The office of the tibet,
http://www.tibetoffice.org/en/index.php
I was very lucky to find this organization and met Tsewang Phuntso, liaison officer at the office of tibet.
I would not think to write about the tortured Tibetans, I thought I'm done with them, since I finished the one article about the Tibetan food vendor, for my last piece for the former semester.
But when I was in a radio workshop with prof. Dean, which is in the creation of a one-hour documentary for American Radio Works.
After a few weeks of discussion, we picked our subject, "the torture" and at the morning today, we discussed more about the interview sources that we can have in NYC.
And it led me to research more about the tortured Tibetan in New York City. When I had interview with a couple of tibetan people, there was guy, who was so outragous about the chinese government's severe ways of torturing Tibetan people.
Also I found 'Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture', when they posted hiring volunteers for teaching English to those torture victims last semester. At that time, I didn't feel confident to apply for a volunteer position to teach English, but hoped I would know about its program more. And finally, this time, for my article and also for the radio project, that program could be very great source.
Also, before I went out for interviewing the people form the office of Tibet, the prof. Dean showed me how to use the radio recorder, which seemed much more complicated than my olypus recorder, but I tried and hopefully, I can get some feedback at the next radio work shop.
I expected that this reporting would take longer time, especially, to find people, who actually got tortured and stayed in here. But Phunstso supported me, providing the information of tortured people staying in New York City now. "You need to talk to people who can give you the firsthand view."
Now I finished an interview with Tsamla, and I could set up the interview with another women for an interview.
Thanks God................!
2.25.2008
Bellevue hospital
the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
Lhamo Dongtotsang [view bio]
Social Services Assistant
lcdtsang@yahoo.com
212-994-7160
Lhamo Dongtotsang
Social Services Assistant
Ms. Dongtotsang, who is originally from Tibet, came to us from the New York Association for New Americans, where she worked as a job developer for Tibetans. She is fluent in Tibetan, Hindi, and Nepali. Ms. Dongtotsang began working with our Program as a volunteer six years ago, became a part-time social services assistant two years ago and joined our staff full-time in 2005. She assists in providing social services for clients, as well as serving as a Tibetan interpreter.
+
Darren Bedrosian [view bio]
Director of Data Services
darren.bedrosian@med.nyu.edu
212-994-7171
2.23.2008
contact
* Finally found someone can give me some expert's view on the gambling problems among Chinese community..
Hi Sooyeon,
NYCAAMH's executive member, Dr. Pamela Yew Schwartz would be happy to answer some of your questions for the Chinese community. You can contact her at Pamyewschwartz@aol.com to set up a phone/face- to-face interview. She will be available after Wednesday.
I will provide you the contact information for another resource (Korean) once I get her permission.
I hope this helps and please let me know if you need anything else.
Thank you.
Best,
Joy Luangphaxay
- Show quoted text -
IMPORTANT!
Please note: C/O Two Bridges must be included with our NEW ADDRESS
NY Coalition for Asian American Mental Health
C/O Two Bridges
275 Cherry Street
New York, NY 10002
Tel: 212-720-4524
Fax: 212-732-9297
E-mail: nycaamh@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.asianmentalhealth.org
Hi Sooyeon,
NYCAAMH's executive member, Dr. Pamela Yew Schwartz would be happy to answer some of your questions for the Chinese community. You can contact her at Pamyewschwartz@aol.com to set up a phone/face- to-face interview. She will be available after Wednesday.
I will provide you the contact information for another resource (Korean) once I get her permission.
I hope this helps and please let me know if you need anything else.
Thank you.
Best,
Joy Luangphaxay
- Show quoted text -
IMPORTANT!
Please note: C/O Two Bridges must be included with our NEW ADDRESS
NY Coalition for Asian American Mental Health
C/O Two Bridges
275 Cherry Street
New York, NY 10002
Tel: 212-720-4524
Fax: 212-732-9297
E-mail: nycaamh@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.asianmentalhealth.org
The Mongol Tolbo Newsletter.
http://www.maca-usa.org/newsroom.html
The Mongol Tolbo Newsletter.
The Mongol-American Cultural Association's newsletter Mongol Tolbo is a quarterly publication enjoys the distribution among its kind. It provides commentary and analysis on the subject of the Mongol culture and news of its economic, political, and social development of Northern and Southern Mongolia, Tuva, Sinjiang, Buryatia and Kalmykia.
Contact: Chinggeltu Borjiged, Editor.
Address: Mongol-American Cultural Association Inc., 50 Louis Street, New Brunswick New Jersey 08901.
Telephone: (732) 297-1140.
The Mongol Tolbo Newsletter.
The Mongol-American Cultural Association's newsletter Mongol Tolbo is a quarterly publication enjoys the distribution among its kind. It provides commentary and analysis on the subject of the Mongol culture and news of its economic, political, and social development of Northern and Southern Mongolia, Tuva, Sinjiang, Buryatia and Kalmykia.
Contact: Chinggeltu Borjiged, Editor.
Address: Mongol-American Cultural Association Inc., 50 Louis Street, New Brunswick New Jersey 08901.
Telephone: (732) 297-1140.
[article]
*The following is a reprint of an article written by John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times, entitled Gambling Seen as No-Win Situation for Some Asians, originally published January 16, 2006. It discusses the popularity of gambling among Asian Americans, its ties to traditional Asian culture, and some of the problems of addiction associated with it.
AN EMERGING COMMUNITY ISSUE
In Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean and Cambodian communities, social workers and leaders are pressuring gaming officials and state legislators to recognize a hidden epidemic. "This isn't a special-interest group overblowing a problem," said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, which is conducting an Asian gambling study. "We think this is real."
Nobody really knows how deeply problem gambling reaches into Asian communities because Asians have not been broken out as a group in national or California studies on the issue. But a 1999 poll in San Francisco's Chinatown, commissioned by a social services agency, found that 70% of 1,808 respondents ranked gambling as their community's No. 1 problem.
In a follow-up poll, 21% of respondents considered themselves pathological gamblers and 16% more called themselves problem gamblers -- rates significantly higher than in the overall population. Current data suggest that 1.6% of Americans can be classified as pathological gamblers, a condition recognized as a psychiatric disorder. About 3% more are considered problem gamblers.
Gambling has become America's adult pastime of choice. Each year, more money is spent in the nation's $75-billion gaming industry than on movies, concerts, sporting events and amusement parks combined. And nowhere is gambling on a bigger roll than in California, with nearly 60 Indian casinos, scores of card rooms, racetracks and Internet gambling sites as well as one of the nation's most lucrative state lotteries.
Asian gamblers play a key role in that success. Though few statistics on their contribution to the state's gambling pot exist, some casinos and card rooms near Los Angeles and San Francisco estimate that Asians often account for 80% of their customers. "Asians are a huge market," said Wendy Waldorf, a spokeswoman for the Cache Creek Casino north of San Francisco. "We cater to them."
Each day in San Gabriel, Monterey Park and San Francisco's Chinatown, scores of buses collect Asian customers for free junkets to Indian casinos and to Reno and Las Vegas. Many Nevada casinos also maintain business offices in Monterey Park, where hosts keep in regular touch with Asian high rollers. To reach more run-of-the-mill gamblers, casinos run ads in Asian-language print and broadcast media and conduct direct-mailing campaigns to ZIP Codes with high numbers of Asian residents.
A TRADITION OF GAMBLING
Many Asians -- especially Chinese -- consider gambling an accepted practice at home and at social events, even among the young. Chinese youths often gamble for money with aunts, uncles and grandparents. While growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown, Lee took betting to absurd levels -- wagering on whether the teacher would assign homework. On rainy days, he bet on which drop would first reach the bottom of the classroom window.
Many Chinese are fascinated by the mystical qualities of luck, fate and chance. The Chinese New Year -- this year Jan. 29 -- is a time of heightened wagering, when bad luck of the old year is ushered out by the good luck of the new. Numerology also plays a crucial role in many Asian cultures. The number 8, for example, is considered extremely lucky by many Chinese, while 4, when spoken in Mandarin and Cantonese, sounds like the word for death and is avoided.
Though Chinese believe most strongly in such concepts, other Asian cultures, including Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino, hold similar beliefs -- depending on China's political influence in their history or the extent of Chinese immigration there. Experts believe that recent Asian immigrants -- risk-takers willing to leave the familiarity of their homelands -- develop more aggressive gambling strategies than their U.S.-born counterparts.
Often lacking language skills and advanced education, some gravitate to casinos, where waitresses dote on gamblers with free drinks and cigarettes. "They're treated as honored guests even though they work dead-end, minimum-wage jobs," said Tina Shum, a social worker in San Francisco's Chinatown. "That's what they long for." Some eventually engage in "attack" gambling: wagering sums beyond their means in a reckless grab at the American dream. "The immigrant experience is often demeaning," Shum said. "Many get blinded by the neon lights."
LOSING MORE THAN MONEY
But such gaming habits come at a cost. "An astronomical amount of money leaves the Asian community for gambling industry coffers," said Paul Osaki, a member of a gambling task force created last year by the state Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. "It's not all discretionary money. It's quality-of-life money, food-on-the-table money, college education money."
Osaki and other activists want more research and culturally sensitive gambling treatment programs for often-reserved Asians with gambling problems -- for whom Western strategies like Gamblers Anonymous rarely work. Kent Woo, executive director of a Chinatown-based health coalition that conducted the gambling polls, said the biggest challenge is to convince the community that it has a problem.
"Breaking through the denial is the hard part," he said. Still, activists say, California's Office of Problem Gambling is under-funded and disorganized. The agency's $3-million budget is derived from contributions from 26 Native American-run casinos. Thirty other tribal casinos do not contribute. Nor do card rooms, race tracks or the state lottery. In 2003 the office left its entire budget unspent.
Diane Ujiiye, who heads the problem gambling task force, said $3 million wasn't nearly enough to deal with the issue. "It's unacceptable," she said. "What can you do with $3 million? Publish a couple of brochures and run a hotline?"
DENIAL AND DEPENDENCE
When Bill Lee was on a roll, nothing mattered but the gambling, not even family. He fell for the VIP treatment that came with betting thousands of dollars at a casino: free hotel suites and concert tickets, having casino managers know his name. "I was a big shot," Lee said, "as long as the money lasted." Angela, 52, a San Gabriel Valley Las Vegas gambling tour guide operator, said that on most trips, she ended up losing her own money and began playing with the company's funds.
She said she tried to tame her zealous gambling. On one Vegas trip, she gave all her credit cards to a friend and begged her not to return them, no matter what she said. Later, after losing all her cash, Angela threatened to slap her friend unless she returned the cards. "She threw the cards on the floor and I got down onto my hands and knees without shame to pick them up."
Angela helped start one of the state's few Mandarin Chinese gambling treatment programs. But she soon realized a hard fact: Admitting an addiction is difficult in any culture. But many Asians find it particularly hard, especially men. "It's shameful to be emotionally weak," Lee said. "It's not acceptable. So you certainly don't get up and bare your soul before a room full of strangers."
To save face among neighbors, many families will bail out an addicted gambler, paying off casinos and loan sharks, rather than seek help. Asian American advocates are urging casinos to distribute brochures in Asian languages offering help to problem gamblers. More ambitiously, they want ATMs in casinos closed and overnight hours curtailed to discourage problem gamblers. They also would like the state to require gaming venues to contribute to treatment programs.
Yet casino owner Chu warned that "too many restrictions will kill business."
Related Articles:
Health & Wellness
Martial Arts, Video Games, & Hip-Hop
Religion, Spirituality, & Faith
Copyright © 2006 by John M. Glionna and the Los Angeles Times. Reprinted in accordance with Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
Suggested reference: Glionna, John M. 2006. "Gambling, Addiction, and Asian Culture" Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. (February 22, 2008).
AN EMERGING COMMUNITY ISSUE
In Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean and Cambodian communities, social workers and leaders are pressuring gaming officials and state legislators to recognize a hidden epidemic. "This isn't a special-interest group overblowing a problem," said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, which is conducting an Asian gambling study. "We think this is real."
Nobody really knows how deeply problem gambling reaches into Asian communities because Asians have not been broken out as a group in national or California studies on the issue. But a 1999 poll in San Francisco's Chinatown, commissioned by a social services agency, found that 70% of 1,808 respondents ranked gambling as their community's No. 1 problem.
In a follow-up poll, 21% of respondents considered themselves pathological gamblers and 16% more called themselves problem gamblers -- rates significantly higher than in the overall population. Current data suggest that 1.6% of Americans can be classified as pathological gamblers, a condition recognized as a psychiatric disorder. About 3% more are considered problem gamblers.
Gambling has become America's adult pastime of choice. Each year, more money is spent in the nation's $75-billion gaming industry than on movies, concerts, sporting events and amusement parks combined. And nowhere is gambling on a bigger roll than in California, with nearly 60 Indian casinos, scores of card rooms, racetracks and Internet gambling sites as well as one of the nation's most lucrative state lotteries.
Asian gamblers play a key role in that success. Though few statistics on their contribution to the state's gambling pot exist, some casinos and card rooms near Los Angeles and San Francisco estimate that Asians often account for 80% of their customers. "Asians are a huge market," said Wendy Waldorf, a spokeswoman for the Cache Creek Casino north of San Francisco. "We cater to them."
Each day in San Gabriel, Monterey Park and San Francisco's Chinatown, scores of buses collect Asian customers for free junkets to Indian casinos and to Reno and Las Vegas. Many Nevada casinos also maintain business offices in Monterey Park, where hosts keep in regular touch with Asian high rollers. To reach more run-of-the-mill gamblers, casinos run ads in Asian-language print and broadcast media and conduct direct-mailing campaigns to ZIP Codes with high numbers of Asian residents.
A TRADITION OF GAMBLING
Many Asians -- especially Chinese -- consider gambling an accepted practice at home and at social events, even among the young. Chinese youths often gamble for money with aunts, uncles and grandparents. While growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown, Lee took betting to absurd levels -- wagering on whether the teacher would assign homework. On rainy days, he bet on which drop would first reach the bottom of the classroom window.
Many Chinese are fascinated by the mystical qualities of luck, fate and chance. The Chinese New Year -- this year Jan. 29 -- is a time of heightened wagering, when bad luck of the old year is ushered out by the good luck of the new. Numerology also plays a crucial role in many Asian cultures. The number 8, for example, is considered extremely lucky by many Chinese, while 4, when spoken in Mandarin and Cantonese, sounds like the word for death and is avoided.
Though Chinese believe most strongly in such concepts, other Asian cultures, including Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino, hold similar beliefs -- depending on China's political influence in their history or the extent of Chinese immigration there. Experts believe that recent Asian immigrants -- risk-takers willing to leave the familiarity of their homelands -- develop more aggressive gambling strategies than their U.S.-born counterparts.
Often lacking language skills and advanced education, some gravitate to casinos, where waitresses dote on gamblers with free drinks and cigarettes. "They're treated as honored guests even though they work dead-end, minimum-wage jobs," said Tina Shum, a social worker in San Francisco's Chinatown. "That's what they long for." Some eventually engage in "attack" gambling: wagering sums beyond their means in a reckless grab at the American dream. "The immigrant experience is often demeaning," Shum said. "Many get blinded by the neon lights."
LOSING MORE THAN MONEY
But such gaming habits come at a cost. "An astronomical amount of money leaves the Asian community for gambling industry coffers," said Paul Osaki, a member of a gambling task force created last year by the state Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. "It's not all discretionary money. It's quality-of-life money, food-on-the-table money, college education money."
Osaki and other activists want more research and culturally sensitive gambling treatment programs for often-reserved Asians with gambling problems -- for whom Western strategies like Gamblers Anonymous rarely work. Kent Woo, executive director of a Chinatown-based health coalition that conducted the gambling polls, said the biggest challenge is to convince the community that it has a problem.
"Breaking through the denial is the hard part," he said. Still, activists say, California's Office of Problem Gambling is under-funded and disorganized. The agency's $3-million budget is derived from contributions from 26 Native American-run casinos. Thirty other tribal casinos do not contribute. Nor do card rooms, race tracks or the state lottery. In 2003 the office left its entire budget unspent.
Diane Ujiiye, who heads the problem gambling task force, said $3 million wasn't nearly enough to deal with the issue. "It's unacceptable," she said. "What can you do with $3 million? Publish a couple of brochures and run a hotline?"
DENIAL AND DEPENDENCE
When Bill Lee was on a roll, nothing mattered but the gambling, not even family. He fell for the VIP treatment that came with betting thousands of dollars at a casino: free hotel suites and concert tickets, having casino managers know his name. "I was a big shot," Lee said, "as long as the money lasted." Angela, 52, a San Gabriel Valley Las Vegas gambling tour guide operator, said that on most trips, she ended up losing her own money and began playing with the company's funds.
She said she tried to tame her zealous gambling. On one Vegas trip, she gave all her credit cards to a friend and begged her not to return them, no matter what she said. Later, after losing all her cash, Angela threatened to slap her friend unless she returned the cards. "She threw the cards on the floor and I got down onto my hands and knees without shame to pick them up."
Angela helped start one of the state's few Mandarin Chinese gambling treatment programs. But she soon realized a hard fact: Admitting an addiction is difficult in any culture. But many Asians find it particularly hard, especially men. "It's shameful to be emotionally weak," Lee said. "It's not acceptable. So you certainly don't get up and bare your soul before a room full of strangers."
To save face among neighbors, many families will bail out an addicted gambler, paying off casinos and loan sharks, rather than seek help. Asian American advocates are urging casinos to distribute brochures in Asian languages offering help to problem gamblers. More ambitiously, they want ATMs in casinos closed and overnight hours curtailed to discourage problem gamblers. They also would like the state to require gaming venues to contribute to treatment programs.
Yet casino owner Chu warned that "too many restrictions will kill business."
Related Articles:
Health & Wellness
Martial Arts, Video Games, & Hip-Hop
Religion, Spirituality, & Faith
Copyright © 2006 by John M. Glionna and the Los Angeles Times. Reprinted in accordance with Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
Suggested reference: Glionna, John M. 2006. "Gambling, Addiction, and Asian Culture" Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America.
Tibetans Aren't Only Victims of China's Wrath
* I found this from the NYT's editorial page!**
Tibetans Aren't Only Victims of China's Wrath
Your Jan. 2 editorial ''A Prison Term in Tibet'' rightfully decries the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese Government. Over the past several years, you and many other publications have drawn attention to the appalling lack of human rights in China and in Tibet. This latest editorial condemns the Chinese Government's repressive policies in connection with the 18-year sentence imposed on Ngawang Choepel, accused of spying for the United States, although he was doing nothing more than trying to record traditional songs and dances.
Lest your readers think that the harsh treatment accorded the Tibetans is prejudicial, I would like to point out that similar treatment is shown the other non-Han minority peoples of China, the Mongols in particular.
On Dec. 6, just before Ngawang Choepel was being sentenced, two young Mongol intellectuals, Hada and Tegexi, were handed 15- and 10-year sentences, respectively, for alleged separatist activities.
Just as Ngawang Choepel was trying to preserve pieces of Tibetan culture that he understood were in danger of being lost in the face of Chinese assimilation, Mr. Hada and Mr. Tegexi, members of the Southern Mongolian Democracy Alliance, were similarly engaged in the cultural preservation of the Mongol minority in China.
Their only crime was participation in an organization that was attempting to preserve Mongol identity.
I have no illusions that drawing attention to the plight of the other minority peoples in China will have much influence on the Clinton Administration's policies toward the Chinese Government.
But your readers should know that when it comes to China's minority peoples, the Chinese Government has had a reprehensibly evenhanded approach at ignoring the human rights of its citizens.
SANJ ALTAN
North Brunswick, N.J., Jan. 7, 1997
http://www.smhric.org/news_39.htm
Tibetans Aren't Only Victims of China's Wrath
Your Jan. 2 editorial ''A Prison Term in Tibet'' rightfully decries the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese Government. Over the past several years, you and many other publications have drawn attention to the appalling lack of human rights in China and in Tibet. This latest editorial condemns the Chinese Government's repressive policies in connection with the 18-year sentence imposed on Ngawang Choepel, accused of spying for the United States, although he was doing nothing more than trying to record traditional songs and dances.
Lest your readers think that the harsh treatment accorded the Tibetans is prejudicial, I would like to point out that similar treatment is shown the other non-Han minority peoples of China, the Mongols in particular.
On Dec. 6, just before Ngawang Choepel was being sentenced, two young Mongol intellectuals, Hada and Tegexi, were handed 15- and 10-year sentences, respectively, for alleged separatist activities.
Just as Ngawang Choepel was trying to preserve pieces of Tibetan culture that he understood were in danger of being lost in the face of Chinese assimilation, Mr. Hada and Mr. Tegexi, members of the Southern Mongolian Democracy Alliance, were similarly engaged in the cultural preservation of the Mongol minority in China.
Their only crime was participation in an organization that was attempting to preserve Mongol identity.
I have no illusions that drawing attention to the plight of the other minority peoples in China will have much influence on the Clinton Administration's policies toward the Chinese Government.
But your readers should know that when it comes to China's minority peoples, the Chinese Government has had a reprehensibly evenhanded approach at ignoring the human rights of its citizens.
SANJ ALTAN
North Brunswick, N.J., Jan. 7, 1997
http://www.smhric.org/news_39.htm
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
.jpg,+filename%3DFall+2005+Pictures+053(7986).jpg)