90.5 WESA: Squirrel Hill’s annual Lunar New Year celebration has been canceled this year, amid fears in Pittsburgh’s Asian community about the surge in federal immigration enforcement.
The decision was made in January, according to Maria Cohen, executive director of the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition, and was made in partnership with the Pittsburgh chapter of the OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates.
4 comments:
It is disgusting how ICE is affecting our communities. I feel myself cling to the American Dream, or maybe just the idea of American exceptionalism that this is a country of the free. People should feel comfortable to literally just leave their houses. The cancellation of the Lunar New Year parade feels like exactly what our government wants. They have created an America where only white people can dance on the streets and create art and build community. They have isolated communities of color, as they have for a long time, but now it is so out in the open. There is a battle of anger and acceptance in me. How can we fight back if the risk of stepping outside is so high. If the risk of even attending a celebration is a weight over our heads. We are losing lives and we are losing their stories and their minds and what they mean to their communities. America is disintegrating and there is no off button.
Sometimes I read the titles of news articles and my first thought is that they are a joke, because what is happening should be too disturbing to be real. But, unfortunately this is the reality that we live in. The Lunar New Year is one of the biggest celebrations of the year for many of the cultures who participate. In my culture, there are weeks of preparation spent leading up to the New Year, making sure everything is properly cleaned, prepared, cooked, and our ancestors and being honored. To aid in the creation of a society that fears for their everyday lives in a way so intense that they do not feel comfortable outwardly sharing their traditions is disturbing in ways that words can not describe. America was once regarded with pride as “a melting pot of culture”, but now it seems that all we are trying to do is erase the diversity that makes our society strong. If this is the new normal, then I fear for the future.
It is so frustrating to hear that this celebration needs to be cancelled for fear of safety. It is clear that Squirrel Hill’s Lunar New Year has been a space of comfort and community for many over the years. It is hard to hear that that has been disrupted.
I loved that the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition came up with stand in activities like writing New Years wishes on red tags and tying them on trees throughout the neighborhood. It is great to see people continuing to celebrate even as larger events must be cancelled.
It is always hard to hear about feelings of discrimination and oppression that have been brought on by our government and legal policy in recent years. I’m taking a class that covers Asian American History, and am learning about the discriminatory legislation passed in the 19th and 20th centuries. It feels cyclic, which is terrible. I hope we can move past this.
It's so devastating that our communities have to make decisions to cancel significant cultural events out of fear of persecution and attack from federal government agencies. The fact that ice had raids on two different Lunar New Years celebrations in Minneapolis is absolutely deplorable. What this is is racial profiling, and the fact that these agents are able to do it with no legal repercussions is a truly terrifying prospect. This is literally people being targeted based on their cultures, race and ethnicities. Unfortunately, I think this shows the current power ice has. well sure they do have physical capabilities, where the real danger lies is the fear they bring to communities. This fear makes it so that people struggle to come together and work together as a community to push back against the shit that ice is doing. This whole thing is just very frustrating and confusing to watch our country continue to devolve back into a more racist place.
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