About the Speaker Series--
The 2023 Speaker Series started in February with a special performance of The Chinese Lady. Inspired by the true story of the first Chinese woman to set foot in America, Lloyd Suh's critically acclaimed play is a unique portrait of the United States as seen through the eyes of a young Chinese girl. Then, in May, the Foundation collaborated with the Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival and the Asian Pacific CultureFest.
The 2021 Speaker Series started by looking at the long-hidden WWII program of international kidnapping and imprisonment of Japanese Latin Americans. Then, it examined today’s echoes of that horror: border detentions and deportations of Latinx and Black asylum-seekers from countries including Honduras and Haiti. The 2021 series finally explored two current items of unfinished national business: reparations for African Americans starting with H.R. 40’s fact-finding commission; and reparations for Japanese Latin Americans for the violations found by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The 2019 Series featured a panel discussion, "Local Advocates Confront the Immigration Policy Crisis." We sponsored a performance of playwright Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone, a story of love between Vietnamese immigrants taking to the road in a quest for refuge from destroyed lives in their war-torn native country. We presented a joint film and discussion panel program, "In Pursuit of Justice," with the Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival. And we presented concert readings of playwright Jeanne Sakata’s acclaimed one-man play, "Hold These Truths," an “epic love story between one man and the U.S. Constitution,” reenacting civil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi’s challenges to governmental injustices in WWII.
The first two Speaker Series years brought A Conversation on Civics with Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye; Empowering the Community and Educating the Public through Law with Dale Minami; the Sacramento premiere of the Konrad Aderer documentary Resistance at Tule Lake; Bystander Intervention Training with the Council on American Islamic Relations; a panel on Bail Reform in California; and a screening of Sold, a human trafficking story, with a panel discussion on human trafficking. The Foundation screened the Sacramento premiere of Abby Ginzberg's documentary And Then They Came for Us, attended by 800, with a distinguished discussion panel and a social action networking session featuring opportunities for volunteer action with local organizations.
The Speaker Series is part of the Foundation’s two decades of law-related educational and charitable works in greater Sacramento's Asian/Pacific community. Each year, the Foundation awards about $18,000 in scholarships to encourage community-conscious activist future lawyers. The Foundation has supported activities such as the Hmong Mediation Project, a local project engaging Hmong elders in conflict resolution in cooperation with the Sacramento Superior Court; and the CAIR-Sacramento Valley immigration legal clinic. The Foundation has produced numerous law-related workshops and programs, and administered a federal grant for research on World War II's notorious Tule Lake concentration camp.
