By Huda Ahmed/510 Report

Jessica Fischer organized mysterious shapes made of plastic and metal, as well as spongy brightly-colored toys on the table and waited for her young audience at UC Berkeley’s International House to be seated. The dim yellow light bulbs gave the room a romantic glow. The whole room was soon packed with more than 45 international students from the University of California trying to figure out what these objects were and what the speaker would say.

Fischer a fair, skinny 25-year-old woman, is a masters candidate with the Department of Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, and she was about to lead a workshop about pleasure physiology and sex toys. The workshop’s goal was to let students understand their bodies and feel comfortable with them, and to be as comfortable talking about sex with members of the opposite gender as with their own.

Sex is very sensitive subject for some international students like Cheryl Lo, a 22-year-old undergrad in mass communications, who was staring at the workshop flyer: “It was a bit shocking when I saw it. I asked myself, ‘Do they talk about sex and orgasm publicly?” she said. “I‘m curious and I want to ask some questions. I’m from Hong Kong and in our culture; it is embarrassing to talk about sex in public.”

Fischer began her lecture by asking the students who had taken any biology classes to raise their hands – only one student did. “Okay, in this workshop, we will talk about the history of sex toys, the use of them and the physiology of pleasure to understand how these things stimulate our body,” she said.

She produced two cloth dolls, a man and a woman, with spongy genitals.  The students passed them from one to another, making fun of them and taking pictures; some were nervous and shy about touching the toys.

The lecture lasted for more than two hours; Fischer spoke about the earliest days of sex toys when they were used for medical therapy, not as entertainment objects, and about the 19^th Century doctors who tried to find a way to enhance or increase the sense of pleasure for women who could not get satisfaction from their partners.

Fischer is originally from Arizona, and works as an independent contractor for the Good Vibrations OSSE (Off-Site Sex Education) program. Good Vibrations is a retailer devoted to providing “access to sex-positive products,” according to their Web site. Fischer realized her ability to teach when she was very young, “I have always educated people around me. I used to give my friends condoms to help them have safe sex,” she said, “I came from conservative state which is different from California, so I did not know how it was going to be and if I would be able to talk about sex topics in public.” 

The students were curious and they kept asking questions, especially the males. For many of them, the lecture was helpful and informative.  “I learned about the human body, differences between women and men,” said one Middle Eastern student, who asked that her name not be used. In her home country, she said, “We are mostly introduced to the subject as biology without going into details. Due to the culture we did not discuss it—it is not a public issue, it is completely private and prohibited. You can talk about it with your same sex but, not with the other sex.”

The sex workshop was not the first one for Angela Chang, a senior chemistry major at UC Berkeley, “This is the third sex workshop I’ve attended.  I was so nervous in the first workshop because I was worried how people would judge me but I felt so comfortable about my body after that,” she said, “My family is originally from China but I was born here. At home, we definitely never talk about sex with me. The only way my parents wanted to teach me is when they handed me a stack of sex books about the change the body goes through and that is it.”

The lecture wrapped up with sex toys in different colors and shapes being passed around by the students, who found it a chance to make goofy remarks. One of the students put a vibrator toy on the floor to make it look like a worm. Fischer does not mind her audience to play with the toys. “It is no harm to throw jokes in here and there to break the sensitive barrier of the subject, as long it helps people to understand and have safe sex,” she said.

When I knocked on the door of an apartment building in East Oakland, a woman’s voice nervously asked who I was. The voice belonged to a 45-year-old woman who wishes to be identified only as S. Mohamad because she fears prosecution in her native Iraq; she is a former radiologist who came here as a refugee three months ago along with her husband and their three children. She hid behind the door because she was without a headscarf; Muslim women usually wear one to cover their hair when they are around anyone but family or other women.

When we met, she had just arrived home. Her brown hair, which had been under a scarf, was tousled. She immediately went to the kitchen and put food on the stove, then came into the living room and collapsed into a chair. She wiped the sweat off her warm face with both hands as though to erase the tiredness of the day and refresh herself. Then she put her hands in her lap as if to surrender to rest.  “Forgive me for being messy,” she said. “I have just arrived from a job workshop in San Francisco. I had to take two buses to get home because we can not afford the BART.”

Mohamad, her husband, and their three children left their home in Baghdad shortly after her brother-in-law was assassinated by insurgents. He was a well-known academic figure in Baghdad, and insurgents also targeted and killed funeral-goers. Mohammed’s extended family scattered and sought safety in other places.

Mohamad, her husband and children left everything behind and at first found refuge in Jordan. They lived in Amman for two and half years before applying to the United Nations refugee program to obtain legal papers and avoid deportation. They were accepted into the program and granted refuge in the United States. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a nonprofit group that works with the U.S. State Department to help refugees resettle in the United States, relocated Mohammad’s family to East Oakland because of its affordable rental houses.

The IRC, which is linked with the State Department, was founded in 1933 and is headquartered in New York.  The main task of the agency is to create a viable living situation for refugees. It is required to provide airport pick-up, locate furnished accommodations, help refugees apply for Social Security cards, enroll in schools and find health care, and advise them about immigration services.

There were 13,000 Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States in 2008, according to the State Department’s resettlement program, and the IRC says it expects that number to increase to 17,000 this year. The records do not break down the number of refugees in each state because the State Department stopped tracking them more than a decade ago. “I think they stopped tracking the refugees in the States because it costs a lot of money to do the job,” said Don Climent, the regional director of the IRC’s office in San Francisco.

****

Iraqi refugees face huge challenges adjusting to life and work in the United States. The most obvious of these is language: Refugees vary in their language ability, but all must quickly learn to speak well, so they can search for work and begin to be part of society. Complicating matters for families like the Mohamads, many refugees are resettled to neighborhoods where they are surrounded by others for whom English is a second language.

There is the also the problem of security. Many Iraqi refugees feel shocked and frustrated when they realize that they have to deal with security-part of the reason they had run away from home-again. Mohamad’s 21-year-old son made his own security, buying pepper spray and a knife to protect his life. “I only felt safe in Jordan and all I did is to focus on my study,” he said. “But here, I found the United States similar to Baghdad. I changed my old nice clothes into saggy ones to blend in. I avoided passing any young men group standing in a corner of the street. I tried to put my wallet, phone and my ID in different places in my clothes. I have to struggle to stay safe in Oakland.”

In addition to fears about their security, refugees have to deal with the American healthcare system, which is totally different from back home. In Iraq, the health system is free and patients have easy access to medicine from any pharmacy, except for few restricted prescriptions.

On top of these concerns, refugees also have to find jobs quickly. It’s not easy, particularly with the U.S. economy in recession. Some Iraqis try to look beyond Oakland and go as far as San Jose. Some may get lucky, and some have to keep looking and wait for the phone to ring. “The economy is not so good in regards to employment,” said Climent at the IRC. “It is a reality that refugees have to compete with the Americans for work. Of course there is an impact. In such time you do not have to be picky, you should take any job is offered to you.”

Climent acknowledges that refugees face a difficult situation in the United States, trying to blend in with the society in a short period of time, even when they have the help of the IRC. “There are a lot of things going into this and it is certainly less than perfect,” he said. “It is not easy to be a refugee, even under the best circumstances. Overall it is incredibly positive program but when you get into details, you can see how hard it is for some people to make it through the process and to start over and to learn all the stuff they have to learn to operate in the society in short time. It is a lot, it needs time but it really works.”

****

It hasn’t worked yet, though, for the Mohamads. The family struggles against the loss of their money, jobs, security, and education. They use a temporary monthly stipend from the social services to pay for rent, and rely on social services for food stamps. Mrs. Mohammad said she has submitted roughly seven resumés since she came to U.S. three months ago, with no luck. She said does not want her children to work because they are still in school, and they do not have any job experience.

Her eldest son, now 21, takes advanced courses in English language and CSEE courses (environment and green jobs training) at the community college so he may find a temporary job.  He was once an engineering undergraduate student who had to drop out of school in Baghdad to go with his family to Jordan. He managed to resume college in Amman, but again had to leave in the middle of his studies to come to Oakland with his family. Now he wants to apply for school again, but must first wait for a year or two to be a California resident so the family can afford the college tuition.

“My eyes are dry of tears,” his mother said as she considered her family’s situation. “I cannot see well because I cried so hard. I just wish I could go back home but I could not. I have no family left there, my house is rented and I can not just ask the residents to leave because I will have to go through the court and that means many papers and time and money. It is not safe yet for us to go back and I’m torn between longing to go back and my children’s safety and future. ”

The family’s apartment has three bedrooms, and as Mrs. Mohamad talked, her husband came out of the bedroom, interrupting his wife to fact-check their story. He is a tall man who used to have his own business as a heavy machines contractor. Now he is unemployed, and spends half of the day searching Web sites to fill out online applications. It’s frustrating, he said, and pointless, because almost employers ask for a license and references.

“Wherever we find a job application, they ask for a license and a reference, and I just came from Iraq,” he said. “How am I supposed to have a reference or a license, which [requires] us to get back to study for few months or years to match our degree from Iraq? I cannot even work as a bus driver unless I get a reference and a license.”

Mrs. Mohammad said she and her husband go to the social services program “job club” daily, and attend every workshop and lecture on job-hunting that they can. She wiped her face with her hands. “I do not want my son lose another year,” she said. “Education is very precious to me.”

At that moment, her son entered the house holding heavy books to his chest like a child clutching a precious toy. He called for his younger brother and sister to come out from their rooms. He was happy that he had bought the books for $1 each at a private sales event at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Jack London Square. The books included a history book about the U.S. Marines and their battle in Iraq. “I bought this book because I wanted to learn their history and what they say about us,” he said while flipping the pages showing images of soldiers posing in different positions in Iraq and Kuwait.
Iraqis of all education levels are known for their passion for reading; it was one of their only ways, other than TV, to access to the outside world for knowledge during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Mrs. Mohammad watched her children and sighed as they read the new books. “I do not know what to do,” she said. “We are an intellectual family and all our siblings are doctors and engineers. We do not know any other profession.”

Mrs. Mohammed’s troubles are complicated by health issues; she has a bad back, an ulcer, and high blood pressure. She wants to work, but doesn’t want to give up her 20 years experience as a radiologist in Iraq. “I cannot just trash 20 years of experience behind my back,” she said. “I want to work, but in what I know-as a radiologist or even a nurse, but for both I need to match my degree and study again for few years. I can not do that because I do not have time. I need a job quickly to support the family and save for my son’s education. This is my problem.”

“We did not leave our country for fun-all my concern was my children’s safety and their future,” she continued. “We struggle to learn the American system here by ourselves and it is very hard. How am I supposed to learn all this and get a job in a month? Why [did the] U.S. bring big numbers [of refugees here] if they are not ready to host them? I do not have any relatives in the United States like some have to rely on. I cannot go home now. I sold everything I have in Jordan, and I can not go back to Baghdad because we will be targeted.”

She broke into tears.

William Wong is a renowned journalist and writer who was born and grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown. He is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America and Images of America: Oakland’s Chinatown and a co-author of Images of America: Angel Island.

510report’s Guo Shipeng interviewed him for a story on the 65th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which fell on Wednesday, December 17. Wong responded to Guo’s questions with long and interesting answers, in which he told about his parent’s hard journey for a better life in America and gave some insightful comments on the Chinese American community’s past, present and future.

When did your parents move to the U.S.? Were they ever held on the Angel Island?

My father arrived in the United States in 1912, when he was 16 years old, according to his immigration papers. We don’t really know the real story of why he came then, but family legend has it that his mother sent him to join people from his village, who had settled in Oakland, running a small business, to help the family back in the village with whatever he could earn here.

He stayed on Angel Island for about a week the first time. In subsequent years, he traveled back to China three or four times, finally bringing his wife and three daughters to Oakland in 1933. Each time he came back, he had to be verified as legal, and we don’t know how much time, if any, he had to spend on Angel Island. When his wife (my future mother) and three daughters came for the first time, they were detained on Angel Island for about a week.

Again, my mother came in November of 1933, with two of her own daughters and a daughter (older than her two) from my father’s first wife. My mother had to come in as my father’s sister, not his wife. That was because the law at the time didn’t allow Chinese men to bring in their wives, but for some reason, the law allowed them to bring in a sister. So that is what my father did — bring in his “sister” who was really his wife.

When she became pregnant in Oakland in 1934, they had to solve this legal dilemma, she being officially a single woman. So they hired a man named Wong Sheng to be my mother’s paper husband. That is why the four children born in Oakland (daughter numbers 4, 5, and 6, and then finally me, the only son) carry the family name of Wong, not Gee, which is what my father’s name really is.

How do you feel about the Chinese Exclusion Act and its repeal in 1943?

Angry and sad about the act itself, even though I never suffered directly from its effect. Angry and sad because this act greatly delayed the natural integration of Chinese (and other Asians) into American society. The first 30 or so years of significant Chinese and Asian immigration (from the Gold Rush of 1848 to 1882, when the exclusion act was passed) were harsh on Chinese and Asian immigrants. Yet many of them worked hard to survive and to contribute to the building of the Western United States (agricultural and railroad building, especially).

Then for about 60 years (1882 to 1943), Chinese and other Asian immigrants really suffered and the full development of Chinese and Asian families and communities was greatly suppressed by the exclusion act. That was undeniable institutional racism. That meant that Chinese and other Asians in America at the time did not have the same opportunities as white Americans who had come to America from Europe. Not only didn’t these Chinese and Asians have equal opportunity, they were badly treated, humiliated, and made to feel inferior to “regular” Americans, mostly white Americans.

Angry and sad because of all these lost opportunities for Chinese and Asians like my parents and countless others who might have prospered more and earlier than today’s Asian and Chinese immigrants, who came after the immigration reforms of 1965.

How’s the Chinese American community doing now?

If you didn’t know about this ugly part of Chinese American/Asian American history (1850s to 1950s) and only knew about the fairly recent Chinese/Asian immigrant narrative from the past 40 years, you might think that things are pretty good for this slice of the American population. Some of that is indeed true. Many Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans are high achievers and are relatively well integrated into many facets of American life.

Now, under the new Obama administration, there are samples of ultimate success for a few Chinese Americans and Asian Americans. Plus a plethora of other Chinese American “stars” like Yo Yo Ma, I.M. Pei, Maya Lin, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Ho, Gary Locke, Michelle Kwan, et. al. It is hard to argue that Chinese Americans (and Asian Americans) are “discriminated against” or thought lowly of, when one considers this all-star cast.

Yet I wonder, if there hadn’t been an exclusion act, how many more Chinese American and Asian American “stars” there might have been far earlier in American life and how much richer and advanced America might have been had there not been a Chinese Exclusion Act, or the Jim Crow laws that kept African Americans “separate but equal” (a laughable concept!) in the American South, or the extermination of Native Americans, or the institutional racism against Mexicans and other Latinos.

What do you expect for the future?

It is a good thing that America today is a fairer and more equitable society. The election of Barack Obama last month confirmed the advances our society has made over the past half century.

We do know, however, that the seeds of racial hatred still are being sown somewhere (many places, actually), but the encouraging note is that the Obama phenomenon points us in a better direction and we have hope now that we Americans won’t go backwards in terms of racial and ethnic relationships. We won’t always go straight forward either; there will be setbacks, but our direction is much clearer now and in a much healthier direction with Obama’s leadership, example, and inspiration.

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Click here to visit Wong’s OAKLAND CHINATOWN HISTORY website and here for a historical profile of the Angel Island Immigration Station.

Special thanks to Chinese Historical Society of America for the exhibition photos. Click HERE to view the exhibition online.

By Guo Shipeng

It was a tranquil afternoon in the heart of the Oakland’s Chinatown on Wednesday, December 17.

Guan Shujuan was watching her four-year-old daughter playing around the “Junk Boat”, a replica of one used by early Chinese immigrants to sail across the Pacific and a popular play structure for kids on the Lincoln Square.

“What act? Anti-Chinese act?” the slightly built woman looked bewildered when asked if she had heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned virtually all Chinese immigration from 1882-1943.

With a Chinese American Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration, the humiliation Chinese went through under the Exclusion Act doesn’t register with many people in American Chinatowns like this one, especially for the American-born youth and for the newcomers.

“I’ve only heard of Chinese exclusion incidents in Indonesia, not in America,” said Guan, who arrived in Oakland from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong just a little over a month ago.

The U.S. Congress introduced the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act at a time when the Gold Rush was about to deplete the California mines and when Chinese “coolies” willing to work for low wages stoked resentment among white Americans.

According to some estimates, the bill nearly halved the nation’s Chinese American population. It was repealed on December 17 1943, when China was a U.S. ally against Japan during the World War Two.

The 65^th anniversary of the Act’s repeal on Wednesday went largely unmarked in Oakland’s Chinatown and the Chinese community in the Bay Area in general, except an exhibition from December 2-13 at the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

On Wednesday night, influential politicians and business people of all races threw a big retirement and birthday party for Chinese-born Henry Chang, Oakland’s City Council Member since 1994.

As institutional discrimination was gradually dismantled over the last few decades, Chinese Americans have integrated into the mainstream society fairly well and have generated numerous success stories in various fields.

Holding a “green card” as a permanent resident, Guan came to join her husband, who has been working in a Chinatown restaurant as a chef for more than 10 years.

She said the family had decided to settle down in Oakland, despite the disorienting cultural differences and language barriers.

“The Americans here are nice to me. The main problem is I cannot understand a single word of what they say,” said Guan, 39.

“I’ll find something to do when she grows bigger and goes to elementary school, ” Guan said of the daughter, a shy girl who sometimes looked intimidated by English-speaking kids around her.

The daughter’s education is expected to land her a white-collar job, as well as full acceptance by and assimilation into the American society. It is a story that has been repeated over and over again by Chinese immigrant families who start from scratches.

While the 1943 repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act lifted the ban on Chinese immigration, it set an annual quota of 105 for people of Chinese descent arriving on American shores from any country.

When the Chinese community protested, the proposed number was increased to 107. The restriction and widespread discrimination persisted well into the late 1960s, when large-scale Chinese immigration took off thanks to the Immigration Act of 1965.

“In my first years in America, Chinese people couldn’t buy houses in white neighborhoods in East Oakland, even if they had the money,” said Chuck Lee, 77, who came to Oakland in 1950.

“Some landlords were unwilling to rent rooms to Chinese because they thought that would depreciate their property values.”

Chinese immigrants seeking to join family members in the U.S. were still “subject to detention and interrogations, much as their ancestors had endured at the Angel Island” from 1940s to 1960s, said Eddie Wong, Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Some 170,000 Chinese immigrants were held in the detention center on Angel Island in the first half of the 20^th century, including American-born Chinese returning from trips to China and other countries.

The Immigration Station has been turned into a museum and will reopen to the public in February 2009 after a three-year renovation project.

Wong said commemorating the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act was still of significance, even though it was far from satisfactory at the time.

“Today, conditions have improved for Chinese in America, but immigrants of many nationalities have inadequate legal protections and are subject to detention, interrogation, and deportation,” said Wong.

“If we have learned anything from the Chinese Exclusion Act and other Asian exclusion laws, a just immigration policy must be a humane policy, not one engendered by racial fears and xenophobia.”

[audio:http://rosebud.journalism.berkeley.edu/~j200/510report/chen_monk.mp3]

By Guo Shipeng

Justin (right) and Terilyn (left) with their mother Jamie (center) at the Red Bean. Jamie also sings Cantonese Opera.

Cantonese Opera is probably the most common subtype of Chinese opera in the United States.  In the Bay Area, it is popular among first-generation Chinese immigrants, people at least in their 40s, if not older. But in recent years the Red Bean Cantonese Opera House in Oakland’s Chinatown has been trying to introduce the traditional art to the community’s American-born youth. 

Its youth troupe has trained dozens of “little Red Beans” so far, who have performed in its annual full productions in the summer. 

It is no small achievement and requires hard work and devotion, considering the fact that even in China, most teenagers would find traditional Chinese opera boring as there are plenty of pop culture offerings on TV and the Internet. 

Eighteen-year-old Justin Ma is a freshman at UC Santa Cruz. He started learning Cantonese Opera at the Red Bean with his sixteen-year-old sister Terilyn in 2005.

Click the play button to listen to their stories.

[audio:http://rosebud.journalism.berkeley.edu/~j200/510report/redbeanyouth2.mp3]

By Karen Weise  –

In a room twinkling with thousand of small gold pieces, the message behind the Asian Art Museum’s exhibit “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul” was unmistakable.

“A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive,” the final wall of the exhibit read.

For Dr. Mohammad “Mo” Qayoumi, president of California State University East Bay and the first Afghan president of a major U.S. university, that statement could not be more true.

Qayoumi said aside from the beauty and importance of the artifacts themselves, the dramatic story of safekeeping the treasures through war and crisis is enough cause for jubilation. Qayoumi and others said they are working to connect the East Bay’s Afghan community with the celebrated exhibition before it leaves San Francisco in the end of January.

Protecting heritage through times of war: Secret vaults, sealed lips

As a central hub in the Silk Road, Afghanistan has 15,000 known archaeological sites, charting millennia of trade, invasions, settlements and dynasties. Since 1922, as artifacts were excavated, Afghanistan preserved their national treasures in the National Museum in Kabul, growing the collection to 100,000 artworks and artifacts.

The Soviet invasion in 1979 to the ensuing decade of civil war threatened the museum’s collection, with war lords selling artifacts on the black market and eventually, the shelling of the building. Starting in 2001, the Taliban systematically destroyed 2,500 works of art, according to the exhibition.

Fearing the complete destruction of the national treasure, in 1988, a small group of museum staff hid crates with the most precious artifacts in a vault in the presidential palace in an attempt to protect the treasures. The handful of staff, known as key holders or tahilwidars, kept quiet about the secret vaults.

In Oct. 2003, two years after war ousted in the Taliban, the museum’s director, Omara Khan Massoudi, decided conditions were finally safe enough to reveal the treasured pieces. Afghan archeologists and National Geographic staff opened the crates to find the artifacts intact. The pieces were first shown at the National Gallery in D.C., and are at the Asian Art museum in San Francisco until Jan. 25. The show will stop at Houston and New York before returning to Afghanistan.

CSU’s Qayoumi said the Afghan community’s response to the exhibition was a sense of “jubilation.” The complex, cosmopolitan artifacts countered decades of pessimism. “You look at what they have heard about Afghanistan for the last 25 and 30 years, and it has been the war, destruction, refugees, misery,” he said.

CSU’s Qayoumi said the “sense of stewardship and custodianship” the keyholders showed is an aspect of Afghan culture he homes becomes noted. “When you are trusted with something, you have to protect it with your life,” he said. Qayoumi cited several other instances of unsung “heroes,” such as a corps of guards who protected the American Embassy for close to twenty years without payment.

Qayoumi said he believed the custodianship over nearly two decades should quiet naysayers who question whether the current Afghan government can protect the exhibit when it returns to Afghanistan. “My belief is that all of these artifacts were protected because of the people, not the government,” he said.

Connecting to the East Bay Afghan community

To get the word out, Qayoumi said he did interviews on several Afghan television stations, including Fremont’s Le Mar TV, as well as presented at local organizations such as the Hayward Rotary Club. The museum translated the exhibition brochure into both Dari and Pashtu.

For Saturday, Dec. 6, Rev. Bruce Green, an interfaith facilitator at Centerville Presbyterian Church, said he is organizing buses and free admission for the Afghan community, particularly the poorer and elderly members. Using buses donated by Fremont’s Bridges Community Church and free admission provided by the museum, Green expects 200 people to make the journey from the East Bay. One pick-up was scheduled for the Afghan Coalition office in Fremont, and another likely will be in the Concord area.

“It’s too good for any afghan to miss,” said Green. “It’s their national treasure. Anyone would be really inspired about it.”

For more information, visit: Asian Art Museum, the National Geographic Society and the National Gallery of Art.

By Guo Shipeng

More than 30 members of the Chinatown’s Red Bean Cantonese Opera House came home safely last week after attending the 5th International Cantonese Opera Festival in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which is formerly known as Canton. 

Four Red Bean members staged performances during the festival and received very positive reviews from their counterparts from around the world and from the local audience. 

Click the play button to listen what the Red Beans have to say about the trip.

[audio:http://rosebud.journalism.berkeley.edu/~j200/510report/redbean2.mp3]

By Adelaide Chen

Financial setbacks and anticipated cuts in public education have impacted at least one community program in Oakland.  A volunteer-run Vietnamese language school has raised tuition and decreased teacher stipends in order to pay $7000 to $8000 in janitorial fees for the first time.

This school year has been a financial headache for executive director Ky Vo and his team of volunteers.  For the past decade, the Huong Viet Community Center has held classes at Roosevelt Middle School in the San Antonio neighborhood, drawing about 80 kids from the East Bay.

Faced with the possibility of being unable to afford the school facilities, Huong Viet raised tuition to $250 per student for 33 Saturday sessions.

In addition, the teachers agreed to decrease their stipends, said Vietnamese instructor Chanh Tran, 31, who also teaches math at a local high school during the week.

“We’re kind of worried about whether we’re able to run the school anymore. If we don’t have a budget, we aren’t able to rent a facility,” she said.

The teachers agreed to take home $30 for each three-hour class, rather than $40.  One board member referred to the stipends as “gas money” because half of the eight teachers drive from Richmond, Hayward, and Berkeley.

“I’m impressed with the teachers.  They’re very dedicated,” said Ky Vo, executive director of Huong Viet.  “Some donate (their stipends) back to us.”

As the head of Huong Viet, Vo himself does not receive a stipend.  Nor did he attend Vietnamese school as a kid growing up in Oakland.  Now he seems content giving up his Saturday mornings so that other kids can have the opportunity.

Parents started the school two decades ago so kids could learn Vietnamese in an organized way, he said.  Although some churches and temples offer Vietnamese language classes, Huong Viet is the only non-denominational school in the East Bay.  Increasing numbers of second-generation Vietnamese mean student numbers are growing—the kindergarten class doubled this year.

The East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC), whose staff runs Saturday morning detention and an after-school program, has always extended the use of Roosevelt Middle School to Vietnamese classes for the past decade, said Gianna Tran, executive director.

But last December, Tran received an invoice for janitorial overtime.  Her organization paid for it and notified Huong Viet to take over the costs starting in the 2008-2009 school year, she said.

“We’re all bleeding the same way,” said Tran. “No one should suspect they’re immune to (budget cuts).”

“In the past, I’ve had extra money to pay custodians to open the school on weekends,” said Theresa Clincy, principal of Roosevelt Middle School.

But in order to balance her school’s budget, her first priority was to maintain staffing levels.  She said she anticipated additional cuts in the state’s education budget this year.

Huong Viet has never paid for the use of as many as eight classrooms.  But they don’t charge parents for the summer activity sessions either.

The East Bay Chinese School spends more than $10,000 to pay teacher stipends and lease Westlake Middle School in Oakland’s Grand Lake neighborhood, said Principal Ming Wu.  But the student fees offset the costs.  Parents contribute over $300 per student for 32 sessions, a $25 one-time new student fee, and an $80 deposit per family.

Unlike Huong Viet, the Chinese language school is experiencing rapid growth because students of other races are learning Mandarin, said Wu.  About 400 students, including ones from black and white families, use about 30 classrooms, including the auditorium, on Saturdays.

Fremont – These are tough times for Rahim Aurang. After working for many years with a staff of helpers to aid thousands of newcomers to the United States settle in the Bay Area, he now sits alone in his office in Fremont.

Lack of funding means Aurang, an Afghan-American, cannot afford to draw a salary for himself, let alone a staff. The services of his non-profit agency, the Bay Area Immigrant and Refugee Services, are also severely curtailed.

Rahim Aurang sits at his desk at his office in Fremont. Photo by Mateen Kaul

But with a shrug of the shoulders, he downplays his troubles and talks animatedly about the future. He plans to open an office in Concord to work out of for a couple of days a week, to serve the Afghan community in Contra Costa County. And he is approaching international aid agencies to seek funding for a humanitarian program to assist orphans and widows in his country of origin.

He squints his eyes, raises the pitch of his voice and gesticulates as he talks about the suffering of women and children in the war-torn country, particularly of young orphans in the harsh Afghan winter. “I’ve seen myself, little children sleeping on the sidewalk, their eyes and faces swollen with the cold,” he said.

He thinks much of the money poured into Afghanistan for its reconstruction since the US-led war to oust the Taliban in 2001 has been wasted. “So much money has gone in. What have they done with it? No one knows,” he said.

He hopes to open a center for widows and orphans with money from aid agencies.

Aurang has a long association with the US. He was educated in the US in the 1960s and when he returned to Afghanistan in 1970, it was to head a hydroelectric project funded by the US. But then the Communists seized power and, suspicious of his connections with America, removed him from his job. “They probably thought I was with the CIA,” he joked.

He left Afghanistan in 1982 and took up residence in the US, where his first job was as an employment counsellor for immigrants in Oakland. He opened the Afghan Support Agency in 1989, which later became BAIRS, to reflect the fact that it served not just Afghans, but all immigrants, he said. Aurang estimates that the agency has helped some 10,000 Afghans alone settle in the Bay Area.

Last Year, Aurang moved his office from Oakland to Fremont, on the advice of Afghan friends who were convinced it would be a good idea to come to a city with one of the biggest Afghan populations in the US. It’s a move he regrets. He now gets fewer clients, and many clients of nationalities other than Afghan have been lost. His office is in a less prominent location.

The services on offer have also had to be curtailed, because of lack of funding. In Oakland, the agency ran programs to give refugees professional training, help women and warn youths of the dangers of drugs and gangs. All funding came from Alameda County. But last year, the money started drying up because of the bad economy and rising demand on city budgets. Now he only gets money from the county for services he provides to elderly refugees, accounting for $6,000-7,000 per year, “barely enough to cover rent,” he said.

He said he is lucky that his landlord, who runs an insurance company from offices next door, gives him a discount rent rate and free utilities. The phone number listed for the agency is Aurang’s personal cell phone number. He draws no salary for his work. Asked how he survives, Aurang said his wife has a good job and his kids are both graduates of UC Berkeley.

But he knows the situation is worse for others. Midway through our interview, he stops to take a call. It is from a colleague and friend in Oakland who, until recently, ran the East Bay Vietnamese Association. “He shut down in May, after 32 years in the business,” Aurang said.