Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2015)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER June 1, 2015 Volume 25 Number 11 June 1, 2015 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2015. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n Polo Correspondence: The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): Half year: $14 Full year: $24 Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): Half year: $24 Full year: $40 Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): Half year: $40 Full year: $75 Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): Half year: $100 Full year: $180 Two years: $280 NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. Simply solid, Portland A River City expression of sorrow, and gratitude, for Nepal ortland is a complex place. Oftentimes, accountings of how each of us got here, and explanations of what we daily do to make our homes here — are so painful. Our personal, our familial and communal stories, are sometimes so conflictful. So irreconcilable. And so often open to a hundred irreconcilable interpretations. Endless arguments too. Take our shared history of the settlement of this auspicious place, this confluence of our two river matriarchs, just 60 urgent salmon miles from that grand clockwise sweep of Pacific peoples, products, and ideas that has enriched our interdependent continents and island nations longer, much longer than any grand elder’s memory. Indeed, according to the archeological record — that is, what’s etched into river rock and what’s left in human, bear, and fish bones — vigorous families have lived and loved here 140 centuries before the afternoon President Thomas Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery paddled into the metropolis of Celilo. U.S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark entered a congress of nations and a mix of politics and commerce as complex as any 19th-century capitol city. Ken Burns documentaries notwithstanding. An awful century followed Lewis and Clark’s reconnaissance, deeply wounding native nations and the nascent American nation alike. The attempted ethnocide, so dehumanized both oppressor and oppressed, so disabled both sides’ children and their children’s children, that today’s descendants from their excesses are still unable to feel or heal the wrong done. Done here. Two centuries of migrant resettlement followed. White families migrated east to west; Chinese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Punjabis, Japanese, and Koreans sailed west to east; ambitious Mexican and Southern Black families moved north. A century of wild mainstream mood swings followed each next ethnic stream’s arrival, terribly distorting both our muscular majority society and our vigorous minority communities. All of that, not so different from damming our Pacific Northwest rivers, and the damage done to our natural and human environments. Portland’s last half-century (along with estab- lishing our nationally envied ethos of ecological P A silence followed, during which Portlanders both settled and new, rich and poor, shared a world of sorrow and common cause. Bhutanese Oregonians had delivered a New Portland narrative. sustainability) has been defined by wounded families fleeing the ugly endgame of western imperialism in Asia, Oceana, and Africa; in Eastern Europe and our Arab world. Families escaping all that cruelty, then made their homes here. The port part of Portland. A quick look at the Mexican-, Hmong-, Samoan-, Somali-, Iraqi-, Viet Kieu-, Khmer-, Filipino-, and Palestinian-Portlander faces around our family’s Sunday kitchen table will affirm how grand our city is. How difficult too. Searching for a shared narrative Portland is a U.S. gateway city. As such, America’s past excesses and future promises reside right here. Right now. The present disparities between Portland’s neighborhoods and our schools are shocking. The task of reconciling into a single harmonious narra- tive, what each of us has to daily do to nurture and Continued on page 7 Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.