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My emotional visit to Stonehenge
By Wendell Gaa The most iconic pre-historic manmade structures in global history, the Stonehenge monument in England is, without a doubt, unlike any other in the world. I had the recent golden opportunity to visit this mystical site as a side trip to visiting relatives and meeting new friends on my summer trip to the […]
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On women’s rights and guns, the Supreme Court flunked
The FilAm Editorial The recent decision on Roe v Wade is viewed by this publication not only through the prism of providing relief to women who get pregnant through rape or incest. Others have taken up that cause more eloquently than The FilAm. We are more concerned about a basic tenet of being American. That […]
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Kalayaan/Freedom 5K Run celebrates 124th PHL Independence
By Bel Molina On Sunday, June 5, 2022, several runners in New York City gathered to celebrate the 124th Philippine Independence. On June 12, 1898 — 124 years ago — the Philippine Declaration of Independence was proclaimed by Filipino revolutionary forces. It asserted the sovereignty and independence of the Philippines from Spain’s colonial rule of […]
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Wanna Ver’s ‘cathartic’ meeting with torture survivor (Part 2)
By Wanna Ver, Atmi Pertiwi, Leonardo Taddei, Jody Fish, Adolfo Canales Recognizing the ‘Golden Age’ myth A year after her child’s birth, Wanna Ver reconnected with Michelle so she could come clean about her father. “Michelle almost fell over”, Wanna recalled. “She had to put her hands on the ground to hold herself up and […]
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‘A million sorries is not enough’ — the daughter of General Fabian Ver (Part 1)
By Wanna Ver, Atmi Pertiwi, Leonardo Taddei, Jody Fish, Adolfo Canales Wanna Ver spent her early childhood in a lavish Forbes Park mansion flanked by foreign diplomats’ homes. As the youngest daughter of General Fabian Ver, Ferdinand Marcos’ most trusted ally and loyal military officer and close childhood friend, Wanna was kept under close watch […]
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The 1992 L.A. riots: A personal retrospective
By Wendell Gaa This month marks the 30th year anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, an incensed reaction to the verdict in the Rodney King case. In 1991, white police officers who had brutally beaten African American Rodney King in an arrest gone awry, were all acquitted by an all-white jury in suburban LA. I […]
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How close are we to a USS Telesforo Trinidad? Naming campaign continues
UPDATE: Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced on May 19 that a future Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer will be named USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG 139). A sustained campaign to name a U.S. Navy warship after Filipino sailor Telesforo Trinidad has the support of Filipino American organizations and mostly Democrat congressional leaders. California Rep. Sara […]
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‘The current state of Philippine collections is problematic’ (Part 2)
By Sarah Derouin Ricky Punzalan has his own layered history with the Philippine collections. “The University has a record of bringing Filipino scholars, during the early colonial years up to even the present, to study here,” he says, adding that he was one of these students. When he returned to U-M as a faculty member, […]
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Faculty leads a project to decolonize University of Michigan’s PHL collections (Part 1)
By Sarah Derouin The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus is 8,199 miles from Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. Spread throughout multiple campus locations is one of the largest collections of historical Filipino artifacts outside of the archipelago nation. But how did such a robust collection end up at a Midwestern university? It’s […]