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Unity March photograph by David Andrews.

A diverse crowd gathered on a sweltering Saturday for the first-ever Asian American-led Unity March at the National Mall. Over 60 Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy organizations led the event in response to a rise of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic and the murders of six Asian women at Atlanta massage parlors in March 2021.

Speakers and attendees tackled every issue under the sunethnic studies in K-12 schools, abortion rights, immigration, police violence, and more. The March also highlighted the historical existence of anti-Asian violence: Last week marked 40 years since Vincent Chin was murdered by two white men in Detroit, which sparked the modern Asian American civil rights movement.

Over 50 individuals spoke at the event, including U.S. Youth Poet Laureate Alexandra Huynh, civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, and Gareth and Fe Hall, the parents of Christian Hall, a Chinese-American man who was killed by Pennsylvania state police in 2020.

Washingtonian spoke with organizers and participants about what this moment meant to them:

The paint was barely dry on Anthony Lees week-old mural of Vincent Chin when he and his girlfriend loaded it into a truck and made their way from Detroit to DC. Lee, a muralist and illustrator, was commissioned by the American Citizens for Justice to create the painting ahead of the 40th anniversary and remembrance of Chins death in Detroit.

We just came out here because we felt that, in the discussion about equality and injustice, he is like one of the most important people to be put in that conversation, Lee says. Because the Asian-American civil rights movement was started as a result of fighting for his injustice.

Priya Purandare, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, says shes seen a boom in civic engagement over her 15 years in DC: The difference is that Im seeing much more young people becoming politically active, making sure theyre having difficult conversations with their own families.

Amid experiences of violence and discrimination, 39-year-old Ellen Mins grandparents and parents did what they had to do to survive in America; She and her older sister lived in a senior center with her grandparents as children, because her father couldnt afford childcare.

I want to let everyone know that we do belong. We are a part of the fabric of this country and Im marching, and I look at this picture and this is the reason why Im here. For my family, for my grandparents, down to my children, Min says.

Teach Roberts, whos lived in DC for over 20 years, identifies as hapa: half white and half Asian. While studying in Hong Kong, Roberts realized he was missing something: For the first 19 years of life, I kind of did not identify as Asian at all. In Hong Kong, I started learning more about my Chinese side and my heritage. Until then, I didnt feel like a complete person. Now, Roberts organizes with the National Association of Asian American Professionals.

When 9/11 happened, Kiran Gill was living in New York. Gill, now the Executive Director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, watched as people targeted her community and labeled them as terrorists. To see that again, happening to other communities, you know, in this day and age 20 years later, it saddens me, Gill says.

Gill says one of the first calls her community received was from the Japanese American Citizens League, who recognized the racist rhetoric against the Sikh community as the kind of fear mongering that resulted in Japanese internment during World War II. To see the way our communities have supported each other and really threaded this narrative and understand whats at stake to me that is something that gives me hope, Gill says.

Mian Osumi, a 22-year-old from Bethesda, came to deliver this message: Stop fetishizing Asian women. One side of her sign reads your bad day shouldnt be my last day, referencing police rhetoric of the shooters bad day during the Atlanta shooting. The other side of her sign was a meme calling out white military men with Asian fetishes who prey on young Asian women.

I think humor is a great way to bring attention to a lot of our issues and in a more accessible way. I wanted other Asian women to be like, Ive seen that. Ive experienced that too, Osumi says. Were in this moment of solidarity together.

Derek Yuan flew in from Sacramento Friday night to be at the march. It was a very important trip to make. I had the privilege of working with [APIAVote executive director] Christine Chen last school semester. I got to meet Asian Pacific Islander leaders from all sorts of industries, all sorts of sectors from journalism, or elected officials, people in the API data field, Yuan says. It was really educational. And so it just made sense to continue that sort of learning for me, but also really show out and come support efforts for the Unity March.

Dalip Singh and his son Hersh were visiting from Milwaukee, where, they note, a shooting of Sikh temple happened in 2012. I think its important to come together so that these things stop happening to each one of us, says Dalip, a physician. You know, its better to be part of something than be isolated and get slaughtered.

Tiffany Chang Lawson, a 33-year-old Taiwanese-American from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, carried a sign readingProtect Asian Women in traditional Chinese on one side, and the same in English on the other.We need to take care of our sisters, Lawson says.

Lyric Amodia, seen here with fellow members of Howard Universitys NAACP Council, spoke to the crowd about standing in solidarity in the face of adversity.Considering this week that weve had, were just here to really fellowship and have some unity, have a great time, and just talk about whats important to make a difference, Amodia says.

Hannah H Yu traveled down from New York City with the group YWCA Queens (Young Womens Christian Association of Queens), a group aimed at eliminating racism and empowering women. After posing for this photo, the groups executive director Eun-Kyung Kim, pictured below, provided some background on the gesture: We in Korean culture, we say all the time, Oh, we love you. I love you, but sometimes these are very difficult to say I love you all the time. So they tried to make the heart shape. One of the celebrities in Korea, he was like, this way its like a very small heart.

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A First of Its Kind March on the National Mall Counters Anti-Asian Racism - Washingtonian

Crown Heights, Brooklyn, may have been a fast-gentrifying province of Hipsterville for the past decade, but 30 years ago it was still an affordable community populated largely by working-class Black Americans and recent immigrants from Caribbean nations. It was then, and remains today, the world capital of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty of Hasidic Judaism. Tensions among Crown Heights various constituencies exploded into several nights of rioting in August of 1991, after a vehicle in a Lubavitch leaders motorcade ran a red light and struck two 7-year-old Guyanese-American boys, killing one of them. Hours after the accident, a group of young Black men stabbed a rabbinical scholar on the street in what was widely inferred as retaliation for the death of Gavin Cato, the child who died in the vehicle collision.

Nine months later, Black, Baltimore-born, playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith first performed Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. Her solo show that attempted to make sense of the tragedy and spotlight how a neighborhood can be both shared and divided.

To produce the show, Deavere Smith conducted scores of interviews with participants, witnesses, and cultural observers from the Black and Jewish communities, as well as outsiders. Her subjects ranged in notoriety from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Anonymous Young Man No. 2. Deavere Smith wove together a series of roughly 25 brief monologues that together offer a sort of panorama of the events that transpired in Crown Heights that August.

Deavere Smith has pioneered this format, known as verbatim theatre, where a playwright constructs a story using real peoples words, and she returns to it periodically to interrogate thorny subjects. In fact, the 1992 Los Angeles riotssparked by the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers whod been caught on video beating motorist Rodney Kinghappened the same week Smith opened Fires in the Mirror 2,500 miles east in New York City; shed go on to cover the larger and deadlier L.A. riots in a similarly formatted, one-woman stage play in 1994. She also performed her solo show about Americas dysfunctional healthcare system, Let Me Down Easy, at Arena Stage in 2011.

Whether verbatim theatre is more useful in investigating a social tragedy than, say, a documentary film or oral history of the event, is an intriguing question. Do we gain a deeper understanding or have a stronger emotional response to an event when the reportage is itself a performance? (Smiths original Fires in the Mirror was filmed and broadcast as an episode of American Playhouse on public television in 1993.)

Theatre Js 30-years-later version of Fires in the Mirror, co-directed by outgoing Theatre J head Adam Immerwahr and January LaVoy, who also stars, complicates the question by removing another point of connection to material. LaVoy is clearly a versatile and persuasive actorcapably inhabiting the shows approximately two dozen nonfictional charactersbut she is not the artist who conducted these interviews and stitched them into a script. (Michael Benjamin Washington took over for Smith in Fires in the Mirrors 2019 New York revival; while a production in Milwaukee that same year split the monologues between two female actors, one Jewish and one Black.) The script has not been updated; its the same text Smith used for the original performance. But todays production is one of the rare instances where the fluid impermanence of live theater might be regarded more as a bug than as a feature.

And its profoundly different than a new actor inheriting the role of Heidi Schreck in Schrecks autobiographical solo show What the Constitution Means to Me. Schrecks case is an example of a performers representation of her own life, which was then passed on to another actor. But Smith was never playing herself; she was playing a selection of people she sought out, observed, and interviewed. While most of the subjects she identifies in the script are alive today, its unclear if LaVoy ever met those people.

Impression is not a word any actor portraying a real, living person likes to hear, but when theyre covering two dozen roles of various genders, races, and, ages (complete with lickety-split costume changes) in a 100-minute performance, the effect is inevitably more one of novelty than of exploration. Its the eventthe riotsthats being investigated here; not the plays (nonfictional) characters. A projected photograph and a caption identifies each new speaker on a video screen behind LaVoy. She never leaves the stage for more than a few seconds, reappearing with new vocal cadence, a new gait, and new props right down to the chicken wing sauce that one character dribbles onto his shirt. The precision of her changes, along with the lighting, sound, and projections (which includes a scenic change artist, a credit Ive never seen before) are all impressive technical elements of the show.

But why revisit this generation-old history at all? Does Fires in the Mirror have the same sturdy legs that, say, The Laramie Project, a later specimen of verbatim theatre thats been performed all over, carries? Every available sociological metric would seem to indicate that Laramie, Wyoming, has changed less in the 24 years since the violent tragedy that the play investigatesthe torture and murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepardthan Crown Heights has in the 31 years since the riots. Three decades later, however, Theater J promises the solo show is something every American can relate to, regardless of race, color, or beliefs.

What gives Fires in the Mirror currency today, even as the uprising it investigates has been largely overwritten in our memory by fresher calamities, is that Deavere Smith takes her time to immerse the audience in the milieu of Crown Heights as it was in the late 80s and early 90s. She barely addresses the traffic accident or the violence that followed until the shows second half. One monologue from Los Angeles rapper Monique Big Mo Matthews takes aim at misogyny in late-1980s hip-hop. Another captures a Jewish school teacher whose baby accidentally turned on her radio during Shabbat. The woman asks a young Black boy passing by to turn off the radio for her because, as an observant Jew, she cant do it herself during Shabbat. The woman says with a laugh,He probably thought, And people say Jewish people are really smart and they dont know how to turn off their radios. These gentle observations of how people are different foreshadow the conflict to come, and that doesnt have an expiration date.

Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, written and originally performed by Anna Deavere Smith, co-directed by Adam Immerwahr and January LaVoy and performed by LaVoy, plays at Theater J, and is available to stream online, through July 3. theaterj.org. $50$75.

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Thirty Years Later, Fires in the Mirror Still Burns - WCP - Washington City Paper

LOS ANGELES, June 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Led by attorney Zulu Ali and his daughter, attorney Whitney Ali, the Law Offices of Zulu Ali & Associates, LLP, the largest Black-owned law firm in California's Inland Empire, has been named Best Law Firm by The American Institute of Trial Lawyers.

The American Institute of Trial Lawyers is an invitation only professional organization composed of premier law firms and trial attorneys from each state. These law firms and attorneys exemplify the very best qualities and qualifications. Each law firm must meet stringent qualifications. Selection is based on a thorough multi-phase process which includes peer nominations and third party research. Membership is extended to only a select few in each state and/or region.

Inspired by the legacy of civil rights attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and Avon Williams, Jr., the Law Offices of Zulu Ali & Associates, LLP was founded in 2007 by Attorney Zulu Ali with a focus on representing persons accused of crimes, immigrants, and persons seeking civil justice in state and federal courts.

Founder and Principal Attorney, Zulu Ali, is a former police officer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He earned a juris doctorate in law (J.D.) from Trinity International University; a masters in administration of justice (M.S.) and business (M.B.A.) from University of Phoenix; a degree with a focus on African studies from Regents College through a consortium with Tennessee State University; and is a doctoral scholar researching pan-African business and trade at California Southern University.

Firm partner, Whitney Ali, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Riverside, and a Juris Doctorate from John F. Kennedy University College of Law. She began her legal career assisting with the firm's criminal case management in 2015 under the mentorship of her father, Attorney Zulu Ali, who is the firm's founder and principal attorney. In 2021 attorney Whitney Ali was named a management level partner.

The Law Offices of Zulu Ali & Associates, LLP has been named as one of the top 10 law firms by Attorney and Practice Magazine; and its founder, Attorney Zulu Ali, has been named top 100 lawyers by the National Black Lawyers and National Trial Lawyers; a Top 10 Lawyer by the American Academy of Trial Attorneys, American Jurist Institute, Attorney & Practice Magazine; Rue Ratings Best Lawyer in America; and Litigator of the Year by the American Institute of Trial Lawyers.

Attorney Zulu Ali is the Director of the Stop and Frisk Youth Leadership Academy, which mentors and trains at-risk youth to deal with police encounters; Director of the Southern California Veterans Legal Clinic, a legal clinic offering no cost and low cost legal services to military veterans; Board Member of the Islamic Development Center of Moreno Valley Shurah Board; and a member of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. serving on the international governing body (Grand Council) as General Legal Counsel.

Both attorney Zulu Ali and attorney Whitney Ali are distinguished biographees of Marquis Who's Who; and Attorney Zulu Ali is a recipient of the Albert Neilson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award 2021, Marquis' Top Lawyer in 2021, and received the Marquis Who's Who Humanitarian Award for 2022. In 2017, Attorney Ali was recognized as one of the most influential African American Leaders in Los Angeles by the National Action Network founded by Reverend Al Sharpton.

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Zulu Ali & Associates, a Black-owned Law Firm Led by a Father-Daughter Legal Duo, Has Been Named Best Law Firm by the American Institute of Trial...

DOVER, Del..--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, grassroots advocacy group Citizens for Judicial Fairness joined forces with famed civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton and local activists Pastor Blaine Hackett and Kendra Ray, sister of Jeremy McDole, to denounce the scheduled confirmation of Nathan Cook to the Delaware Court of Chancery.

The confirmation hearing is scheduled for 1:30 PM and Cook is expected to be confirmed easily, despite the fact that his appointment to the Chancery means it will remain all-white. Ray, Hackett, and a representative from Sharptons National Action Network will make public comments at the hearing demanding the Senate not confirm Cook given the lack of diversity and equity on the Court.

Said Reverend Al Sharpton, I am deeply disappointed that today, equity will once again be denied on the Court of Chancery. It is shameful for the Chancery Court to remain all-white in 2022 when Delaware is 40% people of color and the decisions the court makes affect millions of Black and brown employees across the country. It is imperative that Delawares leaders, starting with Governor Carney, recognize this egregious wrong and begin taking meaningful steps to restore trust in its justice system through diverse court appointments.

Said police reform and racial justice activist Keandra Ray, Im testifying before the Senate Executive Committee today because the lack of diversity in our courts is disgusting. Governor Carney and his cronies in the Senate should be ashamed of this appointment. Im not going to stop fighting until our courts actually look like us and deliver the justice we deserve.

230 years of an all-white Chancery Court and only a single Black justice in the courts entire history is a stain on the state of Delaware and an indictment of Governor Carneys failed leadership, said Citizens for Judicial Fairness Campaign Manager Chris Coffey. Delawareans deserve leaders who talk the talk, not just walk the walk, on judicial equity and fairness. Were going to keep up our efforts to fight the Delaware Old Boys Club that excludes and ignores the states most vulnerable communities until we see real progress and accountability.

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Citizens for Judicial Fairness, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Local Activists Denounce Planned Confirmation of Another White Male Justice to All-White...

NEW YORK -- On the eve of Juneteenth, the Tribeca Festival came to a close with the Rev. Al Sharpton documentary Loudmouth in a premiere that united on stage Sharpton and Spike Lee two towering New York figures who have each been vilified and celebrated for careers championing racial justice.

The event held Saturday at the Borough of Manhattan Community College celebrated Sharpton with the kind of big-screen portrait that has been commonplace for an older generation of civil rights leaders, but had, until Loudmouth, eluded the 67-year-old activist. Loudmouth contextualizes Sharpton's legacy as an extension of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Lewis and others, while at the same time chronicling his unique longevity despite plenty of naysayers along the way.

Shoot your best shot," Sharpton said in a Q&A after the film. "I'm still here.

Lee, a longtime friend who cast Sharpton in a small role in 1992's Malcolm X," cheered Sharpton for being there from the get-go, fighting the good fight.

Everybody takes blows but you got up and keep stepping, said Lee, who joined Sharpton and John Legend, executive producer of the film, on stage. And youre still doing it today.

Loudmouth, which is seeking distribution at Tribeca, was introduced by Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro. He drew a firm distinction between Sharpton and other loudmouths on today's airwaves and at the Jan. 6 hearings in Washington.

How interesting that the committee and the Rev are on the same page exposing the lies and the liars who threaten our democracy," said De Niro. "They want to take away our right to vote and deny us social justice. While Washington deals with the lies and the big lie, tonight you're in the company of patriot who challenges us to get to the truth.

Loudmouth, directed by Josh Alexander, is framed around a sit-down interview with Sharpton, who chronicles his story as a constant fight to keep social justice in the headlines. Nobody calls me to a keep a secret, Sharpton said at the memorial service for George Floyd.

To Sharpton, that was his purpose the blow-up man," he once called himself to tirelessly agitate and stir up enough media attention and to spotlight injustice. Of course, that approach earned Sharpton plenty of detractors almost all of whom are white who have chided him as racial opportunist. That was especially after his involvement in the 1987 case of Tawana Brawley, whose allegation that she had been raped and kidnapped by a group of Dutchess County, New York, men was later found to have been fabricated by a special state grand jury.

Sharpton in the film argues that his mission in that case and others was always to give someone their day in court. Ahead of the film, Alexander said Sharpton's one request was to get the context right. And in an litany of other instances, Sharpton has been there to advocate, consult and lend support for Black people. Family members of Floyd, Eric Garner and others were in the audience Saturday.

It just makes you realize that anybody whos making noise for justice, especially for an oppressed minority, is always going to be treated as persona non grata in society, Legend said. Theyre always going to be unpopular to an extent because theyre fighting to disturb a status quo that protects a lot of people.

When Legend approached Sharpton about making the documentary, he and producers surprised Sharpton with the idea of it being directed by Alexander, a white Jewish filmmaker from California. They argued that the film would be more objective from the perspective of a white filmmaker, Sharpton said.

I said: Ill tell you what. If it works, Ill be there to take a bow. If it dont, Ill be picketing you outside,'" Sharpton said.

Legend who Sharpton praised as a pop star and crossover artist who was bold in affiliating himself with a figure seen by some as risque said he had been discouraged by what he saw as a backlash to the reckoning that followed Floyd's death and recent battles over school textbooks. But Legend said he found inspiration watching Sharpton in Loudmouth.

Every time we have progress, theres a backlash, and the backlash is: Oh, weve got to control this narrative, said Legend. Everybody knows how important narrative is and how important whos telling the story and what perspectives are being represented.

Lee, who twice mentioned being traumatized by an early school field trip to see Gone With the Wind, said Loudmouth should be shown in schools. As a chronicle from the front lines of racial tensions in New York, Lee said it was a valuable reminder.

You have to show that racism doesnt really have a particular ZIP code, said Lee, who wore a 1619 hat. This is not Shangri-La. Theres a whole lot of messed up here that continues today.

Sharpton often returned to the question of how much has changed in the last half century. Sharpton recently gave eulogies for several victims in Buffalo of last months racist mass shooting that killed 10 people in a supermarket. Still, he said he also sees great progress, and more Black people in power than ever before.

We're not out of the woods yet, Sharpton said. But we've done enough paths in the woods to believe we can get out.

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Al Sharpton takes a bow, with Spike, to close out Tribeca - ABC News