A dragon at the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown.

It’s the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar and on January 29, the annual Lunar New Year parade organized by the Better Chinatown Society took place in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The event was packed with thousands of New Yorkers and visitors ringing in the year of 4710. The Lunar New Year is the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar and is traditionally celebrated for two weeks. Reporter Larry Tung attended the parade in Chinatown and captured it in the following audio slideshow. Plus, listen to our Year of the Dragon Special Podcast – The Best Regional Chinese Restaurants in Flushing.

“Gong Shi Fa Tsai!”

That’s the standard New Year greeting in Mandarin. It means “best wishes and prosperity.”

The new YouTube video series produced by undocumented youth.

Blind dates are awkward no matter what—but Jesus Iñiguez’s just racheted up the awkward index.

While drunken couples stumble by, Jesus stands in a parking lot outside a bar and takes his cellphone out to call his date. The bouncer won’t let him in, because his ID isn’t up to snuff. All he has is a card from the Mexican consulate, and it won’t get him in. “Maybe we can go somewhere else?” he asks.

That’s one scene from the new YouTube series, “Undocumented and Awkward,” produced by a collective of undocumented youth who call themselves Dreamers Adrift. Like many young people in their generation, these four college graduates in their 20s find themselves in paralysis: U.S.-educated, willing and able to work, yet forbidden.

As Von Diaz noted in her recent piece about the DREAM Act’s journey in 2011, this past year was marked by the energy and momentum of youth who “outed” themselves as undocumented immigrants and staged public actions to bring media attention to their predicament. Some youth focused on civil disobedience on the steps of government buildings, others advocated for state-level changes that would ease the financial burdens of attending college, and a few took an artistic approach that allowed them to creatively express their troubling situation.

California based Julio Salgado, Jesus Iñiguez, Fernando Romero, and Deisy Hernandez are producing the “Undocumented and Awkward”  video series—numbering seven episodes so far—which, by using situational comedy, clever premises and high-quality production, has gleaned thousands of hits on YouTube. They started making videos in advance of attending their 10 year high school reunion, as a way of explaining their struggles and dreams to former classmates who might not “get” why talented graudates were working under the table jobs. Read Salgado’s interview with Michelle Chen at Wordstrike to learn more about the project’s beginnings.

Most of the episodes start with a commonplace situation with nice-looking young actors speaking without accents—on a date, at a new job, waiting for the bus—which inevitably turns awkward when one character avoids revealing their status as an undocumented immigrant. In one of the episodes, two high school classmates run into each other at a hotel—one is a guest and the other is working a shift cleaning rooms:

The project uses narrative to express the difficulty of existence for undocumented youth in a dominant culture that wishes they would disappear or “go home” to a country they don’t remember. For viewers who are undocumented, watching this series is cathartic. For those who are in the lucky camp of having U.S. citizenship, it’s a way to experience the drama and petty humiliations felt daily by thousands of assimilated, yet paperless youth.

This could be a successful kind of activism for DREAMers. It’s easier to relate to feeling awkward than it is to understand why you should attend a press conference or sign a petition. Everyone knows it’s humiliating to be bounced from a bar.

A press conference in favor of the DREAM Act in California. (Photo: Antonio Villaraigosa/flickr)

2011 may be best remembered for a new type of political activism.  Movements including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street were built on a combination of street protests and social media.  The year also saw an outpouring of activism and support for undocumented immigrant youth, especially those who would benefit from the DREAM Act—a proposed federal law that would create a path to legal status for undocumented young people.

Here’s what happened in 2011:

DREAMers (undocumented youth) and their allies responded to the narrow failure of the DREAM Act in Congress at the end of 2010 by launching demonstrations, organizing nationwide groups using social media, getting arrested in civil disobedience actions, lobbying Congress and fighting for state-level DREAM legislation. States can’t offer citizenship, so state efforts are mainly aimed at easing hardships for undocumented college students.  With Congress at an impasse over immigration reform, the movement decided to focus on individual states.

On March 10th, undocumented immigrant advocacy organizations launched National Coming Out of the Shadows day. In the months following this event hundreds of youth across the country revealed themselves as undocumented and participated in demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience in what many called a human rights campaign. Some undocumented youth were arrested while protesting—including six in Chicago, ten in North Carolina, five in Indiana, seven in Atlanta, and four in Arizona.  In all of these cases the students were charged with civil disobedience for either blocking traffic or staging a sit-in at a government office.

With an uncanny resemblance to last year’s “It Gets Better” gay rights campaign, many DREAMers came out publicly as undocumented in online videos, coining the phrase “undocumented and unafraid.”

The most high-profile revelation came from Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post and Huffington Post journalist who revealed his undocumented status in a New York Times Magazine article.  Other DREAMers revealed their immigration status at public rallies or by posting videos online. Several DREAMers shared their stories with Feet in Two Worlds on our YouTube channel and at a forum at The New School in New York.

Illinois and California passed state-level DREAM Acts that allow undocumented youth to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and obtain public and private scholarships, and New York Senator Bill Perkins introduced the New York DREAM Act, with help from the New York State Youth Leadership Council (NYSYLC).

Despite these efforts, and the Obama administration’s declaration that it would exercise “prosecutorial discretion” and focus on deporting high level criminals, several DREAMers narrowly evaded deportation this year.  Nadia Habib, a 19-year-old college student originally from Bangladesh, and her mother Nazmin were almost deported in September. They were permitted to stay, but their case is still under review. Matias Ramos, an Argentine immigrant and UCLA graduate, was also recently granted a temporary stay moments before being deported.

While some states passed DREAM legislation, others sharpened their focus against undocumented immigrant.  In June, Alabama passed HB58— the nation’s toughest law against undocumented immigrants and those who help them. On the federal level  396,906 individuals were deported in 2011.  Secure Communities, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigrant identification program, is now active in 44 states.

Young undocumented immigrants show no signs of slowing down their activism in 2012. Their need for the DREAM Act is stronger than ever, but in a presidential election year where immigration is an issue on which no candidate wants to appear “soft”, the DREAM Act battle will likely continue to be waged in individual states.

Von Diaz is a Feet in Two Worlds journalist.  She has also worked as a consultant to Define American, the organization created by Jose Antonio Vargas.

Buka, a Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. (Photo courtesy of AfricanSpotlight.com)

This piece was written by Adeola Oladele-Fayehun and originally published on AfricanSpotlight.com, an online magazine celebrating Africans in the diaspora. Oladele-Fayehu’s video and interview with Lookman Afolayan Mashood, a man who was once an ice cream vendor on the streets of Lagos and is now the owner of Buka, a popular Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, fits in with Fi2W’s new Food in Two Worlds™ series.  Our goal is to make you hungry for the flavors that immigrants from around the world have brought to the US, and for you to gain a deeper understanding of the people who make, grow, sell and consume food in immigrant communities. 

Interview with Lookman Afolayan Mashood by Adeola Oladele-Fayehun, founder and editor-in-chief of AfricanSpotlight.com.

Where are you from?
I’m from Ijomu Oro in Kwara State. I’m an Igbomina man, but I lived in Lagos all my life.

What were you doing in Lagos before moving to the United States?
When I was in Lagos, I did many things. But my last job was, I used to sell ice cream. I lived in Isale-Eko, where most of my friends are bankers. When everybody is going to work in the morning, I dress up too very nicely like am going to my father’s shop in Bariga, but instead am going to sell ice cream. When I get there, I change my dress and put this big hat on my face, because I don’t want my friends to see me. But the irony was, I was actually making more money than people who were bankers at that time. When I was able to save enough money, I bought my plane ticket and moved here.

When did you move to the U.S.?
I left Nigeria in 1994, went to Dubai for two years. Then I came here in 1996, so that’s 15 years ago.

Lookman selling ice cream in Lagos. (Photo courtesy of AfricanSpotlight.com)

What did you do upon getting to America?
I worked in an African retail store making pepper-soup. It’s just a retail store but we sell pepper soup at night. But I was really good at it that, and it became very popular. And I must tell you, that’s where the idea of opening a restaurant first came to me. Once I left the store, I became a carpenter. I went to carpentry school; I was there for 4 years. I’m a union carpenter. And I used to drive a yellow cab.

So, how did Buka start?
It’s funny because what I enjoy most in Nigeria anytime I go, is to go and eat all those street foods – the “Buka.” And it might not look very beautiful or anything, but every Nigerian knows that’s where you get the best food, not in these fancy restaurants. The best food is from those local mamas in one corner of the street, maybe in Tinubu Square or something like that. Sometimes the dirtier they are, the better the food, (laughter). So I really missed going to a Buka.

I’ve taken people to eat in all kinds of restaurants in this city, Mexican, Italian, you name it, but I was always ashamed to take people to Nigerian restaurants because they were not presentable. When the African retail store closed down, I was already well known in Brooklyn for pepper soup. That was when I decided to open my own Buka complete with both good food and the fanciness missing in other Nigerian restaurants. Also, I have a very beautiful girlfriend that joined me and believed in my dream and decided to support me.

Was this location a restaurant before you acquired it?
Actually, this used to be a law firm. It’s been abandoned for like five years when we moved here, so we did construction for eight months before we opened. Like I tell you, my girlfriend is an architect, while am a carpenter. So she drew it, and I built it to precisely what she drew.

On average, how many people come to Buka?
On week days, we serve about 300 meals, but the number doubles on weekends, about 500 people, sometimes we run out of supplies and we have to buy more. What makes me very happy is that, Buka is attracting both Nigerians and non-Nigerians. It’s not just Nigerians that come here, our customers are like 50-50, half Nigerians and some people who have never been to Nigeria are coming just to experience Nigerian food, and they keep coming back.

Lookman Afolayan Mashood. (Photo courtesy of Africanspotlight.com)

Apart from the food, what are the events taking place in Buka?
A lot of cultural events, Nigerian fashion shows, art shows, musical performances and all that.

Do you have any message for new Nigerian immigrants?
Yes, and please get this on tape. America is a land of opportunity, and it’s still a land of opportunity up till tomorrow. If you come here determined to work, there is work that you can do. Yeah, it might not be as you expect when you’re leaving Lagos, like ‘oh, I’m gonna get to New York and start packing money,’ it’s gonna be a little difficult. But if you’re ready to work and you follow a strict plan and you’re determined, in this country, if you work, you’re going to make it.

Some in Nigeria think things are very easy here, what do you say?
When you come to this country, you’ve never worked in your life. I don’t care the kind of job you do in Nigeria, the real work is in America. Here, there are people that have two or three jobs. You actually go to work at 9, you come back at 5, then you rest till seven o’clock and go to another job. So don’t think you gonna come here and pick money on the street. Here you’re going to really really really sweat! But if you sweat, there’s a reward for you. It’s not going to be forever, it’s just for some time.

What do you spend your money on?
My family is my number one priority. I have three children, and both of my parents are old, and I’ve promised them not to work for like 8 or 9 years ago that I will take care of them. My father has like 17 or 18 children, (laughter), you know how we are from Nigeria, everybody, we’re from extended family. It gets to a stage, you want to tell people to go and do what they have to do to survive, but at the same time, you have to remember that maybe one time in your life, you were a beneficiary of this culture too. And some of my father’s friends came around and saw the restaurant, they went home and told him – your son is so rich in America! So, now I can’t tell anybody in the family I don’t have money.

How does it feel knowing a lot of Nigerians are proud of what you’ve done here?

It makes me want to do more. And a lot of times, it did not occur to me what I have done or what Buka has actually done, because I’m like always hungry for more. So because of what I worry about, it doesn’t make me appreciate what I have now, which I don’t think is a great attitude. But if you’ve been poor for a long time in your life, I don’t think it’s a bad attitude to have either.

Lookman says he learned how to cook from his brother’s wife when he was in Nigeria. He is planning on starting another business in New York before moving back to Nigeria.

Read more stories about the African diaspora community on AfricanSpotlight.com.

Pamela Geller, protesting against the Park51 project on the ten year anniversary of 9/11. (Photo: Mohsin Zaheer)

NEW YORK—On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush were united, bowing their heads together in moments of silence, there were some Americans around Ground Zero who remained divided and continued to point fingers at each other.

The controversy that refused to disappear was the issue of Park51, also known as the Ground Zero Mosque, a plan to build an Islamic Cultural Center two blocks away from the World Trade Center site. Each set of protesters blamed the other for the feud, and predicted they would remain divided for the foreseeable future.

Watch Mohsin Zaheer’s video report on the protestors of September 11, 2011:

Cricket Diplomacy between the NYPD and Pakistani diplomats living in New York. (Photo: Mohsin Zaheer)

NEW YORK—At a time when diplomatic relations between the United States and Pakistan are tense, local law enforcement and Pakistani diplomats based in New York tried to find common ground and friendship through sport.

A special Cricket match, the first of its kind, was played between the New York Police Department’s cricket team and a group of Pakistani diplomats based in New York on Sunday in Cunningham Park, Queens. The diplomats’ cricket team bat first and scored 102 runs, but New York’s Finest chased that target and won the match by seven wickets.

Asked whether was it “cricket diplomacy” or a just game, Faqir Syed Asif Hussain, Pakistan’s Consul General to New York responded, “It was both, it was a game between two friendly countries and two friendly people. The basic purpose was to connect our people together.”

‘Cricket diplomacy’ has a history of smoothing tension between nations, in particular between India and Pakistan. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani visited India on the invitation of his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to witness the semifinal match played between India and Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup.

President George Bush, during his 2006 visit to Pakistan, also took some time out and played cricket at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.

The New York Police Department’s cricketers were happy over their victory. “Through sports we all can find friendship, common ground and unity,” said  Sergeant Mahaan Chandy, president of the NYPD Cricket Team.

Watch Mohsin Zaheer’s video report of the match:

The real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal is spearheading efforts to build a mosque near Ground Zero. (Photo: Mohsin Zaheer)

Listen to Sade-e-Pakistan reporter Mohsin Zaheer speak about the efforts to build a mosque near Ground Zero with WNYC’s Marc Garber.
[Visit post to listen to audio]

Sharif El-Gamal is determined to build a mosque near Ground Zero.  Despite the worldwide controversy that erupted last year over Mr. El-Gamal’s plan to develop a mosque and Muslim cultural center near the World Trade Center site, he is spearheading a new effort to make the proposal a reality.

Mr. El-Gamal, the chairman and CEO of Soho Properties, a real estate development company, has launched a campaign to raise $7-million to support the mosque project.  The deadline for raising the money is September 10, just one day before the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Referring to 9/11 in a speech at a fundraising dinner Friday night at the site of the proposed mosque in lower Manhattan, Mr. El-Gamal said, “Two blocks from where we are today our identities were stolen from us, and our faith was defaced.  And through this project we have an opportunity to show the world who we are, and what we believe in, and what our practice is, and what our faith is.”

Mr. El-Gamal denied that the September 10 fundraising deadline has any connection to the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  He called it a “motivational deadline” for people who want to support the project.  Another project supporter suggested that the date – 9/10/11 – may have been chosen for its numerological significance.

Watch El-Gamal’s remarks at a fundraising dinner on July 29, 2011:

Plans for the building at 49-51 Park Place include a space to accommodate 2-thousand worshipers and an adjacent community center that Mr. El-Gamal said would be like a YMCA.  The building, which is owned by Con Edison, is leased to Mr. El-Gamal’s group and already houses a small mosque.

Less than 75 people attended the kick-off dinner, which had been advertised in ethnic newspapers and on foreign-language TV channels aimed at Muslim immigrants.  Among those who showed up were a half dozen imams from around the country and representatives of the Nation of Islam, a sect mainly composed of African-Americans who have converted to Islam.  Some at the event speculated that many supporters of the project were scared to show up because of the negative publicity it received last year.

Noticeably absent were Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, who were the spokespeople for the project when it was originally introduced last year under the name Park51, and who became lightening rods for criticism by the project’s opponents.

Mr. El-Gamal said Imam Rauf and Ms. Khan are no longer associated with the project, and its name has been changed to PrayerSpace.

Mr. El-Gamal acknowledged the difficulties in getting the project off the ground. “There is no skirting around the issue, the story of this project and what the media has made of it,” he told supporters.  He said the mosque proposal is a response to “a specific need” in lower Manhattan’s Muslim community.   He said it will be “open to call, promote community relations, trust, goodwill and have a sense of neighborhoodlyness.”

Another speaker, Imam Abdul Malik of Panama City, Florida was among the few who directly addressed opponents, including conservative Republicans and some 9/11 family members who say it’s wrong to build a mosque so close to the site destroyed by Muslim terrorists.  “Islam is not responsible for what happened on that day,” he said, “we have to stop apologizing.”

According to an unofficial estimate, the fundraiser netted more than $200-thousand, including a $100-thousand loan from a mosque in Midtown Manhattan.   That was on top of $1.5-million organizers said they had raised previously.

Mohsin Zaheer of Sade-e-Pakistan contributed reporting to this story.

Fi2W is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

The Turkish Olympiad Finals in New Jersey. (Photo: Necla Polat Demirci)

Days before the 4th annual Turkish Olympiad finals in New Jersey, Turkish pop music was echoing through the hallways of the Brooklyn Amity School–New York’s only Turkish-American private school. A group of students gathered in a room with their music teacher, practicing their songs and poems with palpable excitement. One of the students, 11-year-old Nagihan Ozturk, was reciting a poem in Turkish. Her family, who immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey 15 years ago, wants her to have a stronger connection to their native country. Nagihan says she has been to Turkey a few times and her grandmother is her ‘Turkish master’ when she is there.

“My grandmother likes my Turkish, well she sometimes corrects me cause I am like not that sure about words. So sometimes I ask my grandmother if my Turkish is fine, if this is okay, this is good. So I sometimes mix up something and my grandma fixes my Turkish,” she explained.

For most immigrant parents, it is important to keep their children connected to the country they came from. That’s certainly true in the Turkish American community, which has developed the Turkish Olympiad as a unique way to promote Turkish language and culture among young immigrants as well as kids whose families are not from Turkey. It’s is a competition in Turkish singing, dancing and poetry organized by The Turkish Cultural Center in New York.

Nagihan’s family chose to send her to a Turkish-American school so that she could learn the Turkish language and cultural values along with the conventional American curriculum.  She said participating in the Turkish Olympiad helped improve her Turkish.

“I now can understand many words that I didn’t know before which I learned while I was working on my poem,” she said.

At the Olympiad finals on May 1, 2011, hundreds of students who study at private and charter Turkish schools throughout the East Coast showed up at Fellician College in New Jersey. They were accompanied by about 2,000 parents and friends who were there to cheer and clap as they showcased their abilities and talents in Turkish language and culture.

The students from Brooklyn were up against peers from New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut. There were contests in Turkish folk dance performance, song and poetry. The prize was enticing: winners get flown to Istanbul in June for the International Olympiad competitions in which 1,000 young people from around the world compete.

Hayrullah Erdogan, a Turkish parent, was at the competition to support his son, Muzaffer Erdogan, who attends the Brooklyn Amity school. “We are very happy that there are Turkish schools here.  For our kids’ future, for Turkish culture and teaching the culture they are doing a great job,” Erdogan said. He speaks to his children in Turkish at home, and encourages them to watch Turkish TV.

One of the Olympiad organizers, Turkish Cultural Center of New York President Mehmet Kilic, said the mission of the event was to keep Turkish culture alive in America.

“When the kids are born here or come here at early ages they grow up with Americans around. Many Turkish families try to teach their kids Turkish language and culture because they don’t want their kids to be a foreigner when they go to Turkey and they want their kid to blend in the family easily and that is only achieved though teaching the culture and the language here.”

Some 70 thousand Turkish immigrants live in New York City according to unofficial estimates. There is only one Turkish-American private school in New York, but some families send their kids to weekend school at the general consulate building of Turkey in Manhattan. New York public schools don’t offer instruction in Turkish, so if parents want their child to learn Turkish, private Turkish schools or after-school programs are the only option.

But it’s not just Turkish students who participate in the Olympiad or attend Turkish-American schools. Kilic said an equal goal of the Olympiad is to promote Turkish language and culture among non-Turkish youth.

13 years old R.J. Mollaev was at the Olympiad to compete in Turkish singing in the non-native-Turkish-speaker category. R.J.’s family is from Azerbaijan, but his mother, Lala Mollaev, decided in the fall of 2010 to move to New York in order to send R.J. to a Turkish American school, at the recommendation of an Azerbaijani acquaintance.

“Now my kids can speak the language, which is the same family of my Azerbaijani language. Above all this, my son loves the school and it is the first school which he goes, not because he has to, because he wants to.  I am  proud of him,” she added.

Many non-Turkish families from countries like Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, India, and Morocco send their kids to Turkish schools because they feel a close connection to Turkish culture including a shared history under the Ottoman Empire. Others send their kids to these schools for the academics and for the “cultural values” they feel public schools lack.

In the New Jersey auditorium, students danced, sang and cheered, but the competition was fierce. Nagihan did not make it to the final round, but R.J. did, crooning with a Ruzgar song, he won first prize for singing in his category.

For some in the audience, the kids on stage at the Olympiad represented a larger progression in Turkish-American relations.  Nan A. Canter, who has been traveling to Turkey for the past 40 years, called the event “outstanding.” She said that 40 years ago she would have been shocked to see the Turkish community so welcomed. “If anyone told me there was such an event as the Turkish Olympiads, I would be shocked. When I saw American kids singing, dancing in Turkish I couldn’t help myself but cry.”

Listen to a podcast with Necla Demirci.

Necla Demirci is a Fi2W education reporting fellow.  Her work, and the work of other Fi2W fellows, is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

PS 20 in New York has a popular dual language Chinese and English program. (Photo: Lan Trinh)

Across the nation, there’s growing demand for Mandarin instruction for both Chinese immigrant students and kids who speak English and Spanish at home. Fi2W Reporter Lan Trinh filed this report about a public elementary school that has initiated a dual language Chinese-English program in New York City.

Reporter’s Notebook:

I’ve spent much of the past few months researching and filming dual Mandarin-English classes in New York City public schools. I’m truly inspired by what I’m seeing, and envious. While I’m aware that New York City is more diverse than many parts of the country, I do feel America is shifting towards embracing multilingualism, a welcome contrast to when I first came to this country.

Watch Lan Trinh’s video report of the dual Mandarin-English language program at PS 20:

When I arrived in America at the age of 10, I barely knew the English alphabet. As an ethnic Chinese person growing up in Vietnam (who later fled to China), I was born into a multi-lingual family that spoke Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and three other Chinese dialects, often all in one sentence. This was not unusual for Chinese in Vietnam. Since I landed in suburban Houston, Texas, and not New York City or San Francisco, the only option for me to learn English was to enroll in English as a Second Language (ESL) class, which I gladly attended once a day. The rest of the time, I understood nothing that was being said around me. It made me timid and insecure, despite having always been a confident kid.

Other than ESL, for the first year I sat through all subjects without learning much. My school had one Asian teacher and she was Japanese. There were also only a handful of bi-lingual Chinese students and one bi-lingual Vietnamese student, all of whom quickly grew tired of being my translator. Because I had no choice but to be fully immersed in an English-only world, I learned the language quickly; which I was very proud of. But it also came at a price. Outside of my home, I had no opportunities to learn Chinese. When my family spoke Chinese in public, people often gave us unfriendly looks. Back then, becoming American meant assimilating quickly, speaking English fluently, and shedding baggage from the old country.

So it is with great joy that I watch these students, both Chinese and non-Chinese, learn a new language without having to abandon their native tongue. With China becoming a global power, it’s no surprise that Chinese is the fastest growing language taught in U.S. schools.

Admission to the dual language program at PS 20 in New York City is based on a lottery, and classes consist of an even mix of English and Chinese speakers. This structure encourages students to learn from each other, and not just from their teachers. At PS 20, only about a third of the students in the program are non-Chinese children. (All Chinese students, whether born here or abroad, are considered ‘Chinese heritage’ students.) This may seem contradictory to the half and half structure, but many Chinese students were born here and are fluent in English, so they may count as English speakers.

While it’s too soon to tell how effective the Mandarin program at PS 20 will be, studies have shown that students in dual language or immersion programs in general score higher on standardized tests than their English-only speaking peers. Additionally, the cognitive demand of a dual language program generally gives bilingual students an early advantage in other disciplines, including math. But timing is also important. The most effective time for a child to learn a language is between pre-kindergarten and fifth grade.

The kindergarten curriculum may not present challenges for most students in either language, but what happens when they get older and studies become harder? How will more rigorous subjects like science be taught in Mandarin? How will non-Chinese heritage students get help with homework if their parents do not know Chinese? Will dual language students be able to keep up academically with other children who are learning only in English? These are a few concerns that some parents have expressed to me. But they also stressed that the potential benefits of the program far outweighs these concerns.

Demand for the dual language program is huge at PS 20, but its future remains uncertain. Much of it depends on funding. The parents’ biggest worry is whether their children will get to continue the program next year.

I sometimes wonder if I would have acquired English as quickly as I did if I had landed in New York’s Chinatown instead of Houston. To fully participate in American life, fluency in English is important. But if America is to continue to be a global leader, we must learn other languages, not just Mandarin, and not always expect everyone else to speak English.

In talking about immigrants in America, President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.” I couldn’t disagree more.

Lan Trinh is a Feet in Two Worlds education reporting fellow.  Her work, and the work of other Fi2W fellows, is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

An ethnic media panel at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston, MA on April 8, 2011. (Photo: Mohsin Zaheer)

By Jehangir Khattak

This article was originally published in Voices That Must Be Heard on May 7.

When AT&T started capping customer’s Internet usage on May 2, one person paying closer attention than she might have before was Aleksandra Slabisz, a journalist at the New York-based Polish Daily/Nowy Dziennik.

AT&T’s decision to charge extra fees to customers who use more gigabytes per month over certain capped limits means that many of Slabisz’s Polish-language readers – and countless other ethnic and community news consumers – will get hit in the pocketbook with little warning for new overage fees of $10 for every additional 50GB of data. That may not sound like much, but the fees can mount and hit lower-income people hard.

AT&T will offer its subscribers an initial two grace periods so they won’t actually be charged more until the third month after going over the cap, but the additional cost will catch many unaware soon enough. That’s why ethnic and community news outlets need to begin reporting on media policy developments, such as these new fees – and translating their complexities and impacts in terms anyone can understand.

Learning how to humanize the widening stream of complex media policy issues for ethnic and community audiences will be critical to closing the digital divide between media haves and have-nots, according to journalists and media-reform advocates, who attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston last month.

Slabisz is among numerous ethnic media journalists exploring how to cut through the jargon and complicated tech-talk for their audiences. Community voices will be lost in vital media debates unless readers in all languages learn about issues, such as ‘net neutrality’ (keeping Internet access as open as possible, without gatekeepers controlling cost or content), broadband access or crucial decisions being made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“I think the participation in the Boston conference further encouraged me to dig in the topic,” Slabisz said. “I think I have a better understanding of many problems, not to mention that media policy issues are important for our community.”

The Boston conference, which drew thousands of media professionals and advocates nationwide, was organized by Free Press, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media.

Free Press made special efforts to bring the ethnic and community media into the national debate by facilitating participation of ethnic media journalists from across the nation and including several conference sessions on diverse media policy issues. Especially significant for Slabisz and others attending the conference was its “Information Exchange Forum for Ethnic Media and Media Advocates.”

Attended by more than 50 journalists and advocates, the Information Exchange addressed steps ethnic and community media can take to increase coverage of media policy issues and how to improve the quality of current reporting. They also examined the role of media policy advocates in crafting the best course for effective messaging on these issues and what steps they should take.

Watch excerpts from the information exchange forum for ethnic media and media advocates, introduced by Jehangir Khattak of the New York Community Media Alliance.

Video by Mohsin Zaheer

The information exchange was developed with Free Press by the New York Community Media Alliance and G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, which develops national reporting projects to support journalists of color, women and youth.

“I plan to write more stories on media policy issues,” said Jessica Xu, a senior reporter at the World Journal, New York’s biggest Chinese daily. She said the event convinced her that journalists from ethnic and community media need more training, resources and access to experts for writing well-framed stories grounded in the communities.

Xu stated, “We need to learn how to explain these technical terms to normal people. They care about how much money it costs and what functions it has. We need to translate these terms into plain language, and that’s the biggest challenge for reporters.”

Mohsin Zaheer, editor of Sada-e-Pakistan, told participants that immigrant communities face language barriers – on top of such confusing jargon as “net neutrality” and “digital divide.”

At the exchange session, John Rudolph, executive producer of Feet in Two Worlds, advised, “If you approach media policy as a policy story, everybody’s eyes glaze over. I think we have to humanize it.”

Ivan Roman, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, observed that ethnic community reporters need to break policy stories for their readers into fragments focusing on personal or local effects of an issue.

Freelancer Victor Merina, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and correspondent for the Native American news website Reznet, said, “I think there is a real opportunity for advocates, when there is a national story, to actually localize it for the community.” He also suggested that the reporters think about stories in multiple layers, the political, human and economic story.

Joshua Brietbart, senior field analyst for the Open Technology Initiative at New American Foundation and formerly the policy director at People’s Production House, noted, “People think it’s amazing that advocates can follow policy.”

But, alluding to an article in Sada-e-Pakistan about unusual ways New York’s Pakistani community is finding to close their digital divide, Brietbart continued, “I think it’s amazing that Mohsin Zaheer can go to Coney Island and find the tax attorney who has the Internet connection an entire community uses. There are so many pieces to the [media] ecosystem, and they are all critical to getting the story out.”

Joe Torres of Free Press encouraged participants to learn complicated media issues through continuous coverage: “Over time it’s going to start making sense. It just takes time; it’s not an easy issue at all.”

Jehangir Khattak, Communications Manager of New York Community Media Alliance (NYCMA), wrote this article as part of a partnership between NYCMA, the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism and New America Media, in a media policy reporting fellowship sponsored by The Media Consortium.