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Grace Cathedral, San Francisco March 30, 2025   Joshua 5:9-12 Psalm 32 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke15:1-3, 11b-32

With Julia Chiapella and Dion O'Reilly, Roxi Power discusses the just-published anthology she co-edited, Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election (Carbonation Press 2025) with 100+ amazing poets. This urgent, lightning-fast book was a collaborative effort by 8 editors between election and inauguration day to capture feelings about and implications of this critical election. The call asked for compassionate but courageous poems that transform readers through visionary rather than didactic language. Editors Katie Sarah Zale, Paul E. Nelson, allia abdullah-matta, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Robert Lashley, Roxi Power, CChristy White, and Theresa Whitehill spent long days over the holidays choosing a wide range of poems reflecting the editors' different poetics as well as national and international diversity of region, identity, style, and issues affected by this historic election including immigration, reproductive rights, climate change, white supremacy, and more. Publisher Greg Bem made the project happen fast. Along with our own poems, we discuss poems in the book written on election night “as the map turned red”, including “Election Night Blues” by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington; a poem about self-care and healing, “the-bigger-picture” by Dana Teen Lomax; and a poem by Martín Espada about freedom-seeking children playing soccer in detention camps.  Order Winter in America (Again here.  Listen to readings from our 1/19 and 1/20 launches on KPFK Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, on Bibliocracy with Andrew Tonkovich on 4 Thursdays at 2:30, starting Feb. 5.  Join us at our launch events in Seattle (Feb. 4, Seattle U.); Tucson (Feb. 15, Gallery of Food;  San Francisco (March 1, Et Al and summer TBA, City Lights Bookstore), Los Angeles AWP (March 27, CSU-Los Angeles); Santa Cruz (April 1, Bookshop Santa Cruz and April 15, Inter Act, Satori Arts), Lit Balm Interactive Livestream (April 26 & 27 2pm EST), & more.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee speaks with Asian American creatives and Pulitzer prize finalists performance artist Kristina Wong and playwright Lloyd Suh. They reflect on how the covid lock down impacted their work and ruminated on how built communities can arise in times of hardship. One is creating work that explores the times we live in and the other is delving into the past. Each share their creative process and why art matters to them.   Show Note Links Kristina Wong's Website Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, at A.C.T.'s Strand Theater (1127 Market St., San Francisco) March 30 – May 5, 2024. Kristina's Radical Cram School  Lloyd Suh's bio The Far Country BY LLOYD SUH at Berkeley Rep. March 8 – April 14, 2024   Show Transcript Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Miko Lee: [00:00:28] Good evening and welcome to Apex Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee and tonight we get to hear from two Asian American creatives. Both are Pulitzer prize finalists who have had their work presented around the country. They reflect on how the COVID lockdown impacted their work and they ruminate on how built communities can arise in times of hardship. One is creating work that explores the times we live in and the other is delving into the past to lift up stories that might be missing in history. Each share their creative process and why art matters to them. Tonight, join me as I talk story with performance artist Kristina Wong, whose show Sweatshop Overlord opens at ACT's Strand Theater on March 30th and with playwright Lloyd Suh whose show The Far Country runs at Berkeley Rep until April 14th. First up is my chat with Kristina Wong. Welcome Kristina Wong to Apex Express.   Kristina Wong: [00:01:24] I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.   Miko Lee: [00:01:27] We are so happy to have you as the performance artist, writer, creator of Kristina Wong's Sweatshop Overlord, which will run at ACT from March 30th through May 5th. Yay!   Kristina Wong: [00:01:36] Yes, that's eight shows a week, one body. Just me, everybody. Just me.   Miko Lee: [00:01:43] One woman show. Excellent.   Kristina Wong: [00:01:44] No understudy. I've been looking for an understudy. But apparently the theater doesn't think it works as well if someone else goes around saying they're Kristina Wong. So, I gotta stay healthy. For you!   Miko Lee: [00:01:54] That would be interesting, though. I would actually love to see a multi-people Kristina Wong version. That'd be really interesting.   Kristina Wong: [00:02:02] Yeah. There are enough Kristina Wongs on this planet to do that, but can they do what I do? I don't know.   Miko Lee: [00:02:07] I don't think many people can do what you do. [Kristina laughs] Okay, so I want to start with the question I ask many many people, and this is a big one: who are your people and where do you come from?   Kristina Wong: [00:02:21] My people, so many questions. Well, the people that I was born into, I'm third generation Chinese American, Toisan on my father's side and Cantonese on my mother's side. And we were a San Francisco family. Both my parents were born in San Francisco, went to San Francisco high schools. I went to San Francisco. Now I live in Koreatown, Los Angeles, my alternate Asian universe. I will say that those are the people I was born into. When I was growing up in middle school and high school I was somewhere between a theater kid who also liked making prank calls and was constantly trying to figure out who my people were and what my clique was cause I don't even know if I would totally fit in with the theater kids. And then when I got to college, I discovered radical solo performance work and activism and finally could put, like, words around things that I had been told, “We don't talk about it. You just get really good grades and then just become successful and that's how you deal with that,” you know? But was introduced to interdisciplinary art and naked performers and people putting all their trauma out there in beautiful theater ways. Now as an adult, as I tie it back into the show, Kristina Wong Sweatshop Overlord, my people are the aunties. This community of aunties that I found myself leading for 504 days during the pandemic. I somehow found myself, as many artists did, non essential and running a mask sewing group and needing people to help me sew masks. And a lot of those happened to be aunties, a lot of them were Asian women who had mothers and grandmothers who were garment workers. And we had learned how to sew as survival skills that were passed down to us. And those of late have become my people. And that's the story of the show.   Miko Lee: [00:04:16] Kristina, can you step back for a moment and just tell how that got started? How did Auntie Sewing Squad in the very, very beginning, how did it get started?   Kristina Wong: [00:04:24] March 12th, I was doing what I thought was my last show on earth. For some reason, there was a community college in Sacramento, American River Community College that had not canceled its classes, that had not taken its classes online and I had one last show on the books at 12 in the afternoon. I was doing a show called Kristina Wong for Public Office. I actually ran and served in local office in Koreatown, Los Angeles, where I live and was doing a big campaign rally show about what it meant to run for local office. And the idea was the show was going to tour all of 2020 as we led up to the November 2020 elections. And I sew my set pieces and my props. So you imagine all this American flag bunting made out of felt that I've sewn on a Hello Kitty sewing machine. And so this really ridiculous, like an American flag threw up on the set. Like that was my set. And the show is not going well, the students are very distracted. As it turns out, they are receiving a text in the middle of my show saying we're going online until further notice. So I suddenly have no income. No tour. I'm back in LA. I'm hiding inside my apartment as we all are. Going, “Why did I choose to do this with my life? Why was I so compelled to become an artist? What is my purpose in all this? Why, why did I choose this unessential work?” But then I couldn't feel sorry for myself because there were people who are risking their lives to deliver mail, to work at the grocery store, to go to work every single day at the hospital. And I see this article that I'm tagged in on Facebook saying that hospitals have no masks and are looking for home sewn masks. And the whole culture of mask wearing was so, you know, unheard of at this point and I looked at my Hello Kitty sewing machine and I was like, well I've never sewn medical equipment before. I've sewn my sets. I've sewn a giant vagina costume. I think I can make medical equipment. And I was just sort of called like Joan of Arc to sew. And I made this very naive offer to the internet where I said, if you're immunocompromised or don't have access to masks, I'll get you a mask. I didn't have the materials to do this, but I just offered this because it felt like that's what you were supposed to do in this moment. We were all connected and as strong as our weakest link.   March 20th is when I sewed my first mask. March 24th, I was like, okay, I need help because there's no way. One day when I was sewing nonstop all night, I made about 30 masks. That's not enough to fulfill the list that was exponentially building in my inbox. So I thought, okay, I'll make a Facebook group, and sort of offload some of this work to other people who might be sewing who could help me. And I make the group in a rush. I call it Auntie Sewing Squad. I don't realize our acronym is ASS. I start to add my mother into the group, her friends into the group, all sorts of folks are in the Facebook group. And as it turns out, you can't just start a Facebook group and expect people to just sew, so I, [laughs] so I find myself having to figure out how do we get the materials? How do we teach people how to sew these masks that none of us have sewn before? How do we teach people how their sewing machines work? Because some of them haven't touched their sewing machines in decades. And how do we vet these requests for masks, because a lot of people are panicking in our inbox, and we kind of have to create a system where just because someone's going, “Please send as many as you can,” as many as you can might mean 10 masks, it might mean 300. And are they just panicking right now and they think they need that many masks, or, you know, like, so we just had to make a lot of decisions and it felt like in those first days we were playing God, trying to figure out well, If we've only made a finite number of 15 masks today, who gets them, right? And obviously you're going to look at who's at most risk. So, so this was supposed to just be a two week thing, right? This was supposed to be a thing until the government got the masks off those cargo ships and got them to everybody. This was before masks became a bipartisan thing and a politically polarizing thing. And the group just kept going because we found beyond hospitals there were a lot of very vulnerable communities that could not even afford the cheap masks that were showing up on the market. And we're talking about farm workers, folks seeking asylum at the border, indigenous reservations. We sent a lot to the Navajo Nation and to the Lakota tribe in North and South Dakota. So this ended up going on for over 500 days. It became a community of over 800 volunteer aunties, all sewing remotely, all working remotely. We developed this whole system in which we could respond to the high COVID rates that we were witnessing and to communities that were being adversely impacted, either because they had no access to healthcare or no access to clean water.   Miko Lee: [00:09:03] That's an important one.   Kristina Wong: [00:09:05] Yeah.   Miko Lee: [00:09:06] How many masks did you end up creating?   Kristina Wong: [00:09:08] We ended up sewing in total, what we recorded was 350,000 masks were sewn and distributed. We also rerouted hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of medical equipment to a lot of those places. The thing is, like, in a crisis, and I have to remind us, even though it was four years ago, because we forget so many of the details, if you saw an article that farm workers were getting hit by COVID, you don't, you're not going to just send a bunch of masks to some address you find online, right? Because not everyone's checking their mail, not everyone might be at that office address, you're not clear who might distribute those masks once they arrive. So we had to do a lot of work in terms of calling and working with other mutual aid organizers and these communities and figuring out like, well, what is the actual impact? How are you getting these masks around and how many can we send you at least to hold you over for a week or two, right? Like, yes, there are you know, hundreds of thousands of farm workers, but we're not sitting on a ton of masks that we just, you know, that come out of our butt and that we just have like we actually like sit down at our sewing machines and cut and sew these things. So—   Miko Lee: [00:10:13] And you had to research and make the connections—   Kristina Wong: [00:10:16] Make the connections. Yeah. And some of those requests shifted into full on other kinds of aid. So the Navajo reservation had volunteer sewing groups, but they didn't have access to sewing supplies. I'm in Los Angeles where we have a garment district and we were looking at a map going, well, in theory, someone could drive round trip across a very long day, you know, to, to lessen the risk of exposure. And so our first truck over wasn't, you know, just a van filled with masks, but a van filled with the supplies that they could use to sew masks. And then we learned that only 30 percent of that reservation has running water. That when multigenerational families were getting COVID, there was nowhere to quarantine, so they requested things like tents to quarantine and buckets to make homemade hand washing stations. First it was sewing supplies, but we did about eight runs back and forth to the reservation during the pandemic to get supplies to those mutual aid organizers who could get it to people. I helped secure like a big soap donation from Dr. Bronner's. It was like, we just thought it was just the masks, but we basically stepped in all of structural racism and systemic you know poverty and all the ways the system was broken and it had already left behind a lot of indigenous communities and people of color who are getting hit like super hard by this pandemic. So ASS, our unintentional acronym, Anti Sewing Squad, that's sort of what we fell into was going from, okay, we're going to make a few masks to full on shadow FEMA.   Miko Lee: [00:11:51] Yeah, not even just sewing squad, but sort of a superhero squad. Let us come in where the government has failed and help where we can. It's incredibly powerful. Thank you for doing that.   Kristina Wong: [00:12:02] Yeah, I don't know if I would have done it again, honestly, even though out of it came this incredible show, but if you told me at the top of this, this is actually going to go on for 500 days, I don't know that I would have done it. Like, it was so exhausting, and that's also sort of a joke in the show, is people kept going, “Oh, you aunties, you're heroes, you're heroes!” and I'm like, oh my god, like, heroes are what you call the people who do the work no one wants to pay for apparently, because [laughs] this is, this is, this is, this sucks. This sucks. Like, we don't want to be heroes. We want our systems that, like, we, we just saw how everything failed us in this moment. Capitalism failed us. The medical system failed us. Just all these things that we're supposed to step in, in these moments of crisis didn't work. What I witnessed and why I made a show about this, is I've witnessed how community steps up and I witnessed how these aunties showed me this generosity I've never witnessed in my life. Like most of the friendships I have in Los Angeles are because someone does something for a living and that, serves me and my job in a certain way, right? They're very transactional relationships. And I witnessed people who I had no idea who they were before this moment, willing to come to my house, brave this very unknown pandemic, to pick up a roll of elastic, to sew for a total stranger, risk their life going to the post office to mail these things, right? And so to me, that's, what's worth celebrating is this opportunity that I think that we all had as humanity to witness that this was our moment to all come together, I would say we lost that opportunity and we've just become resentful and whatever, but I, I feel like Auntie Sewing Squad showed me a glimmer of the generosity that was possible. And for me, that's worth celebrating. And the only reason why I feel like it's worth reliving the pandemic. In a 90 minute show.   Miko Lee: [00:13:54] Every night for multiple nights.   Kristina Wong: [00:13:56] Yes, eight nights a week. What am I doing? The show is so, you know, people are like 90 minutes. So long. It's like, it's because the pandemic was so long. I would have loved to cap this at 45 minutes, but this kept going. It kept going.   Miko Lee: [00:14:09] How many members are there in the Auntie Sewing Squad?   Kristina Wong: [00:14:12] I would say. We had and they were all involved in different capacities. I mean, like some of them may have been involved for all of a week before, they got pulled away by their families or job obligations. But we had about 800 different aunties coming in and out of the group. Not all of them were sewing, some of them were organizing spreadsheets, making phone calls, some of them were driving aunties. We had a huge system of care aunties, led by our Auntie Gail and basically, people who couldn't sew who felt really guilty would [be] like, “Can I send you all a pizza?” Which was really necessary because a lot of these aunties were operating on survivor's guilt, right? Of feeling like, well I have this privilege of being able to stay at home while my mailman risks his life to get, you know, get me the mail. Because it's really hard to go to sleep when you know that you at your sewing machine an hour longer could possibly save someone's life. But we also needed to encourage these aunties to stop and rest. You can't just tell people, okay, sew a bunch of masks and expect them to stay motivated to do it. We had aunties who lost family members to COVID. We had aunties who are falling into their own depression and getting isolated. So much of this group wasn't just about like, while we joke it's a sweatshop, a lot of it was this entire community that supported each other, cared for each other. We'd have zoom stitch n bitches where we'd, you know, the aunties would, I was working out this show on Zoom, never thinking that it was going to premiere off Broadway, to basically just entertain the aunties while they were at their sewing machines. Like we were this whole system this became this weird ad hoc family that supported each other through this very strange time. And that was sort of the staying power of why people stayed involved is because they'd never experienced community like this either, which was just all pure generosity. I feel like I'm describing a cult, and I sort of am, but whatever. It's a cult called ASS, so it's fine.   Miko Lee: [00:15:59] Well, a unique community that came together to address the harm that was happening. It's beautiful. Can you go back in time, roll us back in time, to how you first got politicized? I heard you say that about college, but is there a moment that happened for you?   Kristina Wong: [00:16:16] I think I was always a little politicized. I just never really had the language and education around it. When I was 12 years old in our middle school, there was a science lesson plan contest and we basically prepared a science lesson plan and taught it to another class. And my partner and I, we did something about saving the planet and just doing a deep dive. This is the nineties, right? Like how much we were screwing with our planet. And I think I still don't know that we all know the lesson, but I was like a little Greta Thunberg, you know. I just didn't know how to be an activist. It was like, do I collect cans that are thrown on the street? Like, how do I, how do I do this? Like, how does this equate to actual change? And I think that's, I think we have some more of those tools and we're also cognizant about how frustrating those tools are to implement and see happen. But that's, I think the first time I realized I was an activist and it wasn't until I got to college and was introduced to, I didn't know what Asian American Studies was I was like, what? Why would you study that? Like, what is that? I had no idea that Asian Americans have had a whole political history that has worked alongside the civil rights movement and, I had no idea I could put words to the microaggressions I'd expressed my whole life and that I could actually challenge them as not being okay. I went to UCLA. I feel like that's where a lot of people figure out that they're Asian American. That's also where I began to understand the political power of art. What I had understood of activism before that point was marching in rallies, screaming at people, berating people to recycle. But, you know, it's not sustainable. It's exhausting. It makes people want to avoid you. And it's an emotionally depleting. And so being introduced to artists, just sort of sharing their lives and their lives as having political power to put forward and to put meaning to was really incredible to experience like performers. I think some of the first performers I saw just like put themselves forward and all their flawed ways was actually kind of profound and incredible. That's where I was drawn to making art as my sort of form of protest and activism.   Miko Lee: [00:18:26] Is this where the roots of the Radical Cram School came about?   Kristina Wong: [00:18:29] Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Radical Cram School is my web series for children. You can find it on YouTube. And where that started was one of our producers, Teddy Chow, his daughter Liberty had come home and they, at that point they were living in Ohio where they were one of the few Chinese families there. And the daughter said, “I wish I wasn't Chinese.” And Teddy was like, “Can you go talk to her and her friends and make her proud?” And I was like, “You know what? I said that too when I was a kid.” And so somehow this blew up into us like, well, let's create a web series for kids, specifically for Asian kids, because I feel like Asian Americans and kids don't really. We just sort of, the tools we are offered politically don't really have our face in them. Like, we don't really understand where we fit in a political movement, and how to be an ally to black and brown movements. And I was like, let's do a web series where we gather Asian American kids and it to me was a little tongue in cheek. And I feel like a lot of me being in a bubble of other progressives in Los Angeles feels like I can lovingly poke at this idea of a cram school where we're trying to quickly teach Asian kids about the entire world of what's overwhelming and oppression in the setting. And so that became Radical Cram School which went on for two seasons and was completely decried by right wingers like Alex Jones. So I would say that's a success.   Miko Lee: [00:19:53] I think it is so delightful and funny. It's a little mix of like drunk history with Sesame Street.   Kristina Wong: [00:20:00] Yes. Yes. That's exactly what we were going for and I feel like I'm very lucky at some point in my lifetime. Yes, it didn't happen until college and like post college was introduced to all these incredible Asian American activists, many of us who are still with us right now. And this history and I feel like it's worth sharing.   Miko Lee: [00:20:21] The child that inspired the whole series. Was she actually in it?   Kristina Wong: [00:20:26] Liberty. Yes, she was in it. She's in it. She's both in the first and second season.   Miko Lee: [00:20:29] Was it mission accomplished in terms of having a sense of pride of being Asian American?   Kristina Wong: [00:20:35] I think so. It's always ongoing, right? Like I think pride, you don't, you don't get it once and it stays forever. It's something that we like, as we constantly learn to like love ourselves and appreciate what we have. And we're also part of growing a community too, right? Like, it's not just like, Oh, I'm proud. I found my pride at 13 and it stayed. Like, we always feel like kicked to the curb constantly and challenged. And I think, like for me, this pandemic was a really challenging time for Asian Americans. As we witnessed like the backlash, the hate, like how backwards it was that people would equate. Do you remember early on when people were like, can you get COVID from Chinese food? Like, it was just so like, what happened?   Miko Lee: [00:21:13] I mean, the whole Kung flu virus.   Kristina Wong: [00:21:15] The Kung flu, China virus, like all these these just sort of racist associations with it are like, are constantly challenging to our sense of pride. So hopefully having that web series out there will be these touchstones to remind Asian American kids that we exist. We're here. There's a basis. We're not building this from scratch and we may be recording it from scratch or constantly trying to remember this history into existence. But, to me it's a verb, right? The verb of finding pride is always active.   Miko Lee: [00:21:44] I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about how you, you often in your work play with gender expectations around Asian women from, you know, like you mentioned before sewing on your Hello Kitty sewing machine, which I have a Hello Kitty sewing machine too.   Kristina Wong: [00:21:59] Yes. It's a good machine. I don't know if it's a Janome.   Miko Lee: [00:22:02] It's actually incredibly practical. It doesn't have the bells and whistles, but it works. Yeah but I remember your big vagina MC for Mr. Hyphen America. I can't believe you sewed that on one of those tiny machines. And then, you have this web series about taking down how white men can date Asian women. And then the other thing is your fake porn site. Can you tell us about that?   Kristina Wong: [00:22:23] Oh, that's like That's 20 years of projects you've just named. Well, my very first project out of college, year 2000, still had dial up internet, my friends, was called BigBadChineseMama.com. You can still look it up. And this is before there were search engines, SEOs. And if you look for Mail Order Bride on Yahoo, because Yahoo was the search engine of choice at the time, it showed up in the top 10 search results for Mail Order Bride. Now, you know, if you look for porn, clearly outnumbered, yeah. So that was like my first project. And a lot of that came out of like me being kind of a depressed college kid and trying to use this thing called the internet to research stuff for my Asian American women class. And all I was finding was pornography and was like, Oh my God, [laughs] we have to like intercept this somehow. And like always feeling like I was not good at being a girl, right? Like the standards for being a good Asian girl, were the extremes. It was like Miss Chinatown, Connie Chung, and then these porn stars that would show up, you know, on these Google, on these searches and that was, that's it, right? So a lot of my projects have been about like being awkward out loud and being uncomfortable out loud and leaning into publicly embarrassing myself, but saying that it's my work.   Miko Lee: [00:23:45] And how has your family responded to your work? You grew up in San Francisco.   Kristina Wong: [00:23:49] Yeah. Oh, they didn't like it at first, but they love it now because I'm a Pulitzer Prize finalist, my friends.   Miko Lee: [00:23:54] Oh, how did that feel to get?   Kristina Wong: [00:23:56] So crazy! You know, I entered, anyone can become a Pulitzer Prize contender. Like you just need 75 dollars and then you mail your entry in and the committee reads it. And so six years before I was a Pulitzer finalist, my friend Brian Feldman and I, we entered our respective plays. Mine was The Wong Street Journal, his was a very experimental piece called Dishwasher. His entry was like two pages long and we were up against Hamilton, which ended up winning. And my mother was so excited because she'd only seen my play, you know, like that was the only play she'd ever seen that year. And she was like, “You're going to win. You're totally going to win.” Which was great that I had her confidence, but I was like, probably going to go to Hamilton. And I actually got a press pass, and I went to Columbia College, where they announced the winner just for press in person, and I happened to just be in New York at that time, and I had prepared three speeches. One, if I won, a speech if I was a finalist, and then the speech if I lost. And I read all three speeches outside after Hamilton was declared the winner of the Pulitzer. So that day when they were announcing it, my, that same friend Brian was like, “Good luck today.” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” And he's like, “They're announcing the Pulitzers.” And then they were announcing it online because you know, it's 2022. And I was like, they're not going to give it to me. I do solo work. I'm an Asian woman. They've never given an Asian woman anything in the drama category and my phone just started exploding at lunch when I was in Chinatown having lunch with some friends and I couldn't believe it. I was just like freaking out and it just feels so dignified, right? And I'm not exactly a dignified person. So I'm like, [laughs] you know, I was like, “Oh my God, this is going to look so good on Tinder. Holy crap, this is crazy.” So it's, I'm still shocked when I look at that by my name. I'm like, this is so weird. But it's just funny because yeah, I entered as a joke six years before, and then I was on the committee the following year reading the applicants. So crazy things happen, folks. Crazy things can happen.   Miko Lee: [00:26:06] I have one more question, which is, you started ASS, Auntie Sewing Squad, in the very beginning when you were making this piece about running for public office. Even though that was created in 2020, you know, we're basically having the same election again.   Kristina Wong: [00:26:19] Yeah, I know. It's a sequel. Why are we in the sequel? I hate sequels.   Miko Lee: [00:26:24] So are you reviving that piece as well?   Kristina Wong: [00:26:27] I did, I have done it a little earlier this year. There have been some requests to maybe do it before November. We will always have elections, so it's a little bit evergreen. I actually had a reality television pilot that didn't get picked up by Trutv. And it was a very self satirizing version of myself that I was going to be playing in this pilot, which was basically satirizing myself as an activist. And it did not make sense once Trump took office to satirize myself, because as it turns out, most of the world have very two dimensional visions of what an Asian American is like and would think that that's who I really was and not get that it was a loving poke at myself. And I think looking at Radical Cram School and how I play myself there can give you a sense of, this won't make sense to everybody. Right. And so I was an out of work reality TV star, and what do you do when you're an out of work reality TV star? You run for public office. So there's a lot of that humor around that era. Just, I think we've just gotten so exhausted with, right? [Laughs]. Like, why, why are these two people still here? Oh my god. This is the best we could do? But there's still a lot of public offices to run for. It doesn't start and end with the presidency or the Senate. The story of the show is like what can happen locally? There are so many local offices that would surprise you. You could literally just go to the meeting and go take the vacated seat and go around saying you're an elected official. For better or for worse, whatever that means. So, but yeah, it did get recorded for Center Theatre Group, but it's not available for streaming anymore. So they did stream it right before the election during the pandemic. And maybe it will have a few more runs right before the election this year, but I'm not sure.   Miko Lee: [00:28:07] Okay, well, keep us posted so that we know. Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know about your upcoming play at ACT, Kristina Wong's Sweatshop Overlord?   Kristina Wong: [00:28:19] I just want to say it's such a special show and I feel very lucky I feel like there's not a lot of this. There's literally pushback in the publishing world and the network TV world where they're like, we do not want you to pitch anything about the pandemic. We are sick of the pandemic. So I feel like this record of this time came under the wire. I'm told it is not annoying as many things about the pandemic are [laughs]. And to me, it's really I find a lot of humor, not at the expense of like how tragic that time was, but in that a group of aunties came together and formed this ad hoc sewing army to protect the country. And, and so this really plays out like a war movie on stage and I think really kind of gives us something to reflect on and appreciate of each other in that moment. And so that's really what I hope brings people out is this need to feel that there's something sort of comforting that we can take from this moment, because I don't know that we got that. I think we just sort of ran from that so fast that we never really reflected. I hope to see everybody at ACT, The Strand Theater on Market, March 30th to May 5th, I believe is when I close. I do shows eight days a week. I do them on weekdays. I do them on weekends. I am living in that theater, folks, and I am living there for you. So please come out. I'll see you. It's Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord. Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.   Miko Lee: [00:29:44] Kristina Wong, thank you so much for sharing your time with us. And we look forward to seeing the show and learning more about the Auntie Sewing Squad. Thank you so much.   Kristina Wong: [00:29:54] Thanks Miko.   Miko Lee: [00:29:54] This is Apex Express and you are listening to 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno, 97.5 K248BR in Santa Cruz, 94.3 K232FZ in Monterey, and online worldwide at kpfa.org. Next up, listen to the Radical Cram School where kids learn about the story of Detroit activist and American revolutionary Grace Lee Boggs. This is the project that Kristina Wong was talking about creating to help young Asian Americans have a sense of pride and an understanding of their history. Take a listen to the Radical Cram School.   Radical Cram School: [00:30:43]   Miko Lee: [00:35:24] That was Kristina Wong's Radical Cram School. You can check out more of that on YouTube, which is linked in our show notes. Next up, take a listen to my interview with playwright, Lloyd Suh. Welcome award winning playwright Lloyd Suh to Apex Express.   Lloyd Suh: [00:35:41] Hello.   Miko Lee: [00:35:43] Your new show, The Far Country, is premiering at Berkeley Rep through April 14th and we're so happy to have you here.   Lloyd Suh: [00:35:52] Thanks for having me.   Miko Lee: [00:35:53] Okay I'm going to start with a big question, which is who are your people and where do you come from?   Lloyd Suh: [00:35:58] My family immigrated to the United States, from South Korea in the early 1970s. I was born in Detroit, Michigan and grew up mostly in the South suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana but I've lived in the New York City area for the past like 25 years.   Miko Lee: [00:36:17] Thank you so much for that. I noticed that many of your plays are based around the Chinese American experience and less on your Korean American background. Can you talk a little bit more about what has inspired your artistic play choices?   Lloyd Suh: [00:36:30] Yeah. In the past, like, almost decade, really, I've been writing about these kind of forgotten or underexplored moments in Asian American history. It's kind of very accidental and almost involuntary. I was doing research on one play and it would lead me down a rabbit hole into reading about a story that I just couldn't shake, that I needed to, you know, get in a room with peers and explore. And so one play would just kind of lead to the next, I was writing a play under commission for the National Asian American Theater Company in New York called Charles Francis Chan Jr. That play kind of accidentally became about the history of the stereotypes that kind of permeate around Asian America to this day, and where those stereotypes came from. And in researching that history, there's just so much more scholarship around now, around Asian American history than there was when I was in school. There was just so much to read, and so much that was new to me. And in the process of researching that play, I came across the story of Afong Moy, regarded as the first Chinese woman to set foot in the United States. And there was something about her story that just haunted me, that I just couldn't shake and I knew I needed to get in a room with peers and like really wrestle with it. So in the process of that play, I was researching the exclusion era and it's unavoidable, right? The way in which the Chinese Exclusion Act and the experience of people on Angel Island really serves as kind of a fulcrum for so much of what Asian America is now, right? It created geographical restrictions, legislative, economic, not to mention cultural and stereotypical. Like, it's just the foundation for so much of what we've had to navigate as this obviously, socially constructed, very important sort of attempt at solidarity that we call Asian America. What that led to was just feeling like I'm just following, you know, I'm just following this impulse. I was doing it kind of subconsciously at first, but once I became aware that I was writing this history, it became really clear that what I was looking for, in total was trying to place myself on this continuum, trying to understand, where have we come from and where are we going and where are we now. The Far Country and another one of my history plays, The Heart Sellers, which is kind of a bookend to The Far Country in a lot of ways. were written largely during the pandemic.   Miko Lee: [00:38:57] Oh, that's so interesting. And so you've sort of been on this pathway, a timeline through Asian American history.   Lloyd Suh: [00:39:05] Yeah. It felt different during the pandemic, like, right. Like, before it was kind of impulsive and it felt very organic and I wasn't always very self aware of that, about how one play connected to the other. But once you know, we were in this moment of deep self reflection just based on what was going on in the world at that time too—a pretty intense reckoning in this country over American history, over, you know, who we build monuments to, over our accounting of what it is to be an American and a contemplation about like who we've forgotten. And so it became just more purposeful in that way. It became just clearer, especially as I started to think about the ways in which, you know, I have aging parents and I have growing children and wanting to understand how do I talk about one to the other? How do I place myself and my parents and my children on this continuum of this long arc of history? That doesn't just go backwards, but, you know, it goes forward as well. That in each of these plays, there's a gesture towards the future, and then thinking about the future and when, you know, when characters talk about the future in these plays, I like to think that for actors who are, who are playing those roles, that they can feel really palpably and recognize that when these characters are talking about the future, they're talking about them. And then when audiences hear them talk about the future, they also could feel the ways in which they mean them.   Miko Lee: [00:40:24] So you're both, as Helen Zia says, lifting up these missing in history moments, trying to tell these stories that haven't been told. Also, I hear you're reflecting a lot during that time of COVID during the lockdown time on how do we rise up our stories? I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the pandemic time and the impact on you as an artist and if the rise in anti-asian hate that really started happening around that time impacted your storytelling.   Lloyd Suh: [00:40:53] Absolutely. Yeah, I mean that whole period was, it was such a bizarre time to be a playwright. I mean, it was a bizarre time to be anything, right? But the idea of writing a play was pretty absurd because there were no theaters, right? And it's like, there's no sense of, hey, when will there be theater again? Right? It just seemed—   Miko Lee: [00:41:15] An unknown, an unknown field, right?   Lloyd Suh: [00:41:17] Yeah, so it was a little silly, right? You're like, oh, your play is due. And you're like, no, it's not [laughs] nobody's going to do anything. Like, why am I writing plays, right? And I think everybody in that time was thinking about, like, why do I do the things that I do? Why do I spend the time on the things that I spend time on? And, you know, our relationship with time was just very different. So very early in the pandemic, I was like, yeah, why am I, why would I write a play? There's no, it just doesn't make any sense right now. But then as I sat with the things that I knew I needed to wrestle with, and just knowing the way I wrestle with things is to write about them, that it felt like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this anyway, even though there's no sense that theater will come back anytime soon. I'm going to do this anyway. And it became an aspirational thing. Like to write a play became aspirational in the sense that it's like, I believe that theater will come back, that we're not all gonna die, that civilization will continue, and that this will matter, right? That what I'm exploring right now, will be meaningful to myself, to my peers and to strangers, in whatever the world looks like then. And so to write aspirationally is pretty, pretty cool. It's different, you know. To be able to write with that aspiration was really valuable. And I think it's part of why and how these plays came to be the kind of plays they are.   Miko Lee: [00:42:40] I appreciate the hopeful side that you are infusing into your plays, given the time that we were in was when many people felt so hopeless. I'm wondering if because you're writing about the immigration station and Angel Island and also the Exclusion Act were, what was happening in the country around, you know, Trump saying Kung flu virus and all the stories about the elders that were getting beat up in Chinatown and, all over the country, the slurs that people were getting. Did that impact or help to inform how you're writing about the Exclusion Act?   Lloyd Suh: [00:43:14] Yeah. I think that reading the news during that time, it's very similar to reading the history, right? You can see where that comes from. I remember during that time, in a lot of news media, tended to make it seem or insinuate that this was new, that this was surprising somehow. Having been immersed in this history, it was frustrating to see the ways in which people, sometimes very smart people [laughs] not recognizing, hey, this is not new. This is ancient. This was there from the beginning. Yeah, of course, that absolutely informs everything. It feels like, yes, I'm writing history, but I'm trying to write out of time. One of the things about writing aspirationally at a time when there is no theater, is you also can't write to a specific time, you know, in the pandemic moment, writing in the pandemic moment you cannot write to the pandemic moment, right? Because you know, oh, this will not be, this is not when these plays will be seen. So you're writing for a kind of a future, right? You're writing for a time that you hope is different, in good ways, but you also acknowledge may be different in, in unpleasant ways.   Miko Lee: [00:44:15] Right.   Lloyd Suh: [00:44:16] But it's also like all of this is out of time, you know, the phenomenon of violence against Asian Americans or against anybody or against a culture is so pervasive throughout history. Right. So, it's not hard to make that or to let that exist out of time. Right.   Miko Lee: [00:44:35] I mean, the violence against the culture is deeply American.   Lloyd Suh: [00:44:38] Yeah. And feeling like it's not something you have to force. It's just something that you have to acknowledge and reckon with on its own terms, which is to say, it's not about 2020. It's not about a particular moment. It's about a long arc of history where these things come from, how they've brewed, how they've festered, how they've lingered, how they've been ignored and forgotten and buried over, and how they might be transformed. How they might be diagnosed, you know, like I think of them as wounds. In a few of these plays, characters refer to, like a sense of historical trauma as a wound, a wound that you can't recognize if you don't know where it comes from. You can't diagnose it and you can't heal it if you can't diagnose it. So part of it is like saying, “Hey, there is a wound.” When I think for a very long time a lot of cultural tradition has been to say, “Push it away, push it away. Move on.”   Miko Lee: [00:45:31] “Keep working. Don't, don't think about it. Just keep working.”   Lloyd Suh: [00:45:33] Yes. Yes. Bury it. And even generation to generation, you don't want to hear those stories.   Miko Lee: [00:45:38] That's right.   Lloyd Suh: [00:45:39] If I have a thesis in any of this, [laughs] it's that, no, we need, you need to know. You know, I think that these characters, this is too early for them to have a name for the concept of epigenetics, but I see it. I see it in tradition, this idea that it does pass down.   Miko Lee: [00:45:54] The trauma through the bloodline.   Lloyd Suh: [00:45:56] Yeah. And so like, if you're going to feel the pain, you got to know where it comes from. If you know where it comes from and if you can deal with it with people, right, with a community on a deep level, then it can be healed. And if you don't, then it never will be.   Miko Lee: [00:46:10] So do you look at most of your plays as a healing modality? Is that what you want from your audiences?   Lloyd Suh: [00:46:15] That's a great question. I mean, I think about that for myself, I would say on a certain level. I mean, I think about it as many things, but that is part of it. Yeah. Like I think about it as I need to understand this. Like, you know, like just thinking about the exclusion era. I felt like, okay, I know I need to write about this because I know we need to make sense of it for myself. I need to understand how it manifests in my life, how it manifests in what is possible for my children, how it manifests in America. So that's part of it for sure for me and for my peers, the people in the room. For audiences, I would say, especially as I've gotten older, I've started to redefine my relationship with audiences in that, like, I had a playwriting teacher once talk about how a playwright's job is to unify an audience. That no matter where an audience comes from, like whatever happened to them that day, they're all coming from different places when they gather in the theater. But through the course of the play, a playwright wants them to become one organism and have the same discoveries in the same moment.   Miko Lee: [00:47:13] Oh, that's interesting. Do you agree with that?   Lloyd Suh: [00:47:16] For a long time I did, but then I had this moment when I was writing a play for young audiences, when I found this really useful tension between like the adults who, you know, thought that the fart jokes were juvenile [laughs] and the young people who would just not understand these references that are there for the adults. And it was kind of cool because you'd feel pockets, different people reacting in different ways. And especially as I was doing some of these early history plays, I found this useful tension between people based on socio location. That Asian American audiences were just naturally responding to different things in a way that was kind of interesting. And so what I realized is if I manipulate an audience so that they're operating as one organism, they're not responding as themselves. They're not responding in as deeply personal of a way, right? So what I want is for people to bring something of themselves to it. Like, no matter what happened to them that day, no matter what happened in the news, no matter what happened in their personal life, that through the experience of watching a play, they can relate something of themselves to what they're watching, and they can bring that into the theater with them. and so, like very purposefully in these plays, I try not to unify an audience, right? Which is to say, I'm not trying to divide them, but I'm also trying to make them respond as individuals.   Miko Lee: [00:48:37] Right, because the first one actually feels like you're trying to get a cult together. Everybody should think the same way and feel the same way, as opposed to individually responding about where each of us are at and how we take in that information of the play.   Lloyd Suh: [00:48:52] Yeah, yeah. And I just find that so much more satisfying because I like to leave a lot of room in my plays, for actors, for directors and designers to personalize.   Miko Lee: [00:49:02] All the other creatives to be able to have their input to put it into their voice.   Lloyd Suh: [00:49:07] Yeah, and just even to make choices like there are moments where you could go many directions like if somebody were to ask me, “Hey, what does this line mean?” I would say, “Well, you know, like, what does it mean to you?” Right? Like it's make it yours. Every character can have secrets that I don't need to know.   Miko Lee: [00:49:22] Oh, you're doing therapy speak with the actors [laughs]. What do you think it means?   Lloyd Suh: [00:49:26] Yeah, I mean, I think it is. It's like making choices, making big choices that allow for any production to be an amalgamation of many people's real personality, their history. Like if I were to go into a rehearsal room and just spend it making everybody do what I already know, I want them to do. Then watching the play is just watching something where I already know what's going to happen.   Miko Lee: [00:49:47] Right. What's the fun in that? [Laughs]. Um, so let's come back and talk about The Far Country, which is at Berkeley Rep right now. Tell us about this play. I heard you saying that each of your plays, the rabbit hole of the journey that one discovered the other, but can you tell us very specifically about The Far Country?   Lloyd Suh: [00:50:07] Yeah, The Far Country is a play that takes place during the exclusion era, about a very unlikely family that spans across a couple of decades navigating the paper son system, and the experience of a young man on Angel Island Detention Center. The journey leading up to that and the journey leading away from it as this very unlikely family tries to build something lasting in America, despite the extraordinary legislative restrictions that were in place at the time.   Miko Lee: [00:50:36] Lloyd, can you speak a little bit more for audience members that may not know what the Exclusion Act was?   Lloyd Suh: [00:50:42] Yes, totally. The Chinese Exclusion Act was legislation passed in 1882, that restricted all Chinese laborers from entering the United States. And this was a period of time when China was, specifically Toisan was ravaged by natural disaster, war, economic disenfranchisement, horribly one sided trade agreements with the West. There was an extraordinary wave of Chinese laborers who were immigrating to the United States in the years preceding. Partially through the gold rush, partially through the opportunity to work on the transcontinental railroad. In the United States, it was a period of such xenophobia and such anger and hatred towards these incoming Chinese laborers that these extraordinarily restrictive laws were passed, the Page Act, prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act. But what also happened is the great earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco destroyed all the government records pertaining to birth records and who was there. So it created this really odd opportunity for Chinese currently residing in the United States to claim birthright citizenship, to claim to have been born in the United States because there was no documentation to prove otherwise. And if somebody was able to obtain birthright US citizenship through that process, they could then bring their children to the United States. And so what it did was it created this system whereby people who had obtained birthright US citizenship could then pretend to have a son or a daughter that they would sell that slot to so that somebody could enter the United States. And so it created these really kind of patchwork unlikely families of people connected only by paper, only by false documentation. And the navigation of that system, ultimately created this very weird community.   Miko Lee: [00:52:32] Expand on that. What do you mean by weird community?   Lloyd Suh: [00:52:36] People who were not able to be themselves, who changed their names, who at least on paper were pretending to be somebody else. Families that were not connected by blood, but pretending to be connected by blood. A community that was almost entirely male, a community that was in the United States, but not really permitted to travel outside of a particular geographical area. This was a community that was constructed in reaction to legislation, in reaction to imprisonment on Angel Island. And in reaction to the horrible conditions of that time. What's remarkable to me is the ways in which they built a community anyway, they built families anyway, they built opportunity anyway, and the resilience of that, the bravery of that, the sacrifice of that, is something that I am simultaneously in awe of, but also feel a responsibility and an obligation to build on to honor, to try and illuminate in some way to try to share with others. But also just to recognize the incredible pain of it, that they gave up everything, like really everything. They gave up their name, they gave up their family, they gave up their identity, in order to pretend to be somebody who belongs. That's the only way to build any kind of future. These were pioneers who did things that it's hard for me to imagine. But I know that they did it for us. Not just us, but for the future, for future generations, for you know, those who come after, and that is very powerful to me.   Miko Lee: [00:54:03] I appreciate that as a fifth generation Chinese American, whose family comes from Toisan, whose grandmother was on angel island under a different name because her husband, my grandfather had bought papers from her great grandfather so that they could not actually be married because on paper they would be brother and sister. So even though she had a legal right to actually be in the U. S., she had to take a whole new name and a different identity on Angel Island. So we all have these complicated stories that are part of our history. Thank you for rising that up and bringing that to the world. I'm wondering what you want the walk away message for folks coming to see The Far Country.   Lloyd Suh: [00:54:49] Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. The only way I can answer it is to go back to what I said before about wanting people to respond personally. Like I think everybody has a history, everybody has a family history, and everybody's is different, but I hope that anybody who watches this play has moments where they can think about their ancestry. About the things they know and the things that they don't know and just change their relationship to that somehow, just really reflect on it and reflect on not just their personal history, but how it relates to their definition of what it is to be an America. To add this really huge, but underexplored moment in American history and add it to their accounting of what it is to be a citizen, what it is to be an American. Cause one of the things about this history, as I'm describing the paper son process, depending on a person's particular relationship with the concept of immigration and depending on a person's political leanings, you know, some might hear my description of that and say, “Well, these are criminals. These are people who abused the system.” And I think that is a part of this history. One of the reasons it's buried. One of the reasons it's not talked about is because there is a sense of shame, societal shame, cultural shame, that these things were necessary, right? Shame is part of it. I don't want to pretend it's not, but I also want to acknowledge that in addition to whatever that sense of shame is, is a sense of pride. A sense of bravery, a sense of dignity, a sense of aspiration, what people were willing to do in order to build something for the future, for us, for their families. So a part of that is like just knowing that many of those stories still are untold, and wanting to uplift and honor, and, acknowledge, the beauty in these pockets that have historically felt painful.   Miko Lee: [00:56:48] Thank you Lloyd Suh for joining us on Apex Express.   Lloyd Suh: [00:56:51] Thanks so much. Appreciate it.   Miko Lee: [00:56:52] Please check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about our show tonight. We think all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. APEX Express is created by Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Swati Rayasam, Aisa Villarosa, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Gabriel Tangloao, Cheryl Truong and Ayame Keane-Lee.   The post APEX Express – 3.21.24 Community in Time of Hardship appeared first on KPFA.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Living Legacies: LARRY THE MUSICAL x MISTER REY TRIBUTE Host Aisa Villarosa covers “Larry the Musical” a new theatrical production based on the book “Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong” written by Gayle Romasanta and the late Dr. Dawn Mabalon. Nomi aka Power Struggle and Aisa also honor an anchor and leader of the Bay Area Filipinx and civil rights community –  Mister REY. Links to Episode Features: Larry The Musical website: https://www.larrythemusical.com/   Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: https://www.instagram.com/pinayism/?hl=en Billy Bustamante: https://www.billybustamante.com/ Mister REY Memorial GoFundMe https://misterrey.bandcamp.com/album/wonders-mysticisms-beat-tape Power Struggle https://soundcloud.com/mario-de-mira Show Transcripts Living Legacies: Larry the Musical x Mister REY tribute Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community And cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board The Apex Express Aisa Villarosa: [00:00:28] You're listening to Apex Express on 94.1 KPFA Berkeley, 89.3 KPFB Berkeley, 88.1 KFC at Fresno and online at KPFA. org. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I am your host, Aisa Villarosa. I'm an artist, attorney, ethnic studies advocate, general rabble rouser, and lifetime fan of the Apex Express crew. Shout out to my homie Miko. Get comfy, get cozy. We have a wonderful show for you tonight. It's a show about a show, that is Larry The Musical, which is based on the book Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong, written by Gayle Romasanta, and the wondrous late great Dr. Dawn Mabolon. The story and songs are influenced by and honor our ancestors, and the musical debuts at San Francisco's very own Brava Theater running March 16th through April 14th, 2024. That means, seats are limited. So, in addition to checking out the show we have for you tonight, visit www.larrythemusical.com to get your tickets today, learn about this cast and crew. Now for our show. First up we'll hear about Larry Itliong's legacy of organizing, resistance, and community power building from Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales. Next, Larry The Musical director Billy Bustamante, previews the heart, soul, and talent behind this production. And, because we're pretty big of a deal here [laughs] we'll also hear a sneak peek of two songs from Larry The Musical. Finally, the artist Power Struggle will help me wrap up this episode by honoring an anchor and leader of the Bay Area Filipinx and civil rights community and our friend, Mister REY. Rest in power. All right, that's the show. Let's dig in. I'm here with Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, one of the country's leading Ethnic Studies and Filipinx studies scholars and professors, co-founder and director of Community Responsive Education, and the educational consultant for Larry The Musical. Allyson, it's so wonderful to have you here. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:02:34] My gosh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this show and all the work that you've been doing for many years. Thank you so much. Aisa Villarosa: [00:02:41] For our dedicated Apex Express listeners who may not be familiar with the wonderful Larry Itliong. Can you talk a little bit about who he is and who he is to this particular Civil Rights Movement? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:02:57] Larry Itliong. He was born in the Philippines, in San Nicolas Pangasinan. He came here at 15 years old. Imagine coming here at 15 years old. He only had a sixth grade education. And he came here, actually in order to pursue his studies and he moved to the United States in 1929. As you probably know, because of the Great Depression, it was difficult to find jobs. He was forced to work in the railroads and then eventually became a migrant farm worker. And he traveled all the way from like Montana, South Dakota, Washington, and finally landed here in California. So during that time, Larry Itliong learned of the plight suffered by Filipinos and other immigrants working in the fields. Larry Itliong was a prominent leader in one of the most important social justice movements in the US, and we call that the Farm Worker Movement. A lot of Filipinos involved along with Mexicanos. He organized a group of 1500 Filipinos to strike against the grape growers in Delano, California. Some people call that the great Delano Grape strike of 1965. Basically they were trying to fight for workers' rights. They had this strike for eight days. And there was tons of violence by the growers, hired hands, and even the sheriff department, and they were thrown out of the labor camp. Larry Itliong. He was strong and he remained tenacious and resilient. And he called upon someone very famous that many of us know Cesar Chavez, and Cesar Chavez' community, to join forces with the Filipinos and they striked again. Because of Larry Itliong, the two groups combined and they ended up becoming the United Farm Workers. And a lot of us know the United Farm Workers and a lot of it is attributed to Cesar Chavez, but really Larry Itliong really pushed that ability to create a coalition. To create a connection to really fight for collective liberation. So this unification between the farmworkers of all different ethnicities, not just Filipino and Mexicano was really unprecedented. And really set an example for many of us—many of us meaning workers and organizers—many of us learned from that movement, how to really create alignment, how to really create a coalition, how to really fight alongside each other. And that movement was very successful. You may or may not know this, but Larry Itliong also was the president of the Filipino American Political Association, the first national political Filipino American organization. And it was very crucial, between Filipino professionals and laborers, that grew out of the Delano Grape strike. Larry Itliong was instrumental in founding lots of things including the Pablo Agbayani Village, a Retirement Home built by volunteers for retired Filipino Manos, who no longer had families and needed a place to call home. I recently visited Agbayani Village with my family. Even in my own family, my husband, his father was one of the farm workers, and it means a great deal to actually be there at Agbayani Village, quite literally, you feel the spirits. And having, having brought my daughter there and she got to, you know, see, where our ancestors lived. Larry Itliong, he passed away in 1977 at the age of sixty-three, very young. He left behind his wife and seven children. But his accomplishments and his legacy, continues to live and we really reap the benefits from all the work that he did. Aisa Villarosa: [00:06:41] I got shivers at several points when you shared Allyson. Thank you. And I am told that as part of your work as educational consultant for Larry The Musical, that one of your unique roles is helping the cast see history in this moment and see what Larry's struggle and Larry's story is to them and their families. So I love that sort of full circle practice. It also means that for a musical to take on you know you've named some, some pretty heavy things, right? You're naming organizing struggle, you're naming the struggle against white supremacy. Can you talk a little bit about what makes this musical special and, and even to be able to do right by Larry and his story, how did you all bring this to life? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:07:33] Whoa. That's a really important set of questions and I really appreciate the connections between what's happening on the stage and what's happening in our classrooms and, you know, what's really happening in our communities. It is a really important show. I think a lot of shows have said, “Oh, we're a hundred percent this, we're a hundred percent that.” But when I go into working with the cast, I really see a hundred percent Filipino, Filipina, Filipinx Americans who are really telling a story that is important. Larry's story is not glamorous, [laughs] you know, and I say that because I've seen a lot of Broadway shows. You know, I have a child who's a performer and I spend a lot of time in New York, and I really do love watching musicals. And so this genre is like happy times for me, right? I go in and I get, I mean, they start singing and I, I just want to cry right away [laughs]. But there's something so powerful, yes, about a hundred percent Filipino cast, but also telling a story about struggle, and about labor, about someone who's working class, who really has changed our lives. I think sometimes when I go to musicals, I try to find myself, you know, like on stage I'm like, which character am I? You know? And in this musical I really feel like I'm all the characters. And you will see this, you know, because there's Larry, of course, this, it's a story about Larry Itliong, but you will see characters, and the creative team has wonderfully weaved characters from different parts of that era, and then also maybe even parts of their own lives and their own families, and they land on stage. They are telling this story alongside Larry, and it's beautiful and I'm really, really excited for people to see it. I'm not going to, I'm not gonna give too much away. Aisa Villarosa: [00:09:39] [Laughs] People gotta buy tickets. Yes. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:09:41] Buy your tickets and bring your tissue [laughs]. Because I really feel like people are going to not only see Larry on stage, but they're gonna see themselves, their families, their parents, their community, their ancestors, all of them there. I will say that, I had the fortune of working with the cast, specifically on a project called Tatlong Bagsak Talambuhay and what I said to the cast was, this work has to be different. This work cannot just be about telling one man's story. And so it's really important for them to understand their own story, their own family's legacy, and why they're doing this work. And so at the beginning of each of the rehearsals, there's one cast member who tells their story. Talambuhay, you know, telling their life story. So that every person is allowed to share their story on the stage, quite literally. And also to be able to make the connections to why they're there on that stage. I had one cast member come up to me last week and say, “I've never been part of a [laughs] a show like this. You know, like where I was seen.” And that's the power of Larry The Musical. It, it's definitely about Larry and how he has inspired us, but it is so much more. And so I'm really excited for people to be able to experience that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:11:18] I was lucky enough to attend the community preview y'all had put on in the fall. It was smashing and I could feel Dawn Mabalon's love and spirit in the room because so much of what you're saying is how are we creating a living archive, right? And there's so many stories that make up history that ultimately is intentionally not told or kept away from people. So it sounds like this is hopefully one of many opportunities for folks to either learn that history for the first time, or to learn it in a really freeing way. I want to talk a little bit about women. If we look at various movements across labor, thinking about the figures of labor, you know, you have Larry, you have Philip Vera Cruz. I am sure there are some strong, strong women in Larry. And as a Filipina we also see that the value of care work, of women really it's often invisibilized by history. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, what can we expect to see from the women in Larry? Are there any toxic narratives that are reversed or addressed by the musical? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:12:32] I feel like you saw the script. [Laughs]. Aisa Villarosa: [00:12:34] I didn't. I did not. [Laughs]. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:12:36] Oh, okay. Okay. I can't give up too much. It'd be really unfair, but I'll say that this begins with the strong women who did the research and who wrote the play, the musical, the book, the script. And I'll start with, a lot of the work is rooted in Dr. Dawn Bohulano's research. I mean, she really was going to tell Larry Itliong's story in an academic book. And before she passed, she was able to write Journey for Justice with Gayle Romasanta. It was, it quite literally went to press the day that she passed. Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon had a dream to really tell Larry's story, but I know deep inside it wasn't just about Larry's story, it was a story about her family. It was a story about her ancestors, including the women. And so I think how beautiful it is to have quite literally the voice and research of Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon in the script that Gayle Romasanta really was able to bring forth. So we have writers like Gayle Romasanta, Kevin Camia, and then writing the music we have Brian Pangilinan, and then you'll hear the sounds of course of Sean Kana. But when we talk and think about the women, the voices quite literally, the singing voices of the women are so powerful. I think sometimes people imagine women during that movement as being behind the men. In this show, that's not the case. I think of the work of Stacey Salinas, Dr. Stacey Salinas, who writes about Filipina farmworkers in the movement. She has some beautiful archives of Filipina women during that time. And you literally see them on the stage and you see them challenging men and you see them saying yes, we are part of this struggle. And so, although it's called Larry The Musical, Larry definitely isn't the main character by himself. Aisa Villarosa: [00:14:40] I love that. And what you shared also reminds me of thinking about the people power movement and the phrase makibaka huwag matakot, where there is power in struggle, right? If, if we can come together collectively. Turning to the musical, it's going to premiere soon. We hope that folks visit the Apex Express website [kpfa.org] where y'all can buy tickets. Please support this incredible work. What is your greatest hope for this musical? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:15:11] Ooh, that's a good question. It caught me off guard. I secretly hope that this musical goes beyond the Bay Area, potentially travels, potentially goes to Broadway, maybe the Philippines. You know, I want people to know how wonderful our story is, our story. And you will really see our story in this. So yeah, I hope it makes it big. [Laughs] I, I really do. We deserve it. Aisa Villarosa: [00:15:41] Well, it's not a secret anymore. You, you manifested it, so now it's gotta happen, right? [Laughs]. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:15:47] Yeah, I really do. I mean, I hope, I hope for all of that. And to be honest, I don't think the Pinnacle is Broadway in my mind. It might've been when we first started the project, but really, I, I feel like most importantly is for people to know the stories of our people. And Larry The Musical can really bring that out. And I hope people can see themselves on stage. I mean, that is a big goal for them to be able to see themselves on stage. Aisa Villarosa: [00:16:13] Allyson, it's been so wonderful talking with you. Before we head out, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:16:21] There's so many struggles going on right now in the world, whether that be, like the manifestation of colonialism and imperialism everywhere, to what's happening in our classrooms. I feel like really key that Larry The Musical is ethnic studies. I think [it's] important that people know that the goal of ethnic studies is collective liberation and we do that by centering the voices of people of color in the first person, ultimately to eliminate and eradicate racism and white supremacy. I mean, like it's all of that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:16:50] Yeah. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:16:51] But I want people to know that Larry is that, and I think sometimes we get stuck on wanting representation, like, oh, I wanna see a Filipino on stage. And so we vote for people on those shows and we get so excited. Aisa Villarosa: [00:17:05] Or that becomes the ceiling, right? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:17:08] Exactly. It becomes the ceiling. We have made it because we've seen ourselves on TV or we've seen ourselves on a stage on Broadway, but I think it's not enough. Because those stories oftentimes are not the stories of our own people. We often play characters who are not ourselves, and we oftentimes have to compromise our integrity to actually become famous. And so for me, when I think about Larry The Musical, it does not compromise. It does not compromise. And it really is about our stories and us telling our stories in the first person. I'll leave it at that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:17:44] I love that. It's such a great way to send us off. And as someone who used to work in the arts and has been shushed at primarily white events, I love the decolonization of the arts as well. It's arts and ethnic studies. So many folks in our work do this work because of a really important moment in ethnic studies that came to them. Unfortunately, because of the forces that are out there trying to stop ethnic studies, for many that revelation comes kind of late in life or sometimes doesn't come at all. So, please let us have more Larry, more stories like Larry and more ways for folks to access this sort of awakening. Thank you so much, Allyson. It has been a pleasure. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:18:31] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do. Aisa Villarosa: [00:18:34] As Allyson shared, Larry The Musical is a lesson in living civil rights history, a chronicle of the racial violence faced by Filipinx organizers and how they mobilize to overcome it. This plays out in the musical's track, “Watsonville,” which we're about to preview. In the 1930s, violence against Filipinos was a daily occurrence. It was not out of the ordinary for Filipinos to get shot at, be beaten, or have their campos bombed. Two major events happened in January 1930, the Watsonville Riots and the bombing of the Filipino Federation of American Building in Stockton California. The Watsonville riots saw hundreds of Filipinos beaten and Fermin Tobera killed over four days of mob violence. White mobs beat and shot Filipinos, and in the end, no one was arrested. “Watsonville” follows our characters as these historic events unfold. It was written by Gayle Romasanta and Kevin Camia, music composed by Bryan Pangilinan and Sean Kana. Let's take a listen. SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:19:39] You're listening to Apex Express on KPFA Radio with me, Aisa Villarosa. That was a special preview of “Watsonville” from Larry The Musical. I'm here with acclaimed New York City-based theater artist, director, performer teacher, and community-driven artivist Billy Bustamante, director of Larry The Musical. We are so honored to have you join us, Billy. Billy Bustamante: [00:21:02] Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here. Aisa Villarosa: [00:21:06] Awesome. Well, we are going to dive into Larry The Musical. And a few months ago I had the honor of catching the community preview at the Brava Theater in San Francisco and it blew my socks off as a mentee of the great ate Dawn Mabalon, a hero and mentor gone too soon, it was beautiful to see her archiving come alive in song. For those who are new to Larry The Musical, can you tell us a little bit about what audiences can expect? Billy Bustamante: [00:21:38] Sure. When you come to the Brava Theater this spring, you will see a story about our shared Filipino American history, but even greater our shared American history brought to life on stage. You will see a story that centers Filipino Americans in the telling of that history. It is a musical that will make you laugh, will make you cry, will make you dance in your seat, and will hopefully make you step back out into the world as you leave the theater with a little more power in your hands. Aisa Villarosa: [00:22:06] Those all sound so incredible. Billy, can you share more, as someone who has been in the arts world for so long, why is this project near and dear to your heart? Billy Bustamante: [00:22:18] Larry means so much to me for so many reasons. I've been making theater now for a little over 20 years professionally. And throughout that time I have kind of had to hold two sides of myself in various capacities, right? I have my American-ness, and I have my Filipino-ness. As a born and raised Filipino American here in the States, I have always had to examine unconsciously how much of myself I can bring into an artistic space just because those spaces have predominantly been white led. Now that we are in a space that is created for by and about Filipino people telling a story that is for by and about Filipino people that really centers not just Filipino story, but the Filipino identity, not just in the product but in the process, that is a feeling I have literally never had before in my 42 years on this planet. And every time I step into this space, I am amazed at how much more myself I feel, and I can see that sensation flashing in every single person in the room. And it's on one side beautiful. It's like a beautiful thing to witness us all kind of come alive a bit more, expand into the space, be more of ourselves. And it's also a bit infuriating to know that it's taken me 42 years to get to this moment. This feeling of true belonging is something that I have grown more and more addicted to and that I continue to chase in any other experience that I have. Aisa Villarosa: [00:23:46] Wow. I'm getting a little goosebumps over here. I am hearing that it's, it's almost like coming home to yourself, that often, and I too have a Filipino family, grew up here I'm second generation, and often the dominant culture's understanding of Filipinos is limited to very simplistic notions, whether that's our food, even if food is very political. Billy Bustamante: [00:24:11] Yes. Aisa Villarosa: [00:24:11] There's often sort of a niceness, and the arts and culture world is no exception. So thank you for sharing. And in thinking about the cast of the musical, can you share what makes this cast special and unique? Billy Bustamante: [00:24:29] I am a firm believer that theater artists of any background are some of the most exhilarating people in the world [laughs]. As a theater artist, specifically as a musical theater artist, there is so much skill you must be able to access in order to do your job. It's not just one thing at a time, it is all things at a time. So we are making a show that sings, acts and dances all the time [laughs], and within that there's that triple threat of skill while also incorporating this fourth ingredient of identity and shared history. So each of the actors that we have brought into this cast has really shown up with not just those first three skills in brilliant capacity, but also a hunger and an enthusiasm to be generous about how they bring this fourth ingredient into the process. Again, another thing none of us have been able to do in an artistic space before. For so many of us, it's our first time bringing ourselves to the work in this way. Because none of us have had a chance to do it. So many of us have never played Filipino on stage before, let alone Filipino Americans specifically. I know I've been lucky to have played Filipinos on stage and have been telling Filipino stories, but none of those have been led by Filipinos or written by Filipinos. So there's a level of not just authenticity, but integrity to the work and the story we're telling that allows each of these cast members to be greater like artistic citizens and contributors to the work. Aisa Villarosa: [00:25:58] I love that. There's in Filipino culture, the word kapwa, right? Which is collective identity. And I was reading a quote from you and you said, “My favorite thing about Filipinx culture is creating community. If you've shared a meal with a Filipinx family, you're family.” And it sounds like here you're talking about a meal but this theater experience and all the prep that y'all did, there's a family feeling to that, and can you share some of the behind the scenes love and care and intentionality that went into creating Larry? Billy Bustamante: [00:26:33] Yes. Yes. I, I love that you found that quote. I can't remember when I said it, but I know I say it a lot. [Laughs]. Aisa Villarosa: [00:26:39] I was creeping on the internet. [Laughs]. Billy Bustamante: [00:26:40] I love it. I, and I do firmly believe, like that's one of my favorite things about Filipino culture. Yeah. If you sit at my table, you leave as a family member, right? And I do think that's the environment we wanna create for the audience as well. This piece of art that we are creating is what I hope will be a fully nourishing seven course meal of artistry that again, audience members come into the theater as guests and they leave as family. That is my hope. How we get there is, has been a thrilling experiment, again, as a theater maker for like 20 plus years, the pandemic, this pandemic pause that was forced upon us as artists, really forced me to examine, but I think forced the greater industry to examine the dysfunction in how we do what we do. And now that we have started creating theater again, I've personally been on this, you know, mission to honor the science experiment that we're all on in terms of a, how to be in a room together and then how to create art together and hopefully a healthier more empowering way across the board. So knowing that's been a mission I've been on with any theater project I take on, for this one specifically there is so much more importance laid onto that particular ingredient, right? How do we make a healthier room? How do we make a more restorative healing process for everyone? Recognizing that the story we are telling impacts the actors and their bodies in a way that no other story does, right? There is an additional toll and cost to reckoning with your own history on stage. And it's, it's a privilege to get to do that, but that does mean we need to reexamine what supportive systems and structures we are creating in the room. Again, this is all an experiment [laughs] and it's going well so far, but some steps we have taken or to gather our company. Our company, on the first full day of rehearsal when we got all the actors together. One thing I was excited about our first day of rehearsal was that we took a good amount of time to sit in a circle and create what we called community commitments. Like a set of shared agreements that we all were participatory in creating that gave us all a guideline of how we treat each other in this space. So now it's thrilling, it's freeing to have this social contract in place that we have all agreed to, that not just allows for the pursuit of an ideal space, but also a way to kind of move through conflict as we pursue that space. So to me that feels really helpful. Another thing we just did in rehearsal yesterday, was we brought Allyson in to lead a facilitation of how we bring our personal individual stories to this greater story that we are telling. We are telling a history and we are living history in this moment. So it was amazing to hear Allyson give us a technique for how we share our individual stories as humans to the rest of the company, which is a practice we will start incorporating at the beginning of every rehearsal. And I can only wait to see how much that impacts the art that we make on stage, knowing that everyone will know more and be more invested with each other as humans. Aisa Villarosa: [00:29:32] And you're talking about living history, right? And as you were sharing, I wrote down safety to create. It's rare that we as folks of color as Filipinos can be in these safe liberatory spaces. Taking it a little personal, has your family seen Larry yet? Billy Bustamante: [00:29:50] Well, I mean, no one really has, [laughs] you know, our world premiere in March will be a world premiere. No one will, even if people have seen every workshop, this is a version of the musical in its fullest form that no one will have ever seen before. So in that way, I'm very excited. With that said, my parents have been keeping up with all the filmed workshops and the interviews, and that's all been amazing. Both of my parents are on the east coast. They're in the DC area, which is where I'm from. So they're keeping up with it virtually. But I am so excited for them to fly out here, to catch opening weekend. I'm getting a little emotional talking about it right now, but my parents are incredibly supportive as is the rest of my family. And they do a great job at coming to see and support whatever I do. And this one, having them in the room to watch this one, I think will be a really special experience. Aisa Villarosa: [00:30:43] I, I can feel love and as a huge fan, a mentee of folks like Dr. Allyson and Dawn Mabalon there's a moment where a lot of Filipinos, Filipino organizations are trying to archive the struggle, the triumphs of the past, and it's incredible that through theater y'all are doing that in a way that will be fresh for new generations. And speaking of theater, you are always creating, you wear so many hats. Tell us what is coming down the road for you in addition to Larry, would love to hear more. Billy Bustamante: [00:31:26] Yeah. I'm gonna put this into the ether here. I, my hope is that this world premiere of Larry will be the first of many steps for this musical. So what I hope is that the next few years includes more productions of Larry at a bigger and wider scale. With that said, there are a few other projects that I'm really excited about. I am a theater leader, but also an educator. So I'm on teaching faculty at Circle in the Square Theater School, which is the only theater training ground attached to a Broadway theater. So, in that way I feel really excited about the work I get to do with young artists there. We are developing a new musical called The Rosetta Project, which I hope everyone checks out. It's gonna be amazing. I'll be directing that. From there I have a couple of, you know, other pots on the stove. I'll be directing, choreographing a new off-Broadway show called Straight Forward in spring of 2025, which I'm very excited about. There are a couple of other things that I cannot release at this moment, but if you want to keep up with the [laughs] shenanigans I am up to, please check out billybustamante.com because I'll be sure to be shouting from the rooftops with excitement once I can. Aisa Villarosa: [00:32:36] Beautiful. And we will include links to your website, Billy, as well as links for folks to get tickets for Larry at the Brava Theatre. And folks can check that out on the Apex Express website [kpfa.org]. And Billy, before we go, is there anything else you want to share? Billy Bustamante: [00:32:55] I think there is one thing. I'm usually not a person who really is enthusiastic about promoting my projects [laughs]. I've always kind of felt some sense of ickiness around that. Some sense of like transactionality around that [laughs]. But Larry is so special to me and there's a spirit that we are creating in this piece that I think everyone needs to experience and be a part of. And I also recognize that, you know, where audience members choose to spend their money is a big investment and a big decision and I hope that everyone who is excited by anything I've said today or anything we've talked about today finds a way to grab a ticket and join us at the theater. This time will be fleeting and it's gonna be over before we know it, and I really hope everyone gets to be a part of it because I think it's gonna be really special so get those tickets if you can. Aisa Villarosa: [00:33:49] Adding a plus one to that. And Billy, you earlier mentioned the impact of these covid pandemic years and yeah, that was the longest period of theater closures, right? Since World War II. As someone who used to work in the arts I also recall that often there's sort of an elite nature to the arts and one of my favorite things when I go to the Larry website is there are so many people who gave all sorts of amounts to make this happen, right? There's folks who gave like 50 bucks. It's such a welcoming site, so I too hope that this is only the beginning. Billy Bustamante: [00:34:28] Awesome. Thank you so much and thanks to everyone who supported us so far. I'm so grateful. Aisa Villarosa: [00:34:32] Our final track from Larry The Musical is called “Train,” which is about Filipinos jumping trains throughout the western United States, traveling from town to town in search of work in the 1920s and 1930s. Train was written by Gayle Romasanta and Kevin Camia, music composed by Brian Pangilinan and Sean Kana. They wanted to create a broad picture of how the thousands of Filipinos must have met each other, built friendships, planned labor meetings, and all while traveling. Here is the exclusive preview. SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:35:03] You're listening to Apex Express on KPFA Radio, and I'm your host, Aisa Villarosa. That was a preview of “Train” from Larry The Musical. You just heard Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Billy Bustamante talk about what makes the world premiere of Larry The Musical so special. Larry debuts at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco March 16th through April 14th, 2024. Seats are limited, so visit www.larrythemusical.com to buy tickets today. Finally, tonight's episode of Apex Express is dedicated to the life and legacy of Reynaldo Timosa Novicio Jr. a father, son, friend, and prolific sound producer, artist and guiding light of the Filipinx American and Bay Area Music and Civil Rights community. Rey passed away on February 2nd, 2024. I'm joined right now by a friend, a colleague, an incredible artist, activist dad, and a martial arts practitioner, Nomi, AKA Power Struggle. Nomi, it's so great to have you on the show today. Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:37:12] Hey Aisa, thank you for having me. Thank you to the KPFA and the Apex Express listeners. What's up Bay Area? Aisa Villarosa: [00:37:19] Nomi, you rep the Bay Area hard. I think a good way to start our conversation is given all the hats you wear, all the ways that you're making change: What does it mean to be Filipinx American in the Bay Area right now? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:37:34] I think right now it is a really important moment to, there's been so much happening in this particular moment around the liberation of Palestine and the end of the genocide in Gaza, and I think that a lot of folks in our community have been really seeing this moment as a way to express their solidarity and mobilize and take action against what's happening to the Palestinians. And I think that is just reflective of the bigger, historical context that a lot of Filipino, Filipinx, Americans, immigrants, have experienced and live under, right? So I believe like a lot of folks are just seeing those connections between colonization, the colonization of the Philippines from various different occupation nations and armies, to what's happening in Palestine. And they make those connections and they even are not that far removed, maybe like two generations removed from the experiences of their grandparents that went through the Japanese occupation during World War II and lived through some of those horrors and they remember that stuff and the stories that they were told and I think that informs a large amount of our community to, to mobilize and take action. I'm not saying that, we don't have more conservative folks in our broad community across the Bay Area, but I believe for a lot of young folks, a lot of folks that have taken time to be part of other movements, whether it be the movement for Black Lives, or Indigenous movements, or even for liberation movements in the Philippines, they kind of understand all these connections, and are building bridges and building solidarity with folks. Aisa Villarosa: [00:39:16] Yeah, it's the young and it's the young at heart, right? I think folks who can be ever curious, and, you know, we have made some headway in ethnic studies where folks are connecting the dots, right, between those shared histories, those living histories of struggle. Tonight's episode started off with a tour of Larry Itliong, the new musical coming out. And it's quite clear that to be Filipino in so many ways means to resist. And as it relates to Larry The Musical, resistance through music is such a powerful form of political organizing. Nomi, you're here today because this episode is also a tribute to our friend who passed away, the wonderful Mister Rey, who you have collaborated with, you have made music with. Can you start by just sharing a little bit about who Rey was to you and maybe talk a little bit about what made your musical collaboration so special? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:40:27] I'm really thankful for this opportunity to just share the story of Mister REY with the entire Bay Area with the country. Mister REY, Reynaldo Novicio, and I worked on one of our first records together. It was called Remittances. And I met Rey back in around 2009. I can't remember specifically where we met. It just happens in life, especially in the art community, you start talking with people and collaborating, and he would invite me to a spot in Daly City, where he was living at the time with his family, and every Saturday morning we would session. I would go over there with Dennis and Kane, Drew, Vi, and we would just, he would just play beats that he had made, and we would write. And after a few months of that, we slowly started to create this body of work that was starting to be more cohesive that would be like the material for the album, Remittances. A couple months after that, we decided to move in, him and his partner, and their family were moving into a spot in the Excelsior District and they had an extra room. I think I was going through a displacement. I think I was going through an eviction in the mission. And so it all kind of worked out and I ended up moving in with them. And that really was just a great opportunity to live together and continue this process of working on this album, which is to me my favorite piece of work. It's so meaningful. The title Remittances. You know, is a remittance obviously, when you send money to your family back home or abroad, was just such a symbol of the immigrant experience, especially for our community and the Filipino community. And so the title was like an offering of culture and love, for our community through music. And that's why we chose that title Remittances and that offering and love transcends beyond just this neighborhood, but also across the seas to our homelands and throughout our diaspora. That project was just really important. For all the artists out there, when you go through a creative process you're partnering with someone and you live with them it's just like a deeper level of connection and struggle [laughs] as well, right? Because, you live together so and Rey has two twin daughters he has one more now. But at the time, and so, you know, you're just really immersed with the family. And for me, it was also such a beautiful experience because Mister REY was a bridge builder. He really was a tulay. He immigrated from the Philippines at a pretty young age, I think late elementary school or middle school, still very much had the identity of the migrant community you know, Tagalog was his first language a lot of his folks, his homies were a lot of recent immigrant hip hop heads and folks from that community. But he was also able to just because there, there is this kind of conception that there's a divide often between immigrant communities and first or second generation Filipino Americans. And it is true to an extent. I've seen it manifest in high schools and on the streets and things like that. But Rey was really able to bridge these differences and connect folks. And so for me, especially someone that grew up in the Midwest, that didn't really grow up around Filipinos, getting to experience living with Mister Rey and his family and living in the Excelsior District, which has the highest concentration of Filipinos in San Francisco, was just such an immersive and beautiful thing and a reconnection to our culture, on so many levels, and I'm already in my, late 20s at the time, and so to go through this experience was really powerful and eye opening. I think it also related to just like what we're fighting for in San Francisco. You know what I mean in the sense of upholding this identity of being a city of multiple languages, a city of multiple classes and incomes. And, and this is what, like, that experience really upheld. At the time I was also doing a lot of work with the Filipino Community Center as a worker's advocate. I was doing some organizing with Migrante, which is a migrant workers organization. And, for all of these kind of different things, from like the organizing work, to my day job, to living with Mister Rey, and being with the Filipino community in the Excelsior, coming together was like one of my favorite periods of my life where I was really understanding more about our culture, our history, our positionality in society and on a local level, on a national level, and on a global level to really understand how politics and history have brought us to America and to really experience it, right? All of these things were super impactful, and I feel like they helped inform and mold what that album, Remittances, was about. And Mister REY was such a huge part of that, right? He was, you know, he wasn't like this crazy political scientist but through his lived experience and his own way of analyzing his life and things he had been through was very sharp and also informing the kind of political influences of this record. So yeah, it was just such a really important time. I don't think I can ever come close to doing something like that again. I just thank him for that year or two that we lived together, embracing me and letting me come into their family life and just being in community with them. His work in terms of, if you visit his catalog of albums, which I highly recommend folks to check out his bandcamp. And it's just Mister REY, M-I-S-T-E-R R-E-Y, check that out and you can hear all of his work. So much like high level art, beat production wise is really sophisticated. He still embraces most of all of his writing and his rapping is in Tagalog. He sprinkles a lot of English in it too but it's just a really beautiful body of work where people in our diaspora can really identify with and just get a lot of nourishment from. So I really suggest folks go check out his catalog. It's really accessible on Bandcamp. Aisa Villarosa: [00:46:40] Nomi, thank you for opening your heart and sharing about what sounded like a really intimate process, right? To make music with someone. And I know the last time I was at Rey's place, he loves his kitchen so I feel like y'all also broke bread, right? Not just making the beats. I was also struck by Rey was such a multi-dimensional advocate, right? Whether it was mental health, whether it was youth issues, right? All of the sort of organizing he did to challenge juvenile curfew laws, for example. You've today brought a track that you worked on with Rey. It's titled “ArtOfficial Freedom” and I'd love for you to cue up the track and just share a little bit about the music. Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:47:31] This was a signature single on the album. It was produced by Mister REY and it also features Mister REY singing the chorus, where he just does a pretty basic refrain where he says, “round and round.” This was like, I feel like for me at least, or many hip hop artists, I think they have that one single on every album that represents the whole album, and I think this is the one. Like I mentioned earlier, around like all the different things that I was doing at the time in terms of community organizing and workers organizing and all the stuff that he was doing, at that time, he was really focusing on mentoring a lot of Tagalog hip hop rappers in the community. And so all these young cats would be at the apartment all the time [laughs], recording in the kitchen. And it was really a lesson for me in Tagalog where I had to like try to learn as much as possible. For all these things to come together, I think are reflected in the song. This song, “ArtOfficial Freedom” is just a great representation of the album. And the title itself is just like a play on words. It spelled art official freedom, to mean that like through art, we can try to aim towards some sense of freedom, some, you know, towards the goal of freedom using art, but then a play of words of artificial freedom that what we are currently existing in and under is an artificial form of freedom. Through this, capitalistic, imperialistic, racist society [laughs]. So that's kind of the play on words, artificial freedom. That was a long time ago. That was like 10 years, no, 14 years ago that we dropped that album. It's great to, I'm glad you're bringing it back on the airwaves. And I just want to give a shout out to also Fatgums, who was the number three part of this record. Lives in LA and is also the CEO of Beatrock Music and Beatrock Art Collective but he was just also a big part of this record. So shout out to Fatgums. Aisa Villarosa: [00:49:25] Here is ArtOfficial Freedom from Mister REY and Power Struggle SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:53:29] Nomi before we go, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners tonight? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:53:34] When our people leave us in the physical world, there's so many ways that we can continue for them to live on and their legacy to live on, especially through art, and especially through the technologies that exist now. Like I said before, please, check out Mister REY's catalog on Bandcamp, it's just Mister REY, M-I-S-T-E-R R-E-Y and look up his music. He also has a project with MrRey and Aristyles called America is in the Dark. That's a beautiful EP. Please check those things out and promote and propagate them, share them with your friends, download them. It's great music. If I could also please plug, to support his family, Mister Rey leaves behind two twin girls and a young son of the age of nine and their mother. And so if you could please donate to the GoFundMe, if you just look up Reynaldo Novicio, his name will pop up, and any donation is greatly appreciated. Lastly, on March 15th Fifth Elements and Hummingbird Farm is going to be organizing a life celebration, for Mister REY, his creative life and his legacy. It's going to be at Hummingbird Farm, which is in the Excelsior District right by Crocker Park, behind the soccer fields. Check that out on March 15th, 4 to 8 pm. The program is still being crafted, but I guarantee it's going to be a really special time. I think there's going to be some films, there's going to be performances, music, and the space in general, Hummingbird Farm, is a really dope community space that is really people power driven. So please check those things out. And again, just really appreciate this time to share about Mister REY and our work together. Aisa Villarosa: [00:55:14] Thank you, Nomi. And Rey would talk about how the Guitar Center in SoMa was a hub for him early on, and he would just meet people, and you have called Rey a bridge builder. So thank you for being with us here tonight and paying it forward with love. Please check out our website kpfa.org to find out more about Larry The Musical, Mister REY, Power Struggle, and the guests we spoke to. We thank you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Aisa Villarosa, Anuj Vaidya, Ayame Keane-Lee, Cheryl Truong, Hien Nguyen, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Nate Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar, and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by Aisa Villarosa and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night. Mga kababayan. Makibaka, huwag matakot. The post APEX Express – 3.14.24 – Living Legacies Larry the Musical appeared first on KPFA.

Enjoy our sets live from Fault Radio in San Francisco, California (March 18th, 2023) 1st hour- JBA 2nd hour- Josh Giggin Special thanks to fault radio for hosting and recording this mix!

GameStop has instructed management to counter law enforcement efforts to close down its stores by referring to the video game provider's services as "essential retail". But is the claim quite as crazy as it seems? GameStop may be oily, but is it "essential" oil? We consider...in Virtual Legality. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT: https://youtu.be/qvWH6oSliQo #GameStop #EssentialRetail #Lockdown *** Discussed in this episode: "GameStop: We Can Stay Open During Lockdowns Because We're 'Essential Retail'" Kotaku - March 19, 2020 - Jason Screier https://kotaku.com/gamestop-we-can-stay-open-during-lockdowns-because-wer-1842415962 "This could be a good virtuallegality" Tweet - March 19, 2020 - The ReTweeter (@BoneSawIsReady_) https://twitter.com/BoneSawIsReady_/status/1240770027227353090 "GameStop claims it is ‘essential retail’ to remain open amid coronavirus shutdowns" The Verge - March 19, 2020 - Megan Farokhmanesh https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21187357/gamestop-coronavirus-essential-retail-shut-down-open "San Francisco Issues New Public Health Order Requiring Residents Stay at Home Except for Essential Needs" Office of the Mayor of San Francisco - March 16, 2020 https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-public-health-order-requiring-residents-stay-home-except-essential "California governor issues statewide order to ‘stay at home’ effective Thursday evening" CNBC - March 19, 2020 - Weizhen Tan and Riya Bhattacharjee https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/california-governor-issues-statewide-order-to-stay-at-home-effective-thursday-evening.html "EXECUTIVE ORDER N-33-20" State of California - March 19, 2020 https://covid19.ca.gov/img/Executive-Order-N-33-20.pdf "IDENTIFYING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE DURING COVID-19" CISA Website https://www.cisa.gov/identifying-critical-infrastructure-during-covid-19 "GameStop Instructs Employees to Ignore Law Enforcement And Not Shut Down" Vice - March 19, 2020 - Patrick Klepek https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkew4g/gamestop-instructs-employees-ignore-law-enforcement-not-shut-down-coronavirus GameStop Letter to Customers Updated March 19, 2020 https://www.gamestop.com/preventive-measures.html "A Note From Best Buy About COVID-19" Best Buy Blog - Updated March 19, 2020 https://corporate.bestbuy.com/a-note-from-best-buy-about-covid-19/ "GameStop's Employees Fear Its Coronavirus Policies Are Dangerously Flawed" Kotaku - March 16, 2020 - Ian Walker https://kotaku.com/gamestops-employees-fear-its-coronavirus-policies-are-d-1842367297 *** "Virtual Legality" is a continuing series discussing the law, video games, software, and everything digital, hosted by Richard Hoeg, of the Hoeg Law Business Law Firm (Hoeg Law). CHECK OUT THE REST OF VIRTUAL LEGALITY HERE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1zDCgJzZUy9YAU61GoW-00K0TJOGnPCo DISCUSSION IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE. INDIVIDUALS INTERESTED IN THE LEGAL TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD CONSULT WITH THEIR OWN COUNSEL. *** Twitter: @hoeglaw Web: hoeglaw.com Blog: hoeglaw.wordpress.com

Listen to The Besties free, only on Spotify. Get Honey for FREE at http://joinhoney.com/morning. Come see us LIVE at AH Live in San Francisco March 20th! Get your tickets now at http://www.RTXevent.com.

Listen to The Besties free, only on Spotify. Get Honey for FREE at http://joinhoney.com/morning. Come see us LIVE at AH Live in San Francisco March 20th! Get your tickets now at http://www.RTXevent.com. The greatest bromance of all-time reunites to tell stories from their past.

Here's the bottom line: It's 2020 and if you're not marketing your interior design business on multiple digital platforms, you're missing out on the kind of name recognition and working relationships that come with getting your images and keywords in front of the people who can help your business grow.  The good news, says Chicago-area-based social media and blogging expert Kyla Herbes (HER-bess), is that it's not too late to start: “I've heard people saying the blog is dead—but the blog is still there…and still very important part of the machine.” In this episode of the Lounge, Kyla shares with host Nick May her secrets to effective digital influencing, pinning, algorithms, analytics, keyword enrichment, and the perils of overthinking it all. So pour yourself a glass of Prosecco (to match Kyla's bubbly personality), grab a pen and notebook and start writing the next chapter of your interior design business today. Remember to be patient: One Kyla's most effective social media traffic-drivers remains a post she wrote in 2014 (a step-by-step guide to marbleizing coffee mugs with nailpolish), when her House of Hipsters blog was just a hobby she indulged in when she wasn't managing her full-time advertising career, her mid-century modern home, and two kids under 5 years old (now 10 and 7).  You'll find it all in this inspiring episode of The Chaise Lounge. You can also catch up with Kyla at Esteem Media's Design Influencers Conference, in San Francisco (March 1-3), where she will be spilling all her proven social media secrets—Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok.    Learn more about blogging and social media expert Kyla Herbes at House of Hipsters and on Instagram at @houseofhipstersblog. Technology took hold as soon as the smart phone came out and our whole world flipped on end to a digital, fast-paced, immediate world. Kyla Herbes Tweet Chaise Lounge Updates Our new podcast Coast to Coast Design is live! Give it a listen to learn about just how many ways there are to run a design business. Our Events Page Resources See what our sponsors can do for you. Upcoming Markets Design Influencers Conference | Mar. 1-3, 2020 HDExpo | May 5-7, 2020 ICFF | May 17-20, 2020 High Point Market | Apr. 25-29, 2020 More About Our Sponsors Wrap Up If you would like to hear more episodes, please visit us on iTunes, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app! We'd love it if you post a review, you may even hear your review read live on our next podcast. Also, find The Chaise Lounge on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. With that said, keep dreaming big, and keep designing a great design business. See ya!

This is a portion of KCBS Radio live coverage around 9am on March 5, 1983 as President and Mrs. Reagan accompanied Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip from San Francisco to end a whirlwind visit by both the First Couple and the Royal Couple. The royal yacht Britannia docked at San Francisco's Pier 50, and the Queen and Prince Philip used the ship to host a dinner in honor of the Reagans' 31st wedding anniversary. The KCBS Radio team includes field reporter Bob Melrose and studio anchors Stan Bunger and Jerry Wilcox.

The Sleep Doctor is in the house! Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and both a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He was one of the youngest people to have passed the Board at age 31 and, with a specialty in Sleep Disorders, is one of only 168 psychologists in the world with his credentials and distinction. Dr. Breus is on the clinical advisory board of The Dr. Oz Show and appears regularly on the show (39 times in 8 seasons). Apart from writing the book we’re obsessed with- The Power of When, Dr. Breus has also written The Sleep Doctor’s Plan and Beauty Sleep. He has consulted for large organizations, including Advil PM, Disney, Princess Cruise Lines, and more. He’s been the Sleep Expert for WebMD for over 14 years and principal researcher on numerous grant funded projects and clinical trials. Dr. Breus has been interviewed many times on CNN, Oprah, The View, Anderson Cooper, Rachael Ray, Fox and Friends, The Doctors, Joy Behar, The CBS Early Show, The Today Show, and Kelly and Michael. What hasn’t this incredible man accomplished? Dr. Breus currently resides outside of Los Angeles and maintains a private practice in that area. I was honored to get a chance to speak with him about chronotypes, your body’s biological clock. Dr. Breus shares with me how to get high quality, restorative sleep. We debunk the biggest myths about sleep- ahem, you must wake up at 5AM to be successful, and more things that may surprise you (social jet lag? Yeah, that’s real). Listen up so you can sleep tight tonight! Dr. Michael Breus Website: The Sleep Doctor Connect with Dr. Michael Breus: The Sleep Doctor Twitter, The Sleep Doctor Instagram Take the Power of When Quiz The Power of When on Amazon Listen through Audible! Sign up here Luminere Sleep Glasses By The Sleep Doctor (Use Code SLEEPDR5 for 50% off at checkout) #HealthcareHangout in San Francisco March 20th RSVP Show Notes/blog post: www.joyenergytime.com/blog/ Join the Thriving Collective- bi-weekly wellness newsletter for healthcare professionals: https://www.joyenergytime.com/the-thriving-collective/ Our Instagram: www.instagram.com/burntouttolitup/ www.instagram.com/joy.energy.time/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/burntouttolitup Free Guides for Occupational Therapists + All Healthcare Professionals: https://www.joyenergytime.com/resources Support the Podcast! patreon.com/burntouttolitup Our website: joyenergytime.com/podcast

Donald Abel, one of Jonah’s oldest friends, is our guest this episode along with one of our earliest guests director Lance Bangs. Lance has a new documentary about Slint called Breadcrumb Trail.  You can see Lance’s new film at Cinefamily in Los Angeles March 11-13, the PhilaMOCA in Philadelphia March 14 and 15, and Roxy Theater in San Francisco March 20. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

InDesign Events; ID to EPUB scripts; Shortcut of the Week; Quizzler Update; Obscurity of the Week: Japanese Dots Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-167.mp3 (15.9 MB, 28:51 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. Upcoming InDesign Events and Deadlines March 2: Early bird ends for Print + ePublishing Conference (May 14-16, San Francisco) March 3: Creating Digital Publications with InDesign, UC Berkeley June 13-14: InDesignSecretsLive! in NYC Three must-have free scripts for InDesign to EPUB (and other uses) TomaxxiLinkRename PerfectPrepText (download link, blog post to come) CSSGeometry (thank you Kris at Rorohiko!) Keyboard shortcut of the Week: Command-Shift-V (Ctrl-Shift-V) Quizzler Update: Code Breaker (see below) due midnight Feb 29! Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Japanese Dots News and special offers from our sponsors: >> Rorohiko’s TextExporter 3.1 plug-in makes exporting text out of InDesign CS2-CS5.5 so simple! You can export all the stories in an ID file into one single RTF, plain text, or ID tagged text file, and you control how it orders the text as it extracts and concatenates it.  Special for InDesignSecrets listeners: Use the coupon code INDESIGNSECRETS167 in the Rorohiko.com store to get 25% off the TextExporter plug-in. >> In-Tools is the developer of AutoFlow Pro, an InDesign plug-in that lets you fully control the layout of both text and images by dynamically shrinking and expanding individual text frames and threaded stories using your settings. (And it’s a great solution for easy alternate layouts for DPS.) Check out their AutoFlow page for details, screenshots, documentation, and to download a free trial! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Register for PePCon by March 2 for up to $200 off > PePCon 2012 Event on LinkedIn; see which of your contacts are attending > Diane Burns' Creating Digital Publications with InDesign, UC Berkeley > Info and registration for our 2-day, single track InDesignSecretsLive! in NYC, June 12-13, 2012 > Forum discussion about Jongware's preptext.jsx script > David's PowerStyles plug-in can also do what PerfectPrepText does (and more) > Cari Janssen's article about TomaxxiLinkRename script > Anne-Marie's post about TextExporter & exporting text from ID > Japanese dots post by Cari > Orthogonal paste (or "paste without formatting") post by David -- Quizzler! Listeners: The mystery image is below. CLUE: The last character is Sonata, here's a character map To enter this episode’s Quizzler: Send an email to info@indesignsecrets.com with the word QUIZZLER in the subject line and the correct answer to the puzzle (as described in the podcast).  You have until February 29 2012 at midnight CDT to send in your answer, one per user! We will randomly choose a winner from the correct answer(s). Winner will be announced in the first podcast in February, and receives the prize: a copy of every single one of our eBooks!

Upcoming events and deadlines; TOCCON recap; John McWade Interview; Quizzler Results; Obscurity of the Week: Sample Buttons ------------- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-166.mp3 (19.8 MB, 35:56 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. Upcoming InDesign Events and Deadlines March 2: Early bird ends for Print + ePublishing Conference (May 14-16, San Francisco) March 3: Creating Digital Publications with InDesign, UC Berkeley June 13-14: InDesignSecretsLive! in NYC Recap of the O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference (TOCCON) Interview with John McWade, founder of Before&After magazine Quizzler Update: Code Breaker! C'mon people! (see below) Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Sample Buttons News and special offers from our sponsors: >> eDocker, the fine people who sell the InDesign > Flash magazine solution (now known as eDocker2 Desktop Publisher) that we've talked about before, just released a new InDesign digital publishing solution called eDocker Tablet Publisher. With this program you can create, from InDesign, an HTML5 Web publication that works in all devices, including iPads, and that you can publish through your own server. Normally $995 for a Single User edition, InDesignSecrets users can get Tablet Publisher for only $895 through April 30 2012 with the coupon code 10IDS2012. For more details and more discounts for InDesignSecrets fans, go to http://www.edocker.com/ids. >> Recosoft continues to improve and enhance their breakthrough product, PDF2ID, now at v3.0. PDF2ID is a cross-platform plug-in for Adobe InDesign that enables you to directly open and convert PDF documents within Adobe InDesign CS3/CS4/CS5. It supports multiple languages and can even pull in PDF annotations (comments) into the InDesign layout!  As an InDesignSecrets fan, you can get an incredible 50% off of PDF2ID Standard or Professional with the promo code IDSECRETS. Note this promotion ENDS on March 9, 2012! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Register for PePCon by March 2 for up to $200 off > Diane Burns' Creating Digital Publications with InDesign, UC Berkeley > Info and registration for our 2-day, single track InDesignSecretsLive! in NYC > O'Reilly eBooks optimized for Kindle Fire 8 > Anne-Marie's Professional Web Site Design book > Presentation Zen that very few presenters paid any attention to > Mike's and Anne-Marie's PDF slides (include links to InDesign scripts) from TOCCON > EPUB 3 Resources from TOCCON, collected by Matthew Diener from EPUBSecrets.com > John McWade's Before&After Magazine > MOO.com Luxe Cards > All about QR Codes and Teacup Software's solution > Our post about the Reappearing Sample Button Library -- Quizzler! Listeners: The mystery image is below. CLUE: There are THREE E's in this! To enter this episode’s Quizzler: Send an email to info@indesignsecrets.com with the word QUIZZLER in the subject line and the correct answer to the puzzle (as described in the podcast).  You have until February 29 2012 at midnight CDT to send in your answer, one per user! We will randomly choose a winner from the correct answer(s). Winner will be announced in the first podcast in February, and receives the prize: a copy of every single one of our eBooks!

Today we are bringing you a very special episode from Eyes on Conservation correspondent Kristin Tieche.  Some of you may recognize Kristin’s voice from the episode that we did on the March for Science - she was reporting from the San Francisco March for Science event in episode 119 of the show. As many of our listeners are likely aware, the following Saturday after the March for Science was another day of action - the People’s Climate March.  Kristin didn't just participate in this march - she volunteered with Rock the Bike, an organization that creates pedal-powered events and activities.  This is the story behind what Kristin experienced at the People's Climate March in Oakland, CA.