We used to do it different from today. We used to do it acting like Hong Kong thugs. Right out of a bad Hollywood movie. It was the very best we could do. Back then.

From the head of our packed Saturday morning noodleshop table, Mr. Thach "TNT" Nguyen would bark: "Okay-okay, Wednesday we meet Dr. Jack Bierworth (several earnest Portland Public Schools superintendents ago).

"Taro" — he’d poke chopsticks in the direction of the edgy hapa-Nihon at our table’s far end — "You be UNreasonable. Crack knuckles constantly."

"Polo — Bring your legal pad, take notes, lots and lots of notes. Say nothing but growl like an unfed Rottweiler.

"Lee, you play the elegant Lao Hmong diplomat. At 10:58 sharp the rest of us all get up to go. You linger and cut us a deal."

"Everyone got it?" We got it.

We got it because we had to. Next school superintendent, we’d switch roles. Hollywood or Hong Kong, all the same.

We used to do it late-late nights. Back when bedside telephones ambushed you out of your sweet dreams. RING RING RING.

Me: "Hallo?"

The Colonel (Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hung): "Cra-azy kid has a kitchen knife and his grandma hostage."

Me: "Knife? Grandma? Hostage? —"

The Colonel: "Police say we better fix it. Fast. (Code for Before They Fix Him.)

Me: "Right. Ten minutes please, Mr. Hung." (As if my assent or my timing matters.)

Wife: "Who dat?!" (As if she didn’t know.)

We did it that way because we had to. Because, good police chief or bad one, community policing or not, in some ways America’s not so different from back home. Government does what government does, you still have to take care of your family and your neighborhood. Or not.

Reactors to Pro-actors

Time passed. Three iconic Portland mayors and two contrasting U.S. presidents came and went. Mrs. Rosa Parks took her last tired bus ride home. Mr. Rogers passed away, and his neighborhood upscaled. Property values soared, families and neighborhoods suffered.

After 15 years of old-school tough guys in cheap suits, bulging pants pockets, we passed into another phase. Into an entirely new look, a new modus operandi too — APANO, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, went to work in 1998.

Today, APANO staff and activists spend entire Saturdays listening to Bhutan newcomers, to Tongan aunties, to our gay sons and our lesbian daughters. Getting the big picture, planning proactively, instead of reacting constantly, crisis to crisis. Smart.

Today, APANO does the research. What are metropolitan-area Asians and islanders earning? What’s our several energetic communities’ physical and emotional health? What’s going on in our public schools? And the Big Q: How do our outcomes compare to mainstream Oregon’s outcomes? And to how other ethnic stream families scored?

Given today’s ferocious competition to be included in the division of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars, or to be considered for foundations’ increasingly sophisticated funding formulae, hardcore empirical data determines which organizations bring home the bucks and which won’t. Cold data gets your community steady dollars.

The truth is, our Asian and islander families fare far behind Anglo America in all indices examined by the research. Forget the model minority myth — in fact, for the sake of keeping our moral momentum, never mind why we’ve been burdened with this cynical stereotype for the past 50 years of the U.S. civil rights movement — we need now deal straight up in data. It doesn’t lie.

Come celebrate success

Which brings us to APANO’s policy and legislative advocacy, the work done alternatively in staid business attire and in bright red APANO Ts. APANO makes us present at Oregon’s Legislative Assembly, in Portland’s historic City Hall, before the superintendent and the board of public education. It’s the steady work of participatory democracy. It’s the focused work of making Oregon laws, of making city services, of making those crowded classrooms, work for us too.

At the end of another exhausted workweek, this is the kind of focus that mitigates against us having to react and react and react again to our mainstreams’ neglect of those precious constitutional provisions about equal opportunity and equal protection.

This is what keeps that crazy phone from ringing off the hook late nights, what keeps my wife from getting mad at that muscular community uncle, from getting mad at America, and mad at me.

APANO is democracy at work. Every islander generation joining in, every Tongan and Samoan grandpa, every Chuuk and Chamoru teen, broadens our understanding of our strengths and our needs. Every Asian religious tradition jumping in, whether Korean or Khmer, Tamil or Thai, changes what our several teams do and the ethos with which we get it done. Together.

Stick Together is the theme for APANO’s May 23, 2012 fundraiser at theSLATE, (2001 N.W. 19th Avenue, Suite 104, Portland). Festivities go from 5:30 to 8:30pm and will be bookended by classical performers Geni and Yunita of Indonesian Performing Arts of Oregon and by local Bollywood phenom DJ Prashant. The intensely scared and the crazy fun ends of APANO. Come celebrate success.

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The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon

Hapa (Hawai’i patois): Half blood. From "hapa dis, hapa dat" — half of this, half of that.

Nihon (Japanese): Japanese.

Rottweiler (German): Dog originating in Rottweil, Germany. Averages 100 pounds, big jaws, much slobber.

The Colonel (Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hung): Former fighting colonel serving the Republic of South Vietnam, once the second-largest air force in the free world. First pilot of any air force to fly a bombing mission over the Communist North. As general secretary of the Southeast Refugee Federation, always first in making peaceful accord among our several ethnic streams and Oregon’s mainstream.

APANO research: APANO participates in the Coalition of Communities of Color. The group’s cornerstone research is set out in "The Asian and Pacific Islander Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile" (2010), found at <www.coalitioncommunitiescolor.org/research/research.html>.

Model minority myth: A cynical narrative about Asian "success" relative to African-American "stuckness." A myth that likely emerged as an impatient mainstream reaction against 1960s and ’70s social engineering as it failed to rapidly undo 300 years of brutal African enslavement plus 100 more years of African-American segregation. In truth, current research makes plain that every ethnic American minority community scores substantially below mainstream Americans in all indices of economic and social wellness. <www.enzymepdx.com/2010/asian-model-minority-myth>.

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Stick Together

APANO’s celebration at theSLATE

2001 N.W. 19th Avenue, Suite 104, Portland

May 23, 2012, 5:30 to 8:30pm

To learn more about APANO’s programs and
its May 23 celebration, visit <www.apano.org>.