OPINION / U.S.A.
November 21, 2016
What all new and Americans need
Chrysanthemum Emperor’s ferocious
army into unconditional surrender. While
keeping his dignity intact.
They were regular Joes fighting for
American ideals, and our liberty. Yanks,
we called them. They treated our wounded
women with the gentle manners their
moms taught them. They calmed our kids
with thick Hershey bars. They built us a
sturdy schoolhouse. Then a playground,
out of construction leftovers. That done,
they quietly went home to their families.
Today, I’m an activist lawyer. For our
next months, community mechanicos like
me will be explaining to families living
here, and to families in our roughly 70
sending countries, what on earth’s up with
America. Making it upbeat. And smart,
like autumn rain on Subaru hoods and
Volvo wagons.
To do that we need to hear our new
president and new congress say they’re up
to it too. We need leaders as discerning and
deliberate as those Bronx, San Diego, and
Badland boys who sent us dreaming not so
long ago. American dreaming.
Do that and we’ll show up early and
leave late every single workday. Saturdays
we’ll shop and shop so our kids can dress
super, to show respect for our dear
teachers. From our rather grim parts of
Portland we’ll engage our city’s institu-
tions of education, commerce, and law
enforcement, with ridiculous optimism.
We’ll allow no erosive cynicism.
That done, at no later than 10:00pm, our
households will settle down, to dream up
some more. Alhamdulillaah.
w
The Asian Reporter’s
Expanding American Lexicon
(Because a robust patois of shared
languages serves our cosmopolitan city.)
Okay. Campaign 2016 is over. Time to
get our robust republic back to work, in a
world of hurt. And New Americans know
exactly what kind of dreams are due for
those settled and for those resettling.
For as long as I can remember, our
elders have been talking about slim
soldierboys named Smitty and Red and
Dakota, earnest guapos who smacked the
70 sending countries: Reference to the reality
that in our shared city today, newcomers no
longer need suffer the total break between how
we are here and how we are in our homelands. A
thriving economy depends on Portlanders
understanding how our precious planet is a now
circulating system of people, products, and ideas.
And that this is very cool.
140 centuries: Reverential reference to how
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
Dreaming after all
that campaigning
A
nother season of national theater
is over. Outside our kitchen win-
dow, an Oregon November rain is
drumming jazzy blues on orange maple
and yellowing elm. A presidential election
cycle finishing and another summer
ending always leave me at once comforted
and anxious.
I’m at our kitchen table. Morning
coffee’s steaming my cheeks and I’m
indulging in weeks of morning papers,
neglected except for those intoxicating
campaign stories that’ve captured our
limited attention spans this last month.
Here’s a report about Syria’s air force
crushing 11 Aleppo families just before
dinnertime. Here’s one about 3.5 million
Nigerian elders and babies stubborn
enough to survive Boko Haram warlords,
now facing starvation in refugee hovels. A
monster sob rises inside me.
Here’s an editorial about Russian
President Putin having a lot to gain and no
love to lose by projecting brazen old-school
power into several regions, including
cyberspace. Here’s one about the arrest of
10 businessmen after 10 years of
brutalizing and selling Mexican girls and
women across national and state borders. I
dash to our kitchen counter to tear off a
Brawny, to mop up my face, before my wife
comes down.
Our family is made of turmoil like that.
Likewise for most of Portland’s 1-in-5
foreign-borns. All of us ache in all those
places our hearts and bones got broken.
To be clear — because clarity is essential
during transitions both settled and New
Americans are making now — it’s not the
WWF-style body slamming of robust
democracy that makes us newcomers so
blue. Tidak aduh’illaah (OMG no). Not at
all. We love the drama, those puffy heroes
and campy villains. It’s not the approach of
another wet Oregon winter. Indeed, it is
because of our blessed rain, our swollen
Rivers Willamette and Columbia, and the
silty shores stewarded by 140 centuries of
families living and loving here, that we
thrive here.
Tidak djiran djiran manis — no, dear
neighbors — what floods our households is
the grief of that Arab dad, a working guy
like me, arriving for dinner where his
home used to be. What overwhelms me is
that photo of him digging, fingers bleeding,
through concrete chunks. Digging for his
pretty wife. Digging for their buried
babies.
What paralyzes New Americans — in a
nation now as jazzed with newcomers as
we were in the early 1900s — is Mexican
wives and daughters disappeared on their
way to market or to school.
My Turn: What we can do
After poll failure, expert makes
good on promise to eat bug
Continued from page 6
Hardesty believes most people want to
do better, but they are still learning about
and unlearning the racism and bigotry
they were brought up with and what
they’ve seen and experienced. There will
be plenty of opportunities to practice this,
as there have been many instances after
the 2016 election of people who have
become what Hardesty calls “emboldened”
to direct their racism at people of color,
Muslims, and members of the LGBTQ
community.
For me, it’s more important than ever to
unify with other marginalized groups and
to have honest conversations with those
who have different views. It’s going to be a
struggle, as it always is when change is at
stake. Our country is far from perfect, but I
still believe America can be a hate-free
place where people are able to find equality
and opportunity.
q
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
For our next months,
community mechanicos like
me will be explaining to
families living here, and to
families in our roughly 70
sending countries, what on
earth’s up with America.
Making it upbeat.
long native families have been living and loving
here. And how much we owe them for these
generous river matriarchs and our rich soil.
Alhamdulillaah (From Arabic, also see:
Hebrew halelluyah): All our gratitude to God. An
expression of our humbled place in an often
un-understandable but blessed universe.
Chrysanthemum Emperor: Reference to
Imperial Japan’s Showa Emperor. During his
reign, Japan invaded, occupied, and exploited
many European colonies including our
homeland, the Nederland Oost Indië (later, the
Republic of Indonesia).
Djiran djiran (Bahasa Indonesia): Neighbors.
To make a noun into a plural, just repeat it.
Bahasa is Indonesia’s national language, in an
energetic nation of 700 languages.
Guapo (Spanish, Pilipino, and Indo patois):
Handsome guy.
Hearts and bones got broken: Human
migration means discontinuities, often traumatic.
Our present generation of newcomers is trying to
deal upfront with these losses. Earlier genera-
tions simply could not, with enduring public
health consequences for families, communities,
indeed for our American nation.
Portland’s 1-in-5 foreign-borns: Based on
aggregated data from Portland’s several school
districts. Public-policy shifts are necessary for
immigrant integration by design, rather than by
default to very bad historical habits.
WWF style: Reference to the World
Wrestling Federation, the sporting theater our
pop’s boys grew up watching. My favs: The
Iron Sheik (Persian); Jimmy Snuka (Hawaiian);
and of course The Rock (Samoan Dwayne
Johnson).
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — A Princeton
University polling expert who said he
would eat a bug if Donald Trump got more
than 240 electoral votes followed through
on his promise.
Sam Wang, of the Princeton Election
Consortium, made good on his Twitter
word on CNN.
He ate from a can of gourmet-style
crickets and added in some honey.
He said John the Baptist ate locusts and
honey in the wilderness, and he considers
himself to be in the wilderness as well.
Wang said on the consortium’s website
that polls failed, but that his analysis
“amplified” that failure. He apologized for
“underestimating the possibility” of
Trump winning.
Wang is a data scientist and
neuroscientist at Princeton.
Japan rubber-mask
makers happy to face
a Trump presidency
Continued from page 16
employee hand-paints details such as blue
eyes for a life-like resemblance.
Yagihara said most customers wear the
masks for year-end parties and other
social gatherings. They cost 2,400 yen
($22) each and are available in Japan at
toy and retail stores and on internet
shopping sites.
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