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KPFA - APEX Express

KPFA - APEX Express

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 Apex Express is a proud collective member of AACRE, Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. AACRE focuses on long-term movement building, capacity infrastructure, and leadership support for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders committed to social justice.2025KPFA 312700 Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • APEX Express – December 4, 2025

    APEX Express – December 4, 2025
    Dec 4 2025
    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. The post APEX Express – December 4, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
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    1 hr
  • APEX Express – November 27, 2025 – We Belong Here: Bhutanese & HMoob Americans in the Struggle Against Statelessness

    APEX Express – November 27, 2025 – We Belong Here: Bhutanese & HMoob Americans in the Struggle Against Statelessness
    Nov 27 2025
    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. Important Links We Belong Here campaign page We Belong Here Partner organizations: Asian Law Caucus |Asian Refugees United | Hmong Innovating Politics | Hmong Family Association of Lansing | Rising Voices Transcript Nina Phillips: Hello and welcome. You are tuning into APEX Express, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans. I’m your host Nina Phillips, and tonight we are doing something a little different. Earlier this month on Monday, November 3rd, communities of Hmong and Nepali speaking, Bhutanese Americans, fellow immigrants and allies, gathered together at a virtual [00:01:00] community event called We Belong Here. The goal: to shed light on the continued detainment and deportation of immigrant communities in the United States and the specific challenges faced by Bhutanese, Hmong, and Southeast Asian folks. Tika Basnet: When, uh, my husband got detained on April 8, I took one week after to reach out Aisa and she told me, Hey Tika, come forward, you know, your story is powerful. People need to know your story. Nina Phillips: That was the voice of Tika Basnet. Her husband, Mohan Karki is a Nepali speaking Bhutanese refugee from Ohio who has spent months in ICE detention, trapped in legal limbo. Tika has been working tirelessly to bring her husband home and shared her story with us at We Belong Here. Tonight, we are bringing you a recording of this virtual community gathering. You’ll hear more from Tika about the Free Mohan Karki campaign and from Ann Vue, [00:02:00] the spouse of Lue Yang, a Hmong community leader from Michigan, who is also currently detained and facing deportation. Ann is leading the movement to Bring Lue Home, and we’ll be sharing more later about how you can get involved as well and support both of these campaigns. You will also hear from state representatives of Michigan and Ohio, the music and spoken word performance of Asian Refugees United, and community tools and resources that a vital in helping to keep our immigrant loved ones safe. The host of this community event was Miko Lee, APEX producer, and a voice that you might be familiar with. Alrighty, without further ado, here’s Miko. Miko Lee: We belong here. What we recognize right now is there’s almost. 60,000 people being held in detention right now, immigrants that are being held in detention. It is a pandemic that is happening in our country that’s impacting all of our people, and we need [00:03:00] to be able to take action. Tonight we’re talking very specifically, not with this 60,000 people that are in detention now, but just two of those stories, so that you can get a sense of what is happening in the Bhutanese and Hmong communities and what’s happening right now, and to talk about those particular stories and some actions you can take. First I wanna recognize that right now we are on native lands, so all of us except our original indigenous people, are from other places and I’d invite you to go into the chat and find your native land. I am speaking with you from the unceded Ohlone land, and I wanna honor these ancestors, these elders that have provided for us and provided this beautiful land for us to be on. So I invite you to share into the chat your name, your pronoun, and also what indigenous land you are living on right now in this Native American Heritage Month. Thank you so much to all of you that have joined [00:04:00] us. We are really seeing the impact of this administration on all of our peoples, and particularly tonight in terms of the Hmong and Nepali speaking, Bhutanese communities. These are communities that have been impacted, specifically refugee communities that have been impacted in incredible detrimental ways by this administration. And tonight what we really wanna do is talk to you about what is going on in our communities. We wanted to make sure we translated so that we have as much access into our communities as possible because we wanna be as inclusive of our world as we can. We Belong Here is focusing on the fact that all of us belong here. We belong in this land, and we are telling these stories tonight in the context of these sets of people particularly that have so many similarities in terms of Hmong folks who worked with our US government and worked with our US military during the Vietnam War and then came [00:05:00] here as refugees and stayed in this country to the Nepali speaking Bhutanese folks, who left their country from ethnic cleansing and then went into refugee camps and now took refuge in the United States. So these are all stories that are impactful and powerful, and it’s really what it means to be American. we have come from different places. We see these attacks on our people. right now I would like to bring to ...
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  • APEX Express – 11.20.25 – Artist to Artist

    APEX Express – 11.20.25 – Artist to Artist
    Nov 20 2025
    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. Powerleegirl hosts, the mother daughter team of Miko Lee, Jalena & Ayame Keane-Lee speak with artists about their craft and the works that you can catch in the Bay Area. Featured are filmmaker Yuriko Gamo Romer, playwright Jessica Huang and photographer Joyce Xi. More info about their work here: Diamond Diplomacy Yuriko Gamo Romer Jessica Huang’s Mother of Exiles at Berkeley Rep Joyce Xi’s Our Language Our Story at Galeria de la Raza Show Transcript Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It’s time to get on board the Apex Express. Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:00:46] Thank you for joining us on Apex Express Tonight. Join the PowerLeeGirls as we talk with some powerful Asian American women artists. My mom and sister speak with filmmaker Yuriko Gamo Romer, playwright Jessica Huang, and photographer Joyce Xi. Each of these artists have works that you can enjoy right now in the Bay Area. First up, let’s listen in to my mom Miko Lee chat with Yuriko Gamo Romer about her film Diamond Diplomacy. Miko Lee: [00:01:19] Welcome, Yuriko Gamo Romer to Apex Express, amazing filmmaker, award-winning director and producer. Welcome to Apex Express. Yuriko Gamo Romer: [00:01:29] Thank you for having me. Miko Lee: [00:01:31] It’s so great to see your work after this many years. We were just chatting that we knew each other maybe 30 years ago and have not reconnected. So it’s lovely to see your work. I’m gonna start with asking you a question. I ask all of my Apex guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? Yuriko Gamo Romer: [00:01:49] Oh, who are my people? That’s a hard one. I guess I’m Japanese American. I’m Asian American, but I’m also Japanese. I still have a lot of people in Japan. That’s not everything. Creative people, artists, filmmakers, all the people that I work with, which I love. And I don’t know, I can’t pare it down to one narrow sentence or phrase. And I don’t know what my legacy is. My legacy is that I was born in Japan, but I have grown up in the United States and so I carry with me all that is, technically I’m an immigrant, so I have little bits and pieces of that and, but I’m also very much grew up in the United States and from that perspective, I’m an American. So too many words. Miko Lee: [00:02:44] Thank you so much for sharing. Your latest film was called Diamond Diplomacy. Can you tell us what inspired this film? Yuriko Gamo Romer: [00:02:52] I have a friend named Dave Dempsey and his father, Con Dempsey, was a pitcher for the San Francisco Seals. And the Seals were the minor league team that was in the West Coast was called the Pacific Coast League They were here before the Major League teams came to the West Coast. So the seals were San Francisco’s team, and Con Dempsey was their pitcher. And it so happened that he was part of the 1949 tour when General MacArthur sent the San Francisco Seals to Allied occupied Japan after World War II. And. It was a story that I had never heard. There was a museum exhibit south of Market in San Francisco, and I was completely wowed and awed because here’s this lovely story about baseball playing a role in diplomacy and in reuniting a friendship between two countries. And I had never heard of it before and I’m pretty sure most people don’t know the story. Con Dempsey had a movie camera with him when he went to Japan I saw the home movies playing on a little TV set in the corner at the museum, and I thought, oh, this has to be a film. I was in the middle of finishing Mrs. Judo, so I, it was something I had to tuck into the back of my mind Several years later, I dug it up again and I made Dave go into his mother’s garage and dig out the actual films. And that was the beginning. But then I started opening history books and doing research, and suddenly it was a much bigger, much deeper, much longer story. Miko Lee: [00:04:32] So you fell in, it was like synchronicity that you have this friend that had this footage, and then you just fell into the research. What stood out to you? Yuriko Gamo Romer: [00:04:41] It was completely amazing to me that baseball had been in Japan since 1872. I had no idea. And most people, Miko Lee: [00:04:49] Yeah, I learned that too, from your film. That was so fascinating. Yuriko Gamo Romer: [00:04:53] So that was the first kind of. Wow. And then I started to pick up little bits and pieces like in 1934, there was an American All Star team that went to Japan. And Babe Ruth was the headliner on that team. And he was a big star. People just loved him in ...
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