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More info: https://ucla.in/2kJIQt5

Presented by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Co-sponsored by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the National Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team, and the Southern California Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exacerbated disparities in access to health care and other resources, and most strikingly across the diverse racial and ethnic groups across the U.S. It has not only devastated communities, it has illuminated the inequities in our health care system.

For Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) — who are seeing rates of infection up to five times that of white people here in L.A. County — a lack of disaggregated race and ethnicity data has made them invisible. So how does a group which has often been masked by a lack of meaningful data become unhidden? The brand-new Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) COVID-19 Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) is looking to change that — by revealing targeted data for NHPIs across the nation in order to better deploy resources and other actions to help the disproportionately affected population.

This webinar is co-sponsored by the National Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team, a consortium of researchers, physicians, public health experts, elected officials, and community advocates created to respond to the pandemic to protect PI communities, and the Southern California Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team, a coalition of NHPI community-based organizations and advocates providing much-needed resources and information to NHPI communities in the cities and counties across Southern California.

It is with deep sadness that the UCLA Asian American Studies Center shares news about the recent passing of Professor Emeritus Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. Professor Hirabayashi was the inaugural George & Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair of the Japanese American Incarceration, Redress and Community (Aratani Chair) and served as a member of the Center's Faculty Advisory Committee. He retired from UCLA in 2017. Professor Valerie Matsumoto, current holder of the Aratani Chair, shared this tribute in memory of her longtime friend and colleague.

This UCLA report shows that the 2020 Census will severely undercount immigrants, low-income people, and people of color.

Two key reasons are the COVID-19 pandemic and a directive issued July 21 by the Trump administration to cut population data collection operations short by one month; the Census Bureau must now end field data collection by Sept. 30.

The new analysis [PDF], by researchers from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Ong & Associates, uses U.S. Census Bureau COVID Tracking Project data as of Aug. 1, and updates a previous UCLA report that analyzed self-response rates as of June 1.

Join us for an in-depth look into our newest publications at the AAAS Virtual Book Fair!

Mountain Movers: Student Activism & The Emergence of Asian American Studies with Karen Umemoto, Russell Jeung, Harvey Dong, Lisa Tsuchitani and Arnold Pan

Rockin' the Boat: Flashbacks of the 1970s Asian Movement with Mary Uyematsu Kao

Mixed Race Student Politics: A Rising "Third Wave" Movement at UCLA with Robert Chao Romero and James Ong

REGISTER: http://bit.ly/aaas20bookfair

Learn about the newest Amerasia Journal at our issue launch! We will feature senior editor Judy Wu (UC Irvine), guest editors Monisha Das Gupta (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) and Lynn Fujiwara (University of Oregon), as well as some of our contributors. You can check out the abstracts from issue 46:1, as well as read the editors' introduction at https://bit.ly/amerj461.

During this family-friendly workshop, you'll explore Virtual Manzanar and the Suitcase Activity in Minecraft, watch the short film "Boy Scouts of Heart Mountain" and meet Bill Shishima, who was a boy scout at Heart Mountain!

Led by a team from UCLA, Building History 3.0 Project is a collection of free and ready-to-use activities, games, and lesson plans for learning at home and in school. Designed to teach kids about the World War II Japanese American incarceration camps, the project offers short documentaries, worksheets, game-based learning activities in Minecraft, and more!

Please register for free at www.buildinghistoryproject.com/events

Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/events/359369978379469

With the eviction moratorium set to be lifted on September 30, 2020,about 365,000 renter households in Los Angeles County are in imminent danger of eviction and homelessness according to a recent study from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Please join us for a virtual public forum with housing justice researchers and community organizers to discuss the tenants' rights crisis and what can be done to mitigate the damage to Angelenos through enforceable rights and robust protections.

The event will feature research findings from the following reports.

• UD Day: Impending Evictions and Homelessness in Los Angeles
• Hotel California: Housing the Crisis
• Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis in Los Angeles: Identifying Renter-Vulnerable Neighborhoods

During this family-friendly workshop, you'll explore Virtual Manzanar and the Suitcase Activity in Minecraft and meet Marie Tajima from our short film "Marie's Dolls." As a young girl, Marie was forced to give up her precious Japanese doll collection before going to Heart Mountain. Hear her story and find out how she reunites with her dolls 80 years later!

Led by a team from UCLA, Building History 3.0 Project is a collection of free and ready-to-use activities, games, and lesson plans for learning at home and in school. Designed to teach kids about the World War II Japanese American incarceration camps, the project offers short documentaries, worksheets, game-based learning activities in Minecraft, and more!

Please register for free at www.buildinghistoryproject.com/events

Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/events/586183588622690

This UCLA report reveals the disparate economic impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on Asian Americans and points to a need to expand financial relief for all workers in order to stave off the worst effects of the crisis and ensure a strong recovery.

While anecdotal evidence suggests that Asian American businesses, particularly those in big-city ethnic enclaves, experienced the impact of COVID-19 earlier and more deeply than others as a result of xenophobia and racial discrimination, there has been little empirical data to show the overall effect on Asian Americans in the labor market.

The new analysis, by researchers from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and Ong & Associates, used employment and labor data for California and New York to better understand the nature, pattern and magnitude of the COVID-19 economic disruption to Asian Americans between March and May 2020.

The report found an increased difference in unemployment and joblessness between Asian Americans and whites during this period, compared with the period before the pandemic, when the rates were nearly identical. By May 2020, the researchers found, the unemployment rate for Asians was 15% and the jobless rate was 21%, compared with 12% and 16% for whites.

Graduates encouraged to envision and build a better future (UCLA Newsroom) | Alum actor George Takei was the featured speaker for the College, along with student speaker Kristie-Valerie Phung Hoang. You can view the virtual celebration online, as well as view the names of those who graduated this year, including Asian American Studies majors and MAs.

These students have earned their degrees in building equity (UCLA Newsroom) | The story highlights four UCLA graduates who represent the spirit of UCLA’s Institute of American Cultures and the ethnic studies research centers.

UCLA Asian American Studies Cinema Class Congrats to the Graduates 2020 | Various filmmakers, whose works were featured in Asian American film courses taught by Professor Renee Tajima-Pena and Center for Ethcommunications Assistant Director Janet Chen this quarter, contributed video messages to students.

Congratulations to Professor Ninez Ponce, of the Health Policy and Management Department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health! She currently serves as the director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, which houses the California Health Interview Survey. She will be using the funds to set up an NHPI COVID-19 Response Research Fund to award stipends to students she has been working with to collect and analyze NHPI data.

This report issued by the UCLA Latino Policy and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center found that Asian American and Latino voters in California, Texas, and Virginia turned out in smaller numbers for the 2020 primaries than in 2016, requiring immediate action and more work to be done by candidates and political parties seeking their vote for the November general election. Read the report here.

More: Politicians courting Latinos and Asian Americans are advised to step up outreach now (UCLA Newsroom)

Over the last few weeks, members of the UCLA community wrote and signed letters in support of Black lives, Black studies, and struggles for justice, including divesting from the police. Here are some of them:

• Statement for Justice by leaders of academic units dedicated to social justice
• Statement in solidarity with African Americans in the Fight for Justice, signed by over 1,000 AAPIDA educators, scholars, and students
• Open Letter for Black Study at UCLA from the Bunche Center for African American Studies and African American Studies Department
• Letters in Support of Black Study at UCLA demands (#1) (#2) from ethnic studies units
• Letter of support for Black Lives and Black Scholarship at UCLA signed by various UCLA community members
• Allyship Statement from UCLA’s Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) student community
• Solidarity Statement from UCLA's Vietnamese student community (also available in Vietnamese)
• Divestment from police state (multiple letters) from the DIVEST/INVEST UCLA Faculty Collective

After the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Fielding School of Public Health launched the COVID-19 Multilingual Resource Hub at TranslateCovid.org last month, the project team has been working on adding new resources, including producing a series of videos. The first video by Right Here in My Pocket, filmmaker Duc Nguyen, and EthnoCommunications Assistant Director Janet Chen, is on handwashing and is now available on the site and on YouTube. It will soon be translated into six additional languages. Future videos will focus on wearing masks and social distancing to help emphasize the importance and need for these practices to different communities, especially as the United States just reported its highest one-day death toll from the coronavirus this week.

More: UCLA launches COVID-19 website in more than 40 languages (EdScoop)

Rockin' the Boat: Flashbacks of the 1970s Asian Movement is a photographic journey into the Asian American Movement from 1969 to 1974 by photojournalist, UCLA alum, and former AASC Press Publications Coordinator Mary Uyematsu Kao. Never-before seen photographs help tell the story of the beginnings of Asian America. From immigrant demonstrations in Chinatown to Japanese American protests against Japanese imperialism in partnership with U.S. imperialism to visiting the Movement in Denver, Chicago, and New York City—Rockin' the Boat is a reminder that today’s struggles are rooted in the history of U.S. imperialism.

The book is available for purchase online alongside other releases published during the Center's 50th Anniversary, such as Mountain Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies and an expanded edition of Rappin' with 10,000 Carabaos in the Darkby the late Pilipino American poet Al Robles. Please note that due to campus closures, shipping on orders from our online store may be delayed.

Congratulations to Professor Natalie Masuoka of the Asian American Studies and Political Science Departments! She begins her three-year term as chair of the Asian American Studies department on July 1. She has published award-winning books, including The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion and Immigration (co-authored with Jane Junn) and Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States. She also recently published a report, Democratic Primary 2020: Analysis of Latino and Asian Voting in 10 States and developed the Census Engagement Project among many other contributions. The Asian American studies and ethnic studies community at UCLA is grateful to outgoing chair, Professor Victor Bascara who oversaw the recruitment of 8 new faculty, including Professors Natalie Masuoka, Jennifer Chun, Cindy Sangalang, Lee Ann Wang, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Jolie Chea, Loubna Qutami and Karen Umemoto, along with other major accomplishments such as the "Power to the People" Conference for the Asian American Studies Center's 50th Anniversary.

As the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) marks its first five years of work, Vice Chancellor Jerry Kang reflects on the current moment, as UCLA begins to look to the office's new incoming leadership, Anna Spain Bradley.

All Things [Not] Being Equal (UCLA Magazine/ Newsroom) Feature on the work of EDI to find solutions as the coronavirus pandemic has exposed feelings of xenophobia and highlighted societal inequities.

The Work Ahead (UCLA Magazine/ Newsroom) A look at the first five years of EDI.

Jerry Kang to step down as EDI vice chancellor after five years (Daily Bruin) Jerry Kang will return to teaching as a professor of law and Asian American studies on June 30.

Anna Spain Bradley named vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion (UCLA Newsroom) Anna Spain Bradley is an expert in international law and human rights and she returns to UCLA from University of Colorado Boulder, where she served as assistant vice provost for faculty development and diversity. She starts serving as Vice Chancellor on September 1st.