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#200 8/7 Monthly Meeting; US-China Science Agreement; Maui Need Help; March on Washington

In This Issue #200

  • 2023/08/07 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

  • Future of 44-year-old Science Agreement Caught in Middle of U.S.-China Tensions

  • Maui Inferno - The Communities Need Help

  • 2023/08/26 March on Washington



2023/08/07 APA Justice Monthly Meeting


APA Justice held its monthly meeting on August 7, 2023.  Speakers included Nisha Ramachandran, Joanna Derman, Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Clay Zhu 朱可亮, Echo King 金美声, Shuang Zhao 赵爽, Andy Wong, Shanti Prasad, and Christine Chen.  A written summary of the monthly meeting is being prepared at this time.


Presentation by Clay Zhu on Florida Chinese Radio Television (FCRTV)

On July 22, Clay Zhu 朱可亮, Founder of Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA) and a lead attorney in the lawsuit against Florida discriminatory alien land bill, gave a webinar "从微信案到佛州案：在美华人的维权之路和启发" to describe the road from the WeChat Ban to the Florida lawsuit and the inspiration of Chinese people in the United States to defend their rights.  The webinar in Chinese was broadcast by FCRTV 佛州华语广播电视台.  Watch the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOqobsVDX_A (2:05:26).  Clay's 61-slide presentation is posted by the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance (FAAJA) at https://bit.ly/3OWbYdy


Chinese for Affirmative Action 华人权益促进会

During the August 7 monthly meeting, Andy Wong andywong@caasf.org, Managing Director of Advocacy, and Shanti Prasad sprasad@caasf.org, Advocacy Manager, Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), gave an introduction of CAA and described its recent roles and activities.  CAA was founded in 1969 to protect the civil and political rights of Chinese Americans and to advance multiracial democracy.  Today, CAA is a progressive voice in and on behalf of the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community.  It is also a co-founding partner of Stop AAPI Hate - the national coalition to address anti-AAPI racism in the U.S.  Their 6-slide presentation is located here: https://bit.ly/3QBqQPQ


APIA Vote

During the August 7 monthly meeting, Christine Chen, Executive Director, APIAVote, gave an introduction of APIAVote and a report on "The Growing AAPI Electorate and What is at Stake."  APIAVote’s work revolves around collaborating with national, regional, and local partners in order to equip advocates with the training, tools, resources, and best practices they need to do their best work as “trusted messengers” in their communities.  Together, APIAVote’s Alliance for Civic Empowerment (ACE) envisions a world that is inclusive, fair, and collaborative, and where Asian Americans and Pacific Islander communities are self-determined, empowered, and engaged.  ACE is missing partners in some states in the Mid-West, South, and Northeast.  Christine's presentation included the trend and historic AAPI turnout in 2020, a presidential election year, with 64% registered and 60% turnout.  Christine also gave an outline of activities and training in 2023 and 2024.  Her 18-slide presentation is located here:  https://bit.ly/3DZBKY4 



Future of 44-year-old Science Agreement Caught in Middle of U.S.-China Tensions


According to Axios, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the South China Morning Post, one of the most foundational agreements between the United States and China, the Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STA), will expire on August 27, 2023.Originally signed in 1979, STA has been renewed about every five years with the last time being in 2018.  The agreement laid out the terms for government-to-government cooperation in science, opening the way for academic and corporate interactions.  It opened the door for scientists to collaborate in physics, chemistry, health and other areas. Cooperation between the countries helped China to transition from ozone-depleting CFCs and enabled the sharing of influenza data used to devise yearly vaccines.The STA signing gave "a form of permission for lab-to-lab, university-to-university, scientist-to-scientist cooperation," says John Holdren, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) during the Obama administration. "It legitimized the whole notion that collaboration was respectable."More than four decades into the agreement that included a pandemic and several administrations of fiery rhetoric, the broader nature of that cooperation is being scrutinized over concerns about Beijing-backed intellectual property theft and the Chinese military benefitting from knowledge about U.S. scientific advances.Making a case for renewal, Deborah Seligsohn of CSIS, a think tank in Washington, said that as the first deal signed between Washington and Beijing after the normalization of ties, the agreement was of “enormous historic significance”.Seligsohn said the agreement had resulted in “many specific science and technology outcomes” that had greatly benefited the US and the rest of the world, from cooperation on the study of birth defects and influenza to fighting air pollution and HIV/Aids prevention.Over the years scientists on both sides had also worked together on almost 100 protocols and annexes under the agreement, “specifically, a number of changes to intellectual property protections”, she said.


Seligsohn said non-renewal could complicate recent attempts to find areas of cooperation, including the “the types of people-to-people connections and educational exchanges” that Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed to promote during his visit to Beijing in June.“There is a real risk that any such improvements, including access to key health information and the ability to train the United States’ next generation of China experts, will be put at risk if the agreement lapses,” she said.Richard Suttmeier, a US-China science and tech cooperation expert at the University of Oregon, said letting the agreement lapse would not be “productive for finding the right terms for the larger relationship with China”.Suttmeier said it would probably be a mistake to let the deal lapse and the two countries needed to come up with an agreement that reflected the “realities of the third decade of the 21st century”.


Suttmeier acknowledged that China had been the biggest beneficiary of the agreement – “largely because the US had been so far ahead of China in science and technology; there was less to learn from China than China could learn from the US”.


“Nevertheless, the US benefited in a variety of ways,” he said.


“Now, however, with China emerging as a scientific superpower, the flow of knowledge is going in both directions, so, in principle, the benefits to the US could be greater.”




Maui Inferno - The Communities Need Help


According to multiple media reports, Maui's wildfires have killed at least 96 people, a toll expected to rise.  The fast-moving inferno, which started on August 8, 2023, spread from the brush outside of town and ravaged the historic city of Lahaina that was once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.  It was one of three major wildfires on Maui.According to AP News on August 12, 2023, in the hours before a wildfire engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens that would have warned the entire population of the approaching flames and instead relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts that reached a much smaller audience.Governor Josh Green said the inferno that reduced much of Lahaina to smoldering ruins was the worst natural disaster in the state's history, making thousands of people homeless and leveling at least 2,700 buildings and “an estimated value of $5.6 billion has gone away.”  Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just 3% of the search area,A potent mix of high winds from Hurricane Dora, low humidity levels and a high pressure system over the North Pacific created deadly fire conditions in Hawaii.  The fate of some of Lahaina's cultural treasures remains unclear. The historic 60-foot-tall banyan tree marking the spot where Hawaiian King Kamehameha III's 19th-century palace stood was still standing, though some of its boughs appeared charred.The fire that destroyed the historic town of Lahaina in West Maui is now the deadliest US blaze in over 100 years, according to US Fire Administrator Lori Moore-Merrell.Thomas Leonard, a 74-year-old retired mailman from Lahaina, didn’t know about the fire until he smelled smoke. Power and cellphone service had both gone out earlier, leaving the town with no real-time information about the danger.  He tried to leave in his Jeep, but had to abandon the vehicle and run to the shore when cars nearby began exploding. He hid behind a seawall for hours, the wind blowing hot ash and cinders over him.  Firefighters eventually arrived and escorted Leonard and other survivors through the flames to safety.President Joe Biden signed a Major Disaster Declaration to deliver additional federal resources and support for the emergency response.  The action makes federal funding available to affected individuals in Maui and provides aid on top of the actions already underway by federal agencies to help state and local search-and-recovery efforts.


The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is partnering with Native Hawaiian and community organizations and businesses to match up to $1,500,000 in donations for ʻohana (Hawaiian term meaning "family") impacted by the devastating wildfires on Maui.




2023/08/26 March on Washington


On August 26, 2023, a 2023 March on Washington will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in 1963, to continue the fight for democracy, social justice and civil rights. Join the King family at the Lincoln Memorial to honor the past, acknowledge the present and march toward a future of progress and equality.Advancing Justice | AAJC is co-chairing this momentous event along with ADL, Human Rights Commission, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Legal Defense Fund, NAACP, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Urban League and UNIDOS.Advancing Justice | AAJC is working on a common gathering place for the AANHPI community place while at the same time making sure that we are well integrated into the March.Advocate Qian Huang 黄倩 reported that the National Action Network (NAN) is looking for hospitality volunteers on Friday, August 25, at 6:30 pm with a walk-through of all the volunteers.  The set up work (stage, chairs, booth, flyer, t-shirts...) will be done by NAN. On August 8, 2023, ADL East hosted a webinar titled "The March on Washington: Together Towards Justice."  It featured Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway and NAACP New Jersey State Conference President Richard T. Smith. The discussion focused on the historic 1963 March on Washington, the civil rights movement today, the importance of allyship, as well as how to register for this year's March on August 26.  Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1MlImhhgbk (57:56)


August 15, 2023

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