Anja

The Hokule'a, a voyaging canoe built to revive the centuries-old tradition of Polynesian exploration, makes its way up the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Sailed by a crew of 12 who use only celestial navigation and observation of nature, the canoe is two-thirds of the way through a four-year trip around the world.

Bryson Hoe/Courtesy of 'Oiwi TV and Polynesian Voyaging Society

She sails by the memory of the stars.

Her bones are lashed together with 6 miles of rope. Her twin wooden masts are lowered and outstretched only by the power of muscled arms. And once fully extended, the red, V-shaped sails announce who she is.

She is the Hokule'a, Hawaii's famous voyaging canoe, built in the double-hulled style used by Polynesian navigators thousands of years ago to cross the Pacific.

Now, she's on a journey to make history, traversing the globe by wayfinding — an ancient Polynesian skill that requires memorizing hundreds of stars and where they rise and set on the ocean horizon. She has already crossed 26,000 miles of ocean and still has a year left to go.

"As a navigator, your job is to look at the shape of the ocean," said Nainoa Thompson, the architect of the worldwide tour and president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. "You have to be on your feet, and to be able to feel one wave when it comes through from one foot to another. You only know where you are by memorizing where you come from."

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Kala Tanaka marks "stays" at the front of the canoe so they can go back in the same place after the mast is taken down to fit under the George Washington Bridge. The garlands of ti leaves, a Hawaiian tradition, were placed on the Hokule'a by well-wishers.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Onboard this East Coast leg is a 12-member crew, a mix of veteran native Hawaiian navigators and young, lean apprentices who have taken time off their jobs as pro surfers, educators and executives for the chance of a lifetime: sailing for weeks on a 61-foot catamaran-style canoe in the open ocean. And the promise of returning with a stronger sense of themselves.

Many are part Native Hawaiian and were inspired to connect to their roots. With Hokule'a (ho-koo-lay-ah), they want to spread a message about what the world could learn from island people about how to live sustainably and care for the ocean.

"She has the ability to transform," said Na'alehu Anthony, 36, who is navigating this leg of the trip but also serves as chief executive of 'Oiwi TV, a Native Hawaiian television company.

"This floating island is a representation of the values people should have for the islands we all live in — whether that's Hawaii, the U.S. mainland or Tangier Island. It's been really interesting to see how people see themselves in that message. They get it."

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Behind the canvas on both sides of the boat are the small, 6-foot "holes," or cubbies, which are the sleeping quarters for crew members. They have a sleeping bag, clothes and a few personal effects for the journey. Underneath the sleeping mat is storage space for food, water and other supplies.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Hokule'a's trip around the world is ambitious. But it's nothing compared with her maiden voyage. That was a moonshot.

Forty years ago, a group of Native Hawaiians and anthropologists built the Hokule'a to revive the ancient art of Polynesian wayfinding, which had been forgotten.

No one knew how to build a canoe in the style of their ancestors, whose oral stories spoke of setting forth across vast oceans like astronauts of their day, exploring an ocean that is bigger than Russia.

At the time, no one in Hawaii knew how to build a voyaging canoe — none had existed for at least 600 years. No one in Hawaii knew how to navigate by the stars. But they found a man named Mau Piailug in Micronesia, a wayfinder on a tiny island who agreed to teach them how to sail using cues from nature — not only by watching the stars, but by noticing the swells and bird species, and the smallest of details, like shifts in the wind pressing against their bodies.

Left: Apprentice navigator Kala Tanaka (right) talks to students from the Alexandria Seaport Foundation about how the boat is navigated, during one of many educational tours offered while the boat is in port. Right: Na'alehu Anthony took leave from his job as chief executive of a television company to train for and join the voyage.

Claire Harbage/NPR

In 1976, a group of Native Hawaiians and anthropologists, and Mau, bet their lives that they could sail from Hawaii to Tahiti without any modern-day navigational equipment. They wanted to prove a theory that the original people who settled the islands of Hawaii did so not by accident, but with the intention of finding the islands and settling there.

And when the team safely reached its destination, after more than a month at sea, its triumph sparked a revival of Hawaiian identity and culture. Soon after, Native Hawaiians demanded that the state begin teaching the Hawaiian language in schools again. A group occupied the uninhabited island of Kaho'olawe, in protest of the U.S. Navy's use of it as a target for bombing practice.

"There was a time when the Hawaiian culture wasn't valued," said Kalepa Baybayan, who was part of that first generation of crew members aboard the Hokule'a. "In the '70s, it all changed."

Additional Information:

Na'alehu Anthony's hand rests over a small black mark on the rail of the boat. Marks like this create a grid on the entire boat to help orient the navigator in the direction which they are heading.

Claire Harbage/NPR

The Hokule'a gave the Native Hawaiian people an identity; it became a symbol of hope for the survival of their culture.

Now they call Hokule'a the mother ship because she spawned a new generation. Since that 1976 voyage, 25 more deep-sea-voyaging canoes have been birthed across 11 countries. More than 180 crew members have taken a turn aboard the Hokule'a on its global trip. More impressive is the number who trained, applied but for whom there was no room: 4,000.

It's her mana, or spirit, as well as her history, that attracts people, crew members say. On her first voyage, to Tahiti, she was greeted by a crowd of 17,000 who walked into the water with their clothes on to see her; to touch her; and to drape leis around the necks of men who were onboard. And when she arrived along the shores of Alexandria, Va., last week, visitors waited as long as an hour for the chance to step onboard and touch her bow.

Modern updates include this rope rather than the coconut fiber that was used on Hawaiian canoes in the past. The small flag (right) that flutters above the canvas is one tool that navigators use when they can't see the stars. Knowing the direction the wind is blowing and watching the waves helps them to understand their direction when it is cloudy.

Claire Harbage/NPR

The navigator's place is at the back corner of the Hokule'a, standing at all times with feet wide apart on the deck.

"There's the motion that the canoe makes as it climbs up over the wave," said Baybayan. "And you have to internalize that as the rhythm, the pulse of the canoe. And when that rhythm changes, either you've steered off course or the conditions have changed."

When you're doing it for the first time, you're double-guessing yourself, he said. But once you make your first landfall, you understand that the process you went through got you there.

"Once you're in the zone, you've reached a different plateau of metaphysical thinking," he said. "It just builds confidence in yourself. You start to understand nature."

The mast must come down in the next part of the journey to get past the bridges on the Potomac River on the way to the Washington, D.C., stop. The lei at the very top is color coded; traditionally each captain had his own color so the boats could recognize who was on it from afar.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Being on a 61-foot vessel with no engine in the middle of the ocean is, indeed, as tough as it might seem. All crew members train for weeks to prepare their bodies mentally and physically and must take courses on celestial navigation to prepare for the voyage.

Once onboard, crew members are assigned a 6-foot-long plywood plank that runs along the inside of one of the boat's two hulls, which are connected by boards that serve as Hokule'a's deck. Most put a waterproof foam pad on top, like the kind you float on in a swimming pool.

The rookies get a "hole," or 6-foot sleeping spot in the front of the canoe, where it's wettest and coldest. The elder crew members get the back where it's warmer and dry. They all sleep head-to-toe, in a line, inside the twin canoe hulls.

"It's like a one-man tent, but like, elongated, " said Kala Tanaka, 34, who sleeps in the front while her father, one of the most seasoned navigators, sleeps in the back. "You have situations where it's so rough that the water splashes in between the canvas [overhead] and it gets wet. But I like to think of this as exciting!"

Additional Information:

Ki'i, statues that help guide the vessel, are on either side of the boat. Only the female (right) has eyes because she sees the way while the male counterpart stands guard.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Aside from a canvas over their head, the crew members are exposed to the wet cold, the relentless sun or rain. They take saltwater showers. The sunscreen onboard is gallon-size, with a pump on top. The navigator and his or her apprentices are expected to remain awake for 18 to 22 hours a day, keeping an eye on the conditions to ensure they stay the course.

But their rewards, of course, are many. They are counted in mahi-mahi, which the cook prepares sashimi-style, and in the sightings of whales, penguins and sunrises that they will never forget.

This leg of Hokule'a's journey is moving slowly; she's her most graceful out in the open ocean.

On this trip, she has braved new challenges of the mid-Atlantic: She took on unexpected whipping winds while sidestepping the onbeat of Navy and fishing boat traffic up the Chesapeake Bay to Alexandria, Va. Then she had to limbo under a series of concrete bridges up the Potomac River to Washington, D.C.

The Hokule'a has traveled 26,000 miles to deliver a message that, in typical fashion of this city, is often calculated through a political lens. Her message is Malama Honua. In Hawaiian, it means taking care of Island Earth.

"Not everyone believes in climate change, but we do," said Thompson, one of the architects of the worldwide tour. "We're islanders; we see it. We come from small islands in the Pacific who have nothing to do with [causing] climate change but we are the ones who will suffer the most, first."

The Voyage Of Hokule'a, Beginning And Ending In Hawaii

Source: Polynesian Voyaging Society

Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

Hokule'a left Hawaii in 2013 and headed west across the South Pacific and across Australia, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean and down around Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Then, she crossed the Atlantic to Brazil and headed north. At each stop, she has been greeted by first-nation people and like-minded organizations that want to create a sense of urgency about climate change and keeping the oceans clean.

In that cause, the Hokule'a has attracted some high-profile supporters. Before setting sail three years ago, the Dalai Lama blessed her and, on a stop in Samoa in 2014, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came aboard in a show of support.

Additional Information:

Kalepa Baybayan (right) and his daughter Kala Tanaka. Kalepa is training Kala as an apprentice navigator.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Hokule'a, The Hawaiian Canoe Traveling The World By A Map Of The Stars

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When Ban came aboard the Hokule'a, he brought her a gift of a message in a bottle: a handwritten note pledging that the top environmental issue was to protect the world's oceans and a commitment to take action. Thompson said Hokule'a has been collecting other pledges from around the world and added 40 more messages to the bottle. He plans to return it to the secretary-general at the United Nations next week for World Oceans Day.

For 40 years, Thompson's life has been tied to the Hokule'a. Now, she is reaching middle age and, at age 63, he has nearly passed it. This trip is a bookend for him, but not likely for her.

"This canoe is a school that's about relearning the genius of our ancestors, and about our reconnection to our ocean," said Thompson. "This voyage is not my vision. It's that of my teachers. I'm just a bridge between between them and" — he points to his young crew — "them."

After New York, the Hokule'a will attempt to make it as far north as Nova Scotia, which, at 50 degrees north of the equator, would mark the northernmost point she has ever sailed. After that point, though, she will turn around. And every minute will be that much closer to returning home.

Hokule'a will go up the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, then turn back down the East Coast and across the Panama Canal where she will return to her ocean, the Pacific.

Thompson, Baybayan and the other elder crew members made a deal that this would be their last voyage. Anyone over age 32 will have to come off the boat as Hokule'a re-enters Polynesia at the last stop before home, in Rapa Nui. There, a new generation of wayfinders will come onboard and decide where she goes next.

Additional Information:

Hokule'a stops in Alexandria, Va., on the way up the Potomac River to Washington, D.C.

Claire Harbage/NPR

Reporter Adam Cole contributed to this report. @sarakgoo @cadamole

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Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shout at the media prior to a rally at the Charleston Civic Center on May 5 in Charleston, W.Va.

Mark Lyons/Getty Images

Ahead of our forthcoming podcast, I've been heads-down in some reading and interviews about the way we talk about, well, white people. Whiteness has always been a central dynamic of American cultural and political life, though we don't tend to talk about it as such. But this election cycle is making it much harder to avoid discussions of white racial grievance and identity politics when, for instance, Donald Trump's only viable pathway to the White House is to essentially win all of the white dudes.

And indeed, the roiling civil war between the Republican Party's elites and a huge swath of its base has prompted an unusually candid public grappling with whiteness. Take this paragraph from a post by Bloomberg's Sasha Issenberg on "Hillary Clinton's Appalachian Problem:"

"This is all a reminder of how circumstantial Clinton's position as tribune of the white working class was during her first presidential campaign. (Thought exercises: what would Clinton's 2008 coalition have looked like had it been John Edwards, not Obama, who had won the Iowa caucuses that year? And what would it look this year if her liberal challenger were Deval Patrick instead of Sanders?) Perhaps now that she is no longer running against an African-American candidate—and has anointed herself a crusader against the 'challenges of racism, of sexism, of discrimination against the LGBT community'—Clinton no longer has much of a connection with those 'hard-working Americans.' "

This is much closer to Saying The Thing than we normally get, an acknowledgment that the reason "hard-working Americans" — the quotes underscoring the euphemism — don't really rock with Hillary Clinton is a sense that some of the concerns she's championing are, if not anathema to them, then at least not theirs. And that this time around, there isn't a black candidate to ensure that some white voters will vote for her, however grudgingly, despite her platform.

But then, there's the liberal commentator Jonathan Chait's recent essay at New York Mag, "The Real Reason We All Underrated Trump," in which he openly wonders whether Republican voters who've fallen for Trump are "idiots":

"Most voters don't follow politics and policy for a living, and it's understandable that they would often fall for arguments based on faulty numbers or a misreading of history. ... As low as my estimation of the intelligence of the Republican electorate may be, I did not think enough of them would be dumb enough to buy his act. And, yes, I do believe that to watch Donald Trump and see a qualified and plausible president, you probably have some kind of mental shortcoming. As many fellow Republicans have pointed out, Donald Trump is a con man. What I failed to realize — and, I believe, what so many others failed to realize, though they have reasons not to say so — is just how easily so many Republicans are duped."

It's telling that Chait finds it easier to imagine that huge swaths of Republican primary voters are childlike and naive, rather than folks who quite rationally dig Trump's direct appeals to their interests — their racial interests. Among Trump's most notorious policy proposals is a moratorium on Muslims entering the country. He has called Mexican immigrants "rapists." Maybe we should concede that these declarations are not incidental to his appeal among his supporters, but central to them. Calling them "idiots" posits that they've been duped, when perhaps Trump is saying precisely what they want to hear.

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When Trump's supporters aren't being written off as intellectually incapable of knowing a huckster when they see one, their motivations are often ascribed to their being "working class." But the working class today is nearly 40 percent people of color — and among people of color, Trump is profoundly unpopular. His coalition is nearly entirely white. Even the class part of the "working class" narrative is inaccurate; Trump's supporters are wealthier than most Americans, and have higher incomes than supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The "working class revolt" explanation for Trump's rise is overstated — and it can be a useful dodge to avoid talking about explanations involving racial grievance.

There have been outlets and pundits this election cycle who've shown they're willing and able to dig into the role that racial grievance plays in How Trump Happened. Others haven't, and continue not to. And that's a problem. When we don't grapple with whiteness in our politics directly and explicitly — to talk about the fact that not-insignificant numbers of white voters are motivated more by identity politics than by ideology or faith — we're essentially agreeing to misidentify some of the most important dynamics of this cycle.

Prince performs at the Ritz Club during his "Purple Rain" tour on Sept. 13, 1985.

Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images

The Code Switch team was sitting in our daily team meeting when our editor looked up from Twitter and broke the news that Prince was gone.

The rest of the hour was given over to reminiscing about our favorite memories of Prince: shrieking as he climbed into a limo in Greenwich Village, angering a Suge Knight-lookalike to snap a shot of The Purple One for Instagram, risking permanent foot damage for the perfect pair of purple Prince pumps.

The Two-Way

No Signs That Prince's Death Was A Suicide, Sheriff Says

Since Thursday, everyone from Prince's bandmates to his superfans has been reflecting on what he meant to them. The New York Times is collecting reactions from fans around the world, as are our colleagues over at All Songs Considered.

So here's ours. These are our stories, from the delightedly tawdry to the sublime, of the ways Prince affected us. (And as you might expect, some of these stories contain, ahem, strong and colorful language.)

Walter Ray Watson, producer of the upcoming (!!) Code Switch podcast:

Dig if you will, a picture...

It's the '80s, I'm a college kid on a long weekend turned loose on New York City. Hanging, in the not yet summer. I wandered the streets, distracted and inundated by dull droning noise.

And there he was, flashing across my peripheral vision on that sun-splashed day. The color streaked by, bright phosphorescent green...like the stuff in a lightning bug, his suit glowed, matching his shirt, tie, and the high heel shoes too. His eyes sheltered behind fly sunglasses. His petiteness skittered by, click-clack-clacking for seconds and gone into one of two double-parked black limos in Lower Manhattan.

In Greenwich Village, and I'm looking at this scene, those cars idling in the heat.

In the haze of that afternoon, I took a beat. Not even a breath. What I just witnessed, happened so brief, like a dragonfly or a hummingbird you sense, not visible for very long.

Then, I figured it out, and I just knew... It. was. him!

I LOST IT.

I shrieked 20, 30 feet from the cars, "IT'S......PRIIIIINNCE!!!"

Like a teenage girl losing it just when James Brown left the Apollo stage.

"IT'S......PRIIIIINNCE!!!"

New Yorkers on the street, minding their biz, men, women every last one, CHILL.

NOT ME. I'm having my little fan girl seizure. Screaming.

So, Uncool, man.

Prince didn't sing. Didn't drop down into a split for it. Didn't bat his flirty big doe eyes to the blinding sun of that New York afternoon.

Yeah but boy, did I ever scream like a little girl ANYWAY. And I'm still not sorry.

Karen Grigsby Bates, Code Switch reporter:

Truth be told, Stevie Wonder was the Prince of my day, but that didn't stop me from appreciating Prince's energy and look: First time I saw him, I thought two things: "how cute is he?!" and "I probably weigh more than he does." (Sadly, I probably did. And do.) I also marveled at how he presented himself — so immaculately tailored, so coordinated and accessorized! One year, in double-breasted white wool flannel, he looked like what would happen if Savile Row and Marlena Deitrich had a baby. On another tour he looked like a very, very baddisco king. (These would be the assless pants. You remember.)

And in other years, he dazzled in lace jabots, ruffled cuffs and brocade frock coats that would not have been out of place in Louis XIV's court. Beauty mark, heels and all. Foppish and sexy — very hard to pull off. A lot have tried over the years, but "nothing compares, nothing compares 2 u." Good night, sweet Prince.

Shereen Marisol Meraji, Code Switch reporter:

Sam Sanders and I went to see Prince at this "secret-ish" show at the Hollywood Palladium in March of 2014. We were like 5 people in from the stage and right in the middle, BEST VIEW EVER, except for this dude we kept referring to as Suge Knight (he had the bald head, diamond earring) kept elbowing Sam out of the way and stepping on our toes. And, Sam got kicked out toward the end of the show for taking photos. (Prince was not down with that.) But, Sam took one of the most bad-ass Prince photos ever.

Regardless of Suge and the fact that I spent the last hour without Sam (he graciously waited in the car until it was over) ... it was the greatest night of music I've ever experienced.

There was a brass band on stage, dancing and playing back up to Prince's amazing voice and guitar licks. And, it went on for 4 hours ... 4 hours of Prince and there were only 1,000 people in a space that can hold nearly 4K. We were dancing and singing at the top of our lungs and screaming requests. He played more than 50 songs that night. No doubt he played one of your favorites: "Purple Rain," "Raspberry Beret," "Diamonds and Pearls," "Let's Go Crazy." But, I'll have to wait til the afterlife to hear Prince play mine: "Gett Off."

Sam Sanders, NPR Washington Desk reporter:

I can second [Shereen's] story.

In many ways, this should have been the worst concert of my life.

It was crowded. We had to wait hours for Prince to get on stage.

Some Suge Knight-lookin' MUTHA***** tried to fight me.

AND I GOT EJECTED FOR TRYING TO SHOOT AN IPHONE VIDEO.

But here's the thing; it was all worth it for Prince. A 12-piece horn section. HOURS of performance. Dozens of songs. The sheer ENERGY of the crowd. Prince's artistry!

After I got kicked out that night, and went to my car to wait for Shereen, I was still on cloud nine. Yes, even after being forcibly removed from a venue by a burly-ass security guard.

I took a nap while I waited. Woke up when the show was over, still on cloud 9. Still humming the song Prince was singing when they threw me out.

I distinctly remember dreaming I was still at the concert while I napped in my car. It was weird but amazing. Wish I could dream that same dream, today and every night.

Alicia Montgomery, Code Switch editor:

Every phase of every romance I've ever had — from high school to middle age — is connected to at least one Prince song in my memory. But the one that connects them all is "The Beautiful Ones." For me, it's about the moment you realize that — no matter how strong your feelings are — it's just not going to work. It's a lush, gorgeous symphony of pain and longing, and it's a song that I've played — often on repeat — during every break-up. I've played it on vinyl, cassette and CD (still on CD for me), in my childhood bedroom, on my Walkman, in college walk-up apartments, city bachelorette studios, and in the very Mom-ish Honda I've been driving for 10 years. Like every wine has a right temperature, every song has a right volume. And for "The Beautiful Ones," that changes depending on the stage of the break-up: at "11" in the first days and weeks so that those final shrieks could shatter glass, and gradually down, down back to normal as you figure out that the broken heart won't actually kill you. It's the first song I played after hearing this terrible news.

Gene Demby, Code Switch reporter:

I was barely out of diapers at the apex of Prince's reign as the world's biggest pop star — at one point in 1984, he simultaneously had the No. 1 movie, album and single in the country at the same time — and for most of my childhood, I mostly understood him as the weird dude with the ill perm and the ass-less chaps. I came to him much later, post-college, when all of my favorite recording artists would diligently name-check him as one of their influences. I'd miss how discomfiting Prince was at his peak — in the '80s, at the same time hip-hop was gaining a foothold in the broader cultural consciousness, the black dude who most scandalized and titillated America was this diminutive, high-yellow cat with a 24-inch-waist who hailed from some place called Minnesota.

But it was my 30-something, music nerd friends who were his most ardent proselytizers; they talked about him in a tone that was reverential and also maybe a little unhinged. They'd tell stories about their first Prince experiences. (No matter how old they were in these retellings, his music was never age-appropriate as Prince was always too grown.) Rock fans, soul fans, hip-hop fans, Recovering Oddball Black Kids — they all did that hand-on-heart, Isweartogod thing when they talked about him, lowering (or raising) their voices and no longer blinking and tilting their heads before walking me through the arc of their very specific feelings whenever they listened to, say, "When You Were Mine." They'd tell stories about their close encounters — the way he'd invite the folks who frequented his official message boards to watch him do his soundchecks before his concerts, the times they saw him when he would randomly materialize at some smallish club and perform for hours and conscript some other rapt, nervous pop stars in attendance to hop onstage to perform with him. Whenever folks got into this trance, I'd ask: Uh, so how many times have you seen Prince perform? Their answers were usually somewhere in the low millions.

So: my favorite Prince-related memory. My good friend Robyn was always down the rabbit-hole about this dude, ready to pause an unrelated conversation to make sure I properly understood the genius of "Joy In Repetition." On one of those PRN digressions, we watched this insane, grainy, old video that someone put on YouTube of James Brown jamming in concert. It's a display of casual, mind-belting virtuosity — James Brown summons Michael Jackson, who happens to be in the audience, to the stage to perform with him. (Jackson's voice is lovely, as always.) Then when Michael is done, he whispers something to James Brown. James Brown then summons Prince to the stage. And Because he's Prince, he doesn't just walk onto the stage — no, he is carried to the stage on the back of what appears to be a giant, who sets him down. Prince then proceeds to shred on the guitar, perform some James Brownsian tricks with the mic stand, and I think fornicate with the souls of the entire audience. (He also accidentally — or I think accidentally — destroys part of the stage set when he leaves.)

It's unreal. And that's the thing: whenever I tell people about this video, they think I'm making it up — because surely, if this s*** were real, it we'd all have seen it and watching it would be an official part of Kwanzaa or something. It seemed to sum up the whole Prince thing perfectly: the dude who could somehow overshadow both James Brown and Michael Jackson at the same time, and even when there was concrete evidence of it happening, it seemed too preposterous be totally believable.

Image via If Not Now

An advocacy group composed of architects, building designers and planners is hailing a decision by the National Ethics Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to reconsider a proposal to prohibit its members from designing “execution chambers and spaces intended for torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

The decision marked a significant reversal of the AIA’s position on the issue of building and designing execution chambers and facilities that hold prisoners in solitary confinement. The organization’s Board of Directors had outright rejected the proposal as recently as 2014, and the decision to reconsider means the AIA National Ethics Council will review the proposal for the first time.

“We salute AIA’s 2015 and 2016 Presidents for taking another look at this vitally important issue,” said the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) in a February 24, 2016 statement.

In a letter to the ADPSR in late October 2015, the president of the AIA announced the organization’s intent to reconsider the proposal.

“In the letter, President Elizabeth Chu Richter informed us that the AIA’s National Ethics Council will be considering our ethics proposal as well as other public statements that AIA could make in ...

Michelle Honda-Phillips stands with her transgender daughter, Malisa, at a pre-event for Tadaima in Berkeley, California.

Tadaima Bay Area 2016

Tadaima. Okaeri.

Paired together, these two Japanese words are a common greeting-and-response. Tadaima means "I'm home," and okaeri means "welcome." But recently, these terms have taken on new significance as the names for a series of California-based conferences for the Japanese-American queer community and their allies: Okaeri in Los Angeles in 2014, and Tadaima on April 2nd in the Bay Area.

"The Okaeri conference was started by straight allies welcoming people back into the community when they felt ostracized," explained Bonnie Sugiyama, Director of both the PRIDE and Gender Equity Centers at San Jose State University, and one of Tadaima's lead organizers. With Tadaima, she says, northern California Japanese-American queer people are saying, "We exist, and we want to be part of the community. Are you going to say okaeri and welcome us?"

Coke Tani will lead "All of Me for All of You," a creative movement and poetry workshop at Tadaima.

Tadaima Bay Area 2016

Okaeri was the brainchild of author and activist Marsha Aizumi, who became a major proponent of LGBTQ rights after her son Aidan came out, first as a lesbian, then as a transgender man.

"When Aidan came out, the first thing I thought was, what did I do wrong?" Aizumi admitted over the phone, describing her journey to becoming a board member of PFLAG, the national group for families and friends of LGBTQ people. "Because white people were more visible and talked about. In literature I would see Caucasian faces, but hardly any API [Asian Pacific Islanders], and absolutely no Nikkei!"

So Aizumi founded the first API-specific chapter of PFLAG, which soon began to host events for specific ethnic groups under the API umbrella. "And I thought – I'm Japanese! I have to do something for the Japanese community." The fifteen people who showed up for her first afternoon tea soon spiraled into the 200-person strong Okaeri conference.

Aizumi was struck by the age range of those who showed up. "People could look around and say, that could be my grandparent, that could be my aunties and uncles, that could be my children." She estimated that attendees ranged from five years old to the mid-eighties.

Afterwards, Aizumi was contacted by numerous participants who were inspired by the conference to come out to their own families, or who used the conference as a time of reconciliation with family members who had ostracized them in the past.

Queer Taika, a group directed by Kristy Oshiro, to perform at Tadaima.

Tadaima Bay Area 2016

Lynn Sugihara, a fifty-nine year old dental hygienist from the Bay Area, has attended two of the three "lead-up" events to the Tadaima conference: A panel on coming-out stories, and a moderated discussion on LGBTQ rights in a post-same-sex-marriage world. She too was struck by the diversity of the participants.

"This is the first such event I've been to where it is intergenerational," she said in a phone interview. For Sugihara, this matters because it's important "to hang on to part of our history." In fact, at one of the panels, she met a woman who had been her father's next-door neighbor in their WWII internment camp.

Sugihara was also struck by the vocal participation of many straight allies, who came to learn about issues facing their queer friends and family. "They didn't quite understand," she said, "but they came." This was an encouraging change from her youth, she said, when her family took a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to sexuality and gender.

To meet the needs of such a diverse audience, the organizers of Tadaima have planned a wide variety of events over the course of the one-day conference. Marsha and Aidan Aizumi will be speaking, as will Dr. Amy Sueyoshi, the associate dean of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and a founding curator of the San Francisco GLBT History Museum.

Melvin Fujikawa, the director of 88 Keys Choir, to perform at Tadaima.

Tadaima Bay Area 2016

"When I hear that a JA [Japanese-American] community of straight people want to do something around queer JA issues, it makes my heart melt around the edges," said Dr. Sueyoshi. "It feels momentous."

But while straight organizing around queer issues might be a new phenomenon, Dr. Sueyoshi pointed out that there is a long history of support for social justice in the Japanese-American community. In part, Dr. Sueyoshi said, this is the legacy of the internment camps and other acts of nativist discrimination the Japanese-American community has endured over the last two centuries. It's also part of a larger nationwide turning of the tides, in which LGBT issues have gone from niche concerns to items of general interest.

Given the expected diversity of the conference, organizers have planned break-out discussion sessions to allow different identity groups to meet and talk openly about their specific issues.

"It's hard to explore [these issues] on your own because you only have your single experience," said Sugiyama, the conference organizer. Until recently, Japanese-American queer people have had few spaces in which to gather. Sugiyama hopes that Tadaima will allow folks to network with one another and to begin to figure out the commonalities between their experiences, and how to address the issues they share. She's excited that over the course of organizing the conference, that's already beginning to happen.

"I've been involved with queer API groups for a while now, and there's just not very many of us JA's," Sugiyama said. "Helping to bring people out of the woodwork...it's been a really great experience."

Protesters attend a rally in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Feb. 20 in support of a former NYPD Officer Peter Liang.

Craig Ruttle/AP

Over at the New York Times Magazine, Jay Caspian Kang recently had a really sharp essay on protests by Asian-Americans over the conviction of Peter Liang, the New York City police officer who was involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of unarmed Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man. Protesters have called Liang a "scapegoat," pointing out that many white officers involved in previous killings of unarmed black men have not faced similar consequences. In fact, as Kang notes, Liang is "the first N.Y.P.D. officer convicted in a line-of-duty shooting in over a decade."

"It's easier to hang an Asian, because Asians, they don't speak up," is how one Asian-American critic of Liang's verdict recently put it.

But on Feb. 20, in cities across the United States, large numbers of Asian-American protesters did speak up, and turn out for public protests. They were there both to show support for Liang and to fight "the institutional racism and failures of our system," said New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim, the first and only Korean-American elected official in New York and an active advocate for minorities.

But as Kang points out, the fact that this movement has been triggered by the death of an unarmed black man at the hand of an Asian-American cop rests uneasily with many Asian-Americans and others alike, and reflects a sometimes — or often, depending on where you live — painful history of relations between Asian and black communities in the U.S.:

"The Liang protests mark the most pivotal moment in the Asian-American community since the Rodney King riots, when dozens of Korean-American businesses were burned to the ground. The episode is often said to have been precipitated by the horrific killing of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old black girl who was shot in the back of the head by Soon Ja Du, a Korean store owner, after a confrontation over a bottle of orange juice. In reality, the tensions between Asian store owners and the black neighborhoods they served had been simmering for years; they began well before Rodney King became a household name, and they continue today."

In his essay, Kang explains the Liang protests as a reaction by a community unaccustomed to taking the spotlight, one more used to opting for political silence. He recounts, from firsthand experience, seeing low participation by Asian-Americans in modern social justice movements. But he emphasizes that this lack of participation doesn't necessarily stem from apathy. He says many Asian-Americans simply haven't known know what to say, or how to say it — and the Liang protests make that clear.

"This is the stunted language of a people who do not yet know how to talk about injustice," Kang writes. "The protesters who took to the streets on Saturday are trying, in their way, to create a new political language for Asian-Americans, but this language comes without any edifying history."

Of course, Kang notes, the protests don't change the fact that a man was killed, or undo Liang's actions on the day he shot Gurley: not performing CPR on a dying man, and failing to radio his supervisors immediately. "No amount of nuance or qualification or appeal to Martin Luther King will change the fact that the first massive, nationwide Asian-American protest in years was held in defense of a police officer who shot and killed an innocent black man," he writes.

Kang's full essay over at New York Times Magazine is well worth a read.