Welcome to the Twin Cities Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). JACL is a national membership organization whose mission is to secure and maintain the human and civil rights of Americans victimized by injustice.
JACL derives its effectiveness through its strategically located regional offices, which serve the needs of the organization’s members and help maintain the well-being of all Americans.
In addition to its national headquarters in San Francisco, the JACL has regional offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
The Pacific Citizen, publishing news and information for and about the Asian American community since 1929, is a production of the JACL Los Angeles office.
2023 – A Year In Review
JACL National Convention 2023
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Posted @withregram • @maskbloc_msp Minneapolis People's Pride is back on June 28th, 12-4pm at Powderhorn Park! This is a masks required event. Every break in the chain of transmission of Covid (and other airborne illnesses) is a benefit to our community! Masking up also helps the most vulnerable in our community be able to attend - and since anyone can be impacted by Covid illness and Long Covid, masks help protect all of us. ![]()
For all those able to, please find places to purchase masks ahead of time in our linktree: @maskblocmsp. For all those who need, you can make a request ahead of time for free masks from our form @maskblocmsp. There will be a limited stock of free masks available at the event. We can't wait to see you there!![]()
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Image description: centered text on a light blue background, bordered by the Mask Bloc MSP logo, a QR code that leads to the mask bloc msp linktree, two megaphones, and an illustration of people attending pride. Text reads- Mpls People's Pride, June 28th, 12-4 pm, Powderhorn Park. No corporations, no cops. People's Pride is a masks required event to help protect our community. Please plan ahead to request or purchase masks ahead of time as there will be limited stock at the event. Linktr.ee/maskblocmsp. The illustration features a vendor tent, a large progress pride flag, many people with various skin tones and body sizes wearing masks and colorful clothing, and trees in the background. Next to one tree, there is a person wearing a keffiyeh speaking into a microphone with the Palestinian flag flying. In one corner, someone grills while others wait for food. The mask bloc logo is a bright blue circle with a pink border and white text, and in the center there is a white KN95 mask. Logo text reads- Maskbloc MSP/On Dakota Land. We Keep Us Safer/@maskblocmsp. Two pink triangles separate the text on the logo. End image description.
📅 Sunday, July 27th, 2025![]()
🕟 11:00am - 2:30pm![]()
📍 Rosland Park Shelter![]()
4300 West 66th Street![]()
Edina, MN 55435![]()
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Join the Twin Cities JACL for our annual summer picnic, featuring great food, Japanese Dance, Games, and More!![]()
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All are welcome! Bring your friends, family, and appetite. Please also bring something to share, and don't forget to RSVP!![]()
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tinyurl.com/4au297ae
Posted @withregram • @asamnews The Trump Administration has ordered new signage at Manzanar National Historic Site, an incarceration camp where over 10,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants were once imprisoned for their Asian descent and subjected to poor living conditions and violence. These signs have sparked controversy, as many park advocates and historians have cited concerns over whether or not the signs encourage an erasure of history.![]()
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Trump’s March 27 executive order calls for the Interior Secretary to review if monuments “have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”![]()
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This executive order caused Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to issue a directive mandating all national parks post the signage, which include a QR code and a description urging visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans,” and “that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” ![]()
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Dennis Arguelles, the Southern California director of the National Parks Conservation Association, told his concerns to SFGATE.![]()
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“If this administration has its way, [Manzanar is] probably one of the stories they’d rather see go away,” he said.![]()
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Read more at the link in bio.![]()
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First photo by Jrsavageau via Wikipedia Creative Commons, second photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia Creative Commons, third photo by Lindsay Smythe via Wikipedia Creative Commons![]()
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#aapi, #asianamericanhistory, #japaneseamerican, #eastasianamerican, #japaneseincarceration, #aapicommunity, #internmentcamp, #ManzanarNationalHistoricSite, #NationalParkService, #memorial, #WWII, #trumpadministration, #trumpexecutiveorder, #asamnews
The new travel ban is part of a long and troubling history of restricting immigration based on race and nationality. From early attempts at excluding Asian immigrants to Trump’s previous Muslim Ban, history shows how these restrictions are often driven by racist and xenophobic stereotypes rather than any real threat.![]()
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The country’s first restrictive immigration law, the Page Act of 1875, banned Chinese “coolie” labor — though enforcement largely focused on prohibiting the entry of Chinese women to the United States based on the racist and sexist assumption that all were sex workers. Five years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act closed the borders to all Chinese immigrants. ![]()
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As U.S. labor recruiters turned to Japan as a source of cheap, exploitable labor, a familiar backlash emerged. The 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the U.S. and Japan barred Japanese laborers, and in 1917 the “Asiatic Barred Zone Act” banned migration from much of Asia. ![]()
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But it didn’t stop there. The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, was a nativist response to increased immigration from “undesirable” countries. Its primary target was Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks — but West Coast politicians used it as an opportunity to solve the so-called “Japanese Problem.” The Act established a national origins quota for the first time, imposing strict limits on immigration from Asia or Eastern and Southern Europe. It also created an outright ban on Japanese immigration. ![]()
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Immigration bans have always been about weaponizing nationalist fears to label entire groups of people as a threat. Today’s travel ban, along with mass deportations and migrant detention, are rooted in a long history of racism and xenophobia masquerading as “national security.” We must recognize these bans for what they are: a legacy of exclusion that threatens our civil rights and the foundations of our democracy. This history serves as both a warning and a call to action.![]()
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Image descriptions: Six slides with the same text as above, along with photos and documents of early Chinese and Japanese immigrants entering the United States and images from protests against the Muslim Ban.
www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2025/06/18/trump-administration-impact-books-reading/8...
Trump administration could change the way we read, from book bans to author talks
www.usatoday.com
Policies from the Trump administration are already impacting readers, publishers and authors – and could continue given grant cuts and DEI reversals.
Posted @withregram • @tsuruforsolidarity Over the past week, we have seen the culmination of years of increasingly militarized immigration enforcement operations — a deliberate targeting of immigrants continues to ramp up and expand into workplaces, courthouses, and outside schools through an incentivized system that racially profiles and disappears people into a deadly detention system.![]()
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Community and elected leaders are warning that we are on a trajectory towards a normalized state of violent martial occupation and dissolution of the rule of law.![]()
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People in Los Angeles and in cities across the country are rising up in anger and frustration to protest the invasion of their communities by ICE and federal forces who have come to arrest neighbors, families and friends. In response to community resistance, the federal government ordered the National Guard and Marines to deploy alongside federal agents, escalating a tense situation and provoking confrontation with state governments and citizenry.![]()
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As Japanese Americans, we know all too well what it feels like to be a community treated as an internal enemy: occupied, policed, restricted, and removed by our own nation’s military. We know where this leads if left unchecked: curfews, mass roundups, martial law, separation of families, indefinite detention and the wholesale loss of civil liberties and human rights. Today, the technology of repression and removal may be different — airplanes instead of trains, AI-driven databases instead of paper census maps — but the dangers are familiar.![]()
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This is a defining moment for each one of us. What kind of ancestors will we be in this moment? What will we do to protect our communities and build the future that we want for our children and grandchildren. (1/2)