MINNEAPOLIS (March 9, 2017) — Asian Women United of Minnesota (AWUM) is partnering with Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women and Cornerstone in hosting the Twin Cities premiere of LIGHT Film.
LIGHT is a film by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki. Lenora Lee is a San-Francisco based dancer/choreographer and Tatsu Aoki is a Chicago-based filmmaker/musician. The film uses dance, memory, music and poetry as a visual and aural meditation on women being forced into indentured servitude and propelled into the unknown by courage and faith to risk their lives and everything they have for freedom. The event is free and open to the public.
Two screenings will take place with two showings on Thursday, April 6, 2017 at Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey School of Pubic Affairs on the University of Minnesota west bank campus, 301 – 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis. After each 57 minute screening at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., there will be a brief panel discussion with the filmmakers and a light reception to follow.
Additional event partners include the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work, Asian American Studies Program and the Women’s Center, Alpha Phi Gamma, Sigma Psi Zeta, along with In Progress and KC Fortune Cookie Factory.
Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women’s 2014 Annual Report states that more than 63,000 Minnesotans sought advocacy and services from domestic violence programs and 23 domestic violence homicides were recorded in 2014. National statistics: 1 in 4 women (22.3 percent) have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner, while 1 in 7 men (14 percent) have experienced the same (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey). An estimated 1 in 15 children are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, and 90 percent of these children are eyewitnesses to this violence.
AWUM is a non-profit organization dedicated to end domestic violence by promoting safe and healthy relationships within the Asian-Pacific Islander community. For almost a decade, AWUM has provided 24-hour emergency shelter (House of Peace) and advocacy to women and children victimized by domestic violence in the Minneapolis/St. Paul and surrounding areas.
For information contact Asian Women United of Minnesota at 612-724-0756 or [email protected] and visit www.awum.org.
Discrimination against women in politics is another form of battery of women.
Take the cases of the former female presidents of South Korea, Brazil and Thailand. They were all ousted for allegations of corruption. Curiously, when men are in power, people find corruption much easier to tolerate. In South Korea, Brazil and Thailand, the first women ever elected president also became the first ever to be removed from office.
While it is good that corrupted officials are punished, it is far from coincidence that these women political leaders faced much more hostile scrutiny that men. All these 3 countries- South Korea, Brazil and Thailand have a long history of corrupted business and political practices. In fact my late father in law in Bangkok called the city’s Victory Monument Corruption Monument. Yet the three women leaders faced much more aggressive investigation and very different treatment.
In fact, the same pattern was seen during the 2016 United State presidential election. Donald Trump, a candidate with a very shady ethical track record, was able to paint Hillary Clinton, the first woman to lead a major party ticket, as the corrupt one.
It was quite appropriate that Clinton was closely scrutinized for her private email server, for possible connections between donations to the Clinton Foundation and her work as secretary of state, and for her decision to give highly-paid speeches to Wall Street, as that old fool Bernie Sanders so effectively hammered into the minds of Americans.
But what is extraordinary is the extent to which the moralistic fire fell on her while the mountain of accusations against Donald Trump didn’t seem to make a dent. Trump was facing multiple scandals, from his “Trump University” scam to the statement that he grabbed women against their will and a flurry of conflicts of interest, which are turning into reality in this presidency.
But many Americans (deleted) just kept zeroing on Clinton and did not once mention any of Trump’s shady ethical practices. These prejudiced people did enough to swing the election to Trump, even though Hillary got almost 3 million more votes.
To sum it up, battery to women comes in many forms and recent world events show that even women at the highest political level still face different treatments than their male counterparts.