Vietnamese American 18-year-old student raped and beaten in Florida

By D'ANN WHITE | The Brandon News & Tribune
Published: September 17, 2008

TAMPA - The story spread like wildfire through the close-knit Vietnamese-American community.

In churches around the nation, they held special services to pray for the 18-year-old woman of Vietnamese heritage who was brutally raped and beaten April 24 at Bloomingdale Regional Library in Brandon.

In Westminster, Calif., Michael Nguyen, a member of the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California, organized a carwash and bake sale to help pay her medical bills.

Closer to home, Michelle Phan of Tampa and her friends were considering a similar type of fundraiser after learning the victim likely will need expensive, long-term rehabilitation.

"I first heard about the rape victim on a MySpace bulletin," said Phan, a 21-year-old student studying illustration at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota. "A lot of young people were talking about it so, after hearing her story, how she had this full scholarship to college and so much promise that was destroyed, I just felt compelled to help her."

Phan said their first idea was to host a barbecue or carwash. But when she announced her plans on her Web site, xanga.com/ricebunny, the fundraiser evolved into Fashion for Compassion, a benefit fashion show.

"People just started offering to help," Phan said. "We got the ballroom at the Tampa Convention Center for a huge discount, free food, and a lot of independent Asian and American designers from around the country contributed fashions for the show; everything from T-shirts and street wear to couture."

Amid it all, Phan and her partners, Yvette Nguyen, 20, of Sarasota and Wey Nguyen, 25, of St. Petersburg, received an unexpected phone call two weeks ago.

The rape victim's mother called to say she heard about the benefit and appreciated it, Phan said. The mom said her daughter, who is undergoing inpatient rehabilitation in Sarasota, can't walk or talk and is partially blind, but she can smile in response to questions, Phan said.

"Our hearts just dropped when we got that call. She invited us to meet with her and her daughter," Phan said, adding the women gratefully accepted the invitation. "The family is really private, and we felt so honored, so trusted and so inspired."



i'm angry and frustrated about what happened to this woman, and why. it makes me feel sick and disgusted. it hurts. i wonder why people could be so cruel. and then i think about the people who have supported this woman, and women throughout the world, to stop violence. i think my role as director for Cal's Vagina Monologues. my mission, my community. i think about the kindness and courage of such people like Phan and her fellow designer friends. and i am inspired.

Follow the One Dollar Diet Project

i think this is really cool...

from Ode Magazine:

More than 1 billion people live on $1 or less a day. Christopher Greenslate, M.Ed. graduate of the Institute for Humane Education (www.humaneeducation.org) and his partner Kerri -- both social studies teachers -- have embarked on a project to each eat on a food budget of $1/day. As they say in their first post:

"When we first started talking about doing this, we didn’t really have an agenda, or any developed sense of why we wanted to do it. It just seemed like an interesting challenge; one that would force us to see things differently.

"We are interested in many of the strands related to this experiment; food choices, consumerism, waste, poverty, social psychology, etc., and this experience may provide insights that could help us better understand and teach about a variety of concerns."

Follow their journey on the One Dollar Diet Project: www.onedollardietproject.com

MY VAGINA IS OBSCENE

Participating in the Vagina Monologues has guided me in my vagina-related explorations. For example, saying the word VAGINA. I was a little timid at first when it came to tabling on Sproul and saying the word vagina in public, but having come to acknowledge and appreciate it..IT FEELS DAMN GOOD.

some of this stuff baffles me..



A Los Angeles high school confiscated an issue of the school paper because of the presence of an anatomically-correct diagram of a vagina. "The special Valentine's Day issue of Grover Cleveland High School's Le Sabre newspaper featured an article on the front page about The Vagina Monologues, a play by Eve Ensler, that was accompanied by a labeled diagram of a vagina and a hot-pink headline reading: "Happy Vagina Day," according to UPI. Principal Bob Marks confiscated the issue before it could distributed. The editor-in-chief of Le Sabre, Richard Edmond, said he thought the vag was no big deal, and that the diagram was meant to increase awareness about violence against women. The day after V-day, Edmonds and two other students got sent home for wearing t-shirts which read, "My vagina is obscene." He should totally make friends with the "safe sex or no sex" T-shirt girls from Illinois! [UPI]

this and much more can be found at: jezebel

Vagina Monolgoues at CAL

www.vday.berkeley.edu




I'll be playing "The Woman who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy." Should be a festive event..save the date!

Power Shift 2007

good news about babysitting, moms and magazines

The awesome mom of the adorable 3 1/2 year-old boy I babysit (who no longer goes by "flight plane," but "buzzlight year") handed me the latest issue of Ode magazine and said I'd be interested. I'd never heard of the magazine but hearing that it's about people and ideas that are changing the world for the better immediately caught my attention, and written on the cover is, "for intelligent optimists." Its an international mag dedicated to providing positive news. How cool is that? I'll have to report more once I start reading.

Reflecting on my past jobs, I've come to realize that I have loved every job I've had, and babysitting is certainly among them. Last night after Kerrie (the awesome mom) returned home we talked for about two hours mainly about life in the coming-of-age years. She told me stories about leaving her family in New York for school and later for life in California. She also talked about dealing with the pressures and expectations of her parents and confronting them even if it meant upsetting them or not meeting their expectations; the way she described her parents and struggles seemed all too familiar. we both laughed and took comfort in our similar experiences. It was so comforting that forgot that I was talking to the mom of the son whom I babysat; I felt like I was talking to a good friend. When she had come home I was exhausted and ready to leave for bed, but our conversation was so captivating that I didn't leave until 2am and I when I did I felt energized and inspired.

the power of words and their omission

from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

Just as we could thank George III for creating the United States of America, black America can now thank Don Imus for making Russell Simmons finally face himself. On Monday Mr. Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Records, called for a voluntary ban on the N-word, "bitch" and "ho'" in rap music, and suggested that the words be bleeped when music with them is broadcast. Meanwhile, the NAACP has spearheaded a STOP campaign aimed at combating the use of these words, and the imagery associated with them, in popular culture.

who says one person can't make a difference?

dick cheney delusional?

When I was in high school I wrote for L.A. Youth, a newspaper written by teens and for teens. It was amazing--issues covered a wide range of topics from the typical teenage stresses of the SATs and college apps to the wonders of live rock music, horrors of being locked up in county jail, and randomness of visiting a nudist residence. L.A. Youth covered everything, and writing for the newspaper served as a stepping stone into my years of adolescence.

As a fourteen year-old I was timid and shy (believe it or not, I think I still am), and when something so grand or furious came to my mind, I was too afriad to open my mouth and share it. Instead, I took to pen and paper. That sort of writing allowed me to collect my thoughts and organize them in a way that I found to be just as effective as oral communication. It gave me the support to use writing as an outlet for social activism and the confidence to publicly express my emotions even in the toughest situations dealing with personal matters. There was nothing more empowering than receiving letters from peers who were so motivated by my articles to write back. In the bigger picture, writing for L.A. Youth stressed the importance of communication, whether oral or written, to reach people and converse. Might I also note that my writing escapes led me to find the most amazing cookie recipe and produce this short commentary--link here.

I thought of all of this after my former editor, Mike Fricano (awesome awesome man and friend--who, to this day, still edits my work!) sent me this NY Op-ed column by Maureen Dowd, a columnist I love for her worldly knowledge and razor-sharp wit. I thought I'd share the article here because otherwise you'd have to have pay the Times. Please read with me in laughter and awe.

Daffy Does Doom

By MAUREEN DOWD

January 27, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

WASHINGTON

Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as "delusional."

It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.

Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn't begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he's right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America's reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran's power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq's civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.

In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he's "out of line" when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.

Mr. Cheney acts more like a member of the James gang than the Jefferson gang. Asked by Wolf what would happen if the Senate passed a resolution critical of The Surge, Scary Cheney rumbled, "It won't stop us."

Such an exercise in democracy, he noted, would be "detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."

Americans learned an important lesson from Vietnam about supporting the troops even when they did not support the war. From media organizations to Hollywood celebrities and lawmakers on both sides, everyone backs our troops.

It is W. and Vice who learned no lessons from Vietnam, probably because they worked so hard to avoid going. They rush into a war halfway around the world for no reason and with no foresight about the culture or the inevitable insurgency, and then assert that any criticism of their fumbling management of Iraq and Afghanistan is tantamount to criticizing the troops. Quel demagoguery.

"Bottom line," Vice told Wolf, "is that we've had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes." The biggest threat, he said, is that Americans may not "have the stomach for the fight."

He should stop casting aspersions on the American stomach. We've had the stomach for more than 3,000 American deaths in a war sold as a cakewalk.

If W. were not so obsessed with being seen as tough, Mr. Cheney could not influence him with such tripe.

They are perpetually guided by the wrong part of the body. They are consumed by the fear of looking as if they don't have guts, when they should be compelled by the desire to look as if they have brains.

After offering Congress an olive branch in the State of the Union, the president resumed mindless swaggering. Asked yesterday why he was ratcheting up despite the resolutions, W. replied, "In that I'm the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster." (Or preordained it.)

The reality of Iraq, as The Times's brilliant John Burns described it to Charlie Rose this week, is that a messy endgame could be far worse than Vietnam, leading to "a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we're seeing now," and a "wider conflagration, with all kinds of implications for the world's flow of oil, for the state of Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there's complete chaos in the region?"

Mr. Cheney has turned his perversity into foreign policy.

He assumes that the more people think he's crazy, the saner he must be. In Dr. No's nutty world-view, anti-Americanism is a compliment. The proof that America is right is that everyone thinks it isn't.

He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet.

To borrow one of his many dismissive words, it's hogwash.

Victory is awaiting!

Following is an excellent article that was featured in Vermont's Sunday paper. It tells all of the global warming campaign I'm working on with Greenpeace called Project Hot Seat and its aims and successes. Please read and enjoy.

Energy-PHS-(2) (N)
Global Warming a Hot State Issue
By KEVIN O'CONNOR
Times Argus, Rutland Herald
October 22, 2006/

When Martha Rainville, the Republican candidate for Vermont's lone U.S. House seat, was asked three months ago for her stance on global warming, she seemed cold to the cause when it came to an answer.

"The overarching question is, what is global warming?" the Republican replied at the time. "What is the extent of it? How much of it is influenced by man and the decisions that we make? And what ought we to be doing?"

Rainville soon made up her mind. Last month, at a Burlington rally of more than 1,000 environmentalists, she joined Democratic challenger Peter Welch in pledging to fight the problem. This month she announced if elected, she'd become the seventh Republican to co-sponsor the Safe Climate Act, the companion House bill to the Senate's Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act introduced by retiring Vermont independent James Jeffords.

The cause of Rainville's newfound conviction? The candidate found herself in the Hot Seat — specifically, Project Hot Seat, an election-year initiative by the nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental group Greenpeace to encourage congressional hopefuls to fight global warming.

Greenpeace is known worldwide for floating its message on a big green boat, the Rainbow Warrior. But this fall, members are anchoring themselves in six U.S. House districts — in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington — with the aim of educating candidates of all political colors.

"This is an issue that most people recognize, but there's a certain sense of impatience in terms of political action," says Rebecca Sobel, Project Hot Seat's Vermont organizer. "We want to do more than preach to the choir. We want to be a bridge to harness the energy for action."

So how do you get elected officials to pass effective laws? Most activist groups campaign for a person who supports their position. Project Hot Seat instead is working with all candidates in a targeted House district, offering everyone information about the problem and potential solutions.

"Addressing global warming is a bipartisan effort," Sobel says. "It doesn't matter to us who wins, it matters to us that whoever wins is a leader on global warming. We're here to cultivate champions on the issue."

The heat already is hitting home. Just ask ski-area workers who must make more snow because of a 15 percent decrease in natural flakes this past half century. Or maple sugar makers who fear warm mud season days won't be followed by enough freezing nights to encourage sap to run.

Global warming seems to be a gargantuan challenge, but Sobel boils it down simply: The United States is the world's top producer of pollution that leads to climate change, in part through coal-fired power plants and cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles. Scientists agree the country needs to reduce such emissions significantly within the next 10 years. Her group believes the best way to do that is through federal legislation.

Sobel, a young Philadelphia native who shies away from giving her age, became Project Hot Seat's sole paid Vermont staffer in the middle of July, just as Rainville was spouting questions about global warming.

Sobel moved into donated office space at the Burlington headquarters of household-products maker Seventh Generation (company president Jeffrey Hollender is a member of the Greenpeace board). She then met with Rainville and Welch, giving both candidates information about global warming and how government can fight it.

For Welch, a lawyer and outgoing state Senate president pro tem, the tutorial was more of a refresher course — he announced his plan to fight climate change at the time of Project Hot Seat's arrival, prompting the group to stand outside his campaign office with thank-you signs.

"They have done a great job of raising the issue and getting our opposition in this race up to speed," Welch spokesman Andrew Savage says of the Greenpeace effort.

Welch says his first action upon election would be to cosponsor the Safe Climate Act, a bill by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to cut the nation's carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 percent in the next half century. Welch also wants the government to sign the international Kyoto treaty that seeks worldwide cuts in pollution.

"Global warming threatens the Vermont way of life, from the existence of our ski areas and our maple syrup production to our ability to hunt in native forests," Welch is quoted on Project Hot Seat's Web site. "The question is not should we curb our greenhouse gas emissions, but how can we begin to do so immediately, efficiently and aggressively."

Rainville, for her part, also wants to cosponsor the Safe Climate Act and found Project Hot Seat's information on the issue to be "a great resource," candidate spokesman Brendan McKenna says. Rainville announced her position this month at a press conference, where she stood beside Sobel (who also attended a global warming forum with Welch the next day).

"The issues of global warming impact the economy, future job creation, agriculture and tourism," Rainville is quoted on Project Hot Seat's Web site. "We need a comprehensive approach across America: education, efficiency, investment in renewable fuel and the economic opportunities of being on the forefront of the energy revolution."

Project Hot Seat is posting updates on the candidates' positions on its Web site — www.vermonthotseat.org — as well as offering suggestions for improvement. The group doesn't have any specific tips for Welch, but says of Rainville: "She still supports nuclear power and offshore oil drilling, which are distractions from efforts to solve global warming."

Sobel and volunteers also are popping up at candidate debates statewide in red "stop global warming" T-shirts and maple tree costumes. There, they tell Vermonters that fighting climate change not only can save the environment, but also reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and create a market for cleaner energy projects.

"Solutions to global warming are good for everyone — we're talking about energy independence, creating jobs," Sobel says. "I really look at global warming as one issue that everyone in this world needs to rally behind."

Each grass-roots action, she adds, seeds another. The Burlington rally that drew more than 1,000 people this past Labor Day capped a five-day walk that called for government action on global warming. The big crowd, in turn, drew all the major congressional candidates, who are now talking up the issue with the electorate.

"We were taken more seriously once the candidates saw how much public support there was for this issue," Sobel says. "We'll be working with the winners to make sure they follow through with their campaign promises. But what's really important is that people know they have power, both in their votes and in their ability to mobilize. It's the Vermont community that has made this successful."

Hip hip Hoorah! Now it's Florida, baby!