OPINION / U.S.A.
January 6, 2020
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
There’s a tall obelisk
marking the end of
the nascent Philippine
nation’s 1898 Declaration
of Independence.
Our America did that.
n Polo
Love hurts
At Chapman Square, there is a life-size bronze statue
of a resettling family. (AR Photo/Polo)
Our parks and our shared histories
I
love Portland, jah tentu. Sure I do.
And surely too, loving this place is
new for Portlanders like me. What I
mean is, while I’ve worked in our
nationally envied city since 1984, loving
this place didn’t figure into living here
until the inspiring administration of
mayor Tom Potter, coincident with the
heady presidency of Barack Hussein
Obama.
American dreamers love guapos like
these. They take your breath away — the
promise of love and of course, the loss of it.
So when that blue collar mayor and that
dignified president left us, I was left
breathless. I’m not complaining, mind you.
I’m just saying: Love hurts.
I first heard this saying soon after our
family fled deadly political violence in our
beloved spice island homeland, Indonesia.
“Love Hurts” by American country artists
The Everly Brothers was on our youngest
uncles Max and Wally’s cookie tin-sized
record player, up in their little attic
bedroom of our grandpa’s packed
household in the chilly Netherlands.
Love is like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain
Love hurts
Oh, oh, love hurts.
Yeah, kind of crybaby stuff. Pero let me
set out some context for how much this
concept matters, here and now.
We began our community law practice
around the back tables of N.E. Sandy’s Yen
Ha Café, back in 1984. Also back there and
back then, the esteemed Dr. Trí and
hilarious Dr. Kiet, both Republic of South
Vietnam army battle surgeons, were
peering down refugee elders’ throats and
poking around buddha-belly babies’ tum-
mies. We’ve since been blending Anglo-
American law with the cumulative
boatloads of social and spiritual capital
banked by Portland’s South and Southeast
Asian, East and North African, Middle
Eastern, Pacific and Caribbean islander,
Russian- and Spanish-speaking commu-
nities’ elders, and savvy younger activists.
A vigorous mix we make. Like America’s
always made and remade.
We’re those crews of stubborn commu-
nity mechanics working the destructive
and the instructive intersections where
Portland’s 70 ambitious ethnic streams
and our mainstream’s staid institutions
daily meet. We’ve done this through six
River City mayors, five U.S. presidents,
and nine ugly American wars against
peoples just like ours, in places just like
Portland. A world of hurt lives in our
shared city. And overwhelming joy too.
Love’s this way.
Shared history lives here
Each workweek of every next decade,
our crew of community builders crossed
downtown Portland’s Chapman Square or
adjacent
Lownsdale
Square.
Like
everyone hurrying to City Hall, our federal
and our Multnomah County courts, must.
Enduring monuments stand in our parks.
Each expresses Anglo-America’s historical
relationships with our ethnic minority
communities’ ancestors and our elders.
And because traditional peoples live our
histories, our children and our grandkids
Age limit now 21 across U.S. for
cigarettes, tobacco products
By Linda A. Johnson
The Associated Press
nyone under age 21
can
no
longer
legally
buy
cigarettes, cigars, or any
other tobacco products in
the U.S.
The new law enacted in
December by congress also
applies
to
electronic
cigarettes
and
vaping
products that heat a liquid
containing nicotine.
The provision raising the
legal limit from 18 to 21
nationwide was in a
massive spending bill
passed by congress and
signed by the president on
December 20. About one-
third of states already had
their own laws restricting
tobacco sales to people 21
and older.
“This is a major step in
protecting
the
next
generation of children from
becoming
addicted
to
tobacco products,” new
Food and Drug Admini-
stration (FDA) commis-
sioner Dr. Stephen Hahn
tweeted.
Usually, new legislation
doesn’t take effect right
away. The change simply
increased the age limit in
A
existing law, so it was able
to
go
into
effect
immediately, a spokesman
for the FDA said.
The agency has regu-
lated tobacco products
since 2009. It enforces the
law partly through spot
checks. Stores can be fined
or barred from selling
tobacco
for
repeat
violations.
Anti-smoking advocates
say the higher age limit
should make it more
difficult for young people
to get tobacco, parti-
cularly
high
school
students who had friends
or classmates over age 18
buy for them.
live inside these troubled realities too.
Our chit-chatting ends as we near them.
Those statues. Chins drop into chests. I
can’t breathe. I ache in all our kualarga
kualarga (our familias’) bruised and
broken places.
Chapman Square has a life-size bronze
of a resettling family. There’s a Conestoga
wagon wheel, a bearded dad, his brave boy.
There’s a mom holding tight her absent
daughter’s dolly. They have a Bible and
rifle. They’re so far from home, surely so
afraid of men like me and boys like ours.
Much like foreigners settling our
homelands’ rich riversides and generous
valleys, must’ve feared us.
New Americans understand them.
We’ve survived this. Our elders say those
settlers’ ferocious armies made of their
own men and boys — eliminating our
leaders, levelling our cities, terrifying our
families — did not secure peace. And could
not secure law or order. Not ever, not
anywhere.
Lownsdale Square is anchored by a
limestone memorial for 16 Oregon sons
who didn’t return to their anxious families
after warring on Filipinos. There’s a tall
obelisk marking the end of the nascent
Philippine nation’s 1898 Declaration of
Independence. Our America did that.
Maybe 200,000, maybe one million baby
girls, handsome dads, elegant grandmas
died in their neighborhoods during that
U.S. military mission — Just how many no
one can say, though any Pinay auntie, back
there or right here will softly tell you about
entire towns mass murdered. Places just
Millennial Money: Six empowering money moves
By Kelsey Sheehy
NerdWallet
R
aise your hand if you feel confident about your
finances. Not feeling it? That’s OK.
Perhaps you’re among the 60% of Americans
living paycheck to paycheck, or one of the 81.6 million
paying off student loan debt.
It’s hard to feel confident when your loan balance
doesn’t seem to budge and you’re fishing through the
couch cushions for spare change to put gas in your car.
But you can gain some control over your finances, bit by
bit, until that confidence comes. These six empowering
money moves will help you build momentum with small
gains.
1. Track your spending for one month
Knowledge is power when it comes to finances. Still,
most people don’t know exactly where their money goes.
Tracking your spending for one month will help you
identify habits and spot excess expenses, says Colin
Walsh, CEO of Varo, an online bank.
“By keeping track of each and every purchase you make,
you can more easily start to see how small purchases here
Department of Consumer & Business Services
Division of Financial Regulation
We are here to help with your
financial services questions
Have questions about a state chartered bank, looking for resources to get out of debit, or
want to learn more about a financial services company or professional? We have a dedicated
team of consumer advocates who can help free of charge. Call at 866-814-9710 (toll free).
Additional resources
• File a complaint
like Portland. People on their way to work,
just like us.
That’s a lot of history living here and
now. Same love, same love lost.
Our elders say our ancestors told and
told them that a mother sorrowing her
soldierboy lost across a deep gray sea is
exactly like another amala’s sorrow over
her smart schoolgirl lost to a firefight for a
downtown intersection. Love lost is indis-
tinguishable, inarguable, inconsolable.
Our elegant aunties say every determined
dad’s dread — a father migrating his
family from 19th-century St. Louis, a papa
slipping his kids out of gangland
Guatemala, or pulling us out from under
collapsed Aleppo — is exactly the same
dread. The same anguish gets etched by
the same humiliation into every good
man’s achy bones. Here, history is coded.
Accordingly from here, his children and
their children act out our shared present
in our shared komunita, in our shared
country and shared future. We are this
love and love lost. Punto.
About our downtown parks, let’s walk
them, Native and settled and New
Americans together. Let’s go as we begin
another uneasy New Year. Before another
exhausting workweek squanders the
enormous institutional wealth and the
irrepressible cultural capital our blending
city’s main and ethnic streams bring to
this place. This blessed confluence of
rivers Willamette and Columbia and our
deep blue sea.
Parks are meant for laughing and
quarrelling and crying. Love is too.
Insh’allaah.
• Check a license
• Foreclosure help and resources
Call at 888-877-4894 (toll free)
For more information, contact the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation
at (503) 947-7980, or visit our website at dfr.oregon.gov.
dfr.oregon.gov
and there add up,” Walsh says.
Once you know where your money is going, you can
make informed decisions about where you want it to go,
giving you a sense of purpose with your spending. You
might even decide to keep on tracking.
2. Switch to a high-yield savings account
If you’re already doing the hard work of saving, why not
make money on your money?
Most savings accounts earn minimal interest — the
average annual percentage yield (APY) is just 0.09% —
but several offer close to 2% interest.
Here’s the difference that can make: If you have $1,000
in a savings account with an APY of 0.09%, you’ll earn a
measly $4.51 over five years. In a 2% APY account, that
same $1,000 would earn about $105.
3. Increase your credit score
Continued on page 8
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