Today's story for @seattletimes.com: "Local journalist and author Ken Mochizuki believed that we could only paint a complete picture of our communities if we told our own stories with honesty and courage." @aajaofficial.bsky.social

Please read/consider signing @wakasamemorial.bsky.social's open letter calling for the protection/preservation of the most significant artifact discovered in the WWII Japanese American concentration camps, the Wakasa memorial stone, and its site: t.ly/jh2dE.

I wrote about it here: t.ly/DbxB5

On Shima, from a shima: Flash reviews of sho yamagushiku’s simmering spiral of decolonial Okinawan diasporic visual poetry
By Mira Shimabukuro

iexaminer.org/on-shima-fro...

In this corner of the internet, hope and optimism abounds so here is your weekly round up of good things you may or may not have heard about.

A thread/

Thousands out in NYC today to demand that DOGE… STOP THE CUTS!

Columbia, for its very soul, needs to tell them, f*ck you and your 400 mill. Then they’d need to withdraw a chunk of their endowment, cut athletics, cut admin, keep ICE off campus, & run itself independently of this fascistic regime. Seems obvious. So why comply? Maybe because they’re complicit.

Musk views empathy as a “bug” that threatens his political agenda. This framing is instructive.

This Day of Remembrance at Chiyo's Garden in Seattle felt different from all those previous. At the first DOR we created here in 1978, we were 2,000 Nikkei strong in remembering the camps and standing for redress with our families. 1/

I wrote about managing overwhelm during these times and about practices that can help us regulate our emotions on our own and in our organizing groups.

Tsuru for Solidarity had been working with the Pike Place Market on a Day of Remembrance event where they could apologize for kicking out the 70% of their workers who were Nikkei in 1942, while also committing to protect their vendors today. They informed us on Friday that they were cancelling on us

If you haven't yet read JVL's piece from yesterday about why Trump would want to fire the archivist of the United States, who heads the National Archives and Records Administration, you should, especially now that it's actually happened.
www.thebulwark.com/p/the-story-...

I went to post about the National Japanese American Memorial in D.C., which is beautiful but usually missed by tourists. It is a deeply staggering admission of guilt and a warning to future Americans. I went to link to the inscriptions and-

Well, they took the site down. www.nps.gov/places/japan...

🚨BREAKING🚨

Leonard Peltier Granted Executive Clemency

After 50 years of unjust incarceration and the tireless efforts of intergenerational grassroots organizing and advocacy, our elder and relative Leonard Peltier has been granted executive clemency.

A reminder that just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right.

Friends, the Asian American Feminist Collective just launched their community survey ASIAN AMERICAN FEMINISM IN 2025 AND BEYOND, & we're asking you to help participate, circulate, and share with your networks! ❤️‍🔥
bit.ly/aafc2025

And there it fucking is.

I just want to add to this that if Asian Americans somehow think we’ll be exempt — the US is arguably in a Cold War with China. It wouldn’t take much for this next administration to decide that’s rationale enough.