments have repeatedly denied recognition of the Rohingya as one of Myanmar’s 135 official ethnic groups, rendering them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even when the Rohingya’s historical roots can be traced back centuries in the country. Renewed violence of rape, murder, and arson against the Rohingya minority in 2017 followed when the militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked police and army posts. Myanmar’s claim on their effort to reintroduce stability within their western region – where most of the Rohingya, an estimated 1 million, resided in Rakhine State – through brutal campaigns destroying hundreds of villages was condemned by the United Nation for its “genocidal intent”. Given Myanmar’s history of institutionalized discrimination against “the most persecuted minority in the world” through suppression on marriage, employment, religious choice, and other matters, Rakhine State’s underdevelopment with its 78% poverty rate (compared to the national average of 37.5%) does not come as a surprise. After Myanmar’s 2017 military campaigns against the Rohingya forced nearly 700,000 to leave the country and killed at least 6,700 in the first month, the decades of exploitation and persecution against the ethnic group – and now those of other ethnic origins – have only exacerbated in the face of the country’s February 2021 coup d’etat by its military junta (the Tatmadaw) led by Senior General Min Aung Hliang that overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The gradual shift towards democracy within Myanmar has halted under the country’s military dictatorship, which has waged war against its own people. There have been thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests, torture, and scorched-earth campaigns with at least 1,600 people killed and over 8,700 people still remaining in detention. While the coup internally displaced over 638,000 Burmese people and worsened the drug and human trafficking crises within the country, its repercussions transcended borders in impacting countries like India and Indonesia due to an influx of refugees attempting to escape the collapsing economy, widespread hunger, and the hardships of COVID-19. More than 900,000 of the Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh, many staying within the crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar district. Refugees face a contaminated water supply and a high potential of disease outbreak alongside the threat of exploitation and sexual enslavement. As is the case in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, the Rohingya also have no legal status and are denied employment, education, and health care: in Cox’s Bazar, nearly 400,000 children lack access to education. Moreover, they are often locked up in immigration detention centers or neglected to die on boats, trapped at sea for months; several nations have used the pandemic as an excuse to push back boats carrying refugees and put restrictions on aid. When refugees do reach a neighbouring country, the risk of exploitation is high. ‘The ASEAN Way’ Undermining Intergovernmental Support for Myanmar Since the country’s reversion to a military dictatorship a little more than a year ago, the people of Myanmar have little faith in the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) to tackle the junta’s ongoing atrocities. The organization’s principle of non-interference in the “internal affairs” of its eleven members means that regional instability from deteriorating democracies, human rights abuses, and ineffective rule of law has only heightened in the face of ASEAN’s lack of concrete actions in response to Myanmar’s dual socio-political crises. When ASEAN leaders met on 24th April 2021 in a special summit on Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing’s invitation emphasized the lack of any National Unity Government (NUG) – Myanmar’s elected civilian government – involvement during the proceedings. The “Five Points of Consensus” agreement on facilitating a peaceful solution to the nation’s crisis contradicted ASEAN’s repeated failure to condemn the coup and demand that Min Aung Hlaing return power to the NUG. “The ASEAN way” has historically diminished the bloc’s authentic effort in helping Myanmar. More than 170,000 Rohingya refugees were trafficked to Thailand and Malaysia between 2012-15 while neighbouring countries turned a blind eye, and ASEAN’s impunity towards the violations in Myanmar was re-established during the junta-instigated genocide of the Rohingya in Rakhine State in 2016-17. It is unsurprising, then, that the Tatmadaw counted on the bloc’s “acquiescence in legitimizing the putsch” in 2021 to carry their agendas. Despite being Myanmar's closest neighbour, Thailand has had a “disappointingly weak” stance on the coup due to its similarities with the political stances of the Tatmadaw. With an accelerating refugee crisis that would be felt across Southeast Asia for a long time, Min Aung Hlaing’s October 2021 block in attending key ASEAN summits has not been enough of a response when Myanmar is yet to be formally suspended from the bloc and other senior officials are still able to attend near-daily ministerial meetings. One-fifth of Myanmar’s population (14 million people) requires life-saving humanitarian assistance, yet ASEAN has only delivered aid in terms of COVID-19. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore’s push for ASEAN to do more for Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis and to delegitimize the junta is thwarted by the regional bloc’s own backward policies, especially when Cambodia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste remain the only Southeast Asian countries to accept the United Nations’ 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Beyond Southeast Asia: International Responses to Myanmar After a 2018 UN report accused Myanmar’s military of carrying out mass killings and rapes with “genocidal intent” (which Myanmar and San Suu Kyi have long denied), the International Court of Justice case by The Gambia – a small Muslim-majority nation in West Africa – came to fruition in January 2020. The case called for emergency measures to be taken against the Tatmadaw to protect the Rohingya from persecution and death. Yet, the ongoing crises in the country are undeniably rooted in international failures to hold the military junta and its leaders accountable for their atrocities: from the Rohingya genocide to the current dictatorship ruling Myanmar. The persisting climate of impunity permeating ASEAN’s policies has allowed the Tatmadaw to continue with ineffective opposition from the international stage. Thus, the 2019 lawsuit filed by The Gambia against Myanmar has seen Burmese authorities failing to comply with a set of four provisional measures offered by the ICJ. Following a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Myanmar military’s “systematic and widespread human rights violations and abuses, some of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”, Southeast Asian parliamentarians have urged ASEAN, who are already facing weakening credibility, to act quickly and immediately to alleviate the hardships of Myanmar’s people: for example, pushing Cambodia, the blocs’ current chair, to take concrete actions like banning other junta representatives from ASEAN official meetings until all political prisoners are freed, violence against Burmese civilians comes to an end, and democracy is restored. The European Union imposed a fourth round of sanctions on the junta in February 2022, as well as promised €65 million in aid to Myanmar, whilst the U.S., Canada, Norway, and South Korea have intensified their humanitarian efforts. The Tatmadaw’s need for legitimacy and “business as usual” status quo means a global arms embargo would effectively derail the junta’s military efforts. Although Brussels sanctioned the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a great source of revenue for the junta, Russia and China’s reluctance to increase sanctions as Myanmar’s top arms supplier and their veto powers render this course of action nearly impossible. Calls for ‘R2P’ Responsibility to Protect (R2P), an approach adopted by the UN in 2005, sought to end “the politics of indifference and inaction” that has long defined the international community’s inadequate reaction to atrocities like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. One of R2P’s three pillars states the international community’s moral responsibility to protect people from mass atrocities when the state is either unwilling to do so, or they are the perpetrator themselves. Although criticized as a Western tool used by UN policymakers to justify using force or undermining the sovereignty of another state, grassroots movements and individuals in Myanmar acknowledge the importance of a global response to their crises. Being neither an independent coalition nor agency, the “principle of R2P will only ever be as effective as practitioners make it”. ASEAN states and countries beyond the regional bloc must, therefore, increase their sanctions, arms embargoes, accountability for crimes, and humanitarian efforts by preventing refoulement and border rejections, and providing refugees with temporary legal status for employment, education, and health care. It is also paramount that all parties condemn the junta as illegitimate power holders, recognizing instead the National Unity Government of Myanmar as the lawful representatives of their country. Editors: Chris F.C., Evie F., Blenda Y., Rachel C., Amshu V., Uzayer M., Rano B. This article was originally written in March 2022 Image Credit: Maung Sun - Wikimedia Commons

From the Current Events Editorial Staff: Chris Fong Chew, Lillian Han, Leila Wickliffe, Jiaying Zhang On the morning of Sunday, February 13th, 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed to death inside her Lower Manhattan apartment in Chinatown by a man who followed her into the building. Surveillance video showed Lee being trailed into her building on Chrystie Street by a man later identified by police as Assamad Nash, 25, who catches the door and follows her inside. Neighbors called the police a short period later when they heard screaming from her apartment. When police arrived at the scene, Nash had tried to flee down a fire escape and eventually barricaded himself inside her apartment; Lee was found dead with 40 stab wounds. Lee was a Rutgers University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Art History, a Senior Creative Producer at an online platform for digital music called Splice, and worked on many photo and video campaigns. She did not have any connection with Nash prior to the attack. Nash was taken into custody and found to have a history of misdemeanor arrests dating to 2015 in New Jersey and New York, including assault, burglary, and drug possession. In January, he was charged with criminal mischief and unlawful escape but was released under supervision. Many believe that, given his history of arrests, he should not have been allowed on the streets. Lee is just one of the most recent people of Asian descent to be killed or injured in random, unprovoked attacks in New York City. However, police have yet to call this killing a hate crime. This incident happened just weeks after another woman of Asian descent, Michelle Alyssa Go, was killed by a man who pushed her in front of an oncoming subway train in New York City. The suspect was identified as 61-year-old Martial Simon, who was unhoused and charged with second-degree murder. He too has an extensive criminal history and was on parole. These attacks have left Asian American communities across the country feeling defenseless. Asian American women, in particular, are targeted. Michelle Go’s death was never investigated as a hate crime, but authorities are still investigating whether or not Christina Lee’s murder was racially motivated. But to some Asian American women, what authorities call it doesn’t matter. Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition formed to track and respond to reports of hate, violence, and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, reported that national trends show that women make up 62% of all reported hate incidents. These murders link to a wider narrative of placing blame on East and Southeast Asians for the COVID-19 pandemic, in which scapegoating solely based on appearance has provoked hate crimes as insidious as racial generalizations and as brutal as full-blown escalations into violence. Indeed, the six Asian women that died in the Atlanta spa shootings of March 2021 is a stark example of this—a culmination of months of heightened Sinophobic hysteria in which anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. spiked by 150%. The Atlanta spa shootings, which occurred almost a year ago, brought Asian women in the United States to the forefront. Between racism and hypersexualization, Asian American women are disproportionately attacked, largely due to archaic stereotypes that they are submissive and easier to take advantage of since they won’t fight back. Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said, “There is a big difference between how white women are treated versus how people of color are, even in terms of believing our stories.” However, one must not see the pandemic-fuelled scapegoating as an isolated wave of anti-Asian racism. The pandemic has stirred and inflamed existing discrimination, not created it. The U.S. has had a ‘long, ugly history’ of sinophobia and anti-Asian initiatives; exclusions of Chinese immigrants in American civil society occurred almost as soon as people of Asian descent set foot in the U.S., such as with People v. Hall of 1854 that made their court testimonies negligent, or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned Chinese immigration for more than 60 years. Violence against the Asian community has a long history dating to the Chinese massacre of 1871 and the Rock Springs massacre of 1885. Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a 361% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. since December 2020, a staggering increase. These two recent attacks exist as a haunting reminder that the need for the Stop AAPI Hate movement is not over. Though brutality against Asian American communities predates the pandemic, people are only just beginning to pay attention. However, Choimorrow recalls situations when bystanders would watch as attackers yelled racial slurs at her. “People just stand there and watch what’s happening. It’s this sense of, ‘Wow, we really are alone,’” she said. Choimorrow expressed that only recently there seems to be an increased interest addressing hate against the Asian community. A vigil was held for Lee outside of her apartment. The community united and mourned over her loss. Mary Wang, an organizer of the vigil, reflected on the incidents, “Should we be fearful every time we take a subway or every time we get on the street?” Go and Lee’s deaths have left the Asian community wondering: “what’s next?” Since Lee’s death occurred in her home, Asian American women feel that their safe spaces within the city are shrinking and this has left them reeling. Jonathan Chang, a designer and artist based in L.A. who created the infamous social media portrait of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai American man after he died from an attack has gone on to draw several portraits of Asian American victims of violence whose stories he believed needed to be amplified. “I think a lot of us put ourselves in her shoes. I know in a way Michelle Go was like all of us,” Chang said in response to Go’s death. These stories of hate impact the Asian American community as a whole and leave many wondering if they could be the next victim. We see ourselves in these victims, and that only fuels the fear many of us feel. As a community, we are left feeling defenseless and invisible. Attacks like these are never isolated experiences, they can happen to anyone. Asian Americans should not feel unsafe in their homes and communities. Victims of hate can not be ignored any longer. Protecting Asian women and Asian lives is paramount to preventing unprovoked attacks like these from happening again. In response to the crimes, there have been several calls for addressing the crisis from activists to politicians, and community members alike. The murders of Lee and Go both fit an unfortunately common pattern that has risen since the pandemic–a “seemingly” unprovoked attack perpetrated by an unhoused individual suffering from mental illness and not provided adequate support or assistance. The rise in attacks committed by homeless people speaks toward the systemic issue of the US’s refusal to address the moral obligation as a nation to provide basic services that cater to low-income people. The pandemic and the political gridlock in the world has also brought many challenges on the mental health of the already vulnerable homeless population. Many activists are calling to address the mental health crisis in the city, citing that the justice system has already failed many of the victims of these attacks. Many jurisdictions fail to meet the needs of people with behavioral health conditions. Both perpetrators in the case of Lee and Go had cycled through the criminal justice system and were eventually let out again and again without adequate resources or rehabilitation to re-enter society. This highlights the need for state and local leaders to support coordination efforts between the justice and behavioral health systems. Through the implementation of comprehensive crisis response strategies and investment in community resources, we can ensure that people experiencing behavioral health crises are better served. This in turn will lead them to have less contact with the justice system while simultaneously increasing public safety. Meanwhile, a community is left in shock. Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State Assembly stated: “That’s exactly why it hurts so much, and also hits so close to home. The community is feeling a lot of the same things. There’s so many people who have just told me: They’re so afraid. They’re afraid for their sisters, they’re afraid for their grandparents, they’re afraid for their daughters.” Niou continues, “We don’t get resources, we don’t get help. Instead, people think, almost like, we deserve it…The community feels all these things at once, there’s the layers of it, the history of it, and then the exhaustion of constantly having to beg for our own existence.” In the past several weeks, vigils were held for both Go and Lee, and speeches by politicians and community members were made. Flowers were also left at the sites of where these heinous attacks occured. Still, the somber memorials weren’t free from controversy as the New York Post reported that a memorial outside Christina Yuna Lee’s apartment was vandalized overnight where candles were smashed, and a sign stating “Stop Asian Hate” torn. Politicians in California recently announced a bill to “curb anti-Asian attacks against women, vulnerable groups.” The proposed legislation hopes to “frame street discrimination and harassment as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one.” The laws will require the state’s 10 largest transit districts to study the types of harassment that commuters experience, and develop data-driven initiatives to promote safer ridership. However, such initiatives are yet to be implemented in California or or even proposed in other cities and states. The murders of Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee happened at a time when the Asian American community was already struggling to survive amidst the pandemic, racial scapegoating, and increased levels of harassment and violence. It also shows how Go and Lee’s murders are steeped in a long history of discrimination, racial scapegoating, and fetishization in the U.S. coupled with systemic failures to properly support the unhoused population from providing basic essentials, to adequate rehabilitation, and mental health services to help prevent individuals becoming violent in the first place. The city, state, and federal government needs to come together to address this growing crisis. Unhoused communities need support and pathways to reenter society, and not cycle through a punitive system that locks them up and then releases them without actually helping them. It is unacceptable that these occurrences of harassment and violence have become a norm. The Asian community in the U.S. needs support in addressing violence and hate. The solution to this crisis must be multi pronged in addressing lack of support for unhoused individuals, and those suffering from mental illness, to reclassify hate crimes to better encompass the scope in which these events occur. When working to build solidarity within the Asian community and other POC communities, it is crucial for grassroots organizations to work together. The attacks of Go and Lee are yet another instance of systemic racism in the US that blames the country’s problems on POC. Edited by: Amshu V., Rachel C., Blenda Y., Vishal P., Amirah A.