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DR MICHAEL H WONG ASSOCIATE RESEARCHER
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
510/224-3411 (voice)
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Space Science is for Everyone: An Open Letter.
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NASA’s core values, shown in the Central Campus lobby at Kennedy Space Center in 2020 following the addition of a fifth core value, inclusion, by then NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. [NASA/KSC] |
Lately I have been grasping at things to hold onto, to maintain my spirits and my belief in progressing as individuals, as a community of researchers, as a nation, and as a species. Here are the top three things I'm holding onto at the moment:
Dr. Poon's quote was illustrated by a story she shared from her book, which was so moving it brought a tear to my eye. This is the story of how a Korean cultural organization in Chicagoland was moved to provide resources and host a Black youth activist organization:
What moved the Korean immigrant constituency to welcome BYP100 was a community dialogue and presentation of photos during Min-Ji's organization's annual commemoration event memorializing the May 18 uprising in Gwangju, South Korea. Min-Ji explained to me that in May 1980 the US-backed South Korean military dictatorship sent in tanks and machine guns, slaughtering two thousand civilians who were peacefully protesting for democracy.
At the 2015 Gwangju commemoration event, photos of violent police repression of peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson and Baltimore were displayed next to photos from the Gwangju uprising. Min-Ji remarked, "People couldn't tell the difference between Gwangju and Ferguson and Baltimore. The the Korean first-generation [immigrant elders] said, 'Oh my God. This is happening here, same way.'"
---OiYan A. Poon, Asian American Is Not a Color
Happy New Year everybody; the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley has just gotten a major upgrade... me!
At some point my older Astronomy webpage will be going offline. I will try to preserve some of the old content, but just let me know if you're searching for any particular dead link and I can try to restore it.