World Mental Health & Indigenous Peoples Day
Despite my best intentions of posting on world mental health day and indigenous peoples day, I missed the boat. However, I’d like to share some thoughts about these two important topics. As a Puerto Rican, I often think of how the Spanish colonizers changed Puerto Rico, wiping out the lives and culture of the Taino […]
PRIDE Month
Why “PRIDE?” For so long, members of the LGBTQ+ community were discriminated against as well as stigmatized, ridiculed and shamed because of their sexual orientation. Naming the organization that supports the LGBTQ+ community, PRIDE, was specifically to try to undo the damage caused by homophobic detractors. As is typical within the United States, it was […]
AAPI Historical Month
Over 23 million Americans consider themselves to be AAPI (Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders) ethnic group. Asian-Americans have ancestry from 50 different ethnicities and 40 countries, including China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos. Pacific Islanders have origins in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, and includes Native Hawaiians. The term AAPI is controversial […]
Poverty in America
It’s hard to imagine that a superpower such as the United States, a land of vast resources and great innovation, should have poverty within its borders. When we do imagine it, we may attribute poverty in such a rich land as a function of effort or merit: they are poor because they don’t ‘lift themselves […]
Why International Indigenous People Day
Indigenous people – also referred to as first people, or aboriginal people – are native to their lands that have been settled or colonized by other ethnic groups. As the UN describes: “Indigenous people share a strong tie to their ancestral heritage and land. They may live there, or have been displaced from there, but […]