In this special 2024 Election episode, host Marpheen Chann discusses Maine politics, the danger of Donald Trump, and why he's voting for Kamala Harris on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024.

Celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month by supporting AAPI writers. Discover their books at local stores, online retailers such as Amazon and Bookshop.org, or borrow from the library.

All over the country, there are efforts to ban books featuring the stories of marginalized and historically underrepresented minorities such as LGBTQ+ and Black, Asian, Hispanic and Latinx, and Indigenous people and youth.

I wanted to do something special for LGBTQ+ pride month so here's a short reading from my memoir "Moon in Full: A Modern-Day Coming-of-Age Story" and brief soapbox of why we celebrate pride.

I hope this is helpful and sorry that it’s coming to you late in the day. It may be #GivingTuesday, but I know many of you care about our communities well beyond just one day of the year.

Now, over two decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, my biological mother and yeay hold in their hands a new memoir written by their son and grandson.

It really boils down to two issues, which helped to bolster and grow Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and the evangelical movement: LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights.

I had the honor of giving a short speech at the Maine Democratic convention a few weeks ago in Maine, of special significance because it also happened to be National Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander heritage month. This is a critical time in Maine and across the country, especially as racial and social justice, women and reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights are under attack. We need elect Democrats up and down the ballot to secure a brighter future for all.

When writing about trauma, self-care is important. My memoir "Moon in Full" took me eight full years to write. Partly because I kept myself busy finishing law school, trying to make ends meet, and engaging in political and community organizing.

In a time of great division and anger nationwide, how do we go about changing hearts and minds when it comes to issues like LGBTQ+ rights? In a 40 minute presentation followed by Q+A discussion, Maine politician, author and civil rights advocate Marpheen Chann shares his personal story of growing up in Maine, coming out to his religious adoptive family, and the lessons he’s learned about how change can happen.

This program is provided in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council Maine Speaks program.

A new U.N. study on the treatment of children released today ranks the United States #1 on the list of countries with the highest child incarceration rate in the world.

We keep fighting. That’s how. We keep fighting for our loved ones, for the things we love about this country. We keep fighting for country we want and dream of. We keep fighting for the America we believe in and the America we believe we can be.

And here I am celebrating the 9th Pride Month since coming out and the enormity of it all is still sinking in. All the people I met and all of the things I’ve done and, yes, the mistakes I’ve made.

This means devoting more resources to hire more asylum officers and immigration judges to reduce administrative backlog. It also means putting an end to family separations and indefinite detentions. In the long term, we need compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform and a foreign policy that doesn’t contribute to the global refugee crisis.

Morality exists as a universal concept to free humanity from our baser instincts, such as hate, fear, and violence; that morality should free us to contemplate, imagine, and dream of a world in which we live in peaceful coexistence. Instead, we have seen morality used to oppress, marginalize, dehumanize, and to stoke fear and hate of those who may look different, talk different, dress different, act different, and love differently.

We cannot let what it means to be moral be monopolized by those with an agenda to oppress, suppress, and repress. Morality shouldn’t just be about what we CAN’T DO, but what we CAN DO together. A moral people keeps families together to the extent possible; helps feed the hungry and provide shelter to the homeless. A moral people will fight for a government that represents, defends, and lifts up the weak, the broken, and the downtrodden.

The passage of the Real I.D. Act stripped away many safeguards and imposed credibility determinations, allowing personal biases of immigration officers and judges to factor in.