SE Asian Focus Group - Week 9 - Nov 4

    Hey guys, I think we did a good job yesterday talking and working through ideas. I think our thesis could be something along the lines of: The United states has started and been involved in conflict in South-eastern Asian countries for many years (since the 60s or 70s?), even after publicily withdrawing from those conflicts the actions of the united states continue to affect those communities abroad and in this country as well...
    Feel free to suggest any ways to clarify or edit that thesis as you see fit. That is just a rough draft.
    I also think the first presentation we saw was inspirational in a lot of ways. I hadn't previously thought of asking for opinions as a way to get the class involved, but now I have a couple ideas for what we could do for that part of our presentation.
    Another thing we can consider is how many movies have been made in America that have to do with the vietnam war, and the conflicts in the countries we are discussing. The Vietnam war was very prominent in the media when it was happening, and we should talk about that. But also there have been a lot of very famous movies focused on the war in Vietnam which is a useful tool we should use. Even just showing clips from some of these movies I think would be highly beneficial to give some students in our class some perspective on this war they may not know so much about.
    Have a good weekend, we will be in contact.

I think that is a very strong thesis, and also its brings out everything that we are talking about. There is one movie called "We are Solder" and this was a war between North Vietnamese and the United States. There was one part where they show the U.S. bombing them and I think that it would be a good part to use. This is not joust a movie it's also a book to so we would have two resources to use.

In this Tuesday class, we talked about the Japanese American Yuri Kochiyama. She was an American political activist. She was influenced by her father’s death and Malcolm X. Her father was arrested by American government because they thought her father was a potential threat to the US. Because of the detention, her father was sick heavily. When he came back home, he dead in the following 24 hours. That’s the turning point she became to a political activist.

Yuri Kochiyama wanted to seek justice and she put into practice. She made speeches in more than 100 high schools to express her claims. When she met Malcolm X, she was so excited that she can shake hands with Malcolm. She said Malcolm was giving direction to people. She was the person who are not black to defend their rights whether to be achieved.