Creating a Culture of Peace: Statement of the National Council of Elders

Creating a Culture of Peace: Ukraine, Buffalo, Uvalde: We are veterans of a long struggle for social justice in our nation and peace in the world. We are the National Council of Elders (NCOE) and stand alongside legions of elders who work to resist oppression and build dreams of new worlds. Our commitment is to accompany younger twenty-first-century leaders in their effort to bring a greater measure of justice, equality, and peace to our country and world.

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MOSF 17.9: “Can I Withhold Care from a Bigot?” A Brown Psychiatrist’s Perspective

Caregivers and caregiving teams in health care, education, and child care have reported increased stress during the pandemic. Burnout and resignations have reportedly increased. Simultaneously, issues of racial justice, and LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights have risen to the forefront of broad public consciousness, triggering both calls to action and reactionary, defensive pushback. Socio-political issues clearly have an impact on caregiving. They can either divide us, or bring us together in service to broader, essential, critical, indispensable duties of caregiving. This essay is an attempt to offer insight, clarity and allyship from my position as a psychiatrist and writer for all those impacted by these tensions, and thus assist affinity, study, support, and action groups that continue to form.

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MOSF 17.8: From Bad Axe to Chinatown to Hong Kong, Let Freedom Ring!

Three films at CAAMFest this weekend brought home the central conflict of our times: social dominance orientation vs. what I call relational-cultural-contextual orientation. The latter is central to Asian and Asian American psychology, as well as other non-individualistic Black and Brown societies, feminine consciousness, and on a deeper level, our common humanity and compassion itself. To my knowledge, this way of viewing our times has not been discussed in this way, particularly in the Asian American community, and is potentially a paradigm shift that could fuel growth and change on our journeys of identity, belonging, wellness and meaning. In the end, we do have to fight for and affirm our human dignity, as well as affirm the human dignity of others.

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Min Jin Lee’s remarks at the Break the Silence Rally, March 16, 2022

Min Jin Lee’s remarks at the anti-Asian hate rally in NYC, March 16, 2022. “I’m a novelist and it is my job to have empathy for everyone. And I imagine that things must be pretty awful for a person to carry a hammer, to shout racial slurs, sleep on the streets, be off their medication, and wish to take another person’s life. My assailant is likely a person without much reason, and I’m sure he’s desperate. And yet, when I think of my brothers and sisters almost imprisoning themselves in their homes, modifying their own faces in the hopes of not getting hurt, I get angry. Why are we tying ourselves in knots trying to solve a problem that we did not create?”

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