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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 2018)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER October 1, 2018 Volume 28 Number 19 October 1, 2018 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, Suite 2D, 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 2018. 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, Suite 2D, 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): q Half year: $14 q Full year: $24 q Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): q Half year: $24 q Full year: $40 q Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): q Half year: $40 q Full year: $75 q Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): q Half year: $100 q Full year: $180 q 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, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 q q q 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, Suite 2D, 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. Why we can’t fix nothing ah tentu (yup for sure, in Indo patois) next Saturday early I’m borrowing my best bud Alberto’s cherry 1967 GMC pickup. And I’m hauling a ton of orange Craftsman power tools, Stanley socket sets, even that vintage pig-iron hand auger our dear Pop grabbed for some odd reason just before we sprinted for our lives off our beloved Spice Islands — off to Ted’s Tool Shed they go. Way out on S.E. Powell. Of course, me telling you about next weekend’s purge is just a literary trick to seduce your peepers into sticking to my essay. And sure, Why we can’t fix nothing is an attention-grabber. A concession to our shrill times. Overstated improper English is normal now. Shameless starts aside, I promise some substance at this essay’s core. Important stuff. Actually, a simple proposition that took me 50 sweaty years to work into the 1,200 words that follow. Five decades, from our just-arrived refugee family’s 1968 heartbreaks over the murders of Bobby Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all the way to mayor Tom Potter’s 2008 invitation to Portland’s 70 newcomer communities to participate in local democracy. Right up to last week. And that proposition is: We cannot fix the unjust and unkind societal machines we’ve built, they daily disable us all. By “we” I mean my generation of stubborn community mecanicos. By “disable us all” I mean both the dehumanization of folks on top, the kind leaving no bruises. And the distortion of our families below. We are not up to fixing our damaging institutions. Not us refugees from colonialism. Not our tried- and-true American minority leaders. Not our mainstream’s elected officials with their armies of 8-to-5 public administrators. Surely not Oregon’s staid captains of finance, manufacture, or trade. Not now, not here, on our shared northwest corner of this grand continent. Scaling from the macro to me and you By leading these institutions, some Americans make billions. By carefully conforming, most of us make middle class. By just complying, many communities avoid social and economic isolation. The “others,” those startling lot of us who cannot smooth in — America shoots dead or locks tight or deports. We all play our part. My complicity level allows me to buy weekly groceries. New Seasons. To J We agreed to a division of labor and love that relieved Anglo America of its responsibility to make room, to make ideal, to make peace. Policy leaders held on to their intermittent appearances to make nice. pay monthly rent. Westside. To dress well our pretty kids, every next school year. Our institutions overwhelm. Standing up against one is like standing on any weekday morning MAX track. Accordingly, my 2018 goals are more modest. My 50th year as an earnest participant in our American experiment will amount to no more than a sorting of my contribution to it all. My part, is all I can possibly know. And all I can manhandle. This accounting starts with evaluating what all newcomer communities do amazingly well, year after exhausting year. Everywhere. Which is adapt-adapt-adapt. My grandparents and parents conformed to four regimes; inside my and my brothers’ lifetimes our family adjusted three more times. We are as tough and elegant as bamboo. This flexibility plus those knucklehead Craftsman and Stanley tools I’m trucking to Ted’s Tool Shed next weekend, have made all of us happy and healthy. Al’hamdulillaah. Thank God. After adaptiveness, the second thing I do well is self-discipline. Our grandpa, our pop, and his four boys were all athletes. Even though South Salem High and I failed each other, sports got me into universities. Adrenaline is my performance- enhancing drug of choice. The fear hormone has fuelled my over-training for coaches, my over-producing on cannery and warehouse floors, my over-preparing for courts, legislatures, downtown boardrooms, Middle Continued on page 8 Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.