Immigrants

by Daniel Cubias

It’s been quite a year in the Twin Cities, and the Daily Planet has been on the scene. With the help of our media partners and our tireless citizen journalists, in 2008 we published over 10,000 articles, blog entries, photos, and event listings. When we saw that the Minnesota Independent had tallied their top ten most-read articles for the year, we were inspired to check the stats and see what articles Daily Planet readers found most fascinating in 2008. MORE »

The US Department of Defense recently announced the launching of a new recruiting program that is designed to attract immigrant healthcare workers, linguists and also cultural specialists to serve in the military. The new program targets immigrants who can legally work in the US but do not have “Green Cards”-Permanent Resident Status. MORE »

On one of its last stops, the popular exhibit Hmong at Heart has been at the Minnesota Children’s Museum since October 4 and will remain a featured exhibit until January 19, 2009. Hmong at Heart gives families a window into the everyday lives of the Hmong people in three environments: a village in Laos, a refugee camp in Thailand, and a Hmong-American home. MORE »

The BK “Whopper Virgin” ad campaign is “as real as Borat” wrote one reader, and “no innocents are actually being exploited except by the concept that Whoppers are good for all, the idea of Burger King as a missionary/ sexual encounter.” Many readers had strong feelings about the Burger King “Whopper Virgin” ad campaign and protests against it. Some comments dismissed Minnesotan Seng Vang’s criticism of the campaign — “This person complaining is being to foolish…. Its a commercial and has nothing to do with Hmong people. I am Hmong and quite proud with this exposure of our people.” Just as vehemently, others agreed that the campaign demeans Hmong people — “I agree 120% not just a commercial..you fool wake up.” The lively dialogue included attacks on Seng Vang, with one commenter lamenting “this is exactly what it means to be Hmong, one person speaks or leads and other pull down … It’s sad already how Hmong being viewed in the mainstream cultures…but, it’s even sadder for Hmong to bash and hurt each other.”

Another comment said that most Hmong people in Thailand would not eat burgers because they eat healthier food, and that BK burgers are “mainly there for tourists and expat locals.” Still another Chiang Mai resident pointed out that the BK is “not cheap by Thai standards. I have quite a few Thai friends in town and they have never eaten there.”

By the end of the week, Seng Vang had responded with more detailed critique of the BK ads, and Sun Yung Shin weighed in with additional analysis (both reprinted below the jump.) Read the original article here, followed by all of the comments, and a second article with Tou Saiko Lee’s blog post from Thailand here. MORE »

Burhaan Hassan was a fairly typical kid, the kind who asked his mother for $20 when he wanted to go see a movie on weekends. But on Election Day, while much of the world — including his single mother — was consumed by the historic election, he and a handful of Somali-American teenagers quietly boarded a plane to Kenya, en route to the front lines of a Jihad in Somalia. MORE »

After being vacant for over a decade, a church in the Cottage Park area of the Jordan neighborhood in Minneapolis is finally opening its doors. The Church of Gethsemane, a non-denominational congregation, bought the building in 2003, but has had difficulty securing funding for renovations. Finally, after a little help from Catalyst Community Partners, a nonprofit group, the congregation was able to have a simple Christmas Eve service in the nearly finished building, and will have an opening ceremony on January 11 at 10:30 a.m., followed by a reception at Urban League in North Minneapolis. MORE »

December 24, 2008. “In the remote Hill tribe villages of Thailand, they do know what hamburgers are but they do not like to eat them at all and know how unhealthy they are. My brief take on the Burger King commercial that had Hill Tribe villagers trying Burgers for the first time is that yes it is exploitation and made the tribal folks out to not know too much but it was also seeing Hmong people on national television in such a way that I hope peeks the interest of young Hmong Americans to explore how we lived as Hill Tribes in the mountains and how much our people have struggled and are still in those conditions…” From Travel in Spirals, blog of Tou Saiko Lee MORE »