OPINION
September 21, 2015
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
Everyone knows how being
bad is easy, how doing
good is hard. Remember
RAD at Catholic Charities
of Oregon. Saturday,
November 14, 2015.
Do good. Make right.
n Polo
So you want to
Make a Difference?
Making Right is so much better
ou’ve heard it said — on packed
morning TriMets, in Starbucks’
snaking coffee lines, at Nel
Centro’s heavenly happy hour — “I just
want to make a difference.” Okay. So this
essay’s about that, about making a
difference. And more. It’s about making
better our shared achy little planet. Here
and now.
And sure, to be honest, I’m saying all
this because I’m suddenly old. I mean, our
wobbly world over, tired ricepickers about
my age begin bargaining with God over
what we’ve done well, balanced against
promises we’ve broken. Promises big and
little.
So okay, this essay’s about redemption,
to put it in old-school spiritual terms.
Putting it into a more urban hip way, this
essay is really about “Making Right.”
Making right how we live.
The thing is, if that grumpy gate-
keeping archangel were to credit-check me
next Tuesday night, on promises kept and
people betrayed — I’d have to argue: “Well
Sir, I did pretty good. I mean, if you
cal-cu-late my average score, over 40 years
of adult life. Right?”
“Redemption, mon cher,” he’d say, as
revered prophets everywhere have always
said, “is never-ever too late.”
We can Make Right, right now and right
here. And indeed, this explains why I spent
September 12, real early to way late, at
AILA’s annual Refugee Adjustment Day.
RAD, they call it. AILA, stands for
American
Immigration
Lawyers
Association.
Pero please, I implore you, say not a
word of this to those tough and tender Lao
sisters who organized that entire sweaty
Saturday effort. It’s best they not know my
motivation was more about my karmic
credit score than about those 400 or so
deeply wounded Rohingya, exhausted
Zomi and Karen, stubbornly resilient
Somalis, broken-hearted and broken-
boned Arabs and Central Africans, all
packed into Catholic Charities of Oregon’s
third and fourth floors. About me trying to
make right. By doing right.
Y
Making Right
Jah tentu (yes, of course), I’m improving
my score in prep for that day I breathe my
last. That final report card is so much more
important than those other scores that’ll
land you or me a preferred mortgage loan
or a low-interest Prius. Or not.
Which gets me to the real point of this
essay: That personal redemption is
actually about the same as our country’s
redemption. You and me making right,
adds up to America Making Right. Doing
good.
Our corner of this generous continent
needs some reflection on the excesses of
our past.
Our policy and opinion leaders have
scored high, have earned great respect
everywhere, for the awesome concrete,
glass, and steel infrastructural capital
they wisely banked; for the amazing
financial and technological assets they’ve
leveraged. River City’s robust mainstream
and our 70-or-so ethnic streams running
through here, are beneficiaries of all that.
But the past 40 years — take your pick,
mine or America’s — have also placed us in
some rather deep social and spiritual
deficits. Inside our last four decades, the
United States has warred on others 17
times. Seventeen. Our irresistible military
has crushed kids, parents, and grand-
parents where each studies, works, shops,
prays. Often setting off societal chaos and
mass migrations, causing more families
even more misery.
International migrants’ desperation fills
our evening news. Baby Aylan lying so
alone on that Turkish strand, hurts us all.
So bad. And global gateway cities respond
— San Franciscans give sanctuary;
Jordanians and Greeks give what little
they have to give; Germans give all of us
bold leadership. And two Saturdays ago,
Portlanders were doing it too. Doing good.
Making Right.
Doing good, on S.E. Powell
Here’s what happened, and if you’re like
me — looking to raise your humanitarian
credits — here’s what those ridiculously
optimistic Lao sisters are asking from us to
do again on November 14. Another sweaty
Saturday.
We could not process them all. Anxious
and exhausted refugees lined up an hour
before doors opened at Catholic Charities
of Oregon. They patiently packed side-
walks at the corner of S.E. 28th and
Powell. Word quickly spread that those
smart-alecky Lao ladies and American
lawyers were telling refugee neighbors to
fill Safeway shopping bags with every
important-looking paper from every
kitchen drawer, and to haul it all to
Catholic Charities. To fix everyone’s U.S.
immigration status. To fix it, for free.
Quick parenthetical: “Refugee” means
your country’s leaders persecuted you due
to your ethnicity, race, or beliefs.
Rwandans for their tribe. Russians for
their Christianity. Rohingya for their
Islam. Iraqis for their belief in America.
Refugees are “paroled” into the U.S.
“Parole” means the U.S. admits you, but if
you mess up, you’re shipped out. A year of
good parole makes you eligible to apply for
“Permanent Resident Alien” status. If your
application’s accepted, all kinds of
American rights will protect you and those
you love. And if you continue behaving well
for another five years, you become eligible
to apply for U.S. citizenship. If your
application’s approved, you’re granted
those privileges people everywhere,
always dream of.
“Fix it for free” means those lovely Lao
ladies convinced local lawyers, paralegals,
Lewis & Clark law students; FBI and
Portland Police officers, Multnomah
County and State of Oregon staffers; Arab
and Persian, African and Asian,
community elders and civic activists to
raise their good-guy scores, for free. Over
50 volunteers gave their love and their
time.
“Free” also means official fee waivers
will be filed for all our bewildered
asylum-seeking families. Free means
thousands and thousands of hard-earned
low-wage Portland dollars — otherwise
laid down to properly document these
proud parents, elegant elders, and their
hundreds of pretty babies — go instead to
Attorney Chanpone Sinlapasai-Okamura (foreground)
gestures to 50 civic activists during Refugee Adjust-
ment Day, also known as RAD, an event sponsored
by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
good you’ve done …
Remember RAD at Catholic Charities of
Oregon. Saturday, November 14, 2015. Do
good. Make right.
To learn more, or to volunteer, please
contact Chanpone Sinlapasai-Okamura or Toc
Soneoulay-Gillespie, whose information is listed
below, under “tough and tender Lao sisters.”
w
The Asian Reporter’s
Expanding American Lexicon
rent, groceries, and nice clothes to show
proper respect to our kids’ teachers this
time of year.
So we try some more
This is not to say that our RAD (Refugee
Adjustment Day) was pain-free. Not at all.
Our sheer volume of worried parents and
grandparents, of over-worked volunteer
childcare providers and energetic kids, of
gasping elevators and air conditioners,
finally tripped the big fuse box. Killed the
lights and the A.C. Compassion is costly.
And all those good people who humbly
made our RAD Saturday possible — both
settled Portlanders and those Portlanders
whose hearts and bones ached in all the
places broken by our own refugee journeys
here — cried and laughed and cried some
more.
Then, the entire house hushed as
Catholic Charities executive director Dr.
Richard Birkel took the mic to make an
inevitable announcement. Iraqi civic
activist Ahmed Al Zubaidi tightened his
python arm grip on me. With the kindness
that comes from having done very hard
things, with the moral authority that
comes from age and stewardship of the
Catholic church’s good work, Dr. Birkel
said he was sorry that we could not keep
our promise to every family packed in here,
now. Many must come back on November
14. For us to care for them. He said he was
grateful to all of us, for doing our very-very
best. Silence filled the place. Disappointed
families left the building, left this nice side
of town. Compassion hurts.
So okay, everyone knows how being bad
is easy, how doing good is hard. Making
Right the world of hurt we all share has
always, everywhere, required sacrifice
from each of us. And all that guarantees
raising your good-person profile. Your
karmic credit score. So when that grumpy
archangel raises his skeptical brow and
looks you straight in the eye, asking what
Mon cher (French): My dear. A small thank
you to Africa House manager and community
elder Djimet Dogo. French is one of four
languages he brought to RAD. Merci beaucoup,
mon frère.
Ricepickers (Attributed to our late, still much
loved, Uncle Max): Used here to mean “Asians,”
because back home, this U.S. Census Bureau
category has no cache. Khmer and Kareni and
Koreans don’t see each other as sharing a lot. Not
enough for a common identity grouping, like
“Asian.” Except, of course, around rice.
Ricelovers. Ricepickers.
Tough and tender Lao sisters: Chanpone
Sinlapasai-Okamura, attorney at law, president
of the board of directors of IRCO (Immigrant and
Refugee Community Organization), and Toc
Soneoulay-Gillespie, MSW, director of refugee
resettlement, Catholic Charities of Oregon. Let
them know you can help. Chanpone can be
contacted at <chanpone@m2io.com> or (503)
607-0444, and Toc can be contacted at
<tsoneoulay@catholiccharitiesoregon.org> or
(503) 231-4866.
Warring 17 times: Viet Nam, Cambodia,
Laos, Lebanon, Panama, Nicaragua, Granada,
Serbia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq
II, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria.
Worldwide misery: While it would be
overstatement to fault U.S. foreign policy for
failed states sending families fleeing for their
lives, or for regimes failing to provide jobs for
parents trying to love their children, it is arguably
true that unkind American commerce and brute
military power contribute to today’s unprece-
dented levels of forced human migrations. In any
case, blame is less meaningful than lending a
helping hand. Here and now.
q
My Turn: Musings on white privilege
Continued from page 6
go-to person for white people to talk about
race. They’re comfortable with me in that
role simply because they relate to me as a
white person. Sometimes as a test of my
race barometer, white people seek my
approval when they knowingly make a
racial comment or joke. It’s almost as if
they are children testing the boundaries of
what they can get away with.
Contrary to what some people might
think, I’m uncomfortable being part of an
all-white group. I feel less awkward when
I’m with a mixture of people of color.
Sometimes I get annoyed when nonwhite
people assume I’m white, but often I
casually mention my identity as part of
conversations. It can be tricky, but I’ve
learned different ways of revealing my
secret Asian woman self.
I often reflect on how much of what I’ve
accomplished in my career is because,
despite being a woman, I was afforded
certain opportunities because it was
assumed I was white. I question my
actions and reactions to the outside world.
I wonder about the part of me that is as
assertive as my pushy mom as well as the
part that has learned to expect a certain
kind of treatment because I’m mistaken
for a white woman. It also makes me
ponder how many more opportunities a
white man might be afforded. These are
not questions most mono-racial people
think about everyday, but for this biracial
Asian/white combo of a woman, it’s a way
of life.
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