APEX Express

APEX Express – 8.12.21 KSW’s We Won’t Move Episode 2

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.

Tonight on Apex Express, we present Kearny Street Workshop’s podcast We Won’t Move: A Living Archive. Hosted by Kazumi Chin, Dara Del Rosario, and Michelle Lin about APA artists of the past, present, and future, whose stories shape the movements and dreams of San Francisco. Find out more information about We Won’t Move: A Living Archive here.

Thank you to Daniel Lam for the editing!

 

KSW Episode 2

Apex express Asian Pacific expression,

unity and cultural coverage, music and calendar. Coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It’s time to get on board. The apex express applies. Well, ask me, how did you get all those people out there? How did you get thousands of people out there at the night of the eviction? Well, we had a phone tree.

We had. But imagine if you had art that could, uh, tell people what the story is in a much more succinct way than a speech art is what amplifies all of that organizing. Uh, you know, it can, uh, move things for.

Welcome to we won’t move a living archive, a podcast series from Kearny street workshop about Asian Pacific American artists of the past present and future whose stories shaped the movements and dreams of San Francisco. I’m Michelle Lynn, literary and mixed media. I’m nonprofit arts administrator and curator, poet, scholar, and educator.

So for today’s episode, we are so honored to speak with Dr. Estella Hubble, activists, scholar, and professor emerita at San Jose state university. She was a member of the KDP of Filipino revolutionary organization, which fought against the Philippine president, Marcos dictatorship and for democratic rights in the U S in the 1970s and eighties, uh, Stella also fought to stop the evictions at San Francisco’s international hotel in 1977.

And the told the story about it in her book, title, the San Francisco’s international hotel, mobilizing the Filipino American community in the anti-eviction movement. Darra, could you share more about the hotel for listeners who might not be familiar with it? Yeah, let’s take this journey together. In the 1920s, the international hotel was a place of rest for seasonal Asian laborers, working in the fields over generations.

It grew to become home of many Asian Asian-Americans, particularly Filipino and Filipino-American elders as well as a hub for organizers. And. The I hotel was also Kearney shoot workshops. First home in 1972, when eviction notices are served to the elderly tenants of the hotel, the tenants, along with local student activists at the time, mobilized the community in a fight that lasted for nearly a decade.

Even after the eviction in 1978, the community really didn’t give up the fight. Estella continued to actively organize student nineties and in 2005, the new eye hotel opened. And today it serves as a space for low income housing St. Mary’s school and Manila towns. In the case w office today, there’s a photograph on the wall of protesters standing, besides the words we won’t move.

This was an important slogan during the movement for the hotel. And we wanted our podcast to hold this energy and to bring it into the present before the interview is sella shared that she was now the age of the tenant. She had supported back in the 1970s and that we, the three of us were about her age when she was a young organization.

What I love so much about this interview was how she was telling us a story as our elder and how we as Kearney shoot workshops descendants today. We’re listening.

can you share a little bit about what was happening in San Francisco during the time of the fight for the I hotel? Okay. Well, 1968. Okay. Is a magical year kind of like the way 2020 is because of the COVID 19 and the George Floyd murder. And then it burst on the scene. And, uh, because of social media, people got mobilized, they began to question police brutality.

Right? So. In the same way. In 1968, there were a lot of things going on. There was, uh, opposition to the Vietnam war and in the bay area, there was an Asian American contingent. Went to demonstrations and said that those Vietnamese, that you’re fighting are Asians, and this is also a racist war against the Vietnamese and they’re fighting for their liberation.

And then there was the strikes on campuses, third world strikes. And what that was about is also about race. It’s about how. The third world people, as, as we saw it at the time, wanted their history told and they wanted their education to be relevant. The third world people’s history is the core, you know, of the development of this country.

Native Americans, for example, wanted to have native American studies. Okay. So what was that all about? Well, it was about the broken treaties. It’s brought the fact that they were already here, that they’re not immigrants. They are, you know, the original inhabitants. And how is it that they became so.

Exploited and oppressed has to do with a history of colonization and devastation of the people through diseases and taking over their land. So that’s really the real history, but of course that’s not what is taught for the Filipinos. In fact, there’s a whole history of colonization there too. And that’s how the Filipinos got to the United States was because they were brought here by the, you know, those who wanted to develop the agricultural industry and cannery.

Right. Mainly cheap labor and, uh, those labors that they replaced where the Chinese and the Japanese, because the Chinese and Japanese were excluded. Now, when was that history ever told. The main thing you hear about is what, like the story of Thanksgiving, the pilgrims, you know what I mean? So by the time you get to college, you kind of get the real history, but then there’s blow back.

Because of that, they have to have a third one college, you know, you have to have an alternative kind of thing because they won’t allow. I’m a student of history. I got my degree in history. When I started teaching at San Jose state, they didn’t even have slavery as a topic to study. And that was 1990s. It was actually the black student union who proposed at first.

At San Francisco state, the thing about slavery and racial oppression and white supremacy, what was the civil war about slavery? All right. But the way it’s taught, you know, I’m embarrassed to know because I’m a history major, uh, is that it was states, right? So, you know, that whole history never gets really told in its entirety from this point of view of, of the people involved.

That was the impetus for, uh, for the ethnic studies. Third world strike both in San Francisco, state and UC Berkeley. And those were the two groups from those two colleges that joined the I hotel in the beginning. One of the things that was a demand for ethnic studies was to serve the people, serve your community.

And so those were the core of young people that came to support the monomers. Some of those who lived in the I hotel had been part of the organizing. A large part of them were laborers and worked in the agricultural field. They had something more, which was that they were part of the organizing of the unions.

what was happening at that time in the city was urban redevelopment. San Francisco for the longest time was a blue collar city. Right after world war two, the city started thinking we want to make San Francisco into a world-class city, one in which people would become tourists of, you know, it’s more tourist city now.

Right? This would be the corporate center, kind of like, you know, what you have now is Twitter. It’s a different situation in different kind of capital finance capital. It’s the information industry, Facebook, Twitter, all of that. In the old days, it was more like the bank. And so their plan was to no longer have it as a blue collar city, it would be white collar and upper income.

What does that mean? They’re going to move poor people out. They’re going to move out communities. That’s what the long-term plan is. And so you’re fighting the same kind of battle, but it’s a different kind of cat. You’re right in that, like, it really does push like low income working class people out of the city, a city and communities in which they’ve really developed connections with one another.

And I think that’s one of the powerful things that from your book is really emphasizing that. Manila town in the high I hotel weren’t displaces, but they were communities in which people build families with one another. They built kin with one another and became each other’s lifelines. Like I really had to sit with that and really imagined what a thriving and bustling Manila town looks like in San Francisco.

Yes like this, wasn’t just a fight just for physical space, which yes. Is very important and like vital live, but it was so much more than that. Like the uprooting was, it, it was so much more traumatizing than just losing a house. One of the things it doesn’t get pointed out is how we actually were traumatized.

You know, we don’t really talk about that cause it’s kind of very, uh, I don’t know, you don’t want pity because you want to show strength in fighting back. But all of us who went through that were traumatized by the eviction itself. Yeah. And I feel like you’re also raising really good questions or not conversation around that.

The battle today is still exists. And the, just the Capitol is different. And I’m thinking a lot about how exhaustion also exists with organizers. We won’t move is this declaration though, of staying strong, but then how do we also talk about the trauma that our bodies are being impacted by and hold? And like, how do we process these things?

Well, you know, it’s something that I’ve learned afterwards though. And I hope that you all take care of yourself because there is a thing about self care and caring for each other and checking on each other because you need it. You really do need. And in our day, we were kind of seen as super people. We kind of thought ourselves that way too, to the detriment of our own bodies.

So you really do have to take breaks. Take vacations when you need it, know your limits, be supportive of each other, you know, uh, ask questions about how come you didn’t do it or something. Thank you for those reminders, because I think that mentality still really exists for people there or to their people in their community, but there are a lot harder themselves in terms of the work.

Do you mind if I asked you a question about like the process of writing your book? There was a moment, yeah. In the beginning where you’re talking about how it was really difficult project for you, quote, trauma has a way of making you forget, because forgetting is one way to cope with hurtful events. Yet in writing this book, you had to recall a lot of things.

We envision a lot of our listeners are going to be writers and artists too, who are also doing this work of recollection or telling the stories of their community. So I am curious if you could share a little more about like your journey in writing this book. Well, uh, there’s a personal side and then there’s also the professional end of it.

The personal side was a struggle for me because I don’t see myself as a writer. However, I felt like I could write history. Literature, I think requires a lot more imagination and artistry. So I really respect artists because I know it’s damn hard to create really good art. I write history. I try to make it as accessible as possible, and it was difficult for me because I’m, I, it doesn’t come easy.

I have to really struggle. Professionally, when you’re writing a book for a discipline, they have certain expectations and then you have to kind of fulfill those expectations. Okay. One of them was that they want it in third person. They want it objective with source material. So I had to approach it a blend between what I thought was going on and then compare and see if what I thought was sort of similar to what was written out there.

But yet I felt that in order to write a community history, there had to be some kind of bias. Bias towards the people biased towards the community that you’re writing about and have that kind of passion in there. Otherwise, I mean, what are you writing it for? Yeah, exactly. And so when I finally wrote the book.

Uh, it wasn’t the dissertation committee and they approved it because they didn’t know nothing about that hotel. But then when I transformed it into a book, they said, I don’t want any I in there. So there’s some ice stuff in there, right. About the night of the eviction and how we’ll hot, brought out melons, cantaloupe, melon.

And I was crying my eyes out and I couldn’t believe that it was happening. I put an I in there and they rejected it. They want it to be objective third person, whatever. And then there was another reviewer that said it needs more theory.

And so I just came back, changed some stuff, but didn’t change the eye. And I said, take it or leave it. I don’t care.

That’s wow. I mean, like, this is new for me to hear about it. Cause I’m not familiar with a work of historical writing. I mean, it makes sense that they would yeah. That just like, given what I know about like oppressive structures, but like that’s wild because history is not objective and you can’t just remove yourself from it.

And to say that there isn’t a bias, that’s just wrong because otherwise the people who are in power, the oppressive structures will make the bias themselves, which they do. Exactly because for them, like their objective is their bias. That like, that’s what they mean by that. And so I just really appreciate everything you’re sharing right now.

And just like sticking with that first person in there and just like the bias needs to be with the people. I wanted to put that on like a shirt and wear it, put it on a cofaq or something. Well, I have to remember that when we make merge,

um, can I go back to the dissertation because, um, you titled the dissertation, we will move. Right. And that’s the title of the podcast. So I was kind of wondering like what that means to you and like, why did you decide to take this title as well? Well, that was the main demand we won’t move to. So that was why I put it there.

And the dissertation, I tried to put that title for the book. They wouldn’t go for it. So I just, I just left it the way it is San Francisco international hotel. So, uh, you know, it’s not as catchy, uh, and it doesn’t really fit the demand or the time, but what are you going to do? You know, I have to give him something.

And I think something else I’m curious about is what kind of art were people making at that time and maybe what is the place of art even overall in like movement building? Oh, it’s central park. It’s, it’s very important. Um, the, the art is what moves it forward really. I mean, it’s an amplifier, it becomes a Zeit Geist.

It, uh, motivates people. It makes people think it can do all of that. An organizer is important too, of course, because you’re, you have to have face to face talks. Right? You have to encourage people. Art can speed it up. So it’s. I will say some of my earliest learnings around the I hotel was through art.

Like looking at the photographs, looking at the documentary film, thinking of how it also helps feed your generations. Understand. What happened in the past, through a fuller narrative, right. And through a narrative created by the people who were there and how powerful that is. Because I know earlier in our conversation talking about the importance of ethnic studies, it was students asking for a fuller narrative and a narrative in which they saw themselves.

As you talk about the importance of art. Like I think about how these artists are doing this work to create that fuller narrative, right. To document what is happening. So we always remember in the power of remembering through art is just so necessary. Um, I studied art history at San Francisco state.

Yeah. And then I also took ethnic studies classes because part of it was just, I wasn’t learning about the relationship between activism and art. But yeah. You know, like really thinking about just the power of photography, especially during the I hotel and how that has helped shape an understanding for me, like when I walked down Kearney street, really trying to imagine what it would look like back in the sixties, feeling some kind of connection because I have a reference point.

Yeah. You know, one of those, uh, the mural art began around that time too. The Asian-American art. Doing the mural on the side of the eye hotel. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to see those photos of the murals that are there, and it really does capture how people felt at the time. So it’s amazing to see that on my book is just one panel of that mural art, but it was gigantic.

Um, was there any final questions that either you, um, or Darra do you. No, I’m just so appreciative that you are here in conversation with us and also uplifted the importance of self and collective care and organizing because, you know, sometimes we do forget to care for ourselves, or sometimes we do feel guilt.

You know, I think that’s something that a lot of us who do organizing work in whatever shape or form are still learning to put into practice. Yeah, but I learned that afterwards.

Then we’re talking to you now and sharing this out as like a reminder, everyone who’s listening that you have to take care of yourself in the moment as well and take care of each other. Yes. Yes. And I think that’s, that’s what gets missing when we say only care. Right. Because I think the way that you framed it.

Self care means caring for each other too. And I really appreciated that too. It’s a reminder that’s especially poignant in this time where people are feeling separate, separated from each other, which is like thinking about how do we continue to stay grounded with each other. Checking in with each other, as you said, we’re all living through it.

And it’s really hard. It’s a difficult work and not everybody understands what commitment is and why you feel the way you do, how you got mobilized and why you feel that it’s very personal. And then you guys have to share that with each other. Otherwise you’ll be doing it alone, you know? So take care of each other.

you won’t move a living archive is the Kearny street workshop podcast. Kearny street workshop is the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization in the country. We envision a more just society that fully incorporates Asian Pacific American voices informed by our cultural values, historical roots and contemporary issues.

We’d like to thank the following funders for the support of this podcast, California arts council, flash hacker, Foundry national endowment for the arts, Asian Pacific Islander cultural center and the grants for the arts. We also want the thing to falling donors who made a contribution to Kearney street workshops and fundraiser.

We got us. Thank you so much. Crystal feal, Christiana Paik, Cynthia, we Dale. Manami Sandra Elmore’s. Dan Lau. Daniel . Dora Kinsey. David say David Young. Debbie Lee, Derek Chung, Diana Lee, Dr. Leda Herrera, drew van deist Ellen. Oh, Ava song, Margolis Evangelina Magnano by Yani. Gavin Tashi. Bonna Jerry chow. Glynis NUCCA Hora, Henry and Priscilla.

Herbert hon poo and Melissa wing, Hernan Ramos, Hilton open zinger, his Sue Irene Fong van Ermin, our civil Jacqueline Walsh. Jamie M Chan Deneen McGannon Jason. Jason Shu, Jason and Michelle Tang. Dyani Bosu. You are all so incredible. Thank you so much. We will continue to shout out supporters and future episodes.

If you would like to make a donation to help sustain this podcast and other kids’ w programs, please visit Kearney street.org. Stay updated our events by following us on Instagram at Kearney street, please take good care of yourself and we’ll see you very soon. They say you to go off and say, build into the sun.

Well, nothing but the stars to get you home. everyone was gone. I’m drifting on the open sea.it seems so simple to be somebody I’m drowning in salt, water and mud, like the ocean can wash away. It says there’s no way I can go running away.

Dang,

you’re tuned into apex express on 94.1, KPFA an 89.3 K PFP in Berkeley and [email protected]. And you are currently listening to our sister organization, Kearney street workshops, podcast series. We won’t move a living art. Hello, I’m Jason. Bayani the current artistic director of Kearny street workshop. And in June of 2021 K stub, you and belie creative launch Philippine X virtual histories, and AR VR storytelling project with lead artists, Christian Kidwai and contributing artists.

Clarizio Riva, Davia, and under the artistic direction of. This augmented reality project presents four vignettes, the fall of stories of SF Philippine, X artists, activists, MCM mob play Rupert Stanislau, Jessica Hagadorn and Joelle 10. Each vignette Rianna meets the hidden histories of how each of these artists grew their consciousness around community and San Francisco.

For the project, which is now viewable on YouTube and KSWs website, we crafted for three minute videos, pulled from some of the stories told in interviews we conducted with each of these artists today, we’ll be sharing portions of our full interview with poet, organizer and advocate. Get Juul B 10, the award-winning author of typo, negative published by red hen press and former director of community affairs for why BCA.

He currently lives on the big island of Hawaii and is the director of social impact of what heart up. Now let’s take a listen to some of that. Well, yeah, hopefully we take this global moment to tinker under the hood. Yeah. Pretty much I can go and do it. Right. Don’t do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right. So yeah, I was just wondering, maybe you start off with the first question that I sent, you know, what brought you to death?

Death is what brought me to this city. Um, between the years, 1994 and 1996, both my parents died and six of my closest friends, uh, died from HIV disease. So I was living in Southern California at that point, um, doing a lot of community organizing and HIV aids, particularly in communities of color, but particularly, you know, I cofounded, um, the Asian Pacific.

Um, uh, no forgetting the core organization. I co founded Asian Pacific aids intervention team health center in LA kind of like, um, uh, it’s like the, the GABA, the G chair, the, um, yeah, we were the HIV needs project communities in LA and part of. What came with that was being, uh, involved and personally involved in being personally affected by HIV disease.

And so I had a crazy period of multiple deaths and I said, you know, I’m going to go crazy living in Los Angeles. I got to go to the bay area because I got to go somewhere where I could make fresh memories. And I remember coming in with a very clear intent and that was to heal. So there’s. No I’ve used that.

So I came to Hawaii to heal right from what I was happening in San Francisco, but I was really kind of, uh, the healing was about grieving, grieving, and then having lost both my parents. And, uh, it was only really close to my mother. San Francisco was the place I chose to raise myself. So I came in to raise myself as a human adult.

I came to raise myself as an artist. Right. I came to, uh, raised myself as somebody who does, uh, cultural activism in movement work. And I needed to kind of look at moving from LA to the bay, like doing my undergrad and I’m going to get my master’s now in the bay area. And so I ended up actually spending about 20 years each in both Southern California and Northern California.

So I claimed dual citizen. Well, if we’re Northern and Southern I’m as much of an Angelina as I am, you know, a bay area person. And I still am that here in Hawaii. Um, but then, you know, another avatar is for me, my avatar is also evolving now. Yeah, that’s good. Well, there’s a question that we always get that, uh, always gets tossed around at a startup and it’s like, how did you arrive at poach?

How did I arrive at poetry? I arrived at poetry by way of really by way of Luis Alfaro, the playwright. And, um, I arrived in this way where I, I was initially, uh, focused on in my practice. My first practice was as a painter, visual arts, and I still am a visual arts. But, um, and, uh, kind of the beginning of my HIV aids career in like 90, 19 90 or something, um, I was, um, you know, the movement that, the response against HIV and aids and the movement that forum was really a movement of artists.

We were all artists, right. But who they were like, what is going on? You know, like we gotta like do something about this and we found. In addition to our arts practice becoming public health people before we even knew it. And so I had a great opportunity to work with the playwright, Luis Alfaro, and he was running an HIV aids and arts, um, project with the comedian Monica Palacios.

And he, um, he basically said, Uh, oh, Hey, I’m doing a reading at a different light in west Hollywood and you’re in Europe for next month. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I’m not a poet. He goes, and he was basically like, girl, I’ve heard, you’ve talked. You are a writer. You know, you’ve got like 10 minutes or 15 minutes and, you know, good luck kind of thing.

And I did. And, um, you know, with everything when, when things just happened in a close, I go there. And I read my thing and I’m in the audience is somebody who would quickly become a meant to our mind, Geraldine, DACA, who was the editor of an Asian bit of rice and valley, better rice. Exactly. And she went there and she heard me and she was like, um, I need you to write me an essay.

And then from that moment on, I felt like a spigot got turned on. And all I did was, uh, there were a lot of stages, right. Because a lot of aids activists. Also involved a lot of cultural production. So we, we, we created brochures and set up case management frameworks in addition to doing film festivals, in addition to doing exhibitions and induce them to, um, publishing works, lavender Godzilla was a big literary endeavor by, uh, the, the G chair, which was.

The gay, um, what were they, what are they called? They’re called GABA. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, there were series of literary journal, um, that came out of that time. That was partly funded by public health. Right. Partly funded by CDC because we made the argument was that in order to really, um, uh, get people to connect.

To POV education. You have to put them in dream space and is dreamspace. But that, that is the realm of the artist, right? The storyteller who makes poetry, the storyteller who makes visual work, the storyteller who makes film. And so, because so many of us were artists, we use the tools that we knew how to use and then married it with the public health education.

We have to quickly understand and learn. And we, I think as an arts centered movement shaped public health, um, to what it is today. So the kind of tenets of community health organizing are, or just community development, um, by way of public health. And the arts happened because of kind of, uh, this, this milieu of artists.

Who are both personally, um, uh, affected and kind of politically aligned toward or toward, you know, creating, uh, toward creating opportunities or access and alleviating the pain that was there in abundance, pain and loss. So yeah, artists, artists, artists, um, do more than that. Um, as, you know, do more than just, uh, make beautiful work or compelling work.

I mean, we organize, we, we start health centers. We, um, we, we, we develop initiatives. So that became the pathway to me. This is what VCs former executive director can foster saw the possibility where he took someone like me, who was doing public health, doing arts work in, in our community. That had a public health impact.

So rather than choosing somebody who was already kind of being what I loved about his choice, which, you know, I was there for 11 years. Right. Um, and help the ball, at least for YVC and maybe even say some of the fields, I think I contributed to the way community engagement is now being done in the arts, but that was a new and great thing that Ken did was rather than taking somebody who was already on a track.

Right toward the arts. Who’s been kind of who, who went to, who went to SF AC and you know, all, all of that. He took somebody not from the arts track. He took somebody who was an artist working in public health and brought them into arts to help. Another question I wanted to ask you is let’s maybe think about, is there, is there a moment that maybe you can pinpoint or story you can tell, you know, of a moment that profoundly affected you as both a poet and as someone who works in the community, it was a moment, you know, when it w where the regard to the city, the thing, one of the things that comes up there are many, but one of the things that comes up is I would put money on it that I have walked every day.

Of that city, at least thrice, if not more, every inch of it. And I mean it, because I would do the, one of the, one of the things that I, I ended up doing on a regular basis, which become, which became, I dunno if it was part of my arts practice, my life practice, but this is such a city thing. But back when all of that, like those big events were happening and the money was coming in, it was completely stolen.

With time. I was like, um, and I don’t mean to just say that, just to say that, but I was smoking a lot of weed and drinking a lot of like, um, cannabis based milk and something about that time, I felt like, um, or we, I always felt the need to be in dream time. And so cannabis helps with that. And then I just quickly discovered the cannabis and walking for hours and hours and hours also did something.

So I did some kind of crazy monk shit, um, where I would just, um, I used to live up in Bernal Heights up on Courtland. Right. Um, there was a period of time where I would walk from there to third admission and back. Everyday. That was just me walking like that for my walk. So I was clocking in like eight or 10 miles a day on foot.

being in that state and walking around the city and experiencing everything, um, it changed me. It really like, um, I became the city. Right. I became like, I, you know, when you’re in that kind of, um, and when you do it all the time, that’s where a lot of, um, poetry came out of that’s where a lot of new program ideas came out of that’s where it became like these big awards, big, like big, and the only way I could think and process was, um, and it wasn’t always stealing, but I would need to walk.

And, and in San Francisco is a place that. That kind of walking, um, in, in that, um, I felt like I didn’t, I got out of my head into place. That’s where I really started to feel the centrality and the power place. And that, that practice inspired me to do my own. I created a procession project with the sisters of perpetual indolent.

I think, you know, that I’m a sister, right? Yes. That was another deviation for me, because I’ve been on this track of being this like down artists, queer, like all of that. And I’m like, like, this is nuts. That is a trip. And then I started to be, cause I, um, I basically organized an exhibition of the 30th anniversary and I kind of fell in through their archives and learned about their history and, and how they came together and saw that there were.

This wacky group of artists who were able to, like they created the first safe sex education. Right. Like, it was phenomenal to see what they did as artists. Like these were artists who are creating change in, um, in a way that you would never get, because it’s all mayhem. It’s like drag none. I mean, it’s so weird.

Right? And it’s so San Francisco, but now it’s this global phenomenon. There’s a sister house in Ukraine. There’s a sister house in salt lake city. There’s a sister house in Berlin. There’s a sister house in debt, you know, Denver, whatever. Um, and so I got into it. And so around that time I was Y BCA. I was just getting into the sisters and then it clicked with me being Filipino.

I said, you know, being Filipino, my whole life is a procession. I understand perceptions. We grew up with procession. So in that, in the walking around, I develop my Prague, um, a project that called project runway, which is a fashion fundraiser. That started 11 years ago, that’s been happening annually since, and since then 10 different cities have been doing them.

And the project is, sisters are paired with local designers to create a theme look made from recycled materials. So essentially it was like a burning man fashion show. Right. And, and, and so that got started, but that was because I was walking and I was just. I saw the city as a runway, right? Like this city is so picturesque and it could be in the beautiful parts as well as the parts that are terrible and beautiful at the same time.

And those were just some of the ideas that came out of just walking and walking and walking and walking. Um, and so, yeah, like San Francisco will always be home for me. Like my, like my DNA is still in that city. San Francisco is still with me.

you’ll have to feel run down for that. You played underneath that I began on my own.

But I can hear myself. I can make it. With a heart of gold, even when I’m playing with cars with cars,

you’d like to give a big, thanks, Joel, tan for sitting with us, and don’t forget to check out the AR VR vignettes at Kearney street workshops website. We want to give thanks to our project manager, Kimberly, our touch and our researcher, Colin Kimsey for the contributions, as well as our partners, belike creative.

If you’d like to learn more about this project or support our efforts to further expand. Reach out to [email protected].

Just three.

So he gave me.

Um,So that’s no.

Check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing. Keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex express is produced by Preeti Mangala Shekar, Tracy Nguyen, Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee and Jessica Antonio tonight show was produced by your hosts.Miko Lee & Jalena Keane-Lee. Thanks to KPFA and staff for their support and have a great night.

Playlist

Artist Song Album Label
ArtilleryUniformWhen Death ComesMetal Mind Productions
KinWaterWaterDaughter of Joy
RosendalePennies Over LoveFairytale - EPRosendale
Invincible Magic FistPhantom StrutCraneInvincible Magic Fist
Cynthia Lin and the Blue Moon All StarsChemicalsMidnight EchoesCynthia Lin and the Blue Moon All Stars
Various ArtistsHoa Tau Dan NhiAlbum Hoa Tau, Vol.1.QM Production