The Week in Review: April 7 - 13

Asian students want their culture represented in Wisconsin classrooms | Education | captimes.com

In 2022, Wisconsin legislators proposed a law that would add the requirement to teach AAPI history in K-12 schools. Although the proposed bill received support, not much else was done to push to add it to existing law. A year later, legislators are continuing to push for AAPI history to be taught in schools. The Cap Times, a local news organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, met with over 20 AAPI-identifying students around the city to ask them about their experiences, or lack thereof, of learning about Asian American history and figures. Students recall being taught about immigration and the Vietnam War, but never about the Hmong people, despite the fact that they are the largest Asian ethnic group in Wisconsin. A Hmong language immersion program has even been implemented at Lake View Elementary and has plans to expand into Black Hawk Middle School. Legislators and activists alike are continuing to fight for the inclusion of AAPI in public school curriculum to benefit both AAPI and non-AAPI students' education in diverse topics. 

New York City home care workers rally against 24-hour workdays – AsAmNews 

In April, proposed bill “No More 24” Act or Intro 0175-2022 was introduced to ban 24-hour workdays, but it has yet to be discussed in council. Homecare workers in New York City are protesting for fair wages and better treatment that come with being a 24-hour home care worker. According to AsAmNews, home care work is “highly gendered and racialized” where immigrant women of color make up the majority of workers. Not only that, but physical labor is demanded by the job, which has left many immigrant women and other home care workers physically and mentally weak given the 24-hour demand of their service. Despite being 24-hours, workers are only paid 13 hours of their labor. If Intro 0175 is passed, these 24-hour workdays will be split into two 12-hour shifts and put a limit of 50 hours a week. Many argue that the bill won’t solve the issues, though. A Representative from the home care worker’s union, 1199SEIU, states that it is not a city issue, but a statewide issue because funding comes from the state. Though, in 2021, a statewide bill to better conditions and rework hours was not supported by the union. 

Workers are currently unpaid for 11 hours of the day and 554 reports of wage theft have been made, the majority of these claims being from Asian women suffering from labor-filled jobs. 24-hour workdays, according to organizer Sarah Ahn, is “fundamentally rooted in a form of structural anti-Asian racism”.

Popular social media app TikTok banned from use across all Florida state universities | USA Today

The University of Florida joined other public Florida universities last week on the ban of social media app TikTok as well as other Chinese-owned apps and Russian-owned apps. This comes after TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress. University of Florida’s newly elected president Ben Sasse accuses the app for being a “fake private-sector companies that are really controlled by the national security laws of China to try gather more and more big data.” WeChat, a Chinese instant messaging app, is also on the list of banned apps from Florida universities, causing concern by Chinese international students and Chinese American students who use this to communicate with friends and family living in Mainland China and other countries. Many believe that the cybersecurity threats that apps like TikTok and WeChat may pose are more due to racist and Sinophobic rhetoric.

Chinese student faces deportation after arrest under Russia’s anti-gay law | NextShark 

Haoyang Xu, a Chinese student living in Russia, alongside his Russian partner Gela Gogishvili were arrested by police while the couple were out in Kazan. Both Xu and Gogishvili are being charged for violating the country’s gay propaganda law. While Russian citizen Gogishvili was fined 200,000 rubles, Xu is being threatened with possible deportation and is currently being held in a detention center. The couple have several shared social media accounts together, including a TikTok and YouTube channel where they post videos of their daily lives. They are currently being accused of LGBTQ+ propaganda for sharing “inappropriate demonstration of ”homosexual intimacy”. Russia’s gay propaganda law received a unanimous vote of reinforcement late 2022 and targets positive LGBTQ+-related information and content. Since the implementation of the law in 2013, 78% of LGBTQ+ people in Russia have faced violent and verbal discriminatory behavior, according to a survey conducted by the Russian LGBT Network.

Tennessee House expels two Democrats in historic act of partisan retaliation | Washington Post 

Three Democratic lawmakers, Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson joined protests fighting for gun control alongside other Tennesseans in response to the March 27 fatal Nashville school shooting at the Covenant School. Of the lawmakers—who were nicknamed the “Tennessee Three” — two were expelled from the House. Johnson, who is white, believes that Jones, who is of Black and Filipino descent, and Pearson, who is Black, were ousted from the House due to the color of their skin. President Joe Biden released a statement condemning their expulsions, stating that the response to remove Jones and Pearson “is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent”. Jones was reinstated three days after his expulsion, while Pearson was reinstated Wednesday, April 12, almost a week after he was first ousted by lawmakers.

International anger as air strikes kill at least 50 in Myanmar - CNA

The Myanmar Armed Forces struck Pazi Gyi village on Tuesday, resulting in the death of at least 50 lives, possibly nearing 100. The Myanmar military called for air strikes against the People’s Defence Force (PDF), an anti-coup militia deemed as a terrorist group by the country’s junta. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with various other UN representatives internationally condemn the violence enacted by the military junta on the Burmese people, calling for a stop to violence. In 2021, Myanmar’s military forcibly ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, taking power and control of the country. Since then, martial law has been called in dozens of townships across Myanmar and anti-coup groups like PDF have been deemed terrorists for opposing military control. Military force has taken the lives of thousands of Burmese people and has displaced more than a million of its population.